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When I try to open my yahoo email contacts, it tells me 'Connection Refused.' Someone please tell me why it is doing this.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Postal Service said Friday it lost $8.5 billion last year despite deep cuts of more than 100,000 jobs and other reductions in recent years. The post office had estimated it would lose $6 billion to $7 billion, but a sharp decline in mail took a toll. Increased use of the Internet and the recession, which cut advertising and other business mail, meant less money for the agency. For the year ending Sept. 30, the post office had income of $67.1 billion, down $1 billion from the previous fiscal year. Expenses totaled $70 billion, a decline of...

Millions Of Calif Vote-By-Mail Ballots UnreturnedNov 1, 2010 2:00 pm US/Pacific SACRAMENTO (AP) - Millions of Californians have not yet returned their vote-by-mail ballots, and county election officials say the flood of returns expected on Tuesday could delay results in tight races. As of Monday morning, many counties had received only about half of the absentee ballots they had mailed out. More than 7.6 million absentee ballots were requested statewide for the general election. In some counties, vote-by-mail is expected to exceed in-person voting. That means a huge number of last-minute returns will not be counted on election night, and...

Mail carrier Bryan Bloomquist survived a harrowing attack by two pit bulls, with help from neighbors and police who killed the dogs. The adversarial relationship between mail carriers and dogs is well-known. But as two pit bulls tore relentlessly into Bryan Bloomquist's arms and legs outside a north Minneapolis house Tuesday, the mail carrier didn't think about clichés. He thought about dying. "I had no fight left in me at that point," said Bloomquist, a 6-foot 3-inch, 300-pound Iraq war veteran said from his hospital bed Wednesday. "I thought it was over."

Paul Dacre, much feared editor of the UK Daily Mail, wanted a journalist to go to America to find out about the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. One would have hoped that this might have produced a reasonable and fairly balanced bit of reporting on two topics that have not really been treated seriously in the UK media. Unfortunately he wanted to do it on the cheap.

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.justice.gov/usao/mow/news2010/harrison.ind.htm JULY 9, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BLACK MARKET TRAVEL AGENTS 38 DEFENDANTS INDICTED IN MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR FRAUD LOCAL INVESTIGATION EXPOSES NATIONWIDE NETWORK THAT USED STOLEN IDENTITIES, CREDIT CARDS TO PURCHASE AIRLINE TICKETS KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced today that 38 defendants from across the United States have been charged in a series of indictments that allege an extensive network of black market travel agents who used the stolen identities of thousands of victims as part of a multi-million dollar fraud scheme...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Buy those Forever stamps now. The cost of mailing a letter is going up again. Fighting to survive a deepening financial crisis, the Postal Service said Tuesday it wants to increase the price of first-class stamps by 2 cents — to 46 cents — starting in January. Other postage costs would rise as well. The agency's persisting problem: ever-declining mail volume as people and businesses shift to the Internet and the declining economy reduces advertising mail. The Postal Service faces a serious risk of financial insolvency," postal vice president Stephen M. Kearney said, an indication that without...

The time has come for postal employees to start flexing their political muscle. The record is clear. The United States Postal Service has been abusing, bullying, and robbing their employees blind --through forced unpaid labor-- all over the country for years now, and with complete impunity. So it's time for both Postmaster General John E. Potter and Inspector General David C. Williams to go. By overlooking the blatant corruption that has been clearly evidenced on their watch, they could both easily be charged with malfeasance at the very least. The U.S. Postal Service is, literally, running a modern day plantation...

How to Stop USPS Junk Mail By Shelly Schumacher, eHow Contributing Writer The average American receives 41 pounds of junk mail per year. Not only does junk mail clog up our mailboxes, it also wreaks havoc on the environment. Nearly half of the junk mail received annually (44 percent) ends up in a landfill. In addition, nearly $320 million in local tax money is used to dispose of junk mail, and more than 100 million trees are used to create pulpwood for paper products. While the United States Postal Service does not have a one-stop method for reducing junk mail,...

Here’s a theory we’d love your help researching. Last night, we were all talking about the crazy amount of mail everyone’s received about the 2010 Census. We don’t remember this much mail in 2000, or in 1990, the other two censuses we were aware enough to take note of. The Census mailed letters advising Americans a census was happening. Then, the government sent letters asking if the first letters were received. It seems letters were sent informing the public that more letters would be coming telling them to expect letters that would give further details about expecting more letters, and...

, bills and even a college acceptance letter from 2007 were among 20,000 letters found inside the garage of a Philadelphia postal carrier. When the mailman missed several days of work in April, postal officials went to his Port Richmond home and found tubs and tubs of undelivered and unopened mail. The postal worker, who has yet to be identified, worked out of the Bustleton station in Northeast Philadelphia. The neighborhood most impacted is located near Castor Avenue and Benton Street. One of those affected was desperate to receive a $900 check in December 2007. The letter just arrived on...

WINTER PARK, Fla. -- Authorities in Winter Park are trying to track down who mailed 70 pounds of marijuana to a Central Florida medical supply company. An employee at the company reported the package to Winter Park police on Wednesday. Detectives estimate the street value of the marijuana inside the box at about $200,000.

Is online delivery a viable future for inconvenient old paper mail? In an effort to increase efficiency, cut carbon emissions, and reduce costs, Finland has begun a pilot program wherein snail-mail letters are converted into PDFs and made viewable online by their addressees, in advance or in lieu of physical delivery. So far, the effort is volunteer-only, but it has already sparked concerns in Finland about privacy and government overreach. In the program, the volunteers will have images of all their letters viewable on a computer or phone, and then optionally physically delivered later on. The postman will still arrive...

Finland's postal service is to begin opening household mail and sending scanned copies of letters by email to cut down on costs and pollution. Not even the most intimate love letters, payslips, overdue bills and other personal messages will be spared under the controversial scheme. The service, aimed at cutting the number of postmen and reducing CO2 emissions in the sparsely-populated country, is being offered on a voluntary basis initially. Volunteers will receive an email or a mobile phone text message as soon as their paper mail has been opened, scanned and sent as an electronic image to a secure...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The post office is renewing its drive to drop Saturday delivery - and plans a rate increase - in an effort to fend off a projected $7 billion loss this year. Without drastic action the agency could face a cumulative loss of $238 billion over 10 years, Postmaster General John Potter said in releasing a series of consultant reports on agency operations and its outlook.

Mail volume in the United States has fallen off a cliff in recent years. It has dropped so sharply that U.S. Postal Service officials have pleaded with Congress to allow a cut in delivery days from six to five. It's been a hard sell. Politicians are reluctant. Although polling data show that the public is willing to accept five-day delivery, people who count on votes for their livelihood are not at all eager to cut back on a service so basic, so trusted and so needed as the U.S. mail. Count President Obama among that number. His proposed budget for...

Spc. Krystal Juarez, a mail clerk assigned to Company A, Division Special Troops Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division, sorts letters during the holiday rush in the division mail room on Camp Liberty, Dec. 23. According to Juarez, daily mail has nearly doubled since the end of November. Photo by: Staff Sgt. Jeff Hansen, MND-B. BAGHDAD — Troops here receive more mail around the holidays than any other time of year, and U.S. Army mail clerks take pride in serving as a liaison between the service members and their loved ones. Spc. Krystal Juarez, a mail clerk assigned to Company B, Division...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Dec. 14, 2009 – The holidays are a special time of year when family and friends get together and celebrate the season in various ways, but many servicemembers serving Afghanistan cannot go home for the holidays due to their military obligations. Army Sgt. Carletha Woods places a bag of letter mail on a skid of packages at the Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, post office, Dec. 11, 2009. U.S. photo by Army Spc. William E. Henry  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Fortunately, the post office here excels at bringing a bit of home to America’s troops on the...

You've Got Mail, But the Mailman Hid It By YVONNE NAVA Updated 1:53 PM EST, Mon, Dec 14, 2009 If your mother-in-law's mail goes through the Waterbury or Wallingford post offices, she might not have received the birthday card you sent in time. Apparently managers at the post office have been hiding mail, Ray Arcovio, president of the Waterbury area postal worker’s union, told the Waterbury Republican-American. And he wants to sincerely apologize. Workers have been stuffing mail into closets and unused rooms at mail facilities in Waterbury and Wallingford because they don’t know how to keep up with such...

Virginia State Senator Ralph K. Smith (R - Roanoke) has pre-filed Senate Bill 3 ahead of the 2010 Virginia General Assembly session. . . . Senator Smith's mail order gun permit proposal is likely the first of an avalanche of mainly pro but also some anti-gun rights bills to be considered by the 2010 Virginia General Assembly. Virginia Citizens Defense League President Philip Van Cleave expects pro-gun bills to do well in the 2010 session in part because of election victories by pro-gun House of Delegate candidates last month.