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August 4, 2000 Leap Wireless International Inc. highlighted the milestones it has achieved in its rollout plan for Cricket, its innovative local wireless service, at a company-organized gathering yesterday of investment analysts in Nashville, Tenn.
Leap also used the gathering to unveil the next 10 markets slated to offer its Cricket service: Tucson, Ariz.; Little Rock, Ark.; Wichita, Kan.; Charlotte and Greensboro, N.C.; Albuquerque, N.M.; Tulsa, Okla.; Knoxville and Memphis, Tenn.; and Salt Lake City, Utah. Eight of these markets are expected to launch by the end of calendar year 2000.
"Our entire organization is dedicated to delivering results and launching markets according to our timeline," says Susan G. Swenson, Leap's president COO. "We wanted to share the nuts and bolts of how we are turning our rollout plans into a reality."
"Cricket service is designed to open up the wireless revolution to everyone and transform wireless into a mass consumer product," says Harvey P. White, Leap's chairman and CEO. "We wanted to provide the analysts with a first-hand look at the Cricket concept in action in our second market and to allow them to meet our customers, visit our stores and hear from our executive team."
As part of its network build out, Leap says it has:
• Is working on wireless networks in 33 new markets.
• Is deploying 12 mobile switching centers.
• Has signed agreements with tower aggregators under which it expects to secure interests in more than more than 500 cell sites.
• Has ordered high-speed T1 circuits for the backhaul of nearly 250
cell sites.
• Has placed interconnect orders in 10 markets
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Boosted by strong first-half earnings and the recently announced sale of Scripps Bank, First National Bank is reporting that it now ranks as San Diego County’s largest locally-owned and managed financial institution — a position the bank says it will nurture in order to meet the growing demand for locally-provided financial services.
“First National Bank reports outstanding earnings, asset and net income growth,” says Leon Reinhart, the bank’s president and chief executive officer. “We attribute this strong performance to our success in offering the range of services typically found in the larger institutions as well as to the fact customers value the personal attention and quality that comes with locally-provided services.”
In its mid-year earnings statement, First National Bank reports net income of $1.17 million for the quarter ending June 30, 2000, a 408 percent increase over the same period in 1999. The bank’s six-month earnings were $2.03 million, up 213 percent over the same time last year.
Total assets were $690 million as of June 30, a 27 percent increase over June 30, 1999. The bank’s trust assets under administration exceeded $635 million.
First National Bank’s net operating income for the quarter ending March 31, 2000, and six months ending June 30, 2000, was $2,187,000 and $3,895,000 respectively, each representing increases of more than 200% over the same periods in 1999.
“With the demise of nearly all San Diego-based banks, as well as the loss of a number of well-respected bank presidents over the past 12-18 months, demand for relationship-based banking is increasing,” Reinhart says. “While we are saddened that so many San Diego banks have found it necessary to go this route, we are happy to meet this demand by providing the best services and products administered by the very finest team of bankers.”
First National Bank has grown steadily over the past several years, adding six new offices in San Diego and Orange Counties as well as Mexico City. The bank has nine area full service branches in San Diego County.
“The bank is realizing strong franchise earnings due to larger loan volumes as well as its rapidly expanding geographic and customer base,” noted Reinhart. “We continually strive to provide our customers with the utmost in convenience. The success of this approach is evident by the tremendous success of our new Carlsbad office, which topped $30 million in combined deposits and loans during 1999, its first year of business.”
First National Bank has two branches in Downtown San Diego, and community branches in La Jolla, Point Loma, University Towne Centre, Carlsbad, Chula Vista, San Ysidro, and Otay Mesa.
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Otay Ranch was the top selling planned community in San Diego County for the third consecutive quarter, according to a new report by The Meyers Group, a company that tracks new home sales around the country. Otay Ranch homebuilders sold 241 homes during the second quarter of 2000 and have sold more than 900 homes since the community’s April 1999 grand opening.
“It’s gratifying that the home-buying public is responding positively to our plan for a pedestrian-friendly community with a small town heart," says Kent Aden, executive v.p. of The Otay Ranch Co., which is developing the 5,300-acre community.
Countryside, the newest village in Otay Ranch, welcomed its first new homeowners in March. The village of Heritage welcomed its first residents in March 1999. More than 1,700 residents now call Otay Ranch home.
Amenities at Otay Ranch include three pedestrian parks, designed to provide close-to-home recreation for residents, are already open. Under construction are the 10-acre city of Chula Vista Heritage Park, the private Heritage Swim Club, Otay Ranch’s first elementary school, the Sharp Rees-Stealy medical center and luxury apartments.
More than 30 model homes by Centex Homes, Pacific Coast Communities, Shea Homes, Trimark Pacific Homes and William Lyon. Homes are available. Single-family detached homes range in price from the low $200,000s to the high $300,000s.
The Otay Ranch Information Center is located in the village of Heritage at the intersection of Telegraph Canyon Road and Paseo Ranchero in Chula Vista.
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Scientists analyzing some of the oldest-known rocks on Earth have discovered for the first time a way to recover from the geological record details about the evolution of oxygen and ozone in the planet's early atmosphere-two key ingredients that permitted and recorded the expansion of terrestrial life.
In the Aug, 4 issue of Science, UCSD chemists report that their analysis of Precambrian sedimentary rocks as old as 3.8 billion years reveal a "profound change" in the chemical reactions involving sulfur and oxygen in the atmosphere that begins before 2.1 billion and extends to 2.5 billion years ago, a period during which the oxygen levels in the atmosphere are known to have increased sharply.
"What we found is a geochemical indicator that originated in the atmosphere and it’s clearly a global signature," says James Farquhar, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSD and the first author of the paper. "It appears in samples that are older than 2 billion years, but is most pronounced in samples older than 2.5 billion years."
"This is the first time that anyone has been able to see a record of oxygen from the ancient atmosphere," says Mark Thiemens, a professor of chemistry and dean of UCSD's Physical Sciences Division, who led the study, which included UCSD postdoctoral fellow Huiming Bao. "We now know it’s possible to track the evolution on Earth of oxygen and ozone, which both coincide with the evolution of life and the build up of the conditions on the planet that led to a major shift in the atmosphere 2.2 billion years ago."
Geologists know from banded iron formations in 2.2 billion-year-old rocks that significant quantities of oxygen were present at the time-enough, at least, to oxidize the iron in the rocks in a process akin to rusting. Some of that oxygen was presumably generated by photosynthetic cyanobacteria, which were known to exist 3.5 billion years ago, and some came from the chemical separation of water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.
But until now scientists had no way to probe what proportion each process may have contributed to this sharp rise in oxygen and to the development of the Earth's ozone layer, which permitted the expansion of terrestrial life by shielding organisms from the most damaging effects of ultraviolet radiation.
"The banded iron formations tell you that the Earth had to have significant quantities of oxygen then," says Thiemens. "But you don’t know how much or where it came from. Because the fossil record is so spotty, the period from the earliest-known rocks, at 3.9 billion years ago, to 2.2 billion years ago is a black hole of knowledge about the atmosphere and about life. This method provides a way to track the record of oxygen in the atmosphere and, more importantly, of ozone in the earliest rocks."
The technique the UCSD scientists developed to track oxygen in the ancient atmosphere involves discerning a recognizable signature in rocks that originated from chemical processes in the atmosphere-in this case, from the oxidation of sulfur-bearing gases. From variations in the four most common isotopes, or forms, of sulfur that were incorporated into sulfide and sulfate minerals in the rocks, the scientists were able to infer that the atmosphere 2.45 billion years ago had limited free oxygen and was the main arena for chemical reactions involving sulfur. That's contrasted to the present-day environment in which the atmosphere has significantly more free oxygen and in which chemical reactions involving sulfur are dominated by terrestrial processes-specifically continental oxidative weathering and the reduction of sulfates by microbes.
Scientists had assumed for decades that the isotopic variations used by the UCSD researchers to infer processes in the ancient atmosphere could only be found in meteorites and other extraterrestrial sources and were a unique byproduct of nucleosynthesis in stars. But in a recent paper, published in the July 13 issue of Nature, the scientists demonstrated that their presence in 20 million-year-old volcanic-ash deposits and 10 million-year-old gypsum deposits reflected chemical processes in the Earth's atmosphere. The UCSD team's latest discovery pushes that window into the ancient atmosphere back to a critical period in the planet's history-when oxygen and ozone were accumulating in the atmosphere and the first terrestrial forms of life were expanding.
“It’s a new discovery," says Robert N. Clayton, a professor of chemistry and geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. "No one has seen anything like that before. It’s another handle on ancient atmospheric chemistry. It’s surely going to be important."
Besides improving knowledge about the ancient atmosphere, the UCSD finding has implications for improving the understanding of long-term atmospheric events in the future, such as global warming.
"One always hears the argument, 'Isn’t global warming all part of a natural cycle?'" says Thiemens. "To answer that question, you really want to have a large-scale record. This will give it to us. We really need to understand the past in order to understand the present and the future."
The study was financed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.
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