In brief: General says soldiers will be spread thinner

FORT BRAGG, N.C. – As the war in Afghanistan winds down, the U.S. soldiers will be spread thinner and must be ready to perform a wider array of missions., the new Army commander in charge of training and providing troops for the wars said Monday.

Gen. David Rodriguez, who took over as head of U.S. Army Forces Command on Monday, said that as troops withdraw from Afghanistan, one brigade may have to take over where two have been working. And he said they must be trained to coordinate and use the high-tech surveillance, communications, and command and control systems that are flooding into the war zone.

“I don’t think we can afford to have a bunch of tailored forces for different things,” Rodriguez said just before he took over his new command. “That’s why we’re going to have to be able to operate across the full spectrum of conflict and use the tools and apply them in the right way.”

N.C. House OKs public vote on gay marriages

RALEIGH, N.C. – The North Carolina House of Representatives voted 75-42 Monday to let state voters decide whether a ban on same-sex marriage should be written into the state constitution.

Supporters decided to put the question on the May primary ballot next year rather than the November 2012 general election ballot, ensuring that the proposal would win support from enough Democrats to clear the 72 House-vote requirement for proposed constitutional changes.

The decision alleviated concerns among Democrats who support the amendment that Republicans were pushing the question to boost turnout from social conservatives for next year’s presidential election. Ten Democrats and 65 Republicans voted for the amendment.

The issue now moves to the state Senate, which is expected to debate the amendment today.

Lawsuit filed against creating online libraries

NEW YORK – Authors and authors’ groups have filed a federal lawsuit in New York City to stop universities from creating online libraries with millions of scanned books.

The Authors Guild and the Australian Society of Authors were among groups joining eight individual authors to file a copyright infringement lawsuit on Monday in Manhattan.

The authors said they obtained from Google Inc. the unauthorized scans of an estimated 7 million copyright-protected books. They claimed universities in California, Wisconsin, Indiana and New York pooled the unauthorized files into a repository organized by the University of Michigan.

Paul Courant, dean of libraries at the University of Michigan, said university officials are confident their plan to digitize books is lawful.