February 10, 1992

Dozens of refugees forcibly returned to Haiti in recent months have told United Nations officials that they suffered beatings, imprisonment, death threats and other abuses that prompted them to flee their country a second time. The statements, made to interviewers last month at the refugee camp set up by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear to undercut a key argument made by the Bush Administration in defending its policy of forcibly returning Haitian boat people. State Department officials have consistently said there is "no evidence" that any Haitians have suffered political repression upon their return.

Some business executives say President Bush's health-care proposals could make their problems worse because they do not go far enough to slow the rapid increase in the nation's medical spending. "It is a plus that the President has come forward and taken a position that we need overall reform," said Walter Maher, director of Federal relations on human resources issues for the Chrysler Corporation. "But we have to bring our health costs more in line with those of our major competitors, Japan and Germany. That requires some very tough cost-containment strategy, which I did not see in the proposal."

Two years ago, his World Cup season was ended by a spill in a race in this very resort village. A year ago, a teammate died while attempting to qualify for a downhill race in Wengen, Switzerland. This afternoon, Patrick Ortlieb of Austria won the gold medal in the Olympic downhill and complained that the mountain had not been dangerous enough. "You don't have to overcome any inhibitions within yourself on this track," Ortlieb said after the first downhill victory of his career. "It was just too slow, not spectacular enough."

Magic Johnson got another chance to smile at the world through basketball today. And the world and his peers smiled back. Johnson was named the most valuable player of today's National Basketball Association All-Star Game, finishing with 25 points and 9 assists in 29 minutes of memorable play at the Orlando Arena. With his performance, he fulfilled a personal quest in a storybook fashion. And in doing so, Johnson seemed to strengthen his determination to increase AIDS awareness and to fight H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, through his words and his deeds.

For the fifth time in 21 years, Argentina has switched currencies. The country has officially stopped using the austral and returned to the peso, the name of the currency in many Spanish-speaking countries. In leaving the austral behind last month, the Administration of Carlos Saul Menem is hoping to send a signal that stable times are here.

The forced resignation of the executive chairman of Granada Television Ltd., whose hits included "Brideshead Revisited" and "The Jewel in the Crown," has stirred fears here that quality programming will be sacrificed in the quest for short-term profits in Britain's increasingly competitive television industry. Granada is one of Britain's most respected commercial television companies, and its critically acclaimed programs have proved quite popular in the United States as well as in Britain.

Campaign fatigue may be setting in at the D'Angelo Sandwich Shop here. Each morning, just after Georgette Seguin starts slicing the bread at precisely 9:30, the same commercial attacking President Bush comes on the radio, and Dan Deshaies cannot resist the temptation to come out of the back room, look her in the eye, and begin lip-syncing to the President's voice: "Read my lips: No new taxes."

SHOULD we have expected any less from Magic Johnson? He had promised a tape for his unborn child, to be popped in the V.C.R. machine in a few years. What he produced was not just a cameo performance, Magic Cavorts With the All-Stars, but a career highlight film, a man at his peak, taking over the All-Star Game, exactly as everybody had wanted.

Fear and anguish have upset the workaday business of Community Board 14 in Brooklyn. Angry outbursts and denunciations have disrupted its monthly meetings in school auditoriums. Its storefront office on Avenue H in Flatbush closed for three days last month while its staff underwent counseling, and when the office reopened, a police officer stood guard out front. For two years now, the community board has been under a sort of political siege as a small but determined group of black community advocates has waged a vigorous campaign to increase the number of blacks on the largely white board.

Rival Protests in Moscow Protesters railed against economic reforms at a rally in Moscow while another throng gathered across town to defend the new system. Page A10. Russian Jews Weigh Leaving Torn between volatile conditions at home and reports of few good jobs in Israel, many Jews in Russia cannot take the last big step. Page A10. Algeria Declares Emergency Algeria's military-backed leadership declared a state of emergency and shut down the offices of the Islamic fundamentalist movement. Page A3.

NEW YORK CITY AN ABUSED LIFE, A CRIPPLED SYSTEM The story of Yaakov Riegler, who died in 1990 after repeated beatings by his mother, is about an affectionate retarded boy and a mother who was overwhelmed by the unending tasks of homemaking. It is about a child welfare system that was unable, despite repeated warnings, to help the child. And it is about a pediatrician who, though he knew of the mother's abusive history and was called on several times to treat Yaakov's wounds, said he recognized in the Riegler household only a harried mother, not a battered child. A1. FEAR BECOMES REALITY IN CONEY ISLAND

The president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said today that he would press for a significant cut in oil production to prop up sagging prices, which have dropped by 20 percent since November. Jibril Aminu, who is also the oil minister of Nigeria, said he would ask OPEC's 12 members to reduce production by about 6 percent when they meet on Wednesday in Geneva.