“Doug Jones defeats Roy Moore”

Democrat Doug Jones has won the Alabama Senate special election, a victory that was a stunning upset in a deeply red state. The win by Jones, projected by The Associated Press two hours after the polls closed Tuesday night, is sure to send shock waves through Washington. The special election was to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who left the Senate in February. It's the first Democratic Senate victory in the state in 25 years and now gives Republicans an even narrower, 51-49 Senate majority that could imperil GOP legislative priorities in 2018. Jones will be up for re-election to a full term in 2020. Moore refused to concede Tuesday night, saying that his campaign would "wait on God and let this process play out." Jones is a former U.S. attorney who is best known for prosecuting KKK members decades later for the killing of four young African-American girls in a 1963 Birmingham church bombing. According to exit polls, African-American turnout reached almost 30 percent — comparable to what it was for Barack Obama in 2008. 60 percent of voters said the accusations against Moore were a factor in their vote.

In Other News Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is ready to talk about talking to North Korea. "We're ready to talk anytime North Korea would like to talk. And we're ready to have the first meeting without pre-condition," he said, in remarks at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington, D.C. It sounds like a chance for a diplomatic resolution to the dangerous nuclear crisis with North Korea, which has gotten tenser in recent months after North Korea's sixth nuclear test and two successful launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Throughout 2017, incendiary threats and name-calling have flown from the U.S. and Pyongyang. Now, the secretary of state is saying the U.S. wants to sit down with North Korean leaders. The wife of the suspect in a pipe bomb explosion in New York was "surprised to find out what her husband did," despite speaking to him 30 minutes before the attempted attack. Akayed Ullah, who is accused of detonating the homemade explosive on Monday, was born in Bangladesh but legally moved to the US in 2011. His wife, who remained in Bangladesh when he moved to Brooklyn, said he "never mentioned radicalization or planning these types of activities."