Nation & World Watch
vWashington: Senate confirms Carson, Perry
Two of President Donald Trump’s former rivals for the GOP White House nomination won Senate confirmation Thursday to join his administration.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was confirmed as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development on a 58-41 vote. A few hours later, the Senate backed former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to be energy secretary, 62-37.
Carson and Perry are the 17th and 18th of Trump’s 22 Cabinet and Cabinetlevel nominations to win Senate approval.
Carson has never held public office and has no housing policy experience. Perry, who once pledged to eliminate the Energy Department, has promised to be an advocate for the agency and to protect the nation’s nuclear stockpile.
vNew York: Typo caused Amazon’s big web outage
Amazon says an incorrectly typed command during a routine debugging of its billing system caused the five-hour outage of some Amazon Web Services servers Tuesday.
In a summary posted online, the Seattle company said a command meant to remove a small number of servers for one of its S3 subsystems was entered incorrectly, and a larger set of servers was removed.
Amazon says it is making changes to its system to ensure incorrect commands won’t trigger an outage of its web services in the future.
vPortland, Ore.: Heater caused blaze that killed 4
A house fire in rural Oregon that killed four children and critically burned three other family members started with a portable space heater that was being used after a fireplace malfunctioned, a volunteer fire chief said Thursday.
Combustible materials placed too close to the heater ignited and started the blaze in the tiny timber town of Riddle, Fire Protection District Chief Rich Holloway said in a post on the district’s Facebook page.
The fire killed four children ranging from 4 to 13 and devastated the tiny town of fewer than 1,000 people. Riddle is about 200 miles south of Portland.
vSyria: Troops retake Palmyra from Islamic State
Syria’s military announced Thursday that it has fully recaptured the historic town of Palmyra from the Islamic State as the militants fled in the face of artillery fire and intense Russia-backed airstrikes.
The development marks the third time that the town — famed for its priceless Roman ruins and archaeological treasures that the Islamic State group had sought to destroy — has changed hands in one year.
Turkish backed opposition fighters seized the Syrian town of al-Bab from the militants Feb. 23, following a grueling three-month battle.
vSweden: Government to draft men and women
Sweden’s left-leaning government instituted a military draft for both men and women Thursday because of what its defense minister called a deteriorating security environment in Europe and around Sweden.
Sweden abolished compulsory military service for men in 2010 because there were enough volunteers to meet its military needs. It has never had a military draft for women.
In September, non-NATO -member Sweden stationed troops on the Baltic Sea island of Gotland. Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist described the move as sending a signal after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its “increasing pressure” on the neighboring Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.