March 30, 1998

Tennessee defeats Louisiana Tech, 93-75, to win third consecutive NCAA women's basketball championship; photo (M)

High-tech corporations embrace use of long-term temps, employees doing high-prestige, high-technology jobs for year or more at same company, but without benefits or pay of company's permanent workers; Microsoft is leading practitioner of trend, employing 5,000 temps, including 1,500 long-term ones, to work beside its 17,000 permanent employees; some temps prefer flexibility and higher take-home pay that temp status affords, but many assail temping as backdoor way to create two-tier work force; Microsoft is locked in five-year-old legal battle with hundreds of independent contractors and temps who insist they should be considered regular employees and receive same benefits as regular employees; is appealing ruling of Appeals Court that it wrongly denied millions of dollars in benefits to hundreds of workers who were independent contractors; photo; graph (L)

Article on Utah preparing for NCAA basketball championship game against Kentucky; photo (M)

Second of two articles, Questioning Miranda, examining US Supreme Court's landmark 1966 Miranda ruling, which requires police to warn criminal suspects of right to remain silent during interrogations; after three decades of rulings that have undercut Miranda's reach, Miranda warning has become easily slipped latch to interrogation room, with majority of suspects waiving rights; courts have increasingly allowed interrogators to use tricks, deceptions and lies on those who do to extract confessions; while thousands of guilty criminals have been caught with such tactics, confessions have also been extracted from many innocent; prevalence of disputed confessions has shaken confidence of prosecutors and juries in their reliability which have long been crown jewels of criminal prosecutions; in attempt to restore credibility of confessions, at least 2,400 law enforcement agencies nationwide are audiotaping and videotaping not only confessions, but interrogations as well; photo (L)

Six largest US military contractors who stand to gain billions of dollars in sales if Senate approves NATO expansion, have made enormous investments in lobbyists and campaign contributions to promote cause in Washington; have spent $51 billion on lobbying in past two years; their zeal, as well as extensive spadework by Clinton Administration and support by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms, have made it virtually certain that Senate will approve treaty to admit Poles, Hungarians and Czechs; industry is also concentrating efforts abroad, setting up partnerships in Eastern Europe to give companies foothold (M)