Lancaster County

Sterling Financial Corp. announced yesterday that officers and employees of its equipment leasing unit ran a "sophisticated loan scheme" that cost the Pennsylvania bank as much as $165 million and may force the sale of the company. Employees of the subsidiary, Equipment Finance LLC, colluded to conceal loan losses, falsify contracts, and "subvert" internal controls over an extended period, Sterling said in a federal regulatory filing yesterday. Five employees were fired, including the subsidiary's chief operating officer and executive vice president, the bank said.

MOUNT JOY, Pa. -- Call it a pipe dream, but when farmer M. Jane Balmer imagines the future of agriculture in Lancaster County, Pa., it is filled with tall, sturdy fields of hemp.Burned by sagging tobacco sales and worried over sluggish prices for other crops, Balmer has joined a small but increasingly vocal group of farmers in Lancaster County and elsewhere who are looking to boost their fortunes by raising industrial hemp, the nonintoxicating cousin of marijuana.It would fit right in as a replacement for tobacco, says Balmer, 60, a widowed mother of two who raises corn, barley, wheat, alfalfa, soybeans and chickens on two 200-acre farms in this pastoral borough 10 miles from the Susquehanna River.

Think of the Amish and most people think of Lancaster County, Pa. Here you will see these "Plain People" in their distinctive dress: the men in beards, broad-brimmed hats and black clothes; the women in their bonnets and long dresses, which are often green or purple, but always covered with black aprons. Eschewing modern conveniences, the Amish farm using horses, mules and equipment from a bygone era to work the land. Transportation is by horse and buggy. Electrical power and telephones are not found in their homes.

NEW HOLLAND, Pa. -- Eli's grandfather reckons that the Amish are like other folks."We believe the best environment for the Plain People is the farm," he explained, standing in a well-ordered woodshop near fertile fields that his family has cultivated for six generations. "So just like you will save and bend over backwards to send your children to college, we will save and bend over backwards to help our sons and daughters buy a farm."The problem for Eli's grandfather - who does not want to be identified further because of church strictures - and the 36,000 other Plain Sect disciples in Lancaster County is that developers are encroaching on farmland they have tended since William Penn welcomed their persecuted forebears nearly three centuries ago.Fastest-growing countyLancaster is the fastest-growing county in Pennsylvania as families move in from Philadelphia and other East Coast cities.

LANCASTER, Pa. -- Old Order Amish families hold church services in their homes. They rarely invite outsiders to attend. But you can't drive more than a mile through Lancaster County's rolling farmland without thinking you've already entered one of the world's great sacred spaces, a landscape consecrated over the centuries to a peaceful way of life.If this view is no more than a day-tripper's idle projection, it is not alien to a place that was settled in the 17th century in William Penn's spirit of religious tolerance.

PHILADELPHIA - At a time when the number of farms and farm acreage have been steadily declining for decades in Pennsylvania, the Amish have been expanding their hold on Lancaster County farmland, despite development pressures.In researching Lancaster County farm sales and Amish registries dated 1984 through 1995, sociologist Conrad L. Kanagy has found that the Amish gained a net of 137 non-Amish farms and gained a net of 11,498 farm acres.Though some Amish were selling, they were not selling out: Of the Amish farms that were sold, 82 percent went to other Amish.

The pretzels hung from a white gazebo on Main Street, with an Amish woman ready to hand one out with a cool glass of lemonade.But the refreshments and much of East Main Street were off-limits yesterday as a crew filmed a comedy, "For Richer or Poorer," starring Tim Allen and Kirstie Alley as a wealthy Manhattan couple who hide out among the Amish in Lancaster County when they fear the Internal Revenue Service is on their trail.A Carroll County farm and Westminster's Main Street stand in for Lancaster County, Pa. The storefronts were altered: Giulianova Italian grocery and deli became "The Tulip Basket Gift Shoppe," and the Winchester Exchange building was "Lancaster Exchange."

MANHEIM, Pa. -- The two men from New York City were wearing neat suits and ties. They showed up in a white, city-owned car, powered with clean, natural gas. They were all ready to talk about improving the environment.And then they stepped into a cesspool of ill will.Next summer, 162 tons of New York City sewage sludge will begin arriving every day at the A&M Composting plant near this northern Lancaster County town - a total of 60,000 tons a year for the next 15 years. The two men had come to say how happy the city was to find a good use for its waste.

Tinseltown has tentative plans to close Westminster's East Main Street on May 5 for the shooting of a Universal Studios film starring Tim Allen.The movie crews also plan to be in town May 6 and 7 to work on the film, "For Richer or Poorer," a present-day comedy about a New York City man in Amish country.Filming dates are tentative -- dependent upon the weather, officials cautioned. The moviemakers apparently are trying to avoid publicity to discourage crowds.Westminster will be standing in for Pennsylvania's Lancaster County -- complete with horses and buggies.

THE SCHOLAR of Amish life John Hostetler, writing of Lancaster County, Pa., asserted that the requirements for life included not only soil, water, air and sunlight -- but community.I would similarly argue that restoring the Chesapeake Bay to health means more than clean water and surfeits of fish and fowl.It also means that on the lands of its watershed, the mention of "Eastern Shore," "Northern Neck" in Virginia and "Lancaster County" in Pennsylvania continue to evoke rich and unique regional identities.

Hanson Ellsworth Fossett The Taliaferro family circle will receive friends on Friday, October 2, 2009 from 4 P.M. to 7 P.M. at Berry Waddy Funeral Home in Lancaster County, Virginia. The Wake will be held at First Baptist Church of Heathsville, Virginia. Services to follow Interment at First Baptist Church Cemetery in Heathsville, Virginia. A memorial in Baltimore will be announced at a later date.

William Denmead Groff Jr., who owned and operated an Owings Mills fuel oil and coal business for 60 years and was interested in preserving his family's historic mill, died Jan. 19 of kidney failure at the Brightwood retirement community in Lutherville. The former longtime Owings Mills resident was 92. Mr. Groff was born and raised in Owings Mills. He was a 1934 graduate of Franklin High School and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1938. "While at Maryland, he played varsity lacrosse for three years.

About five minutes after Fran Mathews went to bed, she heard a boom and felt her house in northern Harford County shudder. "I was afraid enough to see if the furnace had blown up," said Mathews, 61. What rattled Mathews and others in northern Harford County yesterday was a minor earthquake at 12:04 a.m. in Lancaster County, Pa. The 3.3-magnitude quake was centered in the Salunga-Landisville area, about 40 miles north of the Pennsylvania-Maryland line,...

Marjorie Elaine Narigan Funeral Services will be held from the First Presbyterian Church 140 E. Orange St. Lancaster, PA on Monday, September 29th at 12 noon. The family will visit with friends after the service and prior to the interment in Susquehanna Memorial Gardens, York. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Hospice of Lancaster County, P. O. Box 4125, Lancaster, PA 17604-4125 or to the Alzheimer's Disease Association, 3544 N. Progress Avenue, Suite 205 Harrisburg, PA 17110-9638.

Just before dawn on Oct. 4, 2006, Enos Miller, an Amish man with a long gray beard, walked past the school where two of his granddaughters had been fatally shot two days before. A television reporter approached and asked him if he had forgiven the gunman. "In my heart, yes," said Miller, his voice wavering. "How is that possible?" she asked. His answer: "Through God's help." Miller's words - emblematic of the community's response to the tragedy - quickly became international news. How could the Amish so quickly forgive the man who killed five of their daughters and wounded five others?

Sterling Financial Corp. announced yesterday that officers and employees of its equipment leasing unit ran a "sophisticated loan scheme" that cost the Pennsylvania bank as much as $165 million and may force the sale of the company. Employees of the subsidiary, Equipment Finance LLC, colluded to conceal loan losses, falsify contracts, and "subvert" internal controls over an extended period, Sterling said in a federal regulatory filing yesterday. Five employees were fired, including the subsidiary's chief operating officer and executive vice president, the bank said.

John Parrish, Orioles reliever What's considered a fun night in Lancaster County, Pa.? "I don't go out in Lancaster. I don't really do anything up there anymore. I just hang out and barbecue somewhere."

PARADISE, Pa. -- Bobbi Roschel heard the first call for help crackle across her scanner about 10:30 Monday morning. An emotionally disturbed man was on the school grounds in Nickel Mines, in Lancaster County's Pennsylvania Dutch country. The description didn't hint at what awaited Roschel and her husband, emergency medical technicians who raced to the school in their private truck. In the yard, 75 yards from the school, were 10 small girls, some dead, some dying, some hanging on to life.

RONKS, Pa. -- Just off the bustling highway that cuts through the rolling farmland and small villages of Lancaster County stretches a road that in many ways depicts the disparate faces of this region. On one side of the street sits the Mennonite Information Center - offering Amish tours, historical exhibits and tales of the Biblical Tabernacle. Across the road is the Tanger Outlet Center, where throngs of shoppers from cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia flock to find deals on designer duds from Calvin Klein and Donna Karan in new buildings styled to resemble an old barn and silos.

There will be no high-profile funerals or church services for the Amish children killed yesterday in Lancaster County, Pa. The Old Order Amish have no churches. They worship, and dispatch the dead to God's care, from their homes and barns. The Amish have been in the United States for nearly 270 years but, following the tenets of their faith, they have always lived apart, eschewing the conveniences of modern America, embracing pacifism and maintaining strong ties to the land. Their homes have no electricity, their clothes no zippers.