June 22, 2001

Montreal Expos defeat New York Mets, 10-3; photo (M)

Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield strikes deal with most powerful opponents of its effort to convert to for-profit company; Empire's executives have worked out arrangement with Dennis Rivera, leader of New York State's largest health care union, 1199/SEIU, and Kenneth E Raske, president of Greater New York Hospital Assn, in which hospitals will receive half the money from $1 billion charitable foundation company plans to set up; foundation money would come from initial stock offering, expected to be $1 billion; hospitals would use it to buy new computer systems or information technology that they believe would help eliminate medical errors; deal means hospitals will no longer oppose conversion; legislators and Empire executives agree that deal fashioned with hospitals and unions is important advance for Empire, which as been trying since 1996 to convert to for-profit company (M)

Fred Wilpon will buy Nelson Doubleday's 50 percent share of New York Mets, then divide that portion among group of New York entrepreneurs; Doubleday is said to be selling because of hostile relationship with Wilpon; price is $200 million; photo (M)

Eddie Murphy returns as a San Francisco physician with the amazing ability to communicate with animals, a group of whom enlist him to save their forest habitat from an evil lumber company. The film is a sloppy, genial assemblage of furry special effects and fuzzy plot-lines as Mr. Murphy graciously allows himself to be upstaged by bears, raccoons and his own dog, Lucky. Toward the end, the half-baked Darwinism drifts unexpectedly into paw-in-the-air social realism as the woodland creatures, like the poultry in last year's superior "Chicken Run," organize to fight their oppressors in a bizarre and curiously winning amalgam of environmental agitprop and barnyard comedy. - A. O. Scott

Swedish retailer Hennes & Mauritz says profit increased 37 percent, to 1.02 billion kronor ($95 million) from 743 million kronor year earlier; sales rose 39 percent, to 11.76 billion kronor ($1.09 billion); graph (S)