Seattle: Historic plane recovered after crash into sound

A 1940s-era Boeing passenger plane was carefully hoisted Friday from Puget Sound, one day after engine failure forced a veteran test pilot to ditch the aircraft.

The Boeing 307 Stratoliner was loaded onto a barge to take it to a riverside terminal where it would be washed and transported to a hangar at Boeing Field.

The four-engine plane the only one of its kind still in existence crash-landed Thursday. The pilot and three passengers were standing on the plane’s wings when rescuers arrived.

Milwaukee: Serial-killer figures upset victims’ families

A Colorado company’s line of dolls depicting serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and other murderers is in poor taste, an attorney for victims’ families said Friday.

Spectre Studios offers hand-painted, posable figurines of Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Wisconsin killer Ed Gein.

Creator David Johnson declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press, but said in an e-mail that he “was making money doing my artwork. I’m sure that seems a very feeble excuse for a victim’s family member watching the news.”

France: Rabbit clones herald advance in lab science

Although it would seem rabbits need no extra help in the reproduction business, a research team in France announced Friday it has succeeded in producing baby rabbits via cloning. The eventual goal is to tailor rabbits so they’re more useful in laboratory experiments.

According to the journal Nature Biotechnology, a year after they were born, “the resultant cloned offspring showed normal growth and fertility. Rabbit models of human diseases are especially attractive because their physiology more closely resembles humans” than do those of laboratory rats and mice, the journal reported. The cloned animals may also be engineered to serve as “drug factories” to produce products such as drugs or enzymes in their milk.

Detroit: FBI to hand off Jimmy Hoffa case

The FBI said Friday it will refer its findings in the nearly 27-year-old disappearance of former Teamsters President James R. Hoffa to local prosecutors for possible state charges.

No federal charges will be filed for now, though they may if more information is uncovered, said Special Agent Dawn Clenney of the FBI’s Detroit office.

On Thursday, John Bell, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit bureau, told The Detroit News the federal case was stymied because of the time elapsed since Hoffa disappeared from a restaurant parking lot July 30, 1975.

Wisconsin: Crash toll rises to six

A 86-year-old man died early Friday, the sixth victim of a fiery van and bus collision three days earlier, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Lawrence Meyers died at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, spokeswoman Janet Cooper said.

Thirteen people remained hospitalized Friday, two of them in critical condition.