■ United States
Teen held over cheesy plot
A woman allegedly tried to hire a hitman to rob and kill some men who she believed had a block of cocaine in their house, police said. However, the block turned out to be cheese, and the hitman was an undercover police officer. The woman was in the Memphis, Tennessee home of the intended victims last week when she mistook a block of cheese for cocaine -- inspiring the idea to hire someone to break into the home, take the drugs and kill the men, police said. Jessica Sandy Booth, 18, was arrested on four charges of attempted murder and four counts of soliciting a murder, the Commercial Appeal reported on Tuesday. ``Four men were going to lose their lives over some cheese,'' Lieutenant Jeff Clark said.
■ United States
Republican wins House seat
A Republican state lawmaker won the race to fill a vacant congressional seat in California and voters threw the Spokane, Washington, mayor out of office amid allegations he used a city computer to woo gay men over the Internet. California state Senator John Campbell will succeed Republican Christopher Cox, who represented the Orange County district in the House for 17 years before resigning to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Spokane Mayor James West tried to fend off allegations that he offered a City Hall internship to an 18-year-old man he met in an Internet chat room, but voters overwhelming supported removing him from office.
■ Italy
Alert doesn't stop flame
Rome's Ciampino airport reopened yesterday after a bomb alert was declared over just hours before a plane carrying the Olympic flame was due to land. "The airport has reopened," said a police official at the airport. Police had started searching the airport before 7am after receiving an anonymous call saying there was a bomb in the building. Ciampino, located on the southern edge of Rome, is the city's second airport and mainly used for private and military flights. The Olympic flame was due to arrive there from Greece at around 10am ahead of the Winter Games to be held in Turin from Feb. 10 to 26.
■ United States
Plame retiring from CIA
Valerie Plame, the CIA agent at the center of the leak investigation which produced an indictment of a White House aide, is leaving the CIA, friends said on Tuesday. Plame was outed as an undercover agent in a syndicated newspaper column, an act that may have violated secrecy laws. "Friday is her last day," Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who trained with Plame in the 1980s said. "Her ability to operate as a clandestine officer was completely finished. Among some people at the CIA she was both pariah and leper, something you didn't want be around, someone who it was unhealthy to be around."
■ Israel
Likud chief defects
The beleaguered right-wing Likud party suffered a new blow on Tuesday when its acting chairman, Cabinet minister Tzahi Hanegbi, defected to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new Kadima party. Hanegbi, a minister without portfolio, became the sixth member of the Cabinet to follow Sharon out of Likud as part of the continuing turmoil in Israeli politics in the run-up to a March general election. Kadima had called a press conference where Hanegbi was expected to formally declare his move but Kadima party sources and the Likud leadership confirmed his switch.
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