April 13, 1997

Comment on contentious social issues such as affirmative action, welfare and immigration; finds that public has revolted when liberal advocates refuse to compromise or acknowledge obvious abuses; angry California voters, disgusted with fraud and racial quotas, guillotined entire affirmative action establishment; analyst Joel T Kotkin recalls warning Democrats that public approves of helping working-class people, but not notion of collective racial guilt; obstinacy also seen in immigrant and welfare advocates, and vehement defenders of New York's rent control (M)

Peter Passell assesses Hyundai Tiburon FX sports coupe; table; photo (M)

Ira Berkow Sports of The Times column notes that New York Mets home opener against San Francisco Giants was rained out, and contends that there are signs that season might be as bleak for Mets as opening-day weather; photo (M)

Deadly Suspicions A prosecutor in Cleveland is accusing a highly regarded medical center of hastening the deaths of terminally ill organ donors. Page 28. Diplomatic Impunity Mayor Giuliani calls them rogue car parkers, but United Nations diplomats beg to differ. Page 31.

Hutu refugees stranded in jungles of central Zaire are of special kind, not just victims of suffering, but agents of it; many who engaged in massacre of as many as 500,000 Tutsis in civil war in 1994 depend for survival on magnanimity of same Tutsi tribesmen they tried to eliminate, and who currently hold power; not only is Rwanda run by Tutsi, who are in position to decide whether to welcome Hutu back, but part of Zaire in which they are stranded is controlled by rebel soldiers who are ethnic Tutsi as well; neither group feels much empathy for refugees; morally troubling is fact that while thousands of Hutu refugee children are dying of starvation camps in Zaire, considerable number of men, including their parents, look fit, healthy and well-fed; photos; map (M)