New Jersey

Several questioned on aircraft laser beams

Authorities investigating two incidents in which laser beams were aimed at aircraft flying over northern New Jersey have questioned several people but made no arrests, the FBI said Saturday in Trenton.

The pilot of a corporate jet first reported seeing the green lasers on Wednesday as he came in to Teterboro Airport for landing. A police helicopter for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey flew over the area Friday to investigate, and also spotted the lasers.

FBI Special Agent Steve Kodak said Saturday that no one was in custody. A spokesman for the Port Authority said a Parsippany resident was among those questioned.

Federal agents are looking into similar incidents involving lasers and aircraft, including cases in Cleveland, Washington, Houston, Colorado Springs, Colo., and Medford, Ore.

Federal law enforcement officials have said there is no evidence of a terrorist plot involving laser beams, though last month the FBI and the Homeland Security Department put out a memo saying there is evidence that terrorists have explored using lasers as weapons.

Washington, D.C.

Bush opponents plan inaugural events

The bleachers are being assembled along Pennsylvania Avenue; the VIP grandstand is rising in front of the White House; and generous GOP donors have shelled out big bucks for President Bush’s Jan. 20 inauguration and parade.

But not everyone gathering in the nation’s capital and beyond this month will be celebrating: Organizations including ReDefeatBush.org and the January 20 Coalition of New Orleans are planning alternate activities that day, ranging from a “counterinaugural” ball to a jazz funeral.

The January 20 Coalition, bound by shared opposition to the Iraq war, has hired New Orleans’ premier walking jazz funeral band, the Treme Brass Band, to lead their mock funeral and hearse down Canal Street to a rally on the banks of the Mississippi River.

It turns out that the ReDefeatBush folks like to party, too. They’re holding what’s being billed as “The World’s First CounterInaugural Ball,” at a Washington nightclub on Jan. 20.

“Not Just Republicans Have Balls” reads their party invitation, which offers $30 tickets to people younger than 30, and $60 for the older folks.

Wisconsin

Rabies survivor out of hospital

A teenager who became the first person known to survive rabies without a vaccination went home Saturday after nearly 11 weeks in the hospital, officials said.

Jeanna Giese, 15, was infected when a bat bit her at church in September but she did not immediately seek treatment. She began showing symptoms of rabies in mid-October.

A team of physicians at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, in Wauwatosa, gambled on an experimental treatment and induced a coma as part of efforts to stave off the usually fatal infection.

Only five people besides Giese are known to have survived the rabies virus after the onset of symptoms. But unlike Giese, they had either been vaccinated or had received a series of rabies vaccine shots before showing symptoms.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said it is re-evaluating its approach to human rabies because of the results.

Rhode Island

Rep. Patrick Kennedy rules out Senate run

Rep. Patrick Kennedy has decided not to follow in his father’s footsteps and make a bid for the U.S. Senate — at least not yet.

The 37-year-old Kennedy, about to begin his sixth term in Congress, believes he can better serve Rhode Islanders from his place on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, said his spokesman, Ernesto Anguilla, ending speculation that the congressman would try to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee in 2006.

The congressman’s father, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, has said he’ll seek another Senate term in 2006. He was first elected in 1962.

Anguilla didn’t rule out a future Senate bid by the younger Kennedy.

“Definitely, he’s not ruling it out ever. Right now, when he looks at the landscape … it makes sense to stay in the House,” Anguilla said.