plus 3, Fayette EMS purchases PNC Bank building - PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Fayette EMS purchases PNC Bank building - PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Search is on to find more wireless bandwidth - Courier-Journal
Despite prominent leaders, Irvine firm's bank fails - Los Angeles Times Blogs
Baltimore Third Grader Brings Gun to School - ABC2 News

Fayette EMS purchases PNC Bank building - PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Posted: 06 Mar 2010 07:37 AM PST

Fayette EMS has expanded its operations and needs additional space.

The local ambulance service has purchased the old PNC Bank building and will move its executive offices into the new location.

"Fayette EMS has grown so much since its inception. We now have much more reach within the Fayette EMS family," said Bob Topper, administrative director of Fayette EMS.

Fayette EMS was the result of the merging of Tri-Town and the Connellsville ambulance service in 1995.

Fayette EMS stayed true to its mission statement of being a nonprofit business, said Topper. But funding has become tighter and reimbursements are shrinking from the insurance companies. The company receives no tax money from local governments.

About five years, the ambulance service created Tri-Conn Alternative Services which offers services such as a wheelchair van division, public medical training and education, a blood-draw service and other services which help generate income that keeps the ambulance service going.

A management group was also formed that helps ambulance services in Armstrong County and Westmoreland County. Currently, the group is training health and safety to more than 2,000 employees of a large power-plant operation outside of Morgantown, W.Va.

"We've just been adding staff to facilitate the duties for the tasks for the company and ran out of space," Topper said.

Originally, the plan was to find space in the city and build a new building for the ambulance and the crews, but the service officials had trouble finding reasonable property.

The PNC Bank building located on the corner of Pittsburgh Street and Crawford Avenue closed last year.

The Fayette EMS board of directors had Topper place a bid on the building.

Topper and 10 other employees of the executive branch will move into the new office space. Rick Adobato, director of Fayette EMS, will remain at the building on Arch Street. The extra space there will be converted into a learning center and training area.

Contractors are working on the new building. Topper said he's hoping to move into the location by the end of the month.

Along with the much-needed extra space the location will provide for files and employees, Topper said the bank building will also be an opportunity for the service to upgrade technology at the Arch Street location. The service would like to add video conferencing and online training there.

"We couldn't facilitate that when we were all jammed together," Topper said. "This will enhance our ability to communicate with our other branches. That's a big one for us."

Topper said Fayette EMS is always continuing to look for opportunities to further allow the ambulance service to continue to operate with state-of-the-art equipment and protocols and paid employees.

"We really opened up a lot of nontraditional stuff than what an ambulance service does," Topper said.

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Search is on to find more wireless bandwidth - Courier-Journal

Posted: 06 Mar 2010 08:42 AM PST

Federal regulators are hoping to find more wireless spectrum for mobile broadband services by reallocating some airwaves now assigned to television broadcasters and others.

Under a long-awaited proposal outlined by the Federal Communications Commission recently, broadcasters and other spectrum holders would voluntarily give back some spectrum and share in proceeds raised by government auctions of those airwaves to wireless companies.

Wireless carriers have been clamoring for more spectrum as their customers increasingly check e-mail, update Facebook and watch video on the go. Broadband services are already choking in some markets.

"Although the potential of mobile broadband is limitless, its oxygen supply is not," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a recent speech.

The FCC plan would set a goal of freeing 500 megahertz of wireless spectrum over the next decade. That would include spectrum licensed to companies through government auctions as well as unlicensed spectrum open to all, such as airwaves used for Wi-Fi networks. The wireless industry currently has about 500 megahertz of spectrum available for licensed use.

Yahoo says its Web site will incorporate tweets

Yahoo has something new to yodel about: tweets.

In its latest attempt to make its Web site more compelling, Yahoo is plugging its services into the rapidly growing craze of posting short messages, or "tweets," on Twitter.

Most of the new features won't be available until later this year. Among other things, anyone with a Twitter account will be able to tweet and see the updates of people they're tracking while logged into Yahoo.

One change occurred last month, when Yahoo started to show a wider range of Twitter updates in its search results — something that Google and Microsoft began doing last year.

Unlike Google and Microsoft, Yahoo plans to turn its Web site into a tweeting perch. This follows Yahoo's recent commitment to tether its Web site to Facebook, which is even more widely used than Twitter.

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Despite prominent leaders, Irvine firm's bank fails - Los Angeles Times Blogs

Posted: 06 Mar 2010 08:20 AM PST

Regulators late Friday shut down Waterfield Bank of Germantown, Md., a thrift operated from Irvine that had helped big companies, insurers and organizations such as AARP and the American Medical Assn. offer savings accounts, CDs and other banking products under the clients' names.

A team of prominent financial figures, including an honor roll of California bankers, had teamed up with the wealthy Waterfield family in an attempt to use the small savings and loan as a vehicle to expand the private-label banking services offered by its parent company, Affinity Financial Corp. in Irvine.

Affinity is part of the Waterfield family's private businesses, operated as Waterfield Group. A call seeking comment from its Irvine offices wasn't returned Friday afternoon.

Statements issued by regulators about the shutdown don't make clear what went wrong with the business plan. The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision said the bank was critically undercapitalized, with a negative net worth and no "viable prospect" of returning to profitability or raising capital.

Directors of the bank or its parent companies included Joseph Wender, a longtime partner at Goldman, Sachs & Co.; Eugene Fife, a former Goldman general partner; Robert Albertson, chief strategist at bank research firm Sandler O'Neill; private investor John M. Eggemeyer, chairman of PacWest Bancorp, which acquired failed California banks in November 2008 and August 2009; Robert T. Barnum, a private investor who helped run American Savings Bank when it was owned by a group run by Texas investor Robert M. Bass; Timothy Chrisman, a former bank executive and consultant who is chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco; and Howard Gould, vice chairman of Irvine bank consulting firm Carpenter & Co. who was California commissioner of financial institutions in 2004 and 2005.

Clients of Affinity's private-label services included the International Assn. of Fire Fighters, AARP Financial Inc., the AMA, the Air Force Assn., BMW, GE Capital and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, according to Waterfield Group's website.

Most of the so-called affinity banking was conducted over the Internet, through portals on the clients' websites offering savings accounts, certificates of deposit, ATM cards and other services, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. spokesman said.

The FDIC spokesman, David Barr, said the agency planned to mail checks immediately to holders of CDs and retirement accounts. Holders of other accounts will have a month to transfer funds to another bank before the FDIC mails them checks, he said.

Waterfield Bank, which began operations in June 2000 as Assurance Partners Bank, had one branch and 34 employees, with total assets of $155.6 million and retail deposits of $156.2 million, regulators said.

Also Friday, regulators closed one bank each in Florida, Illinois and Utah, bringing the number of bank failures this year to 26.

-- E. Scott Reckard

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Baltimore Third Grader Brings Gun to School - ABC2 News

Posted: 06 Mar 2010 08:13 AM PST

Update

Students at Sharp-Leadenhall Elementary School are ready to start their weekend, but parents need more time to learn what happened inside the building.

A spokeswoman for Baltimore City Schools says an 8-year-old boy had a loaded 9-millimeter handgun on him, threatening to shoot a classmate on Thursday afternoon. Many parents found out about it a day later.

"Anybody could have gotten shot in here… this is unacceptable," said Angela Nelson.

The student was arrested and taken to the Department of Juvenile Services, where his parents later picked him up.

Sharp-Leadenhall is described as a special education school with a student population of just over 50. Next door at the Baltimore Station, Al Phillips leads recovering addicts through a program to mentor the elementary school students, hoping they'll avoid their mistakes.

"A lot of times they're pushed into things because his older brother will say oh that's cool. Take this gun to school that will show him. And the kid doesn't really understand the implications of what he's doing," said Phillips.

No word yet on who owns the gun that got into the third grader's backpack.
An administrator is being praised for hearing the boy make a threat and then searching his bag.

"Kids are only taking to school what they bring from home," Phillips said.

Parents we spoke to were concerned about what they call lack of communication. The gun was found around dismissal time yesterday, and there was no immediate notification.

Edie House, a spokeswoman for Baltimore City Schools, says all parents were called Friday evening and a letter about the incident was mailed home.

Again, police continue to look into how the boy got the gun in the first place.

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