SAN DIEGO (AP) – A Marine’s wife and her lover pled guilty in a bungled plot to kill the husband for insurance money, authorities said.

Astrid K. Tepatti, 21, sneaked into her husband’s home on the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base Jan. 4 and fired a revolver equipped with a potato silencer, federal officials said.

Sgt. Stephen Tepatti wasn’t hurt. The bullet lodged in the sofa where he was sleeping.

Pieces of potato went flying around the room, court documents say.

Ebony Wood, 21, admitted that she made the silencer and drove Astrid Tepatti to the Marine base, knowing she intended to kill her husband. Wood said she had been promised proceeds from the husband’s life insurance policy.

Later that day, California Highway Patrol officers arrested the women along Interstate 8 about 150 miles east of San Diego.

A bag of the deadly poison ricin was found in the women’s car. Tepatti and Woods followed an Internet recipe to make ricin from castor beans with the idea of killing Tepatti’s husband, according to court documents and authorities.

In late 2003, according to the FBI, Tepatti conspired with Wood to kill the husband by luring him to the beach and stabbing him in the neck.

Tepatti is scheduled to be sentenced next month. Woods’ sentencing is set for November.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – It wasn’t a four-letter word, but it was close enough to cause a stir at the National Scrabble Championship.

In the final round, eventual champion Trey Wright played the word “lez”, which was on a list of offensive words not allowed during the tournament.

Normally, no word is off-limits, but because the games were being taped for broadcast on cable sports channel ESPN, certain terms had been deemed inappropriate, including the three-letter slang for lesbian.

“There are words you just can’t show on television,” Scrabble Association Executive Director John Williams said.

Wright, a 30-year-old concert pianist from Los Angeles, played the word and then drew two replacement tiles so quickly that the referee didn’t notice at first. When he did, he said the slang term had to go.

ESPN officials told Williams the word could stay, but the issue was that Wright had already selected new tiles.

“He violated the rules. But there were also people who were upset that the word was played,” Williams said.

Eric Chaiken, a tournament participant and director of Word Wars, a documentary about the Scrabble championship, said the definition of “offensive” was open to interpretation.

“The ultimate absurdity is that you can’t play the word ‘redskins’ on ESPN,” he said. Washington State has an American football team called the Redskins.

Williams spoke with Wright and his opponent, David Gibson, then called an emergency meeting of the Scrabble Advisory Board. The board unanimously agreed to remove the word. Wright then returned the two tiles he had selected and played a different word, Williams said.

“We kind of took two steps back,” he said.

Wright, using more innocent words like feijoa (an evergreen shrub) and zebu (a domesticated ox), won the best-of-five final round in three games and pocketed a $25,000 prize.

“Meaning has no consideration when I play,” Wright said.

OAKFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) – Neighbors of Rex and Jewell Cowan say that in the past three years as many as 250 people and 100 cars have descended on the couple’s property for an alternative sexual lifestyle picnic dubbed Whipstock. But there may be fewer this year.

Pressure from Kent County’s Oakfield Township, which argues that the three-day event in a rural-residential area is really a sex-related business and therefore prohibited by township charter, has led a judge to limit attendance and activities.

Judge Steven Servaas issued an injunction that will keep the western Michigan couple from collecting money and selling sexually oriented materials at the event. He also restricted the size.

The couple may appeal the ruling in Kent County Circuit Court.

Rex Cowan, 46, said Whipstock is connected to his work with the nonprofit Immediate Family, described by him and its website as providing education and crisis help for people involved in alternative sexual lifestyles.

“It’s a picnic for our charity,” Cowan told The Grand Rapids Press.

His lawyer argued that the injunction would punish the Cowans for a crime they had not committed, and violate their free speech and right to assembly.

But the township’s zoning administrator, Willard Konyndyk, said he received complaints about last year’s event and argued that the group’s website suggests it is more than just a picnic. According to the website, Whipstock features demonstrations of sex toys and various dominance-and-submission role-playing scenarios, along with lectures, HIV screening, pot luck meals and a pig roast.

“I believe it is a sexually oriented business,” Konyndyk said. “If it’d been a fundraiser for handicapped children or Boy Scouts, I doubt anyone would have been upset.”

Neighbors Gary and Phyllis VanCamp are pleased with the judge’s order. They said they allowed the Cowans to use their property for extra parking when they thought it was for a wedding, but now wish the annual event would cease.

“It’s quiet here,” Gary VanCamp said. “We don’t need this kind of thing.”

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – State health officials plan to spread the message about safe sex to bars, dance floors and university campuses by recruiting a team of people with social magnetism to put a new twist on old facts.

“People have heard these messages about preventing infection and getting tested from public health workers for 20 years now,” said Phyllis Gray, a project manager at the HIV/STD Prevention and Care Branch of the state Department of Health and Human Services. “But they are still taking chances and engaging in risky behavior.”

By Dec. 1, however, public health officials hope to have identified and trained a team of “popular opinion leaders” in the Triangle, Triad and Charlotte-Mecklenburg County areas.

With the help of a grant of almost $1.4 million from the federal Centers for Disease Control, these men and possibly a few women will drive the campaign targeting black men who have sex with men.

In North Carolina, nonwhite adults are disproportionately infected with HIV.

In 2002, 1,692 new HIV infections were reported in North Carolina, according to state data. Compared with the rate of infection among whites, the infection rate of Native Americans was twice as high, Latinos more than three times higher and African-Americans nine times higher.

Black heterosexual women were infected at a rate more than 17 times higher than their white counterparts.

Lynn Sampson, a state epidemiologist, said people tend to have sex within their own age or racial group. If a few people in that group have a disease, it will spread inside that network.

The state is hoping to recruit 15 percent of the people on the team from those who frequent bars and clubs. Officials also hope to recruit another 15 percent of popular men and women on one historically black college or university campus.

They will rely heavily on the wisdom of bartenders, club owners and school officials to help them identify people with the social skills to change others’ sexual behavior. In turn, the volunteer educators could get gift cards or free admission to clubs.

“This kind of program, where messages are delivered by someone who looks like you, talks like you, walks like you and is dressed like you, can be extremely effective,” said John Paul Womble of the Alliance of AIDS Services Carolina.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Utah’s three candidates for attorney general jointly announced their opposition to a ballot measure banning same-sex marriage, saying it is so poorly written it could strip away fundamental rights for unmarried heterosexual couples.

Residents will vote Nov. 2 on the proposed amendment to the state constitution, which would define marriage in Utah as between a man and a woman and deny legal benefits to any other domestic union.

It was the second part that drew the most opposition from the three candidates.

“I just think it goes too far and actually hurts Utahans,” said incumbent Republican Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

In a joint statement, Shurtleff, Democrat Greg Skordas and Libertarian Andrew McCullough said the amendment would prohibit the Legislature from extending even the most basic partnership rights to unmarried couples, such as rights to hospital visitations, to emergency medical decision-making and to inheritance.

“However well-intentioned this may be, there will be unintended consequences,” said Rob Latham, a spokesman for McCullough. He said McCullough opposes both parts of the proposed amendment.

One of the amendment’s co-sponsors, Republican state Sen. Chris Buttarse, defended the two-pronged proposal.

“If you believe that marriage is only between a man or woman, part two is absolutely necessary,” he said.