Italian

In the latest blow to the world's best-known brand, Italian regulators yesterday fined the bottler for the Coca-Cola Co. in Italy more than $16 million after finding that it had engaged in unfair practices.The fine amounts to about 3 percent of Coke's sales in Italy this year but less than half the maximum penalty. It will be paid by Coca-Cola, which owns 51 percent of the bottler, Coca-Cola Beverages.The bottler also was ordered to eliminate some discounts in its exclusive contracts with Italian supermarkets, a move that could dampen its business.

The setting fit a description of the opening scene of the Italian opera "Don Giovanni -- "in a handsome garden before a handsome house." Only this was the fourth annual Opera and Wine Dinner, an authentic alfresco Italian meal in Howard County. The event, sponsored by the Italian Wine and Food Advocates, raised $1,500 for the Peabody Conservatory's opera outreach program, which brings opera to inner city schools.Under one tent pitched on the grounds of the historic Lichendale Farm, Paul Dongarra, chef for the Dionysus' Kitchen catering company and the event's co-coordinator, prepared the evening's five-course dinner.

WASHINGTON -- As outrage spread across Europe over the acquittal of a Marine pilot in the deaths of 20 Alpine skiers, a "shocked" Italian prime minister appealed directly to President Clinton yesterday for justice, demanding that someone in the chain of command be punished.Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema made it clear that he could accept the acquittal by a military court of Marine Corps Capt. Richard J. Ashby, whose low-flying jet clipped two gondola wires a year ago and sent 20 vacationers to their deaths in the Italian Alps.

The colors of Italy dressed the Associated Italian American Charities' 54th annual dinner dance. The tables at Martin's West were covered in red, green and white, as were the Bali D'Italia Dancers, who performed Italian folk dances for a crowd of almost 800.Among the people decorating the party: Jay Matricciani, AIAC president; Judge Lawrence Daniels and Vince Piscopo, event co-chairs; Paul Russo, Anthony DiPaula and Tony Corbi, the evening's honorees; Guy...

Always a distinctive and majestic model of grace, style and consistency. With glove or bat in hand, he was a baseball symphony. A rare gift of exquisite talent that flowed with classic movement. It all looked so easy. A Rembrandt in flannels.Yet personally, Joseph Paul DiMaggio was far more complex. Stoic. Introverted. Secretive. Arbitrary. Even rude. The public tried to make him a prisoner of adulation. And he fought against it all the way, even to his dying day.Joe DiMaggio was a private person, who, in a kind of paradoxical twist, absolutely craved attention even though his persona was often perceived of as being modest and withdrawing.

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. -- Marine Corps Capt. Richard J. Ashby was acquitted yesterday of all criminal charges in the deaths of 20 skiers in the Italian Alps, a verdict that brought members of his family leaping to their feet and relatives of the dead to tears.Ashby, 31, an eight-year veteran Marine who yearned to fly while growing up near the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Southern California, stood at rigid attention when the verdict of not guilty on all charges was read.The pilot from Mission Viejo, Calif.

"The Miracle of Castel di Sangro," by Joe McGinniss. Little, Brown. 416 pages. $25.Well into this story of a provincial soccer team that improbably scaled the heights of the sport in a land where il calcio has a more devoted following than Catholicism, I began thinking I had mistakenly picked up a Giovanni Guareschi novel. Was I reading one of those charming and humorous Don Camillo-type tales of eccentric but lovable Italian villagers?"I had come to the Abruzzo to write a beautiful story about wonderful, humble people who had dared to dream and who'd then seen their dream become reality," proclaims the author.

ROME -- Capt. Richard J. Ashby was guiding a U.S. military plane through a cloudless afternoon sky over the Val di Fiemme, a playground for skiers in Italy's Dolomite Mountains, when something went terribly wrong.The 31-year-old Marine aviator from Mission Viejo, Calif., had logged 750 accident-free hours in the aircraft, an EA-6B Prowler, in training runs like this one Tuesday and in surveillance missions over Bosnia.This was his first pass over the Dolomites.Believing that he was at a safe altitude, Ashby was stunned to see what he thought was an electric cable straight ahead and dipped to try getting under it, his lawyer said Friday.

Restaurateurs have signed leases for two new eateries -- one Japanese, one Italian -- to fill vacant space in the heart of Columbia that they say was made more appealing by expansions at The Mall in Columbia.Sushi Sono, a 70-seat restaurant, will open on Lake Kittamaqundi adjacent to Sgt. Pepper's restaurant in November, said Samantha Ostertag of the Rouse Co.The lease was signed last month. Extensive renovations will be done on the 2,400-square-foot space that once housed a marketing center for Rouse, Ostertag said.

ALTHOUGH several European institutions were available to serve as umbrella for an intervention force in Albania, their members chose the United Nations instead. The Security Council has authorized such a force, to consist entirely of Europeans and not the usual mix of peace-keepers.The problem in Albania is nothing like that in Bosnia, which pinned down 50,000 NATO troops. It more nearly resembles Somalia, with anarchy rather than civil war. The military mission is to protect humanitarian deliveries of food and medicine.

Anthony J. "Tony" Iacoboni Sr., a retired underground utility and site contractor, died of cancer Oct. 29 at Anne Arundel Medical Center. The Kent Island resident was 80. Mr. Iacoboni, the son of Italian immigrant parents, was born in Baltimore and lived on 27th Street before moving to Govans. After graduating in 1948 from Calvert Hall College High School, he went to work for his father, who had established Camillo Iacoboni & Sons, an underground utility and site contracting company, in 1923.

Ronnie Brooks, Yanna Foster and Victoria Coleman make up the gospel group Immeasurable. As of last week, they are also the owners of a new soul food restaurant, Immeasurable Chicken & Waffle (1700 W. Pratt St., 888-801-2863). I asked the group's assistant, Michelle Guess, why a gospel group would open a restaurant. "They wanted a place the community could have a good, nonalcoholic time," she said. "They wanted to bring back something positive to Baltimore." Chicken and waffles are a good place to start, but the menu doesn't stop there.

Cafe Troia has always been something of an anomaly in Towson, a white-tablecloth restaurant that has managed to survive, even flourish, for 23 years. These are scary times to deviate from the "if it ain't broke" dictum, but when their landlord decided to raise the rent, Carol Troia and her daughter Lisa Troia Martin, who own the restaurant, solved the problem by moving across the street to larger quarters. I happened to love the old space, which some thought cramped; but I was happy to have an excuse to eat at Cafe Troia again.

Events Local samples: The Baltimore Farmers' Market hosts the "How Lo(cal) Can You Go?" food-sampling event, representing farmers from the Chesapeake region from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Sunday on Saratoga Street between Holliday and Gay streets. Taste samples of fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables, such as asparagus, spinach and peaches, and get free recipes. Call 877-baltimore or visit promotionandarts.com. Opera night : Italian restaurant Sotto Sopra offers a six-course Italian dinner complete with live opera performances of some of Italy's most recognizable arias at 5:30 p.m. July 20 at 405 N. Charles St. $57 per person.

Colonial Players' production of Matthew Barber's 2003 romantic comedy Enchanted April succeeds on several levels in creating enchantment. The January-to-early-February scheduling is ideal for an escape to springtime on the Italian Riviera in the post-World War I era. For about two hours, the Annapolis company transports us to a time and place where we meet diverse characters whose disillusions might have relevance to our own. This old-fashioned romantic...

Russian director Andrei Kravchuk clearly has read his Dickens and watched his De Sica. His new film, The Italian (Italianetz), opening today at the Charles, draws equally on Oliver Twist and The Bicycle Thief in its depiction of a world where expediency trumps morality and where what's real is made bearable only by what could be. Six-year-old Vanya (a remarkably composed Kolya Spiridonov) is warehoused in a Russian orphanage, brought out and gussied up periodically in hopes that some wealthy foreign family will adopt him. Luck seems to shine on him when a respectable Italian family agrees to do just that.

mariobatali.com The new Web site of celebrity chef Mario Batali includes an "Explore Italy" section with information about Italian wineries and regional ingredients; downloadable recipes; and a shop offering Italian wines. Brad Schleicher

Maybe three times proves a charm. You've got to think that must be what Riccardo Bosio is hoping for his new restaurant, Pazza Luna. He and partners chef Gianfranco Fracassetti and manager Joe NoCon are the third set of owners for the Italian spot in Locust Point. Longtime Pazza Luna owner Kim Acton sold the place in 2005. Then the new owners shut the doors last summer. You may recognize Bosio's name. He also owns the upscale Italian eatery Sotto Sopra in Mount Vernon. But don't assume Pazza Luna will be another version of the same.

The Baltimore Opera Company's 2007-2008 season will resemble the 2006-2007 lineup - three Italian works and one non-Italian, with a Puccini favorite as the finale. And, although all of next season's operas have been performed by the company before, three of them will be returning after long absences. Verdi's brooding tragedy, La forza del destino, which contains some of his most stirring music, will open the season next October, re-entering the Baltimore Opera repertoire for the first time in 21 years.

At parades, festivals and family gatherings across the country, Columbus Day is as much a celebration of Italian-American culture as of the European discovery of the New World - a day when "everybody is Italian." Yet many people, including some Italian-Americans, may be surprised to learn that Italians and their culture were not accepted in the United States until relatively recently. When my maternal grandparents came to the United States from Italy in the early 1920s, Italians, who were one of the largest immigrant groups, were widely considered to be among the least desirable.