Dupont

George Edward Preston, 92, who survived the Holocaust and afterward came to America, where he thrived, died of multiple organ failure Wednesday at home. He lived in Hyde Park near Wilmington. In 1985, Mr. Preston and his son, David Lee Preston, who was an Inquirer staff writer at the time, took a monthlong trip to France, the Soviet Union, Poland and Germany to revisit his past. The younger Preston wrote an article for Inquirer Magazine that chronicled the trip. The article was a finalist for the 1986 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing.

The Conestoga Country Club team of Drew Hood and John Cooper won the two- man scramble tournament of the Philadelphia PGA on the Nemours Course of the DuPont Country Club yesterday with a 9-under-par score of 60. The event, which opened the association's 1992 schedule, was played on the Nemours Course and on the DuPont Course. The winning team on the DuPont Course was Rick Osberg of Waynesborough Country Club and Jim Bromley of Whitemarsh Valley Country Club, who shot a 7- under-par 63.

DuPont Co. said yesterday that it was restructuring its chemical and specialties operations, a move it said would eliminate an unknown number of jobs. Chairman and chief executive Edgar S. Woolard Jr. said the moves at the Wilmington company would reorganize six business sectors "to have only one layer between strategic business units" and his office. In a news release, he said that for most employees, there would be little effect but that "excess positions" would result. There is no way to determine how many jobs would be affected until each business has assessed its needs, he said.

They ought to rename the A.I. duPont Institute in Wilmington. You may have read about the place. It's the 97-bed pediatric hospital that's going to turn away youngsters who test positive for AIDS. They ought to rename it: the A.I. duPont Institute for Kids Who Aren't Too Sick. That's the message the hospital's overseers at the Nemours Foundation in Jacksonville, Fla., inscribed over its portals with a no-kids-with-AIDS policy that began July 1. It's a first for a hospital in this country.

John Osterlund, 86, a retired DuPont Co. executive and father of U.S. District Judge Marjorie O. Rendell, died Monday at Forsyth Memorial Hospital, in Winston-Salem, N.C. Mr. Osterlund was born in Philadelphia and was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the university's Wharton School. He joined DuPont in 1936 and eventually became assistant to the secretary of the company. He retired in 1974. His daughter Marjorie (known as Midge) is the wife of Mayor Rendell.

Just because the prestigious McDonald's Championship has moved from White Manor Country Club, in Malvern, to DuPont Country Club, LPGA commissioner John Laupheimer, a native of Philadelphia, does not believe the Southeastern Pennsylvania area has to feel a sense of loss. "We're still here," said Laupheimer, who was at DuPont yesterday to help formally introduce the event's new home for the next three years. "We'd like to think of this as a tournament for metropolitan Philadelphia, as well as the Wilmington area.

The basketball game between Villanova and Connecticut, a sweaty, sticky defensive battle touched by wild momentum swings, finally came down to a one- on-one battle between two fine athletes. With the Huskies up, 73-71, Lance Miller, Villanova's slashing forward, spotted an open path to the baseline. His eyes widened; he dribbled and took his long, smooth step. Lyman DePriest, Connecticut's defensive specialist, moved, too. Miller reached the hoop and rose, confident of a game-tying layup.

He was the multimillionaire heir to one of the most fabluous estates in the Philadelphia region - the roughly 600 acres of rolling hills and horse stables near Newtown Square known as Foxcatcher Farm, anchored by a stately Georgian-style mansion called Liseter Hall. But in the end, the chemical-fortune scion John Eleuthere duPont died all alone, apparently of natural causes, in a western Pennsylvania prison cell where his frail and lifeless body was found at 6:55 a.m. yesterday. He was 72. DuPont's millions were powerless against the psychological demons that caused his slide into insanity - which led him to reportedly declare himself the red-robed "Dalai Lama of the United States" and finally to gun down a gold-medal-winning Olympic wrestler for no apparent reason.

WILMINGTON - DuPont Co. has received the final regulatory approval needed for its planned $5.8 billion acquisition of Danish food additives maker Danisco AS. DuPont said Friday that Chinese regulators have approved the deal, and that it is encouraging Danisco shareholders who have not yet tendered their shares to do so. DuPont has said it is confident that Danisco shareholders will follow their board's recommendation to accept DuPont's cash offer,...

DuPont Co. said today it bought Innovalight Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif., company founded in 2005 that makes silicon inks and other materials designed to improve the efficiency of crystalline silicon solar cells. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. With revenue of more than $1 billion from photovoltaic market last year, DuPont, of Wilmington, said its goal was to reach $2 billion in such sales by 2014. Privately held Innovalight said in May it would receive $3.4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to accelerate the development and production of the company's products.

What in the name of value creation has Strategic Diagnostics Inc. done? Like many other companies, the Newark, Del. company has decided to sell off a business unit. However, the company, which rebranded itself SDIX in 2010, is apparently selling its last remaining business unit. OriGene Technologies Inc. , of Rockville, Md., will pay $16 million for the assets of SDIX's Life Sciences business. SDIX said OriGene has agreed to offer employment to a "substantial majority" of SDIX's employees.

In the Region Leaner Supervalu to shed workers   Supervalu Inc. , which last week sold Acme Markets and four other national supermarket chains to a Cerberus Capital Management-led investor group, said Tuesday that it plans to eliminate 1,100 jobs as it trims costs amid falling sales. The company still operates about two dozen Save-a-Lot stores in the Philadelphia region and at the Jersey Shore. The cuts, which will come from its corporate and store-support offices, include current positions and open jobs that won't be filled, Minnesota-based Supervalu said, and represent about 3.1 percent of its 35,000-employee workforce.

DuPont Co., of Wilmington, awarded chairman and chief executive officer Ellen J. Kullman a package of short- and long-term incentives that could total $13.2 million in cash and stock, according to a company filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The figure reflects a 2012 incentive payment of $1.9 million, and future performance-based incentives. The company also gave Kullman a 3 percent salary increase, to $1.44 million annually, effective March 1, the filing said.

WHYY-FM has won the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcast and digital journalism. WHYY shared the award with Harrisburg station WITF-FM and NPR for a jointly produced series of radio and Web reports on issues related to natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. The awards were announced at the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York City on Wednesday morning. The announcement praised the project, "StateImpact Pennsylvania," as "an important model for reporting on local issues.

Hugh Campbell started running for the same reason many of us do. "I just got a bug in my sod about trying to run," he said. He mapped a 0.75-mile route near his house in Wilmington, ran it, and then ran it again. And again. He kept adding distance until he worked up to three miles, after which he ran a 3k. One big difference, though: Campbell was 87 when he got that bug in his sod. Now, he's considered a world-class runner for his age group. At 88, Campbell has set U.S. records in the 5k and 8k distances for male runners ages 80 and up. Two weeks ago, he broke the USA Track and Field 8k record for his age group at the Rothman Institute 8k in Philadelphia with a time of 47 minutes, 40 seconds, as part of the Philadelphia marathon racing weekend.

DuPont Co. lied to a federal court and investors about its right to use Monsanto Co. seed technology as a central part of its defense in a patent lawsuit, a judge has ruled. DuPont "knowingly perpetrated a fraud against the court," according to a Nov. 16 order by U.S. District Judge Richard Webber unsealing sanctions he levied last December that limited the company's defenses in the lawsuit brought by Monsanto. E-mails from DuPont executives and lawyers show they knew the company didn't have an agreement allowing it to combine Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans with a second trait, while telling the court and public for years that it had such a right, Webber ruled.

Shaken by weak earnings reports from companies of all stripes, stock prices are in retreat. Struggling DuPont will eliminate 1,500 jobs. A14.