Newsmakers : It’s a Grand Old Flag, but Don’t Wave It in Bar Harbor

--A Yugoslavian immigrant says that waving an American flag can land you in jail in Bar Harbor, Me.--a town he not so lovingly refers to as “Little Russia.” Emir Bjelajac, 30, was in the midst of a cross-country flag-waving tour when he was stopped by police officers on suspicion of stealing a flag. The immigrant was outraged and refused to produce identification. Policemen hauled him to jail, checked him out and then told him he was free to go. But Bjelajac demanded that officers drive him back to the spot where they had picked him up--about 100 feet from the station. They refused, charged him with criminal trespass and then disorderly conduct after he banged a police typewriter in disgust. “Every interview that I give for the next four years, I will mention Bar Harbor and its police department,” he said. “Bar Harbor will be well-known for being ‘Little Russia’ when I’m through.” Town Manager Richard Plante says “both sides overreacted” and the charges will be dropped.

--Prince Albert of Monaco announced in New York the inauguration of a transatlantic yacht race to be held this autumn in memory of his mother, the late Princess Grace. Thirty of the world’s fastest sailing ships will leave Monte Carlo on Oct. 13, with the winner expected to pass the finish line--the Statue of Liberty--in late October. “America has given Monaco one of its greatest gifts--my mother, Grace Kelly,” the prince said at a City Hall news conference with Mayor Edward I. Koch. Princess Grace, of Philadelphia, was fatally injured in a 1982 car crash.

--A Coca-Cola worker who was suspended for inadvertently drinking a Pepsi on the job was back at work. Dexter Gooden, 25, a two-year employee at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Anniston, Ala., said that he and his wife thought the drink she had bought along with his Burger King lunch was a Coke. “It is against our policy for employees to drink competitive products on our property,” said Charles Edwards, the plant manager. However, Edwards said that a supervisor overreacted in suspending Gooden and that Gooden would get back the $50 in pay he missed Tuesday. The policy in the soft-drink wars is “take no prisoners,” Pepsi spokesman Joseph McCann said.