Smoking can kill, but can it send someone to death row? That's the basis of one man's appeal. The attorneys of the defendant are saying that the jurors became agitated when they were prevented from taking smoking breaks during deliberations.

According to officials, about 300 pot plants were discovered when firefighters were responding to calls that smoke was coming out of the house. Orange County fire captain Stephen Miller stated the smoke was coming from the garage wall, where someone had illegally tapped into a power source.

The Neuköllner Opera House in Berlin, Germany is encouraging its audience to smoke cannabis while watching a play about drugs. According to reports the opera house wants the public to "enhance the psychedelic experience of Camille Saint-Saens' drug opera, "The Oriental Princess. "

A Japanese research team is planning to run a campaign on environmental awareness by entering a racecar that runs on cooking oil, used to fry tempura, in the Dakar rally. Hidefumi Onaka, a lecturer at the Osaka Sangyo University, said Toyota's Land Cruiser 100 would be the first racecar to run on bio-diesel in the prestigious sporting event. Onaka told the Canadian Press, "We want to show what tempura oil can achieve, as a way to raise environmental awareness. . . We're not doing it just for fun, so we decided to enter an internationally acclaimed event and appeal to the world. "

Conservationists plan to burn the carcass of a 47-foot whale that washed onto a beach near Cape Town, South Africa. Officials are unsure how the 34-ton southern right whale died. Its body washed up onto Kommetjie beach, located about 25 miles south of Cape Town.