Pentagon plans to reduce ground forces

Pentagon plans to reduce ground forces

WASHINGTON

Pentagon leaders outlined a plan Thursday for absorbing $487 billion in defense cuts over the coming decade by shrinking U.S. ground forces, slowing the purchase of a next-generation stealth fighter and retiring older planes and ships.

In a bid to pre-empt election-year Republican criticism, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the plan shifts the Pentagon’s focus from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to future challenges in Asia, the Mideast and in cyberspace. More special-operations forces such as the Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden will be available around the world, he said.

“We believe this is a balanced and complete package,” Panetta told a news conference, with Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at his side.

Rep. Barney Frank to marry partner

WASHINGTON

Retiring Rep. Barney Frank, a gay pioneer in Congress, said Thursday that he will marry his longtime partner, Jim Ready.

Frank spokesman Harry Gural said the liberal Massachusetts Democrat’s wedding will be in his home state, but that no date had been set.

Ready, 42, lives in Ogunquit, Maine. He has a small business doing custom awnings, carpentry, painting, welding and other general handyman services, Gural said. Ready is also a photographer. The two men have been together since spring 2007.

Frank was attending a retreat Thursday with other House Democrats on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

During an appearance on PBS’ “The Charlie Rose Show” earlier this month, Frank said he was looking forward to leaving Congress and spending time with Ready.

Teens arrested in reported school plot

SALT LAKE CITY

A Utah high-school student bragged to police that he was smarter than the Columbine killers and was plotting with an older student to set off a bomb during a school assembly and escape in a stolen plane, court documents say.

Dallin Morgan, 18, and the 16-year-old boy were pulled out of school Wednesday and arrested after authorities learned of the plot, Roy police spokeswoman Anna Bond said Thursday.

The students prepared by logging hundreds of hours on flight-simulator software on their home computers, and they planned to take a plane at Ogden Hinckley Airport after the bombing, Bond said.

The juvenile hinted at the plan in text messages to a friend, writing that both suspects wanted “revenge on the world” and “we have a plan to get away with it too.”

Romney failed to disclose income

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.

Mitt and Ann Romney failed to list an unknown amount of investment income from a variety of sources, including a Swiss bank account, on financial disclosure forms filed last year, the presidential hopeful’s campaign announced Thursday as it worked to correct the omissions.

Also missing is income from at least 20 investment funds in the Romneys’ blind trusts that are either not listed on his disclosure or contradict information listed on the former Massachusetts governor’s 2010 tax return. At least one of the 20 is an investment fund held by Ann Romney that carries an “offshore” label. It’s part of a fund operated by Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney ran for 15 years.

Associated Press