Fiat

Philadelphia police say they have identified the man involved in an apparent attempt to abduct an 8-year-old Somerton girl, and they say the whole incident turned out to be a lot less sinister than it first appeared. "A misunderstanding," said Capt. James Nocco, head of Northeast detectives. Alexander Poykov, a 40-year-old Southampton man, telephoned police last week to say he was the person being sought as a suspect in an apparent attempt to abduct the girl June 4, Nocco said Monday.

Attorney Daniel DelCollo Jr. did his best for his client and the game of billiards at last week's meeting of the Somerton Civic Association, but some in the audience indicated they still harbored doubts. As DelCollo spoke, they hummed their way through "Seventy-six Trombones," the theme from The Music Man, the musical with one of Broadway's most memorable lines: "You got trouble right here in River City! With a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for Pool!" Speaking at a Tuesday evening meeting at Arthur's Catering at Bustleton Avenue and Byberry Road, DelCollo said his client, Doylestown CPA Ron Williams, wanted to bring billiards to the Northeast in an "upscale setting . . . a family place where members must be 18 or older, a place with no liquor, no beer.

It is a big, strong, luxurious four-wheel-drive vehicle that weighs in at a Bentleyesque 5,250 pounds and is priced at an equally hefty $44,600. Its target clientele is the horsey set and the nouveau riche horsey wannabees, people who usually buy Jeep Grand Wagoneers and Range Rovers. It is called the Laforza, but, given its strange genealogy, you could call this rugged, ritzy Italo-American off-roader a lot of other things. You could call the Laforza a LaFordza, since it employs a Ford five-liter V-8 and four-speed automatic transmission.

They hadn't a clue the car was coming. No sidelong glimpse of headlights, no muffled thud of tires, not even a rush of air to announce the danger bearing down on them. On a stretch of street that seems sinister even in daylight, Officers Michelle McCurdy and Lillian Burroughs were concentrating too intently on the job before them to sense what was coming from behind. Until it was too late. "I didn't see the car at all until I heard the bang when it hit us," McCurdy says.

A 13-year-old girl was charged yesterday with stealing her uncle's car and ramming two police officers who were conducting an unrelated automobile investigation. Police said the two uniformed officers, Lillian Burroughs, 23, and Michelle McCurdy, 24, both assigned to the 25th Police District, Front and Westmoreland streets, were in satisfactory condition at Temple University Hospital yesterday. The officers were standing next to a 1981 Fiat they had stopped on 5th Street near Clearfield about 10:30 Saturday night when the 1979 Toyota driven by the teen-ager went out of control, police said.

Italy, until recently the sick man of Western Europe, is so robust that social scientists should be dizzy. A mere decade after last rites were being pronounced, it is flourishing in a manner that may make it a model for Europe's fast-unfolding future. It may be especially suited to absorb the political and cultural shocks of 1992, when the unified market of the 12 nations of the European Community commences. Italy had Europe's first formidable Fascist Party. As recently as a dozen years ago, when "Eurocommunism" was a cresting wave (Italian Communists got 34.5 percent of the votes in 1976)

Outside the National Hotel, rays of morning sun were just touching the nearby Kremlin rooftops as I loaded my bags into a rental car for the 1,000- mile drive south to historic, sun-drenched Yalta. I was eager to get started by 6 and out of this city of 8 million people - the Soviet Union's largest - before it came to life. It wasn't the potential Sunday-morning traffic that intimidated me; Moscow's streets aren't exactly a breeze, but they're hardly troublesome when compared to driving in such places as Mexico City and Rome.

This is in reply to the Dec. 15 editorial "For doctors who really care. " The Action Alliance of Senior Citizens and your editorial are urging doctors to sign the Participating Physicians Agreement for Medicare. You equate participation by physicians with being a caring doctor. I feel deeply that I must take exception with this false presumption. You also imply that physicians don't sign because of financial reasons and you state that non-participating physicians can charge whatever they want.

Interest rates on short-term Treasury securities rose sharply in yesterday's auction to levels not recorded since late March. The Treasury Department sold $7 billion in three-month bills at an average discount rate of 6.22 percent, up from 6.07 percent last week. Another $7 billion was sold in six-month bills at an average discount rate of 6.28 percent, up from 6.10 percent last week. The rates were the highest since March 31, when three-month bills sold for 6.35 percent and six-month bills averaged 6.32 percent.

The Marine Corps is in a fix because the lowest bidder for its new fleet of 289 combat bulldozers is 15 percent owned by the Libyan government of Col. Moammar Khadafy. A spokesman for one of the losing bidders said yesterday that the Pentagon should not be sending a "dividend check" to Khadafy's government. But a Marine official said the service simply was obeying orders when it unknowingly awarded the bulldozer contract to a firm partly owned by the state-run Libyan-Arab Foreign Investment Bank.