End of Saturday mail?

End of Saturday mail?

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service plans to cut billions of dollars in losses would end regular Saturday mail delivery and reduce health benefits to retired postal workers, officials warned Congress on Thursday.

The Postal Service lost $2.4 billion in the last quarter and estimates it will lose $7 billion this fiscal year.

“Our situation is more tenuous than ever,” Postmaster General John E. Potter told a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Federal Financial Management Subcommittee.

As a result, he suggested cutting Saturday service, explaining, “It is the lowest-volume delivery day, but with the same level of fixed costs as other delivery days.” What’s more, he said, “Most business and professional offices are open Monday through Friday, with many closed on Saturday.”

Girl, 13, jailed for 13 days

DALLAS — Authorities are investigating how a 13-year-old girl spent 13 days in the Dallas County Jail on a shoplifting charge and was released on probation before anyone was the wiser.

“It doesn’t make any sense to have a 13-year-old in there,” her father said. “They could have killed her. Something bad could have happened. She doesn’t look 17. She looks 13, and I wonder why they didn’t see that.”

Senior Cpl. Roberto Garcia, who arrested the girl and a 20-year-old July 10 for shoplifting at a Target store in Old East Dallas, admits that she did initially tell him that she was underage.

But he said she then gave him a name and date of birth that would make her an adult. He said he verified the information with a detective in the youth division, something that no one in the youth division can recall him doing.

9 die in nursing-home fire

MELLE, Belgium — A fire raged through a retirement home close to Brussels late Thursday, leaving nine people dead and three more in critical condition, officials said.

The fire broke out around 8 p.m. Thursday and quickly sent thick, black smoke through the sprawling facility where some 100 retirees receive care.

Officials said the fire was likely accidental.

Edwards’ ex-lover testifies

RALEIGH, N.C. — The ex- mistress of John Edwards spent much of Thursday in a federal courthouse in Raleigh where a grand jury was meeting, at a time when federal investigators are examining the two-time presidential candidate’s finances.

Rielle Hunter walked into the building in the morning through a back entrance, holding a young child, and left with the child about nine hours later.

Neither Hunter nor her attorney, Michael Critchley, responded to reporters’ questions.

Edwards adamantly denied during a confessional interview with ABC News last summer that he had fathered a child with Hunter, and he welcomed a paternity test. His wife, Elizabeth, has said while promoting her book that she doesn’t know if her husband is the father.

Former Edwards aide Andrew Young, who made a similar courthouse visit while the grand jury was sitting last month, said in 2007 he was the child’s father.

Honored judge dies at 78

LOS ANGELES — U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi, who was sent to an internment camp with his family during World War II and overcame discrimination to become the first Japanese-American appointed to the federal bench, has died at the age of 78.

Takasugi, a much-honored jurist who presided over the high-profile trial of automaker John Z. DeLorean in 1984 and authored groundbreaking opinions on constitutional issues during his 33 years on the bench, died Tuesday at a Los Angeles nursing home after a number of illnesses, according to his son, Superior Court Judge Jon Takasugi.

Great Train Robber freed

LONDON — British authorities have released Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs from prison on compassionate grounds.

Britain’s Justice Secretary Jack Straw said Thursday he decided to free Biggs because he is seriously ill with pneumonia and is not expected to recover.

Biggs turns 80 this weekend.

He was part of a gang that robbed a Glasgow-to-London mail train in August 1963, in what was called the “heist of the century.” The robbery netted 2.6 million pounds — worth more than $50 million today. He was sentenced to 30 years in jail but escaped in 1965 and fled to Brazil. In 2001 he voluntarily returned to Britain and surrendered to police.

Last month, Straw had rejected Biggs’ application for parole on the ground that he was “wholly unrepentant” about his crimes.

Combined dispatches