The midterms

Texas opened early voting. The Senate seat can decide the chamber.

Ballots can be cast through Oct. 30. Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican, is against state Rep. James Talarico. A CBS News poll had the race tight, with Talarico slightly ahead.

Video · CBS19

California

The Justice Department charged 28 voters in California.

All 28 are green-card holders, not citizens. Eleven were arrested Monday. The Los Angeles Times said 21 are suspected of having cast ballots. Noncitizen voting remains rare.

Canada

Alberta voted to stay in Canada.

With more than 1.8 million ballots counted, 76 percent chose to remain. The question was not independence itself. It was whether to open a later, binding vote.

Ukraine

A drone killed three on the road out of Kyiv.

The Kyiv regional prosecutor's office told Reuters that a Russian drone hit near the highway to Odesa. Several cars burned. Four people were wounded. The dead included the driver of a shuttle bus.

Prices

Wholesale prices rose 6.3 percent.

The producer-price index jumped 1.3 percent in September, the biggest monthly gain since March 2022. Energy prices for producers rose 10.8 percent. Economists had expected a much smaller move. Social Security’s cost-of-living raise for next year is 3.6 percent.

Space

Four astronauts splashed down off California.

SpaceX brought Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot, and Andrey Fedyaev home on Thursday after eight months. They had gone up in February to replace a crew sent home when a NASA astronaut fell ill.

Video · Associated Press

The arsenal

Ukraine’s drones still run on Chinese parts.

Magnets, motors, chips, sensors and battery cells still come from China, a dozen makers told the Associated Press. Switching to Western parts could raise the cost by 60 percent and cut production by as much.

Mexico

Trudy is a tropical storm, and the warnings are down.

At 8 a.m. Mountain time the center was about 190 miles west-southwest of Cabo Corrientes, with winds near 60 mph. No coastal watches or warnings were in effect. The National Hurricane Center said it should become post-tropical by early Tuesday.