June 25, 1993

Long before Justice Byron R. White announced his retirement, President Clinton spoke of wanting a Supreme Court nominee with a big heart. And in the 11 days since since he chose Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the questions most often asked about her have to do with her heart: whether she is steely or just cold, a passionate fighter or a dry proceduralist, aloof or simply shy. Among friends and colleagues, including people who have known her since she was Kiki Bader, their pretty blond bunkmate at Camp Che-Na-Wah in the Adirondacks, there is no debate about the goodness of her spirit or the size of her intellect. "Her talent has been there for anyone to see forever," said Richard Salzman, a judge on the District of Columbia Superior Court who attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn and Columbia Law School with Ms. Ginsburg.

WHEN Henry James's play "Guy Domville" was produced in 1895, he appeared on stage for an opening-night bow and was hit with jeers, boos and catcalls that drowned out his friends' polite applause. It was not the last time an audience decided James wasn't much of a showman, and he soon returned to what he did best: writing novels and tales of exquisite subtlety. But he always longed for large public acclaim, and finally, curiously, belatedly, James found his mass audience on film. There is nothing Hollywood would call high-concept in his fiction. His characters' most dramatic moments often exist in what they see or think or sense, or think they possibly might have seen or sensed. Isabel Archer's wedding in "The Portrait of a Lady" is an absolute nonevent that takes place between chapters, nothing compared to the quiet moment when she realizes her husband has deceived her. And James's career is filled with heroes whose most energetic action is running from their own emotions. Yet film makers as different as William Wyler, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and James Ivory have been gloriously inspired by James, in unpredictable ways.

United States Senate investigators have decided that the financial problems of Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the nation's largest nonprofit health insurer, are largely a result of its own mismanagement and not unfair competition. Investigators for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations have found that Empire's management problems are so chronic and deep-seated that they have rendered it incapable of performing the basic tasks of an insurance company, according to interviews with people familiar with the subcommittee's work and those questioned by investigators.

Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, the 32-year-old Sudanese immigrant whom Federal authorities have placed at the center of a conspiracy to bomb the United Nations and other targets in New York City, confided to an F.B.I. informer that he had helped test the bomb for the World Trade Center blast in February, according to Federal officials. That explosion, Mr. Siddig Ali was quoted in a Federal complaint as saying, was a message that "we can get you anytime."

BEAUTY and charisma are not the same thing. Bogart proved it. So did Jean-Paul Belmondo. And now Tyrannosaurus rex, a stomping, flesh-eating star of "Jurassic Park," has served notice that the dinosaurs who ruled the earth for 165 million years developed something even more precious than seven-inch incisors and armor plating: genuine star quality. They're big and they're bad. They have attitude and edge. They're the only thing huger than Arnold. And they are undeniably here.

Only one candidate, Bernard R. Gifford, among the 10 finalists under consideration as New York City's next schools chancellor appears to be seeking the job, has support on the board and is unburdened by debilitating factors, interviews with board members and school officials indicate. As a result, Mr. Gifford, an education professor at the University of California at Berkeley who was a finalist in the 1988 chancellor search, has emerged as the front-runner as successive candidates have withdrawn from consideration and board members have privately voiced criticism of the others. Praise From Board Members The surge by Mr. Gifford, who is black, appears to work to the advantage of Rudolph W. Giuliani in the racial politics of the unfolding mayoral race. Though neither candidate has expressed a preference, city and school officials have said Mayor David N. Dinkins, struggling to keep the Hispanic support that helped elect him in 1989, would like another Hispanic chancellor.

ONCE, the Regency Hotel was Hollywood East. The hotel was crammed with visiting movie stars and studio executives who found the Regency comfortably luxurious, smoothly discreet and reasonably convenient at 540 Park Avenue, at 61st Street. On top of all that, the hotel invented New York's power breakfast. Since people in Hollywood enshrine power, those breakfasts at the Regency made all the visiting producers, agents and movie executives feel as if they were just down the road at the Bel-Air Hotel. But trends -- like studio executives -- fade. The folks from Hollywood are fickle. "They're like lemmings," said one film company executive. Another said, "Someone says the toasted bagel is better at the Mark, and they'll all move." Well, the toasted bagels are just fine at the Regency. But the hotel, while quite luxurious, has become like one of those Hollywood studios that churn out predictable, profitable and not entirely satisfying films. And the Hollywood crowd, which is never content, has been defecting, bit by bit, to the Mark, the Ritz-Carlton, the St. Regis, the Royalton and the newly opened Four Seasons.

Nurse to Be AIDS Czar The President chose a former Washington State health official to be the Federal AIDS coordinator. Page A17. New Jersey Bests New York A commission voted to expand McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey by closing Plattsburgh Air Force Base in New York. Page A12. Wilder vs. Robb, Again Reviving a Virginia feud, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder will challenge Senator Charles Robb for the Democratic Senate nomination. Page A12. Atom-Smasher Voted Down The House voted to kill an $11 billion science project in Texas, the Superconducting Supercollider, and proponents said they were pessimistic that the Senate could save it. Page A18.

The Primerica Corporation, bidding to add investment banking firepower to the vast brokerage forces being mustered at Smith Barney Shearson, hired Robert F. Greenhill, the former president of Morgan Stanley, as the unit's chairman and chief executive yesterday. Mr. Greenhill plans to scour Wall Street for more deal makers and try to lure clients including General Motors and I.B.M. away from Morgan Stanley.

Standing in the long shadow of the onion domes, purple turrets and epic staircases of the Trump Taj Mahal casino, the colossal gambling emporium that blocks the late afternoon sunlight on the boardwalk, Bill Ustick is not one to make comparisons. Donald J. Trump's casino rakes in millions of dollars in bets, while Mr. Ustick presides over the dollar-a-game ring-toss under a canvas canopy on the Steel Pier, just a long roll of the dice from the Taj Mahal's gaudy entrance. But strip away the trappings and move the bottom-line decimal point a few places and you have two concessionaires who invite the public to step right up, put their money down and try their luck.

Procter & Gamble, the nation's largest maker of household goods, is expected to act on a strategy that could eliminate thousands of jobs around the world. But it is unclear just how many employees would be affected. A company spokeswoman yesterday dismissed a published report that as many as 10,000 Procter & Gamble jobs would be involved. The company employs 102,600 people worldwide, including 47,600 in the United States.

A Federal appeals panel yesterday unanimously overturned the fraud conviction of former Assembly Speaker Mel Miller of Brooklyn, agreeing that a tangled real-estate deal in which he and his former law partner netted $200,000 did not constitute a crime. Mr. Miller, who as Speaker was the second most powerful Democrat in the state, was stripped of his position but spared a prison term after his conviction in 1991. The conviction effectively ended the political career of a man who for years had cast a dominating, and often domineering, presence over New York State politics.