This week in the saga

An unexpected ally emerges from the world of music, and the king seizes it — a crack, he believes, in a wall they swore could never move. He praises the artist for a great service to a community he means to win, big things happening, eyes opening for the first time in decades. Across the Pacific a war that never formally ended edges toward its close, and he tells America to be proud. A committee's report finds no evidence he conspired with the foreign power, and he brandishes it like a verdict: a total witch hunt that must end now. For one bright spring, the walls seem to be falling on their own.