ATHENS (Reuters) - The Olympic flame, a symbol of peace meant to bring the world together ahead of the Games, became an instrument of crime busting when a police helicopter accompanying it on the island of Crete spotted cannabis farms.

"The police helicopter was accompanying the flame on its journey, patrolling the skies above the actual torch relay route, when they spotted a cannabis farm near the town of Rethymnon," said a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Public Order.

"They decided to stay and investigate, and eventually spotted other farms in remote areas outside the towns of Heraklion and Rethymnon with a total of around 7,000 cannabis plants, which is quite a good haul," she added.

The torch, now in the last phase of its tour around Greece, will arrive at the main Olympic stadium in Athens to light the cauldron and open the Games on August 13.

Its $45 million journey around the world has had all the hallmarks of a presidential tour with security, surveillance, motorcades, cheering crowds and a specially chartered jumbo jet, dubbed Zeus.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has sentenced two farmers to jail terms of up to nine years for eating a rare Manchurian tiger after leaving it to die in a trap, the Beijing Evening News reported Thursday.

A court in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang convicted Zhang Lichen and Gong Weisheng of killing an endangered rare species recently, the paper said.

The two men found the tiger caught in a trap in a mountain last year but did not report it to the authorities. They left the tiger to die and returned six days later to bring the beast home, skin it and eat its meat.

"The two men knew selling a tiger was a crime, but they thought eating a dead tiger's meat did not break the law," the newspaper said.