May 24, 1993

A case of opening-night jitters pervades the sprawling corporate headquarters in Redmond, Wash., which has become the world's software capital. On the verge of introducing its most ambitious software product yet, Windows NT, the Microsoft Corporation has found itself in an unusual position: It is trying to ratchet back the expectations of the computer industry and computer users, who have come to expect blockbuster products with clockwork regularity from the world's dominant software publisher.

More than 1.5 million Cambodians defied Khmer Rouge threats of violence today to vote in this nation's first multiparty election in two decades, a vote that many Cambodians hope will end a generation of tyranny and unrelenting carnage. United Nations peacekeepers, who had predicted that the Khmer Rouge rebels would try to sabotage the six-day election by attacking polling stations, were relieved to report that there had been only a few instances of violence on the first day of voting, none of them resulting in deaths.

The White House is a strange place. Politicians who move in often seem to lose track of how the public feels. But that was not supposed to happen to Bill Clinton and his band of MTV-bred advisers with their quicksilver reflexes. During the Presidential campaign, Mr. Clinton was hailed by friend and foe as a rare, natural politician who would never lose the populist touch. But now the biggest question consuming Washington, and particularly Democrats, is this: How could such a political thoroughbred seem to keep stumbling out of the starting gate in a race for which he seemed to have been bred?

A growing shortage of doctors willing to practice general medicine has left some hospitals and health-maintenance organizations desperate for qualified candidates and, in the long term, stands as a major obstacle to overhauling the nation's health-care system. Almost all changes under consideration include a central role for what used to be known as the family doctor -- today generally an internist or family practitioner -- who can save the system money by taking care of a wide variety of ailments on his own and referring patients for more costly specialty care or tests only when absolutely necessary. Once a Cornerstone Although such primary-care doctors were once the cornerstone of American medicine, their numbers have dwindled as younger doctors have been drawn to specialty fields by money and the lure of new technology. So today, as more patients enroll in health-maintenance organizations or physician networks that rely heavily on general doctors to hold down costs, a rising demand is confronting a declining supply.

The biological mother of a 5-year-old boy who was beaten and strangled, then found dead in a trash compactor in Brooklyn, said yesterday that just a few days before her son was killed she had been excited at the thought of regaining custody of him. The 20-year-old woman, Kaaron Blackledge, said the child's legal guardian, who she said is her aunt, had even called her recently and instructed her to go to the courthouse in Brooklyn to collect the necessary legal documents.