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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will keep your mail carrier from making the daily rounds, promises the U.S. Postal Service's unofficial motto - but the economy might. With 9.5 billion fewer letters and packages delivered in the 2008 fiscal year compared with 2007, the biggest mail volume decline in history has contributed to the agency's $2.8 billion loss for the year. That partly explains why shipping prices will rise 5% this month (a bigger hike than all shipping increases in 2008), with a stamp price jump to follow in May. The decline could also...
...letter that Apple's iconic executive, Steve Jobs, released Monday to quell concerns about his ailing health and increasingly frail frame - which recently caused a dip in Apple stock - had reporters across the country scrambling for answers. What condition could cause the "hormone imbalance that has been robbing [him] of the proteins [his] body needs to be healthy" and result in such dramatic weight loss? And in what scenario would that condition entail a "nutritional problem" whose cure is "relatively simple and straightforward...
While many of these explanations are possible, no diagnosis neatly accounts for the scarce information provided in the letter. "[It] doesn't make a lot of sense," says Lustig. "There are three medical threads that run through this e-mail, but unfortunately those threads don't make a very strong cable." No illness involving a combination of a hormone imbalance and a loss of proteins that causes dramatic weight loss could be remedied with a simple nutritional fix, Lustig says...
Whether or not the cryptic information in Jobs' letter buoys Apple stock, one thing's certain: it's sparked a new conversation about how much the public deserves to know about the health of CEOs - who are semi-public officials, perhaps - particularly in the midst of an economic crisis. It's one thing to probe the medical records of presidential candidates and other public officials, but "at some point we need to respect people's confidentiality," Willett says...
...tradition; in 1789, New Jersey Congressman Elias Boudinot introduced a resolution asking President George Washington to proclaim a national day of giving thanks - which he did, and the holiday stuck. But today's Americans may find some more recent observances to be slightly less universally appealing: Among the red-letter days proclaimed by the past few Congresses are Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day (March 11), the Day of the American Cowboy (July 26), Siblings Connection Day (March 1) and Corvette Day (June...