People in the News

From The Associated Press

Tweety may get a chance to take the witness stand and sing like a canary. An Italian court ordered the animated bird, along with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Daisy, to testify in a counterfeiting case. In what lawyers believe was a clerical error worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a court in Naples sent a summons to the characters ordering them to appear Friday in a trial in the southern Italian city, officials said Tuesday. Instead of naming only the companies and their legal representatives, clerks also wrote in the witness list the names of the cartoons that decorated the toys and gadgets involved in the product counterfeiting case, said Fiorenza Sorotto, vice president of Disney Company Italia. “Unfortunately they cannot show up, as they are residents of Disneyland,” Sorotto joked in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It certainly pleased us that the characters were considered real, because that’s what we try to do.”

Kevin Zarmer just wanted a shot of Old Faithful. But as he waited in the snow for the world’s most reliable geyser, an unexpected guest lumbered quietly onto the scene. The Scottsdale anesthesiologist moved quickly, and his ghostly portrait of a bison grazing in the Yellowstone hoar frost won him first place in a national photo contest for Parade magazine.

Zarmer’s photo was one of 62,000 submitted to Parade’s “Celebrate America’s Beauty” contest. The top 16 photos appear in this week’s issue of Parade magazine, and the more than 100 selected photos can be seen at www.parade.com.

Pimp C, one-half of the veteran Houston rap group UGK, was found dead in an upscale hotel in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Pimp C and partner Bun B were pioneers of Southern rap, and hit the mainstream with their cameo on Jay-Z’s hit “Big Pimpin’.”