The Italian Almanac

February 8, 1828: birthdate of Jules Verne, French writer

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Italy's state-owned film company said it would file suit over a top-selling Apple iPhone application that plays film clips and speeches by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Cinecitta' Luce, which manages the historic Italian studio's film archive, alleged the material on the user-made mobile phone application had been copied off a DVD without permission for sale on Apple's online store ''with flagrant disregard for international copyright laws''.

iMussolini, a ''greatest hits'' compilation of over a 100 audio and film clips starring il Duce, was taken off the iTunes store on Wednesday amid calls of outrage from Jewish groups and iPhone users. But a Cinecitta' Luce spokesman said it was too little too late, and that the studio was going to court. ''That material is the exclusive property of Cinecitta' Luce, whose media archives constitute its one and only source of revenue,'' said Luciano Sovena. ''It also happens to represent this country's memories, which here have been plucked out of context and put up for sale''.

Selling for 1.50 euros, iMussolini was the Italian Apple store's top-selling mobile phone application, totalling over 60,000 downloads by the time it was removed. The several hours worth of recorded speeches and video were compiled by a 25-year-old amateur software developer from Naples, Luigi Marino, who denied that they were pirated. ''All of those files are available for free on the internet,'' said Marino. ''I didn't do anything but put them together''.

Marino added that he was ''surprised'' by controversy surrounding the application, which he hadn't meant to exalt the Italian strongman. ''I was really just trying to make a sort of documentary about a very delicate time in our history,'' he explained.

As anger welled over iMussolini last week, an unidentified Apple spokesman interviewed by Germany daily Deutschland Financial Times confessed disbelief that the application had been cleared for sale in the first place.But Marino said that he had no problem gaining approval for his application, which went on sale ten days after he submitted it in mid-January.

Archaeologists have for the first time found evidence that people from the Far East were in Italy during Ancient Roman times. A Canadian team has dug up a 2,000-year-old male skeleton at an imperial Roman estate in Puglia whose DNA matches those of present-day east Asians. The discovery, if proven, would push back by several hundred years the date of the first direct contact between the West and the East, to more than 1,000 years before Marco Polo's historic trip to China.

"Our data reveals that some of the inhabitants of Vagnari (near Bari) came from far outside the confines of the Roman Empire," said team leader Tracy Prowse, professor of anthropology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. "This discovery poses many questions about globalisation and human mobility in Roman times," she added in the Journal of Roman Archaeology. "The tests are only preliminary but the results are intriguing".

The analysis of the man's mitochondrial DNA was unable to establish whether he himself came to ancient Apulia or was descended from Asians already living there, Prowse said. "The man probably lived between the first and second century AD but we can't say if he arrived on his own or was the son of people who preceded him". Prowse speculated the man was "probably a menial worker or a slave, because in his tomb we only found the food supposed to help him get to the afterlife and, above all, because another tomb was on top of his".

The Vagnari estate and necropolis, about 12km west of Gravina di Puglia, was discovered in 2002 and has so far yielded the remains of 70 people. In Roman times the area was known for iron-working and producing terracotta tiles, the remains of many of which were found over the tombs. The Ancient Romans are known to have traded with spice merchants from as far away as China, via intermediaries, but it was not thought that East Asians immigrated to Italy

Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney has decided to try his luck playing Italy's popular SuperEnalotto game with a promise that, if he wins, its whopping jackpot prize will go to help relief efforts of Haiti. The American actor last month hosted a star-studded telethon event which raised over $61 million for the survivors of the January 7 catastrophic earthquake which is believed to have left upwards of 200,000 people dead.

According to the Agipronews, an agency specialised in betting events, Clooney had friends on Lake Como, where he owns a waterside villa retreat, buy him some 1,000 pre-marked SuperEnalotto betting slips. "The jackpot is so high so why not try?," he was quoted as telling a friend assigned with the task of buying the slips around northern Italy. Clooney's Italian girlfriend, presenter Elisabetta Canalis, has apparently followed his example and bought another 500 slips.

For weeks the SuperEnalotto jackpot has offered the world's biggest payout. It is also the game's second-highest pot ever, after last August's record win in Tuscany totalled a whopping 147.8 billion euros, a European record.