Daybreak: Huge Wins for GOP

• Midterm elections carried the Republicans to huge victories: They took back the House, but not quite enough seats to take the Senate as well; they also took many governorships and statehouses. [NYT]

• Meet your newest Jewish senator(-elect): Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. [NYT]

• A senior European diplomat reported that while economic sanctions have had a real impact on Iranian life, the country’s leaders remain stubborn in their nuclear ambition. [LAT]

• The two synagogue-bound bombs from Yemen were addressed to long-dead Muslim persecutors—Diego Deza, of Inquisition Spain, and Reynald of Châtillon, of the Second Crusade—leading some to further believe that the bombs were not intended to blow up at their destinations. In other news, someone in al-Qaeda got their hands on a copy of Herzog. [NYT]

• The Palestinian Authority renovated 14 schools in East Jerusalem; in semi-defiance of an Israeli ban, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad made an appearance on the outskirts. [NYT]

• Will a U.N. tribunal’s finding of Syrian complicity in the 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister lead to a Hezbollah coup in Lebanon? [Jeffrey Goldberg]