In brief: Passengers on flight with bat sought

ATLANTA – Health officials are still looking for 15 passengers who were on a flight in which a bat flew inside the airplane’s cabin so they can protect them against the possibility of rabies.

Danielle Buttke of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Saturday they have contacted 35 of the 50 passengers on the Aug. 5 Delta Air Lines Flight 5121 that was operated by Atlantic Southeast Airlines.

She said none of the passengers they’ve spoken with required treatment.

The plane was flying from Madison, Wis., to Atlanta when the bat emerged. No one knows if the bat had rabies because it escaped. The CDC wants to talk to the plane’s passengers to make sure they didn’t have close contact with it.

Bridge railing collapses in Atlanta

ATLANTA – Authorities say a stretch of railing along a key Atlanta bridge spanning a heavily traveled interstate crashed onto the pavement below but missed hitting vehicles and no one was reported hurt.

Atlanta police Officer Kim Jones told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the debris fell from the 17th Street Bridge late Saturday night, halting traffic for miles on the Downtown Connector threading through the city.

Authorities said debris fell into northbound lanes on the interstate artery just before midnight.

The newspaper reported that one driver saw railing sections collapse like dominoes, missing vehicles below.

The bridge opened in March 2004 and links Atlanta’s Midtown with a bustling neighborhood of shops, restaurants and homes nearby.

Greyhound bus crashes, injuring 14

MOUNT GRETNA, Pa. – The driver of a Greyhound bus bound for St. Louis lost control on the Pennsylvania Turnpike early Saturday, sending the bus careening across the highway and up an embankment before it landed on its side on the interstate, briefly trapping a woman and sending 14 people to hospitals, authorities said.

Rescue crews freed the woman who was trapped in the wreckage in a rural area about a mile east of the Lebanon-Lancaster exit, turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo said.

Officials at three hospitals said 14 people altogether were brought in. Four uninjured passengers were picked up by another bus; the conditions of the others were unclear.

State police said the driver, whom they identified as Kareem Edward Farmer, 24, of Philadelphia, lost control of the bus while traveling in the passing lane.

Freed for transplant, she’s back in jail

NEW YORK – A thief who was released from a New York jail so she could get a heart transplant is back behind bars – possibly for good – after she was caught shoplifting again.

A lawyer for the dying Long Island woman told Newsday the new arrest has probably cost her any chance of getting a new heart.

Diane McCloud, of Hempstead, was freed by a judge in January after a doctor said she had only six months to live if she didn’t get a transplant.

After her release, she got into trouble with the court for continuing to smoke cigarettes. Then she was arrested in July for stealing beauty products from a store in Oceanside. McCloud pleaded guilty Friday.

Now she has to finish serving her original sentence, plus additional time in the new theft case – if she lives.

Turtles released after slow recovery

HARWICHPORT, Mass. – Workers from a Boston aquarium have released 10 endangered sea turtles back into the wild, months after they were rescued after stranding themselves on Cape Cod.

New England Aquarium officials said the turtles were released from a lobster boat Friday night in Nantucket Sound.

The turtles were the last group to be released from those rescued during the 2010 stranding season. The turtles became trapped in Cape Cod Bay as the water chilled through the autumn, before washing up on beaches in November and December.

Aquarium officials said these turtles were among the season’s toughest cases. Some had major shell fractures that required surgery, others had pneumonia and exotic infections.

Two of the released turtles had satellite tags attached, so their movements can be tracked.