McNabb, 50, has been with Vanguard since 1986. He currently serves as a managing director overseeing Vanguard's institutional and international businesses, with about $700 billion in assets under management.

He will begin his role as president and director on March 1 and will succeed chief executive officer John Brennan within a year.

Brennan, 53, has served at Vanguard as president since 1989 and CEO since 1996. He will remain board chairman.

Valley Forge-based Vanguard manages $1.25 trillion in mutual fund assets, including more than $350 billion in employer-sponsored retirement plans.

A Braunschweig court sentenced Klaus Volkert, 48, to two years and nine months in prison for his role in arranging illegally, among other things, trips abroad and prostitutes for employee representatives.

The court also convicted ex-manager Klaus-Joachim Gebauer on 40 counts of breach of trust. Gebauer was handed a suspended one-year sentence.

Volkert's attorney had argued that he should be cleared of all 48 counts of breach of trust against him.

Volkert testified that he helped arrange a lucrative contract for his former girlfriend, but denied that he had done anything wrong.

Gebauer had testified that he always acted on behalf of superiors and management, but acknowledged that the indictment against him was "largely accurate."

Serbia's prime minister appealed for calm as the European Union condemned rioting in the capital Belgrade overnight when demonstrators attacked the U.S. embassy and other Western mission. The United States and EU heavyweights Britain, France and Germany have formally recognized Kosovo.

Serbian President Boris Tadic called an emergency meeting of the national security council, saying the riots that engulfed the capital overnight must "never happen again."

In Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, demonstrators waved Serbian flags and chanted "Kosovo is ours!" Police tried to keep protesters off the Kosovska Mitrovica bridge over the Ibar River. The bridge, which divides Kosovo Serbs from ethnic Albanians, has long been a flashpoint of tensions in Kosovo's restive north

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders declared independence from Serbia on Sunday. The province, which is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, has not been under Serbia's control since 1999, when NATO launched airstrikes to halt a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. A U.N. mission has governed Kosovo since.

Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said Friday the violence was reminiscent of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's bloody crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.

Neal Capria, an environmental lawyer and a pioneer in Democratic politics who helped bring his party to power in Brookhaven in the 1970s, was found dead in his Port Jefferson Station condominium Tuesday morning. He was 66.

Capria, who last month began work as an aide to the Suffolk legislature, was found in his bed by his son Justin who came by to drive his father to work.

"He was one of the trailblazers," said Richard Schaffer, Suffolk Democratic chairman. "People should know who he was because he is partly responsible for where we are today," referring to recent party victories in the county and various Suffolk towns.

Capria served as part of the Democratic majority on the Brookhaven Town Board from 1978 to 1982. He was the last elected Democratic town board official until the party regained power in 2006. For the past 18 months, Capria worked as an assistant town attorney, but was let go last month when Republicans regained control of the town board.

From 1982 to 1987, Capria was also a law partner of the late state and county Democratic chairman Dominic Baranello. He continued to share offices with him until 1995. He also served as a counsel to the state Senate minority for five years in the 1980s.

Capria also made his mark as an environmental attorney. In 1991, he won a $7.2-million settlement for 550 South Setauket homeowners who were damaged by a 1-million gallon spill - the largest in Long Island history - caused by leaks in a Northville Industries pipeline.

Brookhaven Supervisor Brian X. Foley, a Democrat, lauded Capria as "very principled" throughout his career. "What clearly came across with Neal was his sense of decency, his concern for his community," Foley said.

For the past four years, friends said Capria had problems with his eyesight, requiring him to use a large screen computer, and make large print copies of documents.

"He was never negative about it and used the right kind of tools," said Mark Grossman, a Foley aide. But the eye problems, he added, "Gave him a real sensitivity to the special needs issue and had him advocating for other employees."

Born in Brooklyn, Capria attended public schools, moved to Freeport at age 16 and later graduated from C.W. Post College, and later Chicago Kent College of Law.

He also served in the Navy and later became a reservist in the Navy. He worked in New York City for several years as a Legal Aid attorney, before moving to Suffolk. He married in 1970 and had two children. He and his wife Denise, divorced in 1994.

"We was a very nice man, who always listened to you," said his son Justin of Holbrook. "Only a few weeks ago, we watched the Super Bowl together. We bonded and had a great time together."

One of Kentucky's oldest law firms, Stoll Keenon Ogden, has announced changes in its top management position.

William M. Lear Jr., managing director for 18 years, will step down to return to full-time law practice.

The new managing director will be J. David Smith Jr., a lawyer with the firm.

Lear will remain with Stoll Keenon and continue as chairman of its board of directors for the next two years. Kendrick Riggs is vice chairman.

The managing director functions as the chief operating officer of the firm, Smith said, dealing mostly with financial issues. "We've got 150 lawyers in four cities. Managing director is, basically, a full time job." Smith said Lear "did an incomparable job."

Lear will concentrate on constitutional law cases, economic development and government relations. In the past five years, Lear has become a major downtown developer with several projects in the South Hill neighborhood, including Center Court loft condominiums.

In the community, Lear served as a state representative from 1985 to 1994. He is vice chairman of economic development for Commerce Lexington, and he serves on the board of the Speed Museum in Louisville. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers for Kentucky.

Smith, also included in Best Lawyers in America, has been with Stoll Keenon since 1982, and is active in the Kentucky Historical Society and the YMCA.

Takafumi Horie, former CEO of Internet service provider Livedoor, was found guilty last March of inflating earnings reports and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. Four other former executives were also found guilty.

Horie was not present Friday for the first hearing of his appeal at the Tokyo High Court, court spokesman Takahiro Ito said, refusing to release any further details of the court session.

Horie pleaded not guilty through his lawyers, according to head lawyer Yasuyuki Takai.

"First of all, (Horie) is not guilty," Takai said he told the court.

Horie and other top executives were arrested in January 2006, sparking a sell-off on the Tokyo Stock Exchange dubbed "Livedoor shock" over the downfall of the company and Horie, who had become a celebrity for his gutsy takeover attempts and flashy lifestyle.

The executives were accused of setting up a number of funds to do stock swaps and other stock trading to pad their books. Prosecutors said the complex schemes fabricated $46.2 million in profits.

Takai said Horie had no intention of evading the law in setting up the funds.

Although Horie's prison term was shorter than the four years demanded by prosecutors, it was considered harsh by Japanese standards, as executives charged with such white-collar crimes generally avoid prison terms.

Horie, a college dropout, became a millionaire by selling Livedoor stock at the height of their value. He drew widespread media attention for his aggressive get-rich-quick schemes, which struck a sharp contrast with the staid conformity of Japan's traditional business elite.

Horie was absent Friday "to prevent turmoil" in the court, Takai said. He said Horie plans to remain absent throughout his appeal trial, which is legal.

At its height, Livedoor drew a large number of individual investors, partly because of Horie's fame. Those investors, many of them amateurs at the stock market, suffered big losses when Livedoor shares nose-dived after Horie's arrest. The shares were later delisted.

The Livedoor case has prompted calls for clearer laws about stock trading and heavier penalties for falsifying earnings reports.

The issue in the LaRue case was whether the Employee Retirement Income Security Act permits an individual account holder to sue plan administrators for breaching their fiduciary duties.

The language of the law refers to recovering money for the "plan" rather than for an individual, raising the question of whether a participant can sue solely for himself.

Justice John Paul Stevens, in his opinion for the court, said that such lawsuits are allowed. "Fiduciary misconduct need not threaten the solvency of the entire plan to reduce benefits below the amount that participants would otherwise receive," Stevens said.

The decision overturned a ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.

Unlike people enrolled in traditional pension plans, employees in 401(k) plans, which have exploded in number in the past two decades, choose from a menu of options on where to invest their money. That puts workers squarely in the middle of decision-making about their pensions and inevitably leads to the kind of disputes LaRue has with his plan's administrators.

"Defined contribution plans dominate the retirement plan scene today," unlike when ERISA was enacted in the mid-1970s, Stevens said.

Many traditional pension plans guaranteeing a fixed monthly benefit have either been frozen or terminated, and 401(k) plans are the main source of retirement income, said the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 60,000 pilots at 41 air carriers.

The Bush administration argued in support of workers. The government said the appeals court ruling barring LaRue's lawsuit would leave 401(k) participants without a meaningful remedy from any federal, state or local court when plan administrators fail to live up to their duties.

Business groups supported LaRue's employer. They argued that ERISA is aimed at encouraging employers to set up pension plans, while guarding against administrative abuses involving the plan as a whole. The law doesn't permit individual lawsuits like LaRue's, the business groups said.

Congress enacted ERISA after some widely publicized failures by companies and labor unions to pay promised pensions. Workers in class-action lawsuits have long relied on the law, most recently in the scandal-ridden collapses of companies like Enron and its 401(k) plan for workers.

The term 401(k) refers to a section of the Internal Revenue Code.

Participants in 401(k) plans do not know how much money they will receive in retirement. Employees invest a certain amount each month and how much they get back depends on how well their chosen investments have performed.