Reforms

Pentagon critics and their allies in Congress are planning t push for sweeping reforms next year to wipe away the "the old boy network" they say has blocked changes in the way the military handles sex-crime allegations within its ranks."

A non-profit, government watchdog group lauded state Sen. Gerald Winegrad, D-Annapolis, last week for his efforts this year to improve Maryland's open-meetings law and to limit the influence of special-interest groups.Winegrad, the co-chairman of a Senate subcommittee onopen meetings, helped pass reforms that give citizens access to mostgovernment meetings but still allow meetings to be closed for "legitimate reasons," said Phil Andrews, executive director of Common Cause/Maryland.The three-term senator also helped enact limits on contributions from political action committees to a state or county candidate, Andrews said.

Democrats and Republicans are poised again to pick as their leaders people who are nowhere near the first choice of the voters.On that fateful November night next autumn when the returns are nearing completion, many will not even have gone to the polls. Many of those who did vote will be saying, ''I didn't really want to vote for either one of them.''hTC And the reason will be a 20-year-old reform movement that went bad. Really bad.Here's how to think of the current system. Each party holds a spring primary in each state.

WASHINGTON -- The world's seven richest nations sent a ringing endorsement of Russia's economic reforms to President Boris N. Yeltsin yesterday but withheld any joint pledge to accelerate financial assistance to Russia.Global unemployment and trade protectionism also were addressed by the nations' finance ministers and central bank presidents. But it was the political standoff between Mr. Yeltsin and Russia's hard-line legislators that was at the top of the agenda.In a joint statement issued at the end of their meeting, the so-called Group of Seven nations (G-7)

The day after President Barack Obama signed the landmark health bill into law, Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Wednesday a task force to oversee the implementation of federal changes, a move the governor said aims to make Maryland a national leader in the health care overhaul. Now that congressional wrangling over health care has produced legislation, it's up to states to figure out how to put it in place. O'Malley said the legislation builds on Maryland's efforts in recent years to expand coverage by adding thousands of parents and their children to the Medicaid rolls, offering assistance to small businesses to provide coverage to their employees and letting young adults stay on their parents' health care plans to age 25. Reform would extend coverage to about 400,000 Marylanders, according to state estimates, although other groups say that figure could be higher.

MOSCOW -- President Boris N. Yeltsin won a major political victory last night, as the Russian Central Bank agreed to stop resisting his free-market economic reforms.According to the Interfax news service, the bank initialed an agreement to phase out credits for ailing industries, reduce tax subsidies and stop propping up the ruble in international currency auctions.The agreement marks the latest and perhaps most significant consequence of Mr. Yeltsin's victory in last month's referendum, in which a majority of Russian voters gave him a vote of confidence and approved his economic policies.

MOSCOW -- Russia's new prime minister may be a former Soviet apparatchik, and he may disapprove of flashy commerce, and he may support price controls on energy, but he promised yesterday to plunge onward with reform."

Proponents of incorporating Columbia have failed to mobilize broad support among residents, but they have succeeded in inspiring an emerging political consensus that more modest reforms are needed in the planned community's governing body.This is not a new achievement. Demands for changing the functioning of the Columbia Association (CA) go back almost to the new town's inception 28 years ago.And even though the same issues keep cropping up -- the need for CA to be more financially accountable, more open and to involve more citizens and reform its election process -- very few substantial changes have resulted over the decades.

WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives passed the Senate's version of a bill yesterday to reform the federal flood insurance program. The bill, which now goes to the president for his signature, includes several amendments written by Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland that are designed to prevent a repeat of problems that have affected Tropical Storm Isabel victims. The reforms include increased education requirements for flood insurance agents and adjusters, and the creation of an appeals system for those dissatisfied with their settlements.

BEIJING -- The Chinese Communist Party appears ready to formally enshrine patriarch Deng Xiaoping's full-speed-ahead approach to economic reform as China's direction for the next five years.Capping months of speculation, the state-run Xinhua news service yesterday announced that the 14th national party congress will open Oct. 12 and will "take as its guide" Mr. Deng's dramatic drive this year for stepping up China's market-style economic reforms.Xinhua said that the key meeting, held every five years, will mobilize the Chinese people "to further emancipate their minds and seize the opportune moment to accelerate the pace of reform, opening to the outside world and modernization."