WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's cancer was found at the earliest stage and has not spread beyond her pancreas, the court said yesterday.

The 75-year-old justice returned to her home in Washington yesterday after being released from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the court said.

The one-centimeter growth that doctors initially spotted during a CT scan in late January was benign. But a second, smaller tumor found during the operation was malignant, the court said. Doctors classified the cancer as early stage.

BRITISH AIRWAYS JET CRASH-LANDS

LONDON — The nosewheel of a British Airways passenger jet collapsed with a loud bang as it landed last night at London City Airport, sending the plane scraping across the tarmac with 71 people aboard, officials and witnesses said. All aboard escaped; one person was taken to a hospital with a minor injury.

The plane was arriving from Amsterdam about 8 p.m. when the front landing gear failed and the front of the plane slammed onto the runway and skidded, officials and firefighters said.

The airline said it did not yet know what caused the landing gear problem.

CALIF. POLYGAMIST GETS 7 LIFE TERMS

MURRIETA, Calif. — A self-proclaimed polygamist was sentenced yesterday to seven consecutive life prison terms for torturing seven of his 19 children, abusing four others and imprisoning two of his three wives.

Mansa Musa Muhummed, 55, also was sentenced to additional terms totaling 16 years and eight months by Riverside County Superior Court Judge F. Paul Dickerson III, who said Muhummed's treatment of his family amounted to "a reign of terror over defenseless children."

20 MILITANTS DIE IN MISSILE ATTACK

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suspected U.S. missile strike by a drone aircraft flattened a militant hide-out in northwest Pakistan today, killing 20 local and foreign insurgents, intelligence officials said.

At least 15 militants were also wounded in the attack in the restive South Waziristan tribal region.

The Taliban surrounded the targeted house and transported the dead and wounded out, said three intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.