SAN JOSE, Calif. – A pot grower in northern California is following nature’s rules, if not the law. Workers who were sorting items at a San Jose recycling center last week found a large trash bag full of marijuana plants.

The center collects leaves, tree limbs and other natural material for composting, but San Jose police say the plants won’t end up that way. Instead they’ll be held as evidence of a crime.

Police say the marijuana could have come from anywhere in Santa Clara County. They don’t know how much of the pot in the bag was sell able.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia all-rounder Andrew Symonds flattened a streaker who ran on to the field during Tuesday’s second tri-series final against India at the Gabba in Brisbane.

The naked man came off second best after he evaded security and charged towards Symonds while he was batting during Australia’s run-chase.

Symonds stood his ground as the man approach and dropped the pitch invader with a rugby-style shoulder charge.

The man was arrested by police and faces the possibility of a fine and a life ban from the Gabba.

Symonds, who briefly contemplated a career in rugby league before he broke into the Australian team, also faces the risk of punishment under the International Cricket Council’s strict code of conduct.

The code includes a section banning players from any physical assault of a rival player, official or spectator.

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thai officials urged Buddhist monks on Tuesday to avoid using social networking Web sites to woo women after an advocacy group found some monks were doing just that.

The request came as police in the northeast detained a monk accused of using a Web site to lure a woman to his temple and raping her.

“I call on Hi5 users to tell the monks to leave the site if they are found using it,” junior minister Jakrapob Penkair told reporters after a Buddhist monitoring group said some monks were flirting on the Web site popular with Thai users.

Reports of monks caught using or selling drugs or having consensual sex with women are not uncommon in the Thai media, which reported on Tuesday a 23-year-old monk was caught raping a teenager he lured to his room through the Web site.

A senior Culture Ministry official said monks should not be banned from the cyberspace, but should turn this “crisis” into “opportunity” by bringing Buddha’s teaching to the young.

“Instead of using the Net to flirt with young girls, monks should find ways to preach Dharma and lead them in the right direction,” said Ladda Thangsupachai, head of the Cultural Surveillance Center.

TOKYO (AFP) – A Japanese pin-up model says that her big breasts have not only boosted her career — they also helped her overturn a court verdict.

The bikini model, who goes by her professional name Serena Kozakura, was cleared after a court decided she was too well-endowed to squeeze into a room through a hole, as she had been found guilty of earlier.

“I used to hate my body so much,” Kozakura, who has appeared in product commercials on television, told the private Asahi network in an interview aired Tuesday.

“But it was my breasts” that won in court, she said.

The case was splashed through the Japanese media on Tuesday, with the Asahi network even inviting her to demonstrate how she could not fit through the opening.

Kozakura, 38, was convicted last year of property destruction after a man said she kicked in the wooden door of his room and crawled inside, apparently because he was with another woman.

Kozakura had said the man made the hole himself.

In her appeal, the defense counsel held up a plate showing the size of the hole and said that she could not squeeze through with her 110-centimeter (44-inch) bust.

“The judges were very good-mannered as they showed no expressions on their faces. I guess they’re well-trained,” Kozakura said.

Tokyo High Court presiding judge Kunio Harada agreed and threw out the guilty verdict on Monday, saying there was reasonable doubt over the man’s account.

JERUSALEM (AFP) – High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

“As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics,” Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the “burning bush,” suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

“The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon,” he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to “see music.”

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil’s Amazon forest in 1991. “I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,” Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

LAGOS, Nigeria (AFP) – A Nigerian man has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for dressing up as a woman and loitering around Lagos international airport, court officials said Tuesday.

“He pleaded guilty to the charges and was given 18 months without the option of a fine during his trial on Monday,” an official at the court in the Lagos suburb of Ikeja told AFP.

It was not clear what Uche Ndubuisi was hoping to achieve with his transvestite antics, but 22 pairs of women’s pants, four bras as well as several make-up kits were used as evidence to convict him.

TEHRAN (AFP) – An Iranian court has ordered a man to buy his wife 124,000 roses after she filed a complaint against her “stingy” husband to claim her dowry, a press report said on Monday.

“After 10 years of marriage Hengameh had decided to claim her dowry of 124,000 red roses to punish her very stingy husband,” the Etemad newspaper said.

“Shortly after marriage I realized that Shahin was very cheap. He even refused to pay for my coffee if we went to a cafe or restaurant,” said the woman, identified only by her first name Hengameh.

But Shahin told the court he could only afford five roses a day and complained that it was “her billionaire friends who had put such ideas in her head.”

The court has seized his apartment worth 600 million rials (64,000 dollars) until he has bought her the entire 124,000 roses. A long stemmed red rose costs 20,000 rials (about two dollars) in Tehran.

Under Iranian law, a woman can claim her dowry or mahr, which is a gift pledged by the man at the time of marriage, at any time during married life or when getting a divorce.

It is common in Iran to offer gold coins, or property as mahr and the number of gold coins (worth about 260 dollars) could vary from 14 to even hundreds or thousands.

An Iranian man can end up in jail over dowry debts and there has been a judicial debate whether it should be adjusted according to the man’s financial status.

NATICK, Mass. – A child’s birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant was cut short after a fight broke out between two mothers. Natick police said the mom of the birthday boy apparently became enraged because the other woman’s son was “hogging” an arcade game.

Sgt. Paul Thompson said Catherine Aliaga, 38, and Tarsha Williams, 33, both of Boston, would be summoned into court to answer charges of simple assault and battery stemming from the scuffle.

Thompson told the MetroWest Daily News that police received a number of 911 calls about the fight Saturday night.

He said what started as a birthday celebration turned into a “birthday melee.”

CHICAGO (AFP) – Officers trying to track down a drug dealer in Ohio stumbled across two alligators guarding his back door instead.

The snipping and snapping gators were far from full-sized — one was about two feet long and the other was about four feet long — but were scary enough to make a team of tough federal marshals and Dayton, Ohio police officers call for help.

“Nobody wanted to play catch a gator,” William Taylor, supervisory deputy US Marshal, told AFP.

“We haven’t got any Crocodile Dundees on the task force,” he joked, adding that the marshals are having fun putting on fake Australian accents as he made reference to the adventurous croc hunter from the Hollywood movie.

Luckily for them, a suburban police officer moonlights as an exotic animal wrangler.

“I get called out on these all the time,” said Tim Harrison, who runs Outreach for Animals.

“Not six months ago they had a 12 foot Burmese python loose in (a drug dealer’s) house.”

When he first started collecting exotic animals in the Dayton area some 34 years ago, Harrison would probably get about six calls a year.

Now he gets 175 a year — everything from an elephant in a living room to panthers and lions roaming through the suburbs — including about a dozen alligators a year.

And he’s begun giving seminars to law enforcement officers warning them of the booby traps that await them in drug dens like venomous snakes in bags of dope.

Taylor says his officers are prepared for finding pit bulls or other aggressive dogs when they bust drug dealers but the gators were a shock.

“A lot of these guys think it’s cool to keep a tough pet,” he said. “Not a lot of drug dealers of the thug variety are going to keep a poodle.”

The gators are being cared for at a local animal shelter until a suitable home can be found for them.

Taylor’s team also seized guns, drugs and two pit bull puppies in the Monday morning raid but are still on the lookout for the drug dealer who is wanted for violating his parole.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Victoria’s Secret, the lingerie company that introduced the Very Sexy bra, the Fantasy Bra, and the Internet server-crashing fashion show, has become “too sexy” for its own good, its top executive said.

“We’ve so much gotten off our heritage … too sexy, and we use the word sexy a lot and really have forgotten the ultra feminine,” said Sharen Turney, Victoria’s Secret’s chief executive, in a call with industry analysts.

Victoria’s Secret was launched with the idea that Victoria was manor-born and lived in London, Turney said.

“I feel so strongly about us getting back to our heritage and really thinking in terms of ultra feminine and not just the word sexy and becoming much more relevant to our customer,” Turney said Thursday.

Turney said Victoria’s Secret has gotten younger with a strong focus on its successful Pink line of lingerie and loungewear created for college-age women, and has tried to chase those customers

Turney said Victoria’s Secret wants to increase its level of sophistication.

“We will also reinvent the sleepwear business and focus on product quality,” she said. “Our assortment will return to an ultra feminine lingerie brand to meet her needs and expectation.”

Sales at Victoria’s Secret, like many clothing retailers, have been slipping.

Victoria Secret’s parent, Limited Brands, said Wednesday that its fourth quarter profits fell 12 percent and that its first quarter earnings would come in below Wall Street expectations.

Same-store sales at Victoria’s Secret fell 2 percent in 2007, with sales in the fourth quarter dropping 8 percent.

The chain was started in San Francisco in 1977 by Roy Raymond, who said he was embarrassed trying to buy lingerie for his wife and hoped to provide a comfortable place for men to shop.

PASCO, Wash. – What happened to faking a cough?

Sheriff’s detectives in Franklin County, Washington, say a man had his friend shoot him in the shoulder so he wouldn’t have to go to work.

When he first spoke with deputies, Daniel Kuch (kooch) told them he’d been the victim of a drive-by shooting while he was jogging Thursday. But detectives say Kuch later acknowledged that he asked a friend to shoot him so he could get some time off work and avoid a drug test.

The friend has been arrested for investigation of reckless endangerment. Kuch is expected to be charged with false reporting.

Detectives aren’t saying where Kuch works or whether he still has a job.