AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Jones wins in stunning Alabama upset

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — In a stunning victory aided by scandal, Democrat Doug Jones won Alabama’s special Senate election on Tuesday, beating back history, an embattled Republican opponent and President Donald Trump, who urgently endorsed GOP rebel Roy Moore despite a litany of sexual misconduct allegations.

It was the first Democratic Senate victory in a quarter-century in Alabama, one of the reddest of red states, and proved anew that party loyalty is anything but sure in the age of Trump. It was a major embarrassment for the president and a fresh wound for the nation’s already divided Republican Party.

The victory by Jones, a former U.S. attorney best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for Birmingham’s infamous 1963 church bombing, narrows the GOP advantage in the U.S. Senate to 51-49. That imperils already-uncertain Republican tax, budget and health proposals and injects tremendous energy into the Democratic Party’s early push to reclaim House and Senate majorities in 2018.

Still, many Washington Republicans viewed the defeat of Moore as perhaps the best outcome for the party nationally despite the short-term sting. The fiery Christian conservative’s positions have alienated women, racial minorities, gays and Muslims — in addition to the multiple allegations that he was guilty of sexual misconduct with teens, one only 14, when he was in his 30s.

A number of Republicans declined to support him, including Alabama’s long-serving Sen. Richard Shelby. But Trump lent his name and the national GOP’s resources to Moore’s campaign in recent days.

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Things to know about Alabama’s new US senator, Doug Jones

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Doug Jones, a Democrat who once prosecuted two Ku Klux Klansmen in a deadly church bombing and has now broken the Republican lock grip on Alabama, is the state’s new U.S. senator.

Here are some facts about Jones:

CLOSE TO HOME

Jones, 63, grew up in the working-class city of Fairfield, just west of Birmingham, an area where steel mills once belched smoke that left a rust-colored haze hanging over the metro area. His father was a steelworker and so was one of his grandfathers; the other worked in a coal mine. Jones spent time working in a mill when not in school.

Now an attorney in private practice, Jones lives just a few miles from his hometown in the hilly suburb of Mountain Brook, Alabama’s richest locale with an average family income estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau at $225,000 annually.

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10 Things to Know for Wednesday

Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Wednesday:

1. WHERE POLITICS CAN BE BIZARRE

The wild Senate race between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones is only the latest odd campaign in Alabama.

2. TRUMP TWEET DRAWS HEATED REPLY

Democrats admonish the president for what they say is an innuendo-laden attack on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand declaring she “would do anything” to get campaign donations.

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FBI agent removed from Russia probe called Trump an ‘idiot’

WASHINGTON (AP) — An FBI agent removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team over politically charged text messages referred to Donald Trump, then the Republican presidential candidate, as an “idiot” and said on election night that a Trump victory would be “terrifying,” according to dozens of text messages reviewed by The Associated Press.

Peter Strzok, a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent who was also deeply involved in the investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, was removed over the summer from Mueller’s team following the discovery of text messages exchanged with Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer who was also detailed to the group of agents and prosecutors investigating potential co-ordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The messages, which surfaced in a Justice Department inspector general investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton inquiry, were being provided to congressional committees and were reviewed by the AP on Tuesday night.

The texts seen by the AP occurred as the 2016 presidential race was in full swing and as Trump and Clinton were looking to defeat their primary challengers and head toward the general election. The messages cover a broad range of political topics and include an exchange of news articles about the race, often alongside their own commentaries.

In one exchange, on Oct. 18, 2016, Strzok writes to Page and says: “I am riled up. Trump is an (expletive) idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer. I CAN’T PULL AWAY. WHAT THE (expletive) HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY??!?!

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Crews struggle to keep flames from California neighbourhoods

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A cooking fire at a homeless encampment sparked a wildfire last week that destroyed six homes in the Bel Air neighbourhood of Los Angeles, authorities said Tuesday, while the fifth-largest wildfire in California history burning northwest of the city kept expanding and kept thousands out of their homes.

They are among a half-dozen fires that flared in Southern California last week and were driven by fiercely gusting Santa Ana winds.

Arson investigators determined that the Bel Air fire near the world-famous Getty museum was started by an illegal fire at a camp near a freeway underpass, city fire Capt. Erik Scott said.

The camp was empty when firefighters found it but people apparently had been sleeping and cooking there for at least several days, he said.

Northwest of Los Angeles, firefighters protected foothill homes while the fire grew mostly into forest land, Santa Barbara County Fire Department spokesman Mike Eliason said.

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Some of Facebook’s early friends now its sharpest critics

NEW YORK (AP) — Some of Facebook’s former friends are starting to express some serious doubts about the social network they helped create.

Facebook exploits a “vulnerability in human psychology” to addict its users, Sean Parker, the company’s first president, said in a public forum last month. Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook vice-president who joined the company in 2007, recently told an audience at Stanford that the company is “ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

And Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist and early investor in both Facebook and Google, wrote that both companies “threaten public health and democracy” in an August USA Today op-ed .

It has been a rough year for the tech industry, especially social media companies. It opened with concerns about fake news and “filter bubbles” that can shield people from contrary beliefs, segued into pressure on Facebook and Twitter to clamp down on trolling and online harassment, and culminated with congressional hearings into Russian agents’ alleged use of their platforms to meddle with the 2016 presidential election .

All of that, of course, came against a steady drumbeat of tweets from President Donald Trump, who used the service to praise his allies and castigate his foes, often in inflammatory fashion.

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San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee leaves behind city in turmoil

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Under Mayor Ed Lee’s seven-year watch, San Francisco went from a city mired in recession to a technology-fueled economic powerhouse where housing costs skyrocketed and the chasm between the wealthy and everyone else grew. Lee died Tuesday at 65 after collapsing while grocery shopping.

He leaves behind a rapidly transforming city where the median home value is more than $1.2 million and grumpy residents are unhappy with homelessness, clogged traffic and frequent auto break-ins.

Supporters touted his dedication to building new housing and sending out workers to clean up dirty streets in a city known for its entrenched homelessness. Critics said Lee, a Democrat, catered too much to tech companies, citing a 2011 tax break he brokered for Twitter as part of a remake of the city’s dilapidated downtown.

Still, many on Tuesday mourned the city’s first Asian-American mayor as a reluctant politician dedicated to civil service who was more comfortable working on details than on delivering the perfect political sound bite. No cause was given for his death but an autopsy was planned.

“He believed in a city where a poor kid from public housing could become mayor,” acting San Francisco Mayor London Breed told reporters at a briefing attended by hundreds of city workers and civic leaders.

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Paris hosts major climate summit _ and it’s all about Trump

PARIS (AP) — The global climate summit in Paris was designed to bypass Donald Trump, but the U.S. president ended up playing a starring role.

Trump became the unwitting villain as world leaders, investors and other Americans assailed him Tuesday for rejecting the Paris climate accord.

To emphasize their point — and prevent others from following his lead — they announced more than $1 billion in investments to make it easier for countries and industries to give up oil and coal.

French President Emmanuel Macron used the summit to seize the global spotlight, capitalizing on Trump’s isolationist policies and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s domestic weakness to position himself as the world’s moral compass on climate change.

“We’re not moving fast enough,” Macron said, warning that the 2015 Paris climate accord is “fragile.”

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NFL Network suspends analysts over sexual misconduct suit

NEW YORK (AP) — Hall of Fame player Marshall Faulk and two other NFL Network analysts were suspended after a woman who worked as a wardrobe stylist at the network accused them of sexual misconduct in a lawsuit.

The NFL on Tuesday identified the three as Faulk, Ike Taylor and Heath Evans. They have been “suspended from their duties at NFL Network pending an investigation into these allegations,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy said.

Jami Cantor described several sexually inappropriate encounters with the three retired players and others who have worked for NFL Network, according to court documents first reported by Bloomberg .

The lawsuit and suspensions are the latest in a wave of sexual misconduct allegations against prominent men in politics, entertainment and media.

Former NFL Network executive Eric Weinberger, former NFL Network analysts Donovan McNabb, Eric Davis, and Hall of Famer Warren Sapp, and former NFL Network employee Marc Watts also are named in the lawsuit.

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Review: ‘The Last Jedi’ a welcome disturbance in the Force

A welcome disturbance in the Force, Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi” is, by wide measure, the trippiest, scrappiest and most rule-breaking “Star Wars” adventure yet.

Not the exercise in nostalgia that was J.J. Abrams’ “The Force Awakens,” Johnson’s Episode VIII takes George Lucas’ space opera in new, often thrilling, and sometimes erratic directions while finding the truest expression yet of the saga’s underlying ethos of camaraderie in resistance to oppression. Though there are countless familiar broad strokes — rebel escapes, Jedi soul-searching, daddy issues — “The Last Jedi” has discovered some new moves yet, in the galaxy far, far away.

As the second installment in this third “Star Wars” trilogy, “The Last Jedi” is like the inverted corollary of “The Empire Strike Back” (long the super fan’s favourite). While it is, like its part-two predecessor, often murky and weird, Johnson’s frequently comic film distinguishes itself by upending the traditional power dynamics of heroes and bit players in the Star Wars galaxy.

Here, the odds-defying daredevil flyboy (Oscar Isaac as Resistance pilot Poe Dameron) is an impetuous chauvinist, at odds with a female commander (a purple-haired Laura Dern). “Get your head out of your cockpit,” admonishes Leia (the late Carrie Fisher, to whom the film is dedicated). The master-apprentice relationship — previously Yoda instructing young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) on a swampy remote planet — is now tilted more toward Rey, the young Jedi (Daisy Ridley), sent to stir a monkish Skywalker from a windswept, Porg-infested isle. And instead of a Tauntaun’s guts being spilled, there are even moments of animal rights reflections creeping into the galaxy. About to bite into his rotisserie dinner, Chewbacca, with a sad groan, is struck by pangs of doubt.

Abrams’s finest touch in his zippy and nimble reboot was in his diverse casting — in particular Ridley and John Boyega, as Finn, the Stormtrooper turned good guy. But Johnson, who also wrote the film, has gone further to shake up the familiar roles and rhythms of Star Wars. Scattershot and loose-limbed, “The Last Jedi” doesn’t worship at its own altar, often undercutting its own grandiosity.

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