Cost of a stamp goes up

Cost of a stamp goes up

WASHINGTON — Peel it and weep: It’ll cost an extra 2 cents to mail a letter starting Monday.

The price of a first-class stamp will climb to 44 cents, though people who planned ahead and stocked up on Forever stamps will still be paying the lower rate.

It’s the third year in a row that rates have gone up in May under a new system that allows annual increases as long as they don’t exceed the rate of inflation for the year before.

Though the increase will bring in added income, the post office continues to struggle financially as more and more lucrative first-class mail is diverted to the Internet, and the recession discourages businesses from sending their usual volume of advertising.

The Postal Service, which does not get a taxpayer subsidy for its operations, lost $2.8 billion last year and is $2.3 billion in the hole just halfway through this year.

Call for credit-card reform

WASHINGTON — Send me a bill that stops credit-card companies from taking advantage of consumers, and do it by month’s end, President Barack Obama is demanding of Congress.

But there’s no guarantee lawmakers will deliver by Memorial Day, and the banking industry is fighting back.

“Americans know that they have a responsibility to live within their means and pay what they owe,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. “But they also have a right to not get ripped off by the sudden rate hikes, unfair penalties and hidden fees that have become all too common.”

Legislation known as the Credit Card Holders’ Bill of Rights has passed the House and awaits action in the Senate, possibly in the coming week.

A ban on cell phones

BOSTON — The head of the Boston-area transit authority said Saturday he’ll ban all train and bus operators from even carrying cell phones on board after a trolley driver told police he was texting his girlfriend before a collision Friday.

About 50 people were hurt in the underground crash in downtown Boston, though none of the injuries was life-threatening.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority already bans operators from using cell phones and recently ran an internal ad campaign featuring a poster of an open cell phone that warned employees not to drive “under the influence.”

Demjanjuk keeps mum

SEVEN HILLS, Ohio — Possibly days away from his deportation to Germany, suspected Nazi guard John Demjanjuk and his family are offering no clues about the 89-year-old’s response to a government notice asking that he surrender to U.S. immigration authorities.

All appeared quiet at Demjanjuk’s home in the Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills as his wife tended to her lilac bush and an unidentified man visited Saturday, one day after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers delivered the notice.

It is the most recent development in a complex 32-year case linking Demjanjuk to World War II atrocities. An arrest warrant in Munich accuses the native Ukrainian of 29,000 counts of accessory to murder.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens had refused Thursday, without comment, to deal with the case.

New S. African president

PRETORIA, South Africa — Jacob Zuma took power Saturday in the culmination of an extraordinary political comeback, pledging to Nelson Mandela and the nation to renew the spirit of commitment and hope of South Africa’s first black presidency.

Zuma was once imprisoned under apartheid and spent years in exile before surviving corruption and sex scandals and a party power struggle to reach the nation’s highest office. He has been embraced by many South Africans with a fervor usually reserved for Mandela.

The elder statesman was cheered as he arrived for the inauguration in a golf cart to join the 5,000 VIP guests and tens of thousands of ordinary South Africans who had gathered for the ceremony.

Body of professor found

ATHENS, Ga. — Cadaver dogs found the body of a wanted professor “beneath the earth” in the north Georgia woods Saturday, two weeks after police say he shot his wife and two other people to death outside a community theater, then vanished.

Searchers found two guns near the body of marketing professor George Zinkhan, 57, but police wouldn’t say how he died. They did say it appears he buried himself in brush and dirt.

Zinkhan disappeared after the April 25 shootings near the University of Georgia, where he’d had a spotless record since arriving to teach in the Terry College of Business in the 1990s.

Associated Press