Mails

I can still remember the pact I made with a co-worker five years ago. We began to notice an alarming increase in the number of exclamation points crammed into e-mails and text messages. False enthusiasm was giving us a headache. The English language had taken enough of a beating, and there was no need for this kind of sucker punch. We would have no part of it. The problem was that nearly every e-mail I received ended with an overzealous "Thanks!" E-mails and texts cheerfully chimed "Can't wait to see you!

The US Postal Service cannot be described as "on the brink" of insolvency; it sailed over that cliff in 2006, when Congress decreed it must fund employee pensions and benefits 75 years in advance. But despite losing $3.2 billion in the first quarter of the year, the Postal Service will not make the hard decision to close 3,700 branches, making the creeping behemoth that is the Catholic Church seem nimble and bold. When its books bleed, the church shutters buildings like a Buddhist monk, serenely indifferent to fury.

CONCORD, N.H. - John Edwards's presidential campaign is asking for a criminal investigation after an aide's internal e-mail messages were copied and mailed to some people he disparaged. Matt Spence, Edwards's deputy New Hampshire political director, apologized and resigned after being confronted with the e-mails, campaign spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield said yesterday. The e-mails disparaged some Edwards backers and people associated with other campaigns, notably calling some Barack Obama supporters "three losers and a lobbyist.

WASHINGTON - The Postal Service announced Thursday that it would begin consolidating 48 mail processing centers beginning in July, the first phase of a cost-cutting plan that is intended to save nearly $1.2 billion a year as it tries to adjust to declining mail volume. The agency said it would consolidate an additional 92 processing centers in February 2013, and 89 more in early 2014. In total, the Postal Service said it would close about 250 processing centers, and it expects to save about $2.1 billion a year after the plan is fully implemented in 2014.

I can still remember the pact I made with a co-worker five years ago. We began to notice an alarming increase in the number of exclamation points crammed into e-mails and text messages. False enthusiasm was giving us a headache. The English language had taken enough of a beating, and there was no need for this kind of sucker punch. We would have no part of it. The problem was that nearly every e-mail I received ended with an overzealous "Thanks!" E-mails and texts cheerfully chimed "Can't wait to see you!

WASHINGTON - The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages - including those pertaining to the CIA leak case - have been taped over and are gone forever. The disclosure was made minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to disclose information it has previously refused to provide. Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about...

JUNEAU, Alaska — Alaska is poised to release more than 24,000 pages of e-mails sent and received by Sarah Palin during her time as governor, providing an inside look into her rise to a spot on the national stage. The release is being coordinated as Palin conducts an East Coast bus tour and contemplates a run for president. The e-mails cover a majority of her short term as governor and could provide the most insight into how she governed. Her only other elected office was as a two-term mayor of her hometown of Wasilla, which has a population of about 7,000.

WASHINGTON -- Trying to avoid a public relations disaster, aides to Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana fretted over her not appearing in charge after Hurricane Katrina hit, even worrying about her clothing, documents released yesterday show. Thirteen pages of e-mails sent in the immediate days after the Aug. 29 storm also reflect the Blanco administration's concerns over race relations -- specifically, the number of black victims leaving Louisiana to find shelter. A Blanco spokeswoman dismissed the race issue as the concern of just one staffer and said e-mails were...

WASHINGTON — Goldman Sachs developed a strategy to profit from the housing meltdown and reaped billions at the expense of clients, a Senate investigation has found. Top Goldman executives misled investors in complex mortgage securities that became toxic, investigators for a Senate panel allege. They point to e-mails and other Goldman documents obtained in an 18-month investigation. Excerpts from the documents were released yesterday, a day before a hearing that will bring CEO Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman executives before Congress.

WASHINGTON - Current and former Food and Drug Administration officials say in a lawsuit that the agency secretly monitored their private e-mail after they raised concerns that approved medical devices might risk public safety. The doctors and scientists who researched the products approached members of Congress and the incoming Obama administration to express alarm that the devices were approved over their objections. Their lawsuit contends that the agency monitored e-mail sent from their personal Gmail and Yahoo accounts from work computers over...

The U.S. Postal Service's mail processing center in Hampden is going to stay open, saving more than 150 jobs. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins announced Thursday that the postmaster general has agreed to follow her legislation passed by the Senate last month and keep the Eastern Maine Processing Center open to ensure certain overnight delivery standards. The Hampden facility was one of more than 200 processing centers across the country slated for closure as the Postal Service struggles with billions of dollars in losses.

A mysterious benefactor in Paris is spreading love, cash and hair appliances along a rugged stretch of New Zealand. Police are baffled by at least four packages that have been sent from different Paris addresses to residents of the South Island's sparsely populated West Coast. They contain either a hair dryer or hair clippers plus a sum of money — either one hundred New Zealand dollars ($78) or one hundred euros ($128). Two of the packages came with identical handwritten notes: "Thanks for being a true friend.

When Cambridge marketing software firm HubSpot Inc. launched in 2006, e-mail pitching was considered old-fashioned and spam-riddled. Consumers struggling with e-mail overload were often not receptive to more electronic clutter. HubSpot didn't even build e-mail marketing products. That changes on Tuesday, when HubSpot will at last offer its own tools to manage, create, and track e-mail marketing campaigns in its standard menu of services. It's a mark of how much life the company thinks is left in the old Internet standby.

Rick Santorum explained his late-night e-mail endorsement of Mitt Romney on late-night television Tuesday, telling comedian Jay Leno that he wanted the message to be "the first thing people would see in the morning. " Santorum e-mailed supporters around 11 p.m. Monday to say he was backing Romney, whom he once called "the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama. " The 16-paragraph e-mail came almost a month after Santorum dropped out of the race, highlighted disagreements between the...

Q. I don't exactly see eye to eye with my husband's family. He is from a large family where everyone (except him) still lives in the same ZIP code. Each branch of his family has at least four kids, even when there isn't the financial wherewithal to support them. My husband left at 18 and vowed not to live there. We will be returning to the "nest" for his youngest brother's wedding, and I know (from previous experience) that I will be hounded about why we have only one child. I am told that only children are spoiled and we are harming our son by not providing a sibling.

The National Association of Letter Carriers is scheduled to hold its annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive on May 12. The event, in its 20th year, is the nation's largest single-day food drive. To take part, leave a bag of nonperishable food items by your mailbox and your letter carrier will pick it up and take it to the Reading Food Pantry at the Old South United Methodist Church, 6 Salem St. Items needed include canned meats such as chicken, tuna, and Spam; bottled juice and juice boxes; canned fruit; canned vegetables, including potatoes, yams, beans, carrots, and spinach; condiments such as mayonnaise,...

QUINCY -- Norfolk County Sheriff Michael Bellotti plans to launch a new program that will let residents sign up for e-mail alerts telling them when one of the state's most dangerous sex offenders moves in or out of their community. The program, apparently the first of its kind in Massachusetts, should be up and running in about a month, Bellotti said. Though information about Level 3 sex offenders, considered the most likely to reoffend, is already available on a state website and is posted throughout towns by local police, the e-mail alert system will put the information at people's fingertips...

NEW YORK — Users of the online budgeting site Mint.com got a scare when they opened their e-mail yesterday morning. The site sent out a series of blank e-mails to users in the wee hours of the morning. There was no follow-up e-mail explaining the mysterious messages, raising concerns that the site was hacked. That’s alarming because Mint.com accesses the bank and investment accounts of its 4 million users. The site says the e-mails were the result of a “misconfiguration from a test system.’’ Mint.com says its security wasn’t breached and that no customer data was...

With financial losses mounting, the nearly bankrupt U.S. Postal Service is urging the House to quickly pass legislation that would give it broad authority to close thousands of low-revenue post offices, reduce labor costs and end Saturday delivery. At a meeting Friday, the Postal Service's board of governors said that a bill passed by the Senate last week doesn't go far enough to give the agency the latitude it needs. That bill would provide the Postal Service with an $11 billion cash infusion to help pay down ballooning debt but halt the immediate closing of up to 252 mail-processing...