With partisan gerrymandering reducing the number of competitive House districts across the U.S., some analysts see just 15 pure toss-ups, five of which are in New York and California. The top of the ticket will likely have a big impact.

• Spain flooding: Crews search for survivors as residents try to salvage what they can from ruined homes following flash floods in Spain that claimed at least 158 lives as of Thursday. 
• North Korea missile test: It test-fires an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time in almost a year, demonstrating an improved ability to potentially launch long-range nuclear attacks.
• Challenge to Musk on hold: A judge in Philadelphia places a state challenge to Elon Musk’s $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes on hold while lawyers for the billionaire try to move the lawsuit to federal court.
• Diwali begins: In India, celebrants mark the Hindu festival of lights by symbolically lighting a record 2.51 million clay oil lamps at dusk on the banks of the Saryu River.
• Dodgers win World Series: Overcoming a 5-run deficit in the final game, the Los Angeles Dodgers win their second World Series championship in five seasons. 

Read these news briefs.

+ Related Monitor story: The Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman, World Series home-run hero, and the Lakers’ Bronny James, who scored his first NBA points, each also made fatherhood an LA story Wednesday night. Commentator Ken Makin explains.

The Russian public is generally satisfied with how their country has transformed under 25 years of Vladimir Putin’s rule. But that’s less because of any special attributes he has, Russian experts say, and more a reflection of history and culture.

China and Russia have so far set the pace in building economic and political ties with Global South nations. Can Western governments match their appeal? That’s their goal.

Election workers play a key role in running voting operations on Election Day. Their role has come under increased scrutiny since the 2020 U.S. elections. Here’s what this position involves – and how people are handling the pressure.

The Harris and Trump tickets project diverse family portraits that, collectively, represent the United States today. They all share family as a top priority, but their policy approaches diverge sharply.

“A Real Pain,” written by, directed by, and co-starring Jesse Eisenberg, is the kind of movie that creeps up on you, says Monitor film critic Peter Rainer. It has a way of seeing that, in its own modest way, owes something to the Yiddish sensibility that informed storytellers like Isaac Bashevis Singer.

In Cuba, blackouts may be bringing light. The island’s power grid has collapsed at least four times in October, plunging the country into darkness. Even under the best conditions, electricity reaches only parts of the population for a few hours at a time.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel declared a state of emergency and blamed the crisis on Washington’s long-standing economic embargo. But even his most senior aides no longer trust that old excuse to placate frustrated citizens.

On Tuesday, the ruling Communist Party fired the vice prime minister in an anti-corruption probe into private business. Several days earlier, Vice President Manuel Marrero Cruz openly contradicted his boss, ascribing the outages – a “complex” situation, he called it – primarily to dilapidated energy infrastructure.

Such rays of transparency may seem at odds with a government hobbled by corruption and criticized for jailing its opponents. Yet that reputation obscures gradual reforms to meet the rising demands of a new and entrepreneurial generation, such as legalization of privately owned businesses.

“With the new circumstances, more honesty has found its way into all areas of the economic debate,” wrote Marcel Kunzmann, a Cuba expert at the University of Buckingham, in a paper published in May. Although most workers still work for the state, he noted, the expectations of ordinary citizens have shifted. “If anything can be said about the young generation in Cuba, it is that we are workers,” a young woman told him.

Honesty has lately helped another country confront its own persistent energy crisis. Since roughly 2007, South Africans have endured rolling brownouts to cope with rising demand on an aging, publicly owned power grid never designed to meet the needs of the full population. Efforts to overhaul the system were beset by deepening corruption. Last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa was forced to declare the power cuts a national emergency.

But the formation of a new coalition government following elections in May that ended three decades of one-party rule has already brought change. A new law signed in August maps an end to the state’s monopoly on power generation. Democratizing the grid, Mr. Ramaphosa said, will boost competition and a shift toward renewable energy sources.

Oil fuels 80% of Cuba’s energy production. In March, during a previous round of acute power shortages, only one of the country’s three refineries was functional. Protests broke out in several cities over “freedom, food, and electricity.” Nearly 5% of the population has emigrated since 2021.

The government’s attempt “year after year to explain the situation and affirm that ‘they are working to resolve it’ are not well received by a large part of the population, tired and worn out by the difficulty of sustaining life in Cuba with a minimum of well-being,” the news blog La Joven Cuba observed.

Some officials might now be listening. Out of the darkness, their honesty shines new light.