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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are seeking an investigation into a U.S. Postal Service plan to replace its aging mail trucks with mostly gasoline-powered vehicles. The plan largely ignores White House calls to replenish the mail-service fleet with electric vehicles and has drawn sharp criticism from the Biden administration, Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists, who say it falls far short of President Joe Biden’s goals to address climate change. In a letter Monday, Democrats on the oversight panel asked the agency’s inspector general to investigate whether the Postal Service complied with the National Environmental Policy Act and...

It was just about week ago that we highlighted a mysterious trend that was sweeping the U.S.: citizens were receiving unsolicited packages of seeds, with return addresses from China, for apparently no reason at all. Now, the U.S. has started to identify "14 types of plants" that the seeds belonged to, revealing a “mix of ornamental, fruit and vegetable, herb and weed species,” according to the NY Times. Cabbage, hibiscus, lavender, mint, morning glory, mustard, rose, rosemary and sage have all been identified. Osama El-Lissy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said: “This...

Why did so many Americans receive strange packages they didn’t think they’d ordered?Sid miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner, sat atop his stallion Smokey and faced the camera. It was Saturday, August 1, 2020. Miller had a message to share. “Good morning, patriots,” Miller began, raising the coiled lasso in his right hand by way of greeting. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of all these surprises coming out of China. First it was the Chinese virus, then we had the murder hornets, then we had to close the embassy in Houston because of espionage … Now we’ve...

Law enforcement officials reportedly informed the Associated Press on Sunday of an arrest related to the ricin poison sent to the White House. An as-yet-unidentified woman was arrested at the Canada border on Sunday, three law enforcement officials told the Associated Press. The woman is suspected to be the sender of a letter intercepted on its way to the White House containing the deadly poison, ricin. The letter was addressed to President Donald Trump. The woman was reportedly arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Peace Bridge border crossing near Buffalo. The letter itself is believed to...

This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates as more information becomes available. A package containing the deadly poison ricin addressed to President Donald Trump was intercepted by law enforcement sometime this week, before it was delivered to the president, two law enforcement officials told CNN on Saturday. Two law enforcement officials also told CNBC about the ricin package that was addressed to Trump. According to CNN, two tests were performed on the package, to confirm the presence of the deadly ricin poison, and the FBI, U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Postal Inspection Service are investigating the...

GLENVIEW, Ill. - A suspect stole mail from a mail receptacle at the Glenview Post Office over the weekend. According to Glenview police, an unknown suspect pried open the outdoor mail receptacle at the Glenview Post Office, located at 1400 Patriot Blvd., between Saturday at 6 p.m. and Monday at 5 p.m., and stole an unknown amount of mail. Police are warning residents who dropped off mail that contained financial payments or personal information during this time frame to take necessary steps to stop fraud. Residents are encouraged to notify their banks and credit card companies as well as cancel...

I’ve been documenting a less high-tech threat emerging in recent months: a surge in stolen checks. Criminals are targeting U.S. Postal Service and personal mailboxes to pilfer filled-out checks and sell them over the internet. The buyers alter the payee and amount listed on the checks to rob victims’ bank accounts of thousands of dollars. While banks typically bear the financial burden and reimburse targeted accounts, criminals can use the checks to steal victims’ identities, which can have severe consequences. For the past two years, we’ve been surveilling 60 black market channels on the internet to learn more about the...

Police are investigating a pattern of mail theft and check fraud in north suburban Lincolnwood. There are more than a dozen cases of people who say a fraudster tampered with their checks after they mailed them. CBS 2’s Tim McNicholas has learned it has also caught the attention of federal investigators. Jeff Zimmerman doesn’t know a Natalie Martinez. So imagine his surprise when he learned a check written out to her drained $4,000 from his bank account. “I decided to go downstairs, talk to my wife, and tell her we’ve got a problem,” Zimmerman said. Zimmerman soon realized that was...

Health authorities in Beijing said they haven’t been able to trace the source of the Chinese capital’s first local Omicron infection but indicated it might have arrived by international mail.Beijing announced the Omicron case on Saturday after the patient developed a low-grade fever on Friday and took a voluntary test that came back positive for Covid-19. Authorities sealed off the patient’s residential compound and office building, and launched contact-tracing efforts. Tests for more than 16,500 people identified as potentially being exposed to the patient came back negative, Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the city’s municipal Center for Disease Control and...

Delivery slowdowns at the U.S. Postal Service take effect Friday, and higher prices are soon to follow. The nation’s mail service is preparing to implement core components of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year plan for the agency, a program designed to cut costs and raise new revenue to fix its many financial problems. The Postal Service has struggled for years with financial losses due to declining mail use, and the coronavirus pandemic exposed more issues within the agency as it struggled to cope with an avalanche of e-commerce purchases, worker availability problems and a disorganized processing network. DeJoy, the controversial...

Three New York residents face life in prison for their roles in the kidnapping of a U.S. postal worker who they accused of stealing a package containing drugs, federal prosecutors say. Mark Rogers, 38; Joseph Way, 36; and Rogers’ girlfriend, Tashara Levans, 37, all of Rochester, pleaded guilty to kidnapping in the November 2019 incident, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York announced in a Dec. 15 news release. The postal worker, identified in court documents as “Victim A,” was delivering mail when Rogers and Way confronted her about a package of cocaine they were expecting...

USPS Test: We mailed 4 packages with GPS trackers to see how quickly they got there

"This change may result in mailed statements, new or replacement cards, and payments you mail, taking longer to arrive." - I received this message in my online bank account this evening. I have a different account that is required to mail me a monthly hard copy. Five years ago, that statement would arrive before the 10th. More recently, around the 15th. This month, already the 20th, and still no statement. Let's Go, Brandon!

The United State Postal Service has suspended all mail service, including parcle post and Priority Mail, to Australia and New Zeeland. Labor shortages are cited as the cause.https://10play.com.au/theproject/articles/united-states-postal-service-suspends-deliveries-to-australia/tpa211004rfcgb

The United States Postal Service projects that it will have a $160 billion loss over the coming decade, so it needs to boost revenue and cut costs. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy thinks he has the answer: offer slower service. That's right, DeJoy's blueprint for making the USPS solvent includes cutting costs by slowing mail delivery for millions of Americans coupled with hoped-for increased revenues from postage rate hikes, CBS News reported. However, critics have been quick to point out that this will likely discourage people from using the Post Office. What's happening? Starting Friday, DeJoy said, the postal service will...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) could sign a new bill making California’s “temporary” system of automatically sending vote-by-mail ballots to every registered voter in the state permanent, whether he is recalled in Tuesday’s election or not. The bill, AB 37, would make the emergency measures adopted in 2020, and later extended in February 2021, permanent. It has already passed both houses of the California state legislature, and merely awaits Newsom’s signature. He could sign it today; he could also sign it in the interim before the results of the recall election are certified Oct. 22, even if he is ousted.

One of the reasons why the federal mandate for vaccinations will fail will be the backlash and refusal compliance by the blue-collar workforce. While the U.S. ideological media will downplay the scale of power within the middle-class and blue-collar workforce, they know the true power exists. The team behind Biden might poke this bear to test a reaction, but they will not dare confront it directly. They know that. WE know that. The 220,000 members of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) released a statement saying the federal government has no business attempting to force vaccinate the workforce. This union...

Washington D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service and its inspection agency seeking records about a covert program to secretly comb through online posts of social media users before street protests, raising concerns about chilling the privacy and expressive activity of internet users. Under an initiative called Internet Covert Operations Program, analysts at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), the Postal Service’s law enforcement arm, sorted through massive amounts of data created by social media users to surveil what they were saying and sharing, according to media reports. Internet...

Hi all. I’ve tried looking at the stupid USPS site and of course can’t find anything. Can you tell me what should be done? Bottom line: I now have 3 things in my org’s P.O. Box as returned mail....BUT THE *RETURN* ADDRESS IS WRONG. We are NOT the senders! Can we make this clear that this sender is somehow putting our # on his labels and not his? He might be just 1 digit off but the P.O. is not paying attention.

Hindsight is 20/20, and now numbers from the 2020 election show how Nevada made a mistake rushing to automatic mail ballots. Dirty voter rolls combined with automatic mail made the 2020 election a mess in Nevada.Concrete post-election data show that 92,367 mail ballots sent out by Clark County election officials came back as undeliverable. They had incorrect or outdated addresses.That means they were sent where the registered voter did not live. That means someone else could have snatched those misdirected live ballots. That means someone probably did.This unfortunate number is unwelcome considering President Joe Biden only carried Nevada by 33,596...