Javascript Ticker Problem

I found a bit of Javascript to create a news ticker—essentially just rotating through the items of a list.

<script>
var ticker = $('ul.ticker');
ticker.children(':first').show().siblings().hide();
setInterval(function() {
    ticker.find(':开发者_运维问答visible').fadeOut(function() {
        $(this).appendTo(ticker);
        ticker.children(':first').show();
    });
},5000);
</script>

It worked really well when I just had list items, but when I made the list items into links it started acting strangely. I watched it with firebug and it appears that it goes through the list just fine the first time, then starts creating new list items:

<li style="display: none;"></li>

It seems to alternate displaying one of these <li> then after it goes through the list the first time.

Thank you for your help!

edit 1: HTML

<ul class="ticker">
<li><a href="#">News Item</a></li>
<li><a href="#">News Item 2</a></li>
</ul>

I think, that problem lies in ticker.find(':visible'). If your links are wrapped in li, then that code finds li and a inside of it and appending them separately to the ticker. Try ticker.find('li:visible').

EDIT: or ticker.children(':visible').