Senate confirms Hur as U.S. attorney for Maryland

The Senate unanimously approved President Donald J. Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. Attorney in Maryland late Thursday, rapidly moving his approval during the course of a single day after it appeared to stall for weeks. Robert K. Hur, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland who was nominated in November, will succeed Rod J. Rosenstein in the post. Rosenstein, then the longest-serving U.S. attorney in the country, left the job last year to become deputy attorney general. Hur had appeared to stall in the Senate Judiciary Committee even as more recent U.S. attorney nominees in other states cleared the Senate. The committee’s chairman, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, told The Baltimore Sun last week he was seeking information from the Justice Department before moving forward on Hur. Multiple sources said Grassley was seeking additional material about the department’s probe into the 2016 presidential election. Hur was scheduled for committee review soon after the Sun’s coverage, and was approved by the Senate unanimously on Thursday. Russia-leased Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan. Ever since he joined NASA as a mission specialist in 2004, he’s been featured in any number of different missions, whether it be aboard the International Space Station or the world’s only undersea laboratory, Aquarius. He was scheduled to be aboard the space station again Thursday, to join station residents Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos, Scott Tingle of NASA and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.