March 29, 1993

Right Finishes French Rout Confirming their showing in the first round of voting, conservatives completed their trouncing of President Mitterrand's Socialists. Page A3. Post Changing Hands Abraham Hirschfeld agreed to hand The New York Post to Rupert Murdoch, and Post officials said a new editor had been chosen. Page B1. College Final Four Is Set North Carolina and Michigan triumphed and joined Kentucky and Kansas in the N.C.A.A. basketball semifinals. SportsMonday, page C1.

Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the nation's largest nonprofit health insurer, has lost tens of millions of dollars over the last decade through a series of management mistakes that have mired the company in financial crisis and undermined its dominant role in New York's health care system. Empire, which can turn no customer away, has complained loudly of the battering it takes from giant commercial insurance companies, who can pick and choose their customers, offering policies to the healthiest and rejecting the sickest. And commercial insurers concede that their goal is to find the youngest and healthiest pool of customers. Quality Customers Lost But an examination of Empire's management, including internal company reports and state audits, and interviews with 16 current and former high-ranking executives, shows that many of the company's problems are of its own making.

Until recently, much of Henry G. Fury's adult life could best be described as a riveting, sometimes unpleasant courtroom drama, with Mr. Fury playing all the parts himself. He was, for several years, a town justice in Carmel, N.Y., where he earned a reputation as a "hanging judge" and once sentenced a lawyer to 15 days in jail -- later reduced to a fine -- for being two hours late for an assault trial. Mr. Fury was also a real-estate lawyer, whose lucrative 20-year career came to a crashing halt in 1988 when he pleaded guilty to charges of bank fraud. As punishment for his crimes, he spent the next 18 months as an inmate in a Federal penitentiary. Hours of Reflection But much has changed for Mr. Fury, 54, since he was released from prison in 1989. This afternoon, his brushes with the law behind him, he was ordained as a Protestant minister at an emotional ceremony in a stone-covered church in this Westchester County community.

Once a sun-bronzed surfer, Joao Henrique de Orleans e Braganca has traded blue jeans for European suits and now races from university debates to television talk shows. With one month left to campaign, he is running for king. "Why a king and not a president?" the 38-year-old scion of Brazil's Braganca clan, descendants of Brazil's last Emperor, asked a visitor. "A king is not tied to a political party. A king is not tied to any economic groups."

Television and radio news, listings and advertising appear today on pages B10-11.