[R] update.packages() behavior

[Bennet Fauber]

I recently compiled and installed R 3.2.2 on an RHEL 6.5 system.  Upon
installation, I tried

$ R-3.2.2/bin/R

R version 3.2.2 (2015-08-14) -- "Fire Safety"
....

> update.packages()
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
Error in download.file(url, destfile = f, quiet = TRUE) :
  unsupported URL scheme
HTTPS CRAN mirror
....
Selection: 14
Warning: unable to access index for repository https://cran.mtu.edu/src/contrib

However, choosing '18: (HTTP mirrors)', which then presents a
different menu of download location choices, and selecting one of
those seems to work, as does specifically naming a http URL, e.g.,
update.packages(repos = "http://cran.mtu.edu/").

Is the defaulting to the https URL-type a new behavior?  Did I miss
including some library, so https is not included?

My configure line was

$ ./configure --prefix=/tmp/bennet/local --mandir=/tmp/bennet/local/man \
   --enable-R-shlib --without-x \
   --with-blas="-L/usr/cac/rhel6/intel-xe-2015/mkl/lib/intel64
-lmkl_gf_lp64 -lmkl_sequential -lmkl_core"

and I have

$ rpm -qa | grep curl
curl-7.19.7-46.el6.x86_64
libcurl-devel-7.19.7-46.el6.x86_64
libcurl-7.19.7-46.el6.x86_64

installed.

If https is the default URL-type, is there some configuration I need
to do to not get the unsupported URL scheme message?  Is there a way
to globally set the URL-type to http instead?

I recompiled R 3.1.1 to check, and it doesn't seem to default to https.

Sorry if this is covered somewhere, pointers to appropriate
documentation will be appreciated.

Thanks,  -- bennet