Mail

An annual food drive by the nation's mail carriers is set for Saturday, with officials hoping to collect more than 32 million pounds of donations for food banks, pantries and homeless shelters. The National Assn. of Letter Carriers is asking people to leave cans and boxes of non-perishable food near their mailboxes on that day.

The U.S. Postal Service frequently cannot give customers an accurate estimate of when their mail will be delivered, a government report said Thursday. The Government Accountability Office said the Postal Service's delivery standards were out of date, leaving those shipping bulk mail, parcels and other items wondering whether it would arrive on time.

The U.S. Central Command has asked the families and friends of those serving in Operation Desert Storm to limit personal mail to first-class letters and audiocassettes, the Pentagon said Saturday. The command said the start of the war against Iraq has meant increased movement of combat troops and their support units and that "every effort must be made to limit transportation support to what is necessary for sustainment."

Neither sand nor desert heat will keep the mail from being delivered to U.S. soldiers dispatched to Saudi Arabia, and it will get there more quickly if letters are correctly addressed, a Camp Pendleton postal official said Tuesday. Deluged by dozens of phone calls from relatives and friends of Marines being shipped out to join Operation Desert Shield, Camp Pendleton officials issued instructions Tuesday on the proper way to address mail to speed delivery to Saudi Arabia.

Postal workers picketed in front of the Van Nuys main post office Wednesday, saying a new automation system designed to make mail delivery more efficient actually slows down the process. About 60 members of the National Assn. of Letter Carriers staged a peaceful, three-hour demonstration as part of a national day of "informational picketing" at post offices against a massive new automated mail sorting system that they believe is undermining their work.

Buried in "Surf's Down on the Net, Survey Says," Jan. 12) is the real reason for the discrepancy between the results of the Find/SVP survey, which estimated 9.5 million Internet users, and the Nielsen survey, which counted nearly three times as many. The Find/SVP survey "required each Internet user to name an . . . application other than e-mail . . . to be counted as a user." So the Find/SVP survey did not measure Internet users--it measured World Wide Web users, along with the relatively few people who use FTP and Telnet.

Britain's striking postal workers reached an agreement to settle their 12-day-old walkout, which paralyzed Britain's domestic and international mail deliveries. Alan Tuffin, leader of the postal workers, said all employees will be back to work by Thursday. The Royal Mail said that normal deliveries should be resumed by Friday.

Frank Watson has a message, and he's found an unusual way of delivering it. The Tustin postmaster, determined to remind his customers to mail holiday cards, letters and packages early, donned his Santa suit early this week and stood in front of his 1st Street post office to get the message out. "I was out there picketing my own office, trying to emphasize that mailing early helps enhance delivery," Watson said.

A proposal to ban the mailing of germs and dangerous toxins has drawn vigorous opposition, Assistant Postmaster General Frank R. Heselton said Wednesday. As a result, final action on the ban has been postponed until the issue can be more fully studied, Heselton told members of a House Post Office and Civil Service subcommittee. Of 508 comments received after the proposed rule was made public, only seven favored the ban, Heselton said.

New Postmaster General Anthony M. Frank, on the eve of a postal rate increase, rejected as "nonsense" White House Budget Director James C. Miller III's proposal that the Postal Service be sold to private contractors. Frank, in an ABC News "Business World" interview taped for airing today, said: "I don't think (the Postal Service) should lose money, and it shouldn't make a profit, which means (it should) break even.