Mail

Hallmark is worried about the end of Saturday mail. Amazon.com, not so much. Across the business world, merchants, delivery services and mass mailers of all kinds were assessing the effect of no weekend delivery of first-class mail possibly starting this summer. The U.S. Postal Service said it made the announcement Wednesday - about six months in advance of implementing a five-day mail delivery schedule in August - to give residential and business customers time to plan and adjust.

The U.S. Postal Service, struggling under a financial load and facing tough competition, will stop delivering mail on Saturdays beginning this summer, officials announced. The announcement, which had been expected, is seen as an attempt to force Congress to deal with the Postal Service's increasing financial woes. Congress has tried to reorganize the agency, but efforts have been derailed because of politics. Material prepared for a Wednesday news conference by Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe says that Postal Service market research and other research has indicated that nearly 7 in 10 Americans support the switch to five-day delivery as a way for the agency to reduce costs.

Wendy Greuel's success in winning support of key city employee unions has enabled her to jump ahead of rivals in TV advertising in the Los Angeles mayor's race and left her chief opponent, Eric Garcetti, scrambling to slow her momentum. With voting by mail beginning today, Greuel, the city controller, holds an enviable spot: For nearly a week, she has had the airwaves to herself. In a city where many voters know little or nothing about the eight people vying to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, first impressions will matter.

Anthem Blue Cross may be breaking California law by requiring some policyholders to buy their prescription drugs from a single mail-order pharmacy, according to the state attorney general's office. Anthem, the state's largest for-profit health insurer, had notified members with conditions such as HIV/AIDS and cancer that they will have to buy their medications from the mail-order pharmacy CuraScript or pay full price at a retail drugstore. Other Anthem members, including those with chronic conditions such as diabetes, face no such requirement.

Andrew Fabella, are you out there? Please report to post-op at Keck Hospital of USC early Monday morning. I'm coming back to have the other knee done. That's right, folks, I'm kicking off the new year by getting a partial right knee replacement because my medial cartilage is cottage cheese and I'm bone on bone, just like I was on the left knee. I need to be in top shape this year because I've got mayoral candidates to chase and a 9-year-old daughter who's already too much for me to handle on the tennis courts.

Teen retailer Urban Outfitters may have tipped itself into the naughty list with a holiday catalog of gift suggestions laced with profanity. Among the highlights: a coffee mug, scrapbook and photo album, all with curse words emblazoned on them. The gifts may score the retailer sales among its young demographic of shoppers, but it's provoking anger from some family-oriented groups. "This isn't anything new for them," Monica Cole, director of Christian organization One Million Moms, told Fox News.

Eighteen years after moving to Los Angeles, I still get nostalgic at Christmastime for my annual trek to North Beach, wandering into the Italian butcher, the deli, the focaccia place, the espresso bar -- and just before going home, picking up the season's panettone from one of the surviving Italian bakeries there. Here in L.A., finding the perfect panettone is more problematic. But I have a solution: Corti Brothers in Sacramento, which this year is getting in just shy of 20 different panettones from two traditional producers, Bardi in Piemonte and Loison bakery in the Veneto, which dates from 1938.

Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer has announced improvements to the company's Yahoo Mail that she says make it quicker and simpler to use. Mayer said the email service now has a more intuitive feel and is easier to navigate. "You've told us loud and clear that you want fewer distractions when it comes to email," she said in a blog post Tuesday morning. "You want to quickly log in, communicate, and get on with your day. " QUIZ: What set the Internet on fire in 2012? The rollout of the revamped Web version of Yahoo Mail will begin today, so some users will see the changes immediately while others may have to wait a few days.

Despite receiving a slew of hate mail, All Saints Church in Pasadena is moving forward with a conference hosted by the Muslim Public Affairs Council - the first time the organization has conducted a national convention at a Christian church. All Saints Rev. Ed Bacon described the emails his congregation received as "some of the most vile, mean-spirited emails I've ever read in my life. " "When we scheduled this event, we had absolutely no anticipation that we would have this kind of response," Bacon said, adding that none of the emails made actual threats.

Jeffrey Cote was driving home from work one evening this spring when he noticed a light on inside Unit 312 of the Little Tokyo Lofts. This was the industrial loft he had bought in downtown Los Angeles for $647,000 - with no money down - at the top of the market in 2007. He thought it would be a great investment. It was also the loft he had abandoned less than two years later, after filing for bankruptcy and expecting the bank to foreclose. The loft was still in Cote's name, so the light surprised him. A few weeks later, he and his girlfriend decided to investigate.