Odds and ends: 'Grinch' takes off with tops of farmer's Christmas trees

FLAG POND, Tenn. - Authorities are on the lookout for a Grinch who stole the tops off more than two dozen Christmas trees from Danny Tipton's farm.

The thief or thieves raided the farm in eastern Tennessee sometime between Nov. 24 and last week and cut the top off the Fraser firs that were 10 to 12 feet tall.

"It's like the Grinch stealing Christmas trees," Sheriff Kent Harris said.

Tipton grows the taller trees for use in businesses, churches and homes with high ceilings and they sell for about $100 each.

The culprit sawed the top six feet off about 28 trees and hauled them off the property, probably to sell off for use in smaller homes.

Cartoon characters ordered to appear in Italian court

ROME - Tweety may get a chance to take the witness stand and sing like a canary.

An Italian court summoned 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 - the Italian names for the characters - 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.

From Associated Press reports