TD to hire dozens in South Carolina

Just days after completing its acquisition of Greenville-based South Financial Group, TD Bank announced Tuesday it will add to its residential mortgage business by hiring several dozen employees in South Carolina.

The new positions will be based in Lexington and the new group will work in tandem with existing TD Bank mortgage operations centers in Lewiston, Maine, and Mt. Laurel, NJ, according to information released by the company.

TD Bank expects to fill approximately 50 jobs in the coming weeks. Positions will include mortgage processors, underwriters, closers and operations staff.  In 2011, the mortgage operations team from former South Financial subsidiary Carolina First will be integrated into the Lexington operations team, bringing the total number of positions there to about 75.

The masterpiece acquired by mistake

The dream of many an individual who’s appeared on the long-running PBS series Antiques Roadshow is to miraculously discover that an old item that’s been kicking around the house for years is a priceless relic of inestimable historical - and monetary – value.

Good old King George III, he of American Revolution fame, had an “Antiques Roadshow moment,” though he didn’t live long enough to enjoy it.

In 1762, George wanted some books being sold off by Joseph Smith, the British consul to Venice. As part of the package, he had to take some paintings, too. Included was one identified as a work by Frans van Mieris the Elder, owing to a misreading of the signature.

It wasn’t until 1866, when art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger examined the piece, that it was correctly identified as The Music Lesson, a work by Jan Vermeer, the 17th century Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class life.

Here’s what a slow news day looks like

Just when you thought television news couldn’t get any worse, we get this.

In late September, Pittsburgh TV station KDKA ”broke” the news of an assault on the Grove City College campus by an individual dressed in a panda suit.

In breathless fashion one might more readily associate with the ongoing activities of a serial killer, KDKA does it’s best to make Everest out of an anthill. 

“What happened last weekend at the Grove City College campus isn’t the kind of bear attack you might normally hear about on the news,” reporter David Highfield intones. “In this case, it wasn’t really a bear, but a man dressed as a bear in a panda costume.”