Cabinet

Two members of the governor's Cabinet came under fire from legislators yesterday in the wake of a news report that one had hired the other's wife.Frank W. Stegman, secretary of labor, licensing and regulation, should not have hired the wife of personnel Secretary Michael J. Knapp without advertising the job, lawmakers said."

BEIJING -- China replaced its ministers of public security and trade yesterday at a closing session of the legislature's standing committee. It also established the death penalty for serious traffickers in narcotics and pornography.Chinese officials and foreign diplomats had expected the Cabinet shuffle, and the changes did not give any clues to the status of China's ongoing power struggle.Few Cabinet changes have taken place during the last year, and they have been announced with little fanfare, because China still appears to be trying to preserve an image of political stability.

WARSAW -- Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, Poland's new prime minister, presented his Cabinet yesterday and outlined an economic program for the nation.Mr. Bielecki, a provincial businessman whom President Lech Walesa appointed after others refused the post, kept only four of the outgoing ministers in a government that he said was composed of experts regardless of their political affiliation.His program differed little from that of the previous government and, in any case, he will scarcely have time to implement it. As he himself told the Sejm, or parliament, the new government is to last only until general elections, expected in the spring.

LONDON -- Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reshuffled her Cabinet yesterday in the wake of Sir Geoffrey Howe's resignation as her deputy after a row over policy toward Europe.She shifted three key portfolios, suggesting that she was going beyond simple damage limitation after losing the last member of her original 1979 Cabinet.She did not appoint a new deputy prime minister, a title that was widely seen as a "sop" to Sir Geoffrey when he was demoted from the foreign secretary's post 15 months ago.She selected Education Secretary John MacGregor to replace Sir Geoffrey as leader of the House of Commons.

LONDON -- David Blunkett, a senior Cabinet minister who has become a lightning rod for scandal and bad publicity, has been forced to resign for the second time in less than a year. After weeks of mounting pressure over some questionable business dealings, Blunkett admitted yesterday that he had violated ministerial ethics guidelines. He submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Tony Blair. "I am guilty of a mistake and I am paying the price of it," he told reporters. He said he was "deeply sorry" for embarrassing Blair, who remained a staunch backer to the very end. "He goes in my view with no stain of impropriety against him whatsoever," Blair declared.

An Annapolis man died of injuries he suffered after someone apparently pushed him through a china cabinet in a fight at a neighbor's apartment Friday night, police said.James Michael Pope, 36, was pronounced dead at Anne Arundel Medical Center shortly after arriving by ambulance. Annapolis police said an artery in his right arm was severed, then he had a heart attack.Police and others tried to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation.Details of the incident, which occurred in the Forest Village Apartments in the 1200 block of Graff Court shortly after 10:30 p.m., were sketchy.

LONDON -- Prime Minister John Major shuffled his Cabinet yesterday, patted his widely disliked finance minister, Norman Lamont, on the back for reducing inflation and then dumped him out of the government.He replaced him as chancellor of the exchequer with Kenneth Clarke, the home secretary, one of the Cabinet's most pro-Europe members.Mr. Lamont has grown increasingly unpopular in the months since the Conservatives won a fourth five-year term in general elections in April 1992. He presided over an economy strangled by rising unemployment, falling productivity, stratospheric interest rates, record bankruptcies and an alarming proliferation of mortgage foreclosures.

TOKYO -- Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu scored a lightning year-end victory over his governing party's political bosses yesterday by suddenly giving them a Cabinet reshuffling they had long demanded but by doing it on virtually his own terms.Japanese newspapers credited Mr. Kaifu with swiftly turning a brewing new political-money scandal into an unexpected chance to resist mounting demands by party bosses that he restore to power old faces that had been dirtied by the Recruit stock-for-favors affair of the preceding two years.

A two-alarm fire last night destroyed most of the Moran Cabinet Co. in north Baltimore and caused an estimated $850,000 in damage to the building and lost inventory, a fire official said.The fire at the firm, in the 3500 block of Clipper Mill Road near Hampden, was reported at 10:13 p.m. and a second-alarm was sounded at 10:17 p.m., said Capt. Ronald Baker of the Fire Investigation Bureau. He said the fire was declared under control at 10:42 p.m.No injuries were reported among the firefighters, who manned more than a dozen pieces of equipment, Baker said.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's Cabinet yesterday unanimously endorsed the findings of a special commission investigating the clash between police and Palestinians on the Temple Mount, even as Israeli commentators lambasted the the commission's report as inadequate.Cabinet members authorized the minister of police, Ronnie Milo, to carry out a reorganization of police but remained divided about whether any officers should be disciplined. Mr. Milo must obtain the Cabinet's approval for any disciplinary measure, even against those commanders the commission singled out for criticism.