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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Residence-retail hall finished at LCSC

The Spokesman-Review

Lewis-Clark State College students this week began moving into the second residence hall project completed by CollegeTown Development, a company owned by Spokane developer Rob Brewster.

The 117-bedroom Clearwater Hall, which includes 12,000 square feet of retail space, is in downtown Lewiston, according to a company news release. It follows the Dorothy Brewster Hall, a dormitory and retail project completed in 2002 at Eastern Washington University by CollegeTown Development, a branch of Brewster’s company, ConoverBond.

CollegeTown also has purchased property near Gonzaga University, Central Washington University and additional property at EWU for future student housing projects, the news release said.

WASHINGTON

Monitoring planned after security breach

The Education Department said Wednesday it would arrange for free credit monitoring for as many as 21,000 student loan borrowers after their personal data appeared on its Web site.

Terri Shaw, the department’s chief operating officer for federal student aid, said the people involved are holders of federal direct student loans who used the department’s loan Web site – www.dlssonline.com – between Sunday and Tuesday.

It is the latest in a string of data thefts and security breaches affecting more than a half-dozen federal agencies in recent months.

CHICAGO

McDonald’s No. 2 exec resigns unexpectedly

McDonald’s Corp. on Wednesday announced the unexpected resignation of Mike Roberts, the fast-food chain’s No. 2 executive, as president and chief operating officer.

No reason was cited in the late afternoon announcement by CEO Jim Skinner. The company said Ralph Alvarez, president of McDonald’s USA, will succeed Roberts. Roberts was widely seen as the likeliest candidate to someday succeed Skinner in the top post of the Oak Brook, Ill.-based company.

A 29-year veteran of McDonald’s whose age was listed as 55 in February in the company’s annual report, Roberts said in comments released by the company that he was honored to have served McDonald’s. Richard Adams, a former McDonald’s executive and now a consultant for McDonald’s franchisees, said he suspects the ambitious Roberts had threatened to leave the company if he wasn’t given a bigger role and had the strategy backfire on him.

DALLAS

Dell stops selling music player DJ Ditty

Dell Inc. has quietly pulled the plug on its DJ Ditty music players, less than a year after the world’s largest computer maker launched the device to compete with Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod Shuffle.

The company stopped selling the Ditty last Thursday, Dell spokesman Venancio Figueroa said Wednesday.

He declined to characterize the decision as Dell bowing out in the face of competition from market leader Apple. He said the company is trying to focus on its core areas of PCs, printers and flat-panel televisions.

The Ditty, like the Shuffle, cost $99 and came with 512 megabytes of memory.

SAN ANTONIO

At&T files lawsuit to ID brokers accused of fraud

AT&T filed suit Wednesday to identify 25 data brokers who it claims fraudulently obtained phone-calling records for about 2,500 customers without their approval.

AT&T Inc. said the data brokers posed as customers to get the records, which are often used in legal or domestic disputes.

The lawsuit, filed in San Antonio’s federal court by the services unit of AT&T, does not name the defendants.

Once the names are known, AT&T said it would seek an injunction to bar them from further tapping phone records.

From staff and wire reports