Washington, D.C.

Army demotes general in prison abuse scandal

The Army said Thursday that only one general would be disciplined for failed leadership in connection with the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and that more than a dozen lower-ranking officers had received a variety of punishments.

The Army said it demoted Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, whose Army Reserve unit was in charge of the prison compound when Iraqi detainees were physically abused and sexually humiliated by military police and intelligence soldiers in the fall of 2003.

The Army also announced it cleared three other, more senior generals of wrongdoing in the prisoner abuse cases, actions that had been reported but not publicly confirmed by the Army.

That leaves Karpinski as the only general officer to be disciplined thus far. The demotion means her career in the military, where officers must rise in rank or leave, is effectively over.

New York City

Officials investigate blasts near consulate

Two small makeshift grenades exploded early Thursday outside a building housing the British Consulate, just as Britons went to the polls in a national election. The blast caused minor damage and no injuries.

Authorities said they had no clear indication the consulate, which shares the building with several other tenants, was a target. The blasts blew out a glass panel at the building’s entrance.

Police were reviewing images shot by 17 security cameras at the building and other locations to try to identify possible suspects. One of the videos raised suspicions that one of the devices may have been thrown from across the street, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The devices used in the attack were described as replica grenades that were stuffed with gunpowder and lit with a fuse.

Los Angeles

Researcher spots Mars lander wreckage

Nearly six years after NASA’s Mars Polar Lander vanished during a landing attempt on the Red Planet, a scientist said he had spotted what appears to be wreckage of the spacecraft.

The observation came during a re-examination of grainy, black-and-white images taken by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor, which searched for the probe with no success in 1999 and 2000.

“The observation of a single, small dot at the center of the disturbed location suggests that the vehicle remained more or less intact after its fall,” wrote Michael Malin, president and chief scientist of San Diego-based Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the camera aboard Global Surveyor.

Malin makes his case in the July issue of Sky & Telescope magazine. A copy of his article was posted Thursday on the magazine’s Web site.

Global Surveyor will take higher-resolution images later this year in an attempt to confirm the missing lander’s location.

Washington, D.C.

Rumsfeld scales back base closure plan

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday scaled back the projected impact of closing and consolidating military bases, saying the United States may have much less excess capacity at its domestic installations than previously thought.

“Without final figures, I would say the percent will be less than half of the 20 to 25 percent that has been characterized previously,” Rumsfeld said in a conference call with newspaper editorial writers days before releasing a long-anticipated list of recommended base closings and consolidations.

Rumsfeld’s new parameters on the extent of the base closings brighten the prospects for towns and cities that have spent more than two years trying to protect installations they consider essential to their communities’ economic futures.