(12-04) 08:45 PST ROME, Italy (AP) —

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 his girlfriend 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.

The court summons cites Titti, Paperino, Paperina, Topolino Д the Italian names for the characters Д as damaged parties in the criminal trial of a Chinese man accused of counterfeiting products of Disney and Warner Bros.

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 the man had reproduced, 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.”

The Naples court will have to rewrite the summons, although this will probably delay the trial, said Disney lawyer Cristina Ravelli.

“Let’s hope the characters will not be prosecuted for failing to appear,” Ravelli quipped.

Calls seeking comment from Warner Bros. in Milan were not immediately returned. Phones at the Naples court were not answered Tuesday.

(12-04) 07:52 PST Santa Barbara, Calif. (AP) —

Just in time for Hanukkah, a Montecito couple has donated $1 million to the University of California, Santa Barbara to start a Jewish studies program.

Part of the gift from Marsha and Jay Glazer will go toward the creation of a chair in the couple’s name.

The rest will be used for faculty, research, students, curriculum and programming for the Jewish Studies Program Endowment.

University Chancellor Henry T. Yang says the money “will elevate the level of research and teaching in Jewish studies and our world-renowned Department of Religious Studies.”

The school hopes to raise more funds over the next five years to expand the Jewish studies program and launch a Center for Jewish Studies.

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Information from: Santa Barbara News-Press, «www.newspress.com»

(12-04) 07:41 PST Harrisburg, Pa. (AP) —

An illustrated advertising section in Rolling Stone magazine violates the tobacco industry’s nine-year-old promise not to use cartoons to sell cigarettes, state officials charged Tuesday.

Attorney general’s offices in at least eight states planned to file lawsuits starting Tuesday about the advertising for Camel cigarettes in the November edition of Rolling Stone, officials said.

The section combines pages of Camel cigarette ads with pages of magazine-produced illustrations on the theme of independent rock music.

“Their latest nine-page advertising spread in Rolling Stone, filled with cartoons, flies in the face of their pledge to halt all tobacco marketing to children,” Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Tom Corbett said in a statement released Tuesday.

Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, New York, Ohio and Washington state are filing lawsuits Tuesday, Corbett’s office said. Attorneys general offices in two other states, Maryland and Connecticut, also said they were taking part.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown confirmed his participation, calling the publication a “rather clever piece of advertising.”

“They agreed not to do these kinds of things ever since Joe Camel,” Brown said. “We have to call them to task.”

David Howard, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds in Winston-Salem, N.C., did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He told The New York Times last month that there was a clear difference between the Camel ads on the outside pages of the section and the illustrations in the magazine-produced inside fold-out.

The landmark 1998 settlement between 46 states and the tobacco industry reimburses states for smoking-related health care costs. In an effort to prevent the industry from pitching to minors, the agreement includes a provision against using cartoons in advertisements.

The cigarette ads in Rolling Stone tout “free range rock” and support for independent record labels while using photographic images of people in 1950s dress, farm animals, an old-fashioned tractor and furnishings like a phonograph against a farm backdrop. Those pages fold out to reveal a four-page illustrated spread of an “Indie Rock Universe” with animals, imaginary figures and other drawings.

But Corbett’s office said the states are seeking fines of $100 per magazine distributed within their borders, as well as $100 per hit on the related R.J. Reynolds Web site, «www.thefarmrocks.com».

Ray Chelstowski, publisher of Rolling Stone, said R.J. Reynolds had no idea that the magazine’s pages would be illustrated, as opposed to an article in independent music, and said the Camel ads tout the music Web site, not cigarettes.

“Particularly the fact that what Camel is promoting here is a Web site makes at least some of the accusations seem far-fetched,” Chelstowski said Tuesday.

Other states are reviewing the matter and could join the effort, said Nils Frederiksen a spokesman for Corbett. If every state involved in the 1998 settlement files suit, the fines could exceed $100 million, he said.

The lawsuits also ask for the removal of the images from all Web sites and promotions and a payment by R.J. Reynolds equal to the cost of the Rolling Stone advertisement to be used for anti-smoking ads.

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Associated Press writer Aaron C. Davis in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this report.