WORLD BRIEFLY
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Senate confirms
billionaire investor
as commerce
secretary
WASHINGTON (AP)
— The Senate on Monday
confirmed billionaire investor
Wilbur Ross as commerce
secretary as President Donald
Trump adds to his economic
team.
The vote was 72-27.
Breaking with Republican
orthodoxy, Ross said the
Trump administration
will work quickly to re-do
the North American Free
Trade Agreement. That’s
the massive trade pact with
Canada and Mexico that has
boosted trade but still stings
laid-off workers across the
Midwest.
Senators from both
political parties were
deferential to Ross at his
nearly four-hour confirmation
hearing, which was much
more subdued than the
confirmation hearings of
other Trump nominees.
Former commerce secretaries
have praised him, including
one who served under former
President Barack Obama.
“Mr. Ross will bring
decades of business,
entrepreneurial and civic
experience to this important
position,” said Sen. John
Thune, R-S.D., chairman of
the Commerce Committee.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
of Massachusetts criticized
Ross’ business ties to
Russia and the way he ran a
mortgage lender during the
housing crisis.
“Mr. Ross has extensive
ties to Russia. He plans to
keep making money from his
major oil shipping companies
while working as Commerce
Secretary. He’s made billions
off the backs of struggling
home owners,” Warren said
Monday. “He is practically a
cartoon stereotype of a Wall
Street fat cat.”
As part of his ethics
agreement, Ross is giving up
his position at Diamond S.
Shipping, but he will retain
a stake in the company,
which ships petroleum and
other products. As part of
the agreement, Ross has
promised not to take any
action as commerce secretary
that would benefit any
company in which he has a
financial interest.
At his confirmation
hearing, Ross was not asked
about business ties to Russia
or his work as a mortgage
lender, and he did not address
the issues.
Cause of most U.S.
wildfires traced to
people, study finds
WASHINGTON (AP) —
People have triggered five out
of six wildfires in the U.S.
over the last two decades,
tripling the length of the
wildfire season and making
it start earlier in the East and
last longer in the West, a new
study finds.
Even as climate change
worsens the nation’s fire
season — making it longer
and easier to burn more
acres — researchers said
human activities play an even
bigger role.
While fire experts have
long blamed people more
than lightning, the new
work details the extent of
human-caused ignitions and
how they interact with global
warming to make matters
worse.
Scientists analyzing fire
data from 1992 to 2012
found that 84 percent of all
U.S. wildfires — but only
44 percent of the total acres
burned — were started by
people, either by accident
or on purpose. And human-
caused blazes have more
than tripled the length of the
wildfire season from 46 days
to 154 days, according to a
study in Monday’s journal
Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
“People are moving
more and more into natural
wild areas and essentially
providing ignition for
wildfires,” said lead author
Jennifer Balch, a fire
ecologist at the University of
Colorado.
Of the more than 1 million
human-started fires since
1992, about 29 percent began
by trash burning, another 21
percent were arson and 11
percent were from misuse of
equipment, Balch said.
Last year’s Soberanes fire
in California was sparked
by an illegal campfire and
burned for nearly three
months. The blaze surpassed
$200 million in firefighting
costs, the most expensive in
U.S. history.
One out of every five
wildfires occurs on the Fourth
of July from fireworks, Balch
said.
Devin Nunes of California,
said he has heard no
evidence so far that anyone
in Trump’s orbit was in
contact with Russians during
the presidential campaign.
The top Democrat on the
committee, Adam Schiff,
also of California, said the
committee’s investigation
was hardly off the ground and
it was premature to make any
conclusions.
The nature of ties between
Trump’s associates and
Russia has dogged him
throughout his nascent
presidency, and Monday
brought renewed calls
for a special prosecutor
to investigate the unusual
situation. Federal
investigators have been
looking into contacts between
Trump advisers and Russia
for months, along with
Probe into Russia
ties to Trump
off to rocky start
WASHINGTON (AP)
— A simmering dispute
between leaders of the House
intelligence committee spilled
into the public Monday over
an investigation into whether
President Donald Trump
has ties to Russia, even as
they pledged to conduct a
bipartisan probe.
The Republican
committee chairman, Rep.
East Oregonian
SpaceX says it will
fly two people to
moon next year
Russia’s role in political
hacking during the campaign
aimed at Democrats. Trump,
on Monday, said he hasn’t
called Russia in 10 years.
The House and Senate
intelligence committees
are conducting separate
investigations. But
revelations last week that the
White House enlisted the
Republican chairmen of those
committees to push back
against news reports have
intensified concerns over
whether the congressional
investigations will be tainted
by political influence.
Nunes has said the White
House asked him to talk with
one reporter, but didn’t give
him any guidance on what
to say. He said he told that
reporter the same thing he’s
said to many other reporters
in the course of discussions.
CAPE CANAVERAL,
Fla. (AP) — SpaceX said
Monday it will fly two people
to the moon next year, a feat
not attempted since NASA’s
Apollo heyday close to half a
century ago.
Tech billionaire Elon
Musk — the company’s
founder and chief executive
officer — announced the
surprising news barely a week
after launching his first rocket
from NASA’s legendary
moon pad.
Two people who know
one another approached
the company about sending
them on a weeklong flight
just beyond the moon,
according to Musk. He won’t
identify the pair or the price
tag. They’ve already paid a
“significant” deposit and are
“very serious” about it, he
noted.
“Fly me to the moon ...
Ok,” Musk said in a light-
hearted tweet following the
news conference.
Musk said SpaceX is on
track to launch astronauts
to the International Space
Station for NASA in
mid-2018. This moon mission
would follow about six
months later, by the end of
the year under the current
schedule, using a Dragon
crew capsule and a Falcon
heavy rocket launched from
NASA’s former moon pad in
Florida.
If all goes as planned, it
could happen close to the
50th anniversary of NASA’s
first manned flight to the
moon, on Apollo 8.
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