Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

COMPANY: LOEWS CORP (93%); CNA FINANCIAL CORP (58%); CARLYLE GROUP LP (57%)
TICKER: LTR (NYSE) (93%); CNA (NYSE) (58%); L (NYSE) (93%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS524126 DIRECT PROPERTY & CASUALTY INSURANCE CARRIERS (93%); NAICS334518 WATCH, CLOCK & PART MANUFACTURING (93%); NAICS312221 CIGARETTE MANUFACTURING (93%); NAICS213111 DRILLING OIL & GAS WELLS (93%); SIC6331 FIRE, MARINE, & CASUALTY INSURANCE (93%); SIC6311 LIFE INSURANCE (93%); NAICS524128 OTHER DIRECT INSURANCE (EXCEPT LIFE, HEALTH & MEDICAL) CARRIERS (58%); NAICS524114 DIRECT HEALTH & MEDICAL INSURANCE CARRIERS (58%); SIC6399 INSURANCE CARRIERS, NEC (58%)
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The New York Times
April 29, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

Paid Notice: Deaths SERRELL, MARGARITA NOBLE
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Classified; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 212 words
SERRELL--Margarita Noble, passed away at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut on April 25, 2008. She was born in Montclair, New Jersey on July 15, 1917, the daughter of Robert P. and Meta B. Noble. She attended Greenwich Academy and was a graduate of the Ethel Walker School. Migi was an extraordinary lady of many talents. She was an acclaimed equestrian, a nationally known flower arranger, lecturer and judge, an author, artist, entrepreneur and a devoted mother of four children. She was the founder of the American Dressage Institute of which she was President for six years and in 2004 she was awarded their Lifetime Achievement Award. Migi was a sixty-year member of her beloved Hortulus garden club. She was awarded two Fenwick Medals for flower arranging and devoted much of her time judging and lecturing on the art of flower arranging throughout the United States on behalf of the Garden Club of America. Her daughters, Patricia Schmeltzer of Greenwich and Margarita McGrath of Scottsdale, Arizona, and her son, Howard Paul Serrell, Jr, of Greenwich, survive Migi as well as seven grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. A Memorial service will be held on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 2:00 pm. Round Hill Community Church, 395 Round Hill Road, Greenwich, CT.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: DEATHS & OBITUARIES (91%); CHILDREN (90%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (76%); AWARDS & PRIZES (75%)
ORGANIZATION: GARDEN CLUB OF AMERICA (83%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CONNECTICUT, USA (90%); NEW JERSEY, USA (90%); ARIZONA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (90%)
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The New York Times
April 28, 2008 Monday

The New York Times on the Web

Venture Firm Hires Creative Chief at Electronic Arts
BYLINE: By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg.
LENGTH: 343 words
William B. Gordon, a dean of video games who was one of Electronic Arts' first employees, in 1982, is leaving E.A. for the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, the firm said Monday.

Mr. Gordon, known as Bing, is E.A.'s chief creative officer and was a driving force behind titles like the Sims, Command & Conquer and FIFA Soccer. He also helped the young company figure out pricing and marketing models.

At Kleiner Perkins, where he is to start on June 9, Mr. Gordon will focus on investments in consumer technologies. He said a few things sparked the decision, including his long relationship with Kleiner Perkins; dropping his oldest daughter off at Yale (''When I saw the vision of the empty nest, my vision was, why not learn something new and different,'' Mr. Gordon said); and talking with young entrepreneurs. ''I have a fascination and appetite with seeing how they're going to change the world in the way that a group of entrepreneurs, when I was a squirt, wanted to change the world through interactive entertainment,'' he said.

''I think we're one year into a five- to seven-year unfolding new renaissance of digital media, so I really want to get going,'' Mr. Gordon said. ''I think there's wild times ahead.''

He first dealt with Kleiner Perkins when it invested in Electronic Arts the year it was founded. The firm then recruited him to sit on the board of Amazon, on which he has served since 2003. Mr. Gordon has long offered informal consulting to the venture capital company on investment prospects.

The idea for Mr. Gordon, said Ted Schlein, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, was to ''take his vision around interactive media and his creativity and his attentiveness to consumer needs and apply that to consumer Internet as well as mobile.''

Kleiner Perkins, which was founded in 1972, rose to prominence in the first Internet boom with early investments in companies like Google, Amazon.com, Netscape and AOL.

Last November, the firm made another star hire, tapping Al Gore to work on green-technology investments.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: VENTURE CAPITAL (91%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); INTERACTIVE MARKETING & ADVERTISING (76%); SPORTS & RECREATION (73%); PRICE MANAGEMENT (71%)
COMPANY: KLEINER PERKINS CAUFIELD & BYERS (94%); AMAZON.COM INC (54%); GOOGLE INC (52%); ELECTRONIC ARTS INC (92%)
ORGANIZATION: FEDERATION INTERNATIONALE DE FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION (57%)
TICKER: AMZN (NASDAQ) (54%); GOOG (NASDAQ) (52%); GGEA (LSE) (51%); ERTS (NASDAQ) (92%)
INDUSTRY: SIC5961 CATALOG & MAIL-ORDER HOUSES (54%); NAICS518112 WEB SEARCH PORTALS (51%); SIC8999 SERVICES, NEC (51%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES (51%); NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (92%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (92%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (52%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (69%)
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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
April 28, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

John McConnell, 84, Steel and Hockey Magnate, Dies
BYLINE: By JAD MOUAWAD
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Obituary; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 475 words
John H. McConnell, a self-made steel magnate and sports enthusiast who borrowed $600 against his car to establish what became a multibillion-dollar company and later brought professional hockey to Columbus, Ohio, died Friday in Columbus. He was 84.

He died at Riverside Methodist Hospital of complications from cancer, said Cathy M. Lyttle, a spokeswoman for Worthington Industries, the steel company he founded in 1955.

Mr. McConnell ran Worthington Industries for four decades until he retired in 1996.

A son of a steel worker, Mr. McConnell, who was known as Mr. Mac, championed the idea that workers should partake in their company's success and set up an employee profit-sharing plan in 1966.

His views were recognized by Mother Jones, a magazine for progressive causes, which in 1986 named Worthington Industries one of the best companies to work for in the United States. Fortune magazine also gave the company that distinction four times.

John Henderson McConnell was born May 10, 1923, in New Manchester, W.Va., then known as Pughtown. He grew up during the Great Depression, and that experience helped define his business philosophy.

''It just came natural,'' Mr. McConnell told The Columbus Dispatch in an interview in 1996. ''You don't cheat. You don't lie. You help your neighbor.''

During World War II, he served for three years aboard the aircraft carrier Saratoga. Upon his return, he married his high school sweetheart, Margaret Jane Rardin, and went to Michigan State University on the G.I. Bill. He studied business, played football and graduated in 1949.

Working in Columbus as a salesman for Weirton Steel in 1954, Mr. McConnell decided to start his own business as a broker between steel mills and their customers. With $1,200 in savings, he took out a loan against his 1952 Oldsmobile and worked from the basement of his home. He made $600 on his first deal.

According to an account he gave The Columbus Dispatch a few years ago, his father tried to dissuade him. ''He said, 'What happens if you go broke?' I said, 'Well, I don't have anything to start with, so what am I going to lose?'''

After retiring, he led a group of investors seeking to bring a National Hockey League team to Columbus. The team began playing as the Blue Jackets in 2000. Mr. McConnell committed $120 million to build up the franchise, according to The Associated Press. On opening night, Oct. 9, 2000, he got a standing ovation when he dropped the first puck.

Mr. McConnell laid out his approach to business in a book published in 2004, ''Our Golden Rule.''

''My father's legacy is how he treated people,'' John P. McConnell, his son and successor at Worthington, said in a statement.

In addition to his son, Mr. McConnell is survived by his daughter, Margaret, of New Orleans; and six grandchildren. His wife of 59 years died in 2005.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: DEATHS & OBITUARIES (93%); IRON & STEEL MILLS (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); COMPANY LISTS & RANKINGS (78%); FACTORY WORKERS (76%); SELF EMPLOYMENT (75%); INTERVIEWS (69%); WORLD WAR II (65%); GREAT DEPRESSION (67%)
COMPANY: WORTHINGTON INDUSTRIES INC (57%)
ORGANIZATION: MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY (54%)
TICKER: WOR (NYSE) (57%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS336370 MOTOR VEHICLE METAL STAMPING (57%); NAICS331221 ROLLED STEEL SHAPE MANUFACTURING (57%); SIC3465 AUTOMOTIVE STAMPINGS (57%); SIC3316 COLD-ROLLED STEEL SHEET, STRIP & BARS (57%)
PERSON: MIKE MCCONNELL (94%); JOHN P MCCONNELL (96%)
GEOGRAPHIC: COLUMBUS, OH, USA (96%) OHIO, USA (96%); MICHIGAN, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (96%)
CATEGORY: Sports
John McConnell
LOAD-DATE: April 28, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: John H. McConnell(PHOTOGRAPH BY COLUMBUS DISPATCH, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
April 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Big (Young) Man on Campus
BYLINE: By DAVE CALDWELL
SECTION: Section NJ; Column 0; New Jersey Weekly Desk; SPORTS; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 795 words
DATELINE: PISCATAWAY
LIKE most college freshmen, Art Forst enjoys sleeping in, but he usually cannot spare the time. He is a football player at Rutgers, and the alarm clock in his dorm room rudely reminds him that he needs to work out year-round.

''Sometimes, when I wake up at 4:20 in the morning, I say to myself, 'I could be in high school right now,' '' Forst, 18, said recently with a smile.

Instead, at the advice of coaches and others, he decided to get a leg up on his college education and his college career.

Though he should have been finishing his senior year at Manasquan High School in June, Forst, an offensive tackle and a top national prospect, rushed to earn the required number of credits for his diploma by December. That allowed him to enroll at Rutgers in January, a semester early.

Forst, who completed spring practice with the rest of the Scarlet Knights this month, believes his early arrival on campus will put him ahead of other players in the fall.

University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, who as a sophomore last season became the first underclassman to win the Heisman Trophy, also entered college through early enrollment.

''Every year, you get more and more kids coming in early, because they can not only get acclimated football-wise, but it gets kids oriented to going to school -- balancing academics and sports, making the best use of their time,'' said Bob Lichtenfels, a recruiting analyst for Scout.com, a Web site that tracks college choices of top high school athletes. ''They are so far ahead of the kids who come into school in the fall.''

Of the 51,000 students on the Rutgers campus, only 25 enrolled in January ahead of schedule, said Courtney McAnuff, the university's vice president for enrollment management. The National Collegiate Athletic Association does not keep statistics on early admissions among athletes, officials said. But three other football players at Rutgers have taken the same route, officials said.

Two share a dormitory suite with Forst: Steve Shimko, a freshman quarterback from Ewing, and Keith Stroud, a freshman wide receiver from Brooklyn who spent a year at Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia. The other, Mo Lange, a tackle from Hillsborough, entered Rutgers early last year.

Though Forst is younger than many of his classmates this year, he hardly looks it, at 6 feet 8 inches and about 300 pounds. He is taking four courses for 13 credits this semester.

''I think that it's been beneficial for me,'' he said, ''yet some people lose a lot. It depends on how much you care about doing those senior-year-of-high-school things.''

He plans to go to the prom at Manasquan, but does not plan to participate in graduation, saying, ''I'm not a very sentimental person, I suppose.''

The second of Bob and Lisa Forst's four children, Forst drives 45 minutes home to Manasquan most weekends to see his girlfriend and to decompress from a week of studying and lifting weights.

''He was absolutely ready to do this,'' Bob Forst said. ''He's always ready to keep going to the next level. Art is always looking to just keep moving on.''

Art Forst picked Rutgers over five other prestigious football schools he considered: Notre Dame, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia and Boston College. He said that he admired Coach Greg Schiano's integrity and that he felt comfortable at Rutgers.

It was the coach of one of the schools Forst turned down, Urban Meyer of Florida, who suggested that Forst enroll in college early, so he could get a head start on his college classes, not to mention learning the technique required to play college football.

Forst thought Meyer made sense. So after consulting with high school officials, he picked up two independent-study classes -- one on the Vietnam War, the other on economics -- and finished them as he played football for the Manasquan Warriors.

''Once he made that commitment, there was no wavering on it,'' said Rich Read, an assistant coach at Manasquan High. ''He has a very strong faith that guides him a lot in his decision-making. He's focused on where he wants to go.''

Forst is determined to become good enough at Rutgers to parlay his success into a career in the National Football League, but if that does not work, his father said he would not be surprised to see Art become an entrepreneur.

When he was a boy, his father, who is in the construction business, used to invite him to work -- and Art would insist on working. When it snowed at Rutgers, Forst went to the maintenance shed and asked to borrow a shovel. He knocked on doors and made $105 shoveling driveways.

''He's probably one of the largest human beings you've seen, and he's a special, special guy,'' Schiano said recently. ''We're blessed to have him here early.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: AMERICAN FOOTBALL (90%); SPORTS (90%); ATHLETES (89%); SPORTS & RECREATION (89%); COLLEGE STUDENTS (89%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY SPORTS (89%); HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS (78%); STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (78%); SPORTS AWARDS (78%); UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION (73%); MILITARY SCHOOLS & ACADEMIES (73%)
ORGANIZATION: UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA (55%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) NEW JERSEY, USA (79%); NEW YORK, USA (79%); FLORIDA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: April 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: IN A HURRY: Art Forst, a 6-foot-8 football recruit at Rutgers, finished his senior year of high school early to get a head start on college. (PHOTOGRAPH BY AARON HOUSTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

820 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Allegations Lead Army To Review Arms Policy
BYLINE: By C. J. CHIVERS; Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1766 words
DATELINE: MOSCOW
The United States Army has begun a broad review of procedures used to supply security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq with foreign arms, prompted by an allegation of fraud and questions about the competence of the main private supplier of ammunition to Afghanistan.

The company, AEY Inc. of Miami Beach, was suspended last month after Army investigators accused it of shipping aged Chinese rifle cartridges and claiming they were Hungarian.

The Army decided to review its contracting procedures as several arms-industry officials said that long before the suspension, it was clear the Army had erred by not recognizing risk factors in AEY's history and activities, and by being lured by a very low bid.

Problems with the contract, they said, were evident again early this year when AEY's president was seen shopping for foreign munitions, including shoulder-fired rockets, at an American gun show. The money he was offering, the officials said, was too little to buy quality ammunition.

Lt. Gen. William E. Mortensen, deputy commanding general of the Army Materiel Command, and Jeffrey P. Parsons, executive director of the Army Contracting Command, said last week that based on questions about AEY's performance and initial inquiries into the contract's history, the Army had undertaken an extensive review of its arms-contracting standards and procedures and planned to overhaul several.

The contract has drawn the attention of three Congressional committees, which are expected to hold hearings in the next few weeks.

General Mortensen and Mr. Parsons said the Army was examining how it ordered foreign munitions and supervised their quality, packaging and shipment. It also plans to review how it vets Pentagon-sponsored deals in the often murky world of foreign arms procurement.

''We are taking a look at what we have done under this contract,'' General Mortensen said. ''We recognize that we need to make changes.''

AEY, a tiny company operating from an unmarked office, is led by Efraim E. Diveroli, 22, who has limited business and munitions experience. His father, Michael, incorporated the company in 1999. In 2004, AEY listed Efraim Diveroli as an officer.

In January 2007, the company was awarded a contract, potentially worth $298 million, that made it the primary munitions supplier for Afghan security forces in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The company's activities have provided a window into the world of foreign arms dealing, as well as the shortfalls in oversight of dealers doing business for the United States.

The contract also points to strains in the military's procurement practices, which were detailed in the report of an independent panel last October. Known as the Gansler Commission, the panel sharply criticized the Army for failing to train enough experienced contracting officers, deploy them quickly and ensure that they properly manage billions of dollars in contracts to supply troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A new element of the Army's review -- the question of how to vet the ties between the Pentagon's contractors and other businesses -- is being conducted with the Department of Defense, General Mortensen said.

Under American law, American dealers must disclose every entity involved in an arms shipment overseas, including brokering, transportation and repackaging companies. The State Department checks subcontractors and partners against a watch list of entities suspected of involvement in illegal arms deals.

But the law exempts federal agencies and contractors working for them. Arms-trade researchers have complained that many contractors supplying the wars, including AEY, have worked with suspicious companies abroad, and that the Pentagon has not screened their activities.

General Mortensen acknowledged that the Army had not reviewed AEY's relationships and said the question of vetting was now being reviewed. ''If there is a seam in our process, then clearly we need to take a look at it,'' he said.

An examination of AEY's activities by The New York Times, first reported last month, found that the company had shipped to Afghanistan tens of millions of decades-old Chinese cartridges that had been repackaged in flimsy cardboard.

The purchases included classes of ammunition that NATO and the State Department have determined to be outdated and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

The ammunition had not been tested for reliability under well-established military standards, the Army and the export agency that sold most of it said.

Mr. Diveroli was under a felony charge of possession of a forged driver's license when the contract was awarded. He later conducted business with a shell company in Cyprus and two international arms dealers on the federal watch list. He was also recorded in a phone conversation that suggested corruption in arms purchases in Albania.

Federal prosecutors have been presenting evidence of AEY's activities to a grand jury in Miami, according to a witness and three lawyers associated with the case. Investigators searched AEY's offices last year.

AEY declined to answer several questions about its business. But Hy Shapiro, Mr. Diveroli's lawyer, said the company had received many Army contracts before the Afghan contract and had performed well.

''AEY delivered on those contracts,'' he said by telephone. ''AEY continued to bid on contracts, and that's why it was given serious consideration on the Afghanistan contract.''

Although public attention has focused on AEY, the Army has also begun examining government contracting practices.

Much of the equipment used by Iraqi and Afghan forces is of Soviet design. The arms have been purchased by various military commands and other agencies, including the State Department.

Unlike the strict rules for NATO arms, standards for foreign purchases varied from contract to contract, and often were vague and less restrictive. Several officials in the arms industry said the lax standards and contracting officers' limited understanding of munitions all but ensured that the Army would end up with questionable goods.

AEY shipped about 125 million rounds of ammunition to Afghanistan, the Army said. Documents from Albania show that most were Chinese rounds from Albanian depots and were made as long ago as 1960.

There has been no public evidence that AEY bought munitions directly from China.

Independent arms-trafficking researchers and several AEY competitors said the Army, after learning that Mr. Diveroli had planned to buy from Albania, should have known it risked getting substandard goods.

Albania's arms-export agency has been involved in scandals in the past, and Albanian stockpiles have a reputation for being old and poorly stored, said the owner of another arms-supply company, who asked to speak anonymously because he said the Pentagon might reject future bids if he criticized the military publicly.

Arms researchers agreed that AEY's activities should have been a warning. ''It is quite strange to us that the U.S. government would allow Albanian ammunition, because all of us know that the Albanian ammunition is not very good,'' said Peter Danssaert, an analyst at the International Peace Information Service in Belgium, an independent research institute.

Several arms-industry officials said the problems were obvious. AEY was a new company with a young and inexperienced staff. Part of its business model, the officials said, was to make extremely low bids on contracts and then seek help from competitors to supply the munitions.

Private arms dealers said the practice caused predictable problems. ''They low-bid these prices so low that there was no high-quality source for it,'' said Sanford Brygidier, managing director of Aztec International, of Ocala, Fla.

Mr. Brygidier, who said he has been in the arms business for 36 years, added that Mr. Diveroli would tell potential suppliers that they had to accept his prices because he had the contract and there would be no other buyers. ''He wanted this, he wanted that, he had immediate cash,'' Mr. Brygidier said. ''I told him, basically, that this wasn't kindergarten and that we were not in the education business. I told him not to call me anymore.''

Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Diveroli's lawyer, declined to answer questions about whether AEY had sought munitions from companies it had underbid. He did not dispute that its prices were generally low.

''It seems to me that Mr. Diveroli's prices would have had to have been lower than his competitors' for the Army to have awarded him the Afghanistan contract,'' Mr. Shapiro said.

The low-price assumptions, the industry officials said, appeared to be what had led Mr. Diveroli to Albania, where the government sold its munitions for as little as 2.2 cents a round, a price that strongly suggested their age and poor condition.

Ed Grasso, president of Sellier & Bellot USA, which has provided new Czech ammunition to Afghanistan, said new rifle cartridges of the types AEY bought typically cost 20 cents to 30 cents a round.

By early this year, Mr. Diveroli seemed to be desperately searching for munitions, three dealers said. He turned up in Las Vegas in February at the SHOT show, which calls itself the world's largest firearms exhibition.

He went booth to booth, seeking suppliers to fill the Army's orders, including those for shoulder-fired rockets, they said. ''He was looking to buy RPG-7 rounds, and let me tell you, he wanted to pay $30 for these things,'' one dealer said. ''You can't get that item for that price, not if you're buying quality.''

A round for an RPG-7, the dealer said, typically costs $60 to $85.

He added, ''He would just come in and give us a list of stuff that he was trying to shop, and at prices no one would touch.''

The Army set no date for finishing its review or recommending changes. The work proceeds under pressure from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee is examining whether Mr. Diveroli wrongly declared AEY to be a disadvantaged, minority-owned small business to get preferential treatment in the bid-selection process.

Mr. Diveroli did identify AEY as a disadvantaged small business in an online form submitted to the Army for other contracts, General Mortensen and Mr. Parsons said. But they added that he also wrote that his company had not been certified as such by the federal Small Business Administration, and that AEY had received no preferential treatment.