New Service

Two new laws seek to protect military service members from being financially taken advantage of on the home front. One aims to prevent agents and brokers from using misleading tactics to sell high-priced insurance and investments to troops. The other caps the annual interest rate payday lenders can charge service members for advances on their paychecks. The help is needed. Last week, the Associated Press reported that thousands of troops are so far in debt that they are losing their security clearances and, as a result, are unable to serve overseas.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. announced a new program yesterday that will allow victims of domestic violence to conceal their whereabouts from their abusers. The Maryland Safe At Home Address Confidentiality Program, designed to make it harder for attackers to find their victims, empowers the state to establish a substitute address for those who have suffered abuse so they can apply for driver's licenses or register to vote without revealing where they live. The service will also allow the victims to have their mail sent to the dummy address and then forwarded to their homes.

NEW YORK -- AOL, Time Warner Inc.'s Internet unit, and Intel Corp. started an online video-on-demand service yesterday that lets users watch films, concerts and sports programs on their television sets. The service allows users to search for videos available on AOL with a TV remote control, said Kevin Conroy, executive vice president at AOL. Personal computers based on Intel's Viiv semiconductors and software will make it easier to search, record and watch music and video files. "The partnership with Intel enabled us to bring this experience to the living room," Conroy said in an interview, referring to watching videos online.

With regular calls nationwide and to China, England and Hungary, Ben Boxall's phone bill was running $900 a month - not an insignificant expense for his small Los Angeles-based import company. After switching to Skype, the Internet program that popularized free and low-cost telephone service, Boxall cut his bill to about $150. A year. "If Skype ever stopped operating, we'd be in big trouble," said Boxall, who runs Luna Imports Inc. So would many of the other small-business operators who make up as much as 30 percent of Skype's 75 million users worldwide.

New service offers help for elderly Elder Care Options, a new service of Family and Children's Services of Central Maryland, is accepting clients. The service provides care managers who coordinate health care, safety, legal services and other resources for older adults. The managers are licensed social workers or registered nurses familiar with Howard County and its resources. They help families and the elderly through medical crises and discharge planning, conduct assessments, develop a written summary with recommendations, arrange for and monitor services, and are available when family caregivers need a break or live far away.

Welcome Back, Kotter and Wonder Woman. Perfect Strangers and Pinky and the Brain. Sure, the TV series themselves are a little dated, but they'll air in a revolutionary way this winter when America Online offers them on the Internet, on demand and for free. For media companies, AOL's new service, In2TV, pioneers a fresh source of advertising revenue from about 100 classic programs, some of which have been shelved for years. For couch potatoes, the new service is not just an opportunity to relive the glory days of Maverick and Eight Is Enough.

Time Warner Inc. announced yesterday that it would make more than 100 old television series - including Falcon Crest, Kung Fu and Welcome Back, Kotter, the 1970s sitcom that made John Travolta a star - available free in the first major archive of TV shows on the Web. When it starts in January, the joint venture between Warner Bros. Domestic Cable Distribution and America Online could help TV, Internet and advertising executives gauge the appetite for longer entertainment programs on the Web, which is dominated by shorter bits typically lasting no more than a few minutes.

Sweeping changes to Baltimore area bus routes take effect Sunday, part of what the Maryland Transit Administration is calling a "new, improved, expanded" bus system. State Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan says the changes to about 30 routes will bring better service - with bigger and more frequent buses on many lines and improved on-time performance - for tens of thousands of customers. "We are poised for a successful transformation of the MTA," Flanagan said. But for Robin Dranbauer and her neighbors in the eastern Baltimore County neighborhood of Chesaco Park, the MTA's new Greater Baltimore Bus Initiative looks more like a cutback.

Starting today, Marylanders who simply must know whether it will rain or shine will be able to find out by tuning in to a 24-hour digital weather channel provided by WBAL-TV, Channel 11, Baltimore's NBC affiliate. Available to Comcast subscribers on digital cable Channel 208, the 11 Insta-Weather Plus service will feature continuous local weather updates and five-day forecasts, plus regional and national reports provided by NBC, the station's partner in the venture. In addition, the station's regular meteorologists - Tom Tasselmyer, John Collins, Neal Estano and Domenica Davis - will provide live and taped updates on the new service.

WASHINGTON -- A new spymaster will for the first time coordinate clandestine activities across all 15 U.S. intelligence agencies, a move aimed to address one of the key recommendations of a presidential commission on intelligence failures. The new chief -- known publicly only by his first name, "Jose," because he is still an undercover officer -- will head a new National Clandestine Service, responsible for running spy operations at the CIA and managing the spy activities of the other intelligence agencies.