Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi's closely contested US Senate race, the Associated Press projected on Wednesday after an extended ballot count, giving the state its first Black senator since the Reconstruction era following the Civil War. The 43-year-old prosecutor's narrow victory also makes him the first Democrat elected to a new Senate seat by Mississippi since 1947. The result marks a major political shift in a state that has been dominated by white conservatives for generations. ...