Holiday deliveries

Holiday deliveries

YOUNGSTOWN

The U.S. Postal Service expects to deliver a total of about 15.5 billion cards, letters, flats and packages during the 2015 holiday season. In addition, it’s projecting about 600 million packages will be delivered between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, which is an increase of 10.5 percent over last year’s volume.

Customers who sign up for alerts at www.myusps.com will receive notification within a few minutes of the delivery scan for select packages.

USPS says it has hired 30,000 employees for the 2015 holiday season to meet the needs of its customers.

Holiday Boutique

BOARDMAN

Southern Park Mall, 7401 Market St., will have a Holiday Boutique from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday. The boutique will feature more than 20 artists, craftsmen and home-based business owners from the local community with a variety of gift items from art, sculptures, photography and other items. There also will be live holiday entertainment.

Dow, DuPont shares rise on merger talk

DOVER, Del.

Shares of Dow Chemical and DuPont climbed Wednesday amid reports that the two chemical giants are in advanced merger discussions.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the companies were planning to merge and then split into three companies focused on agriculture, specialty chemicals and materials.

Shares of The Dow Chemical Co. rose 12 percent to close at $56.97. Stock of DuPont, formally called E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., also gained 12 percent, to $74.49.

The two companies declined to comment on reports of a possible merger. The Journal said a deal could be announced “in coming days.”

Older people renting

WASHINGTON

The majority of U.S. renters are 40 and older, a fundamental shift over the past decade that reflects the lasting damage of the housing crash and an aging population.

This finding in a report released Wednesday by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies overturns the assumption that the rental boom is only the result of twenty-somethings flocking to hip urban centers. Single-family houses are a growing share of rentals. And affordability problems are mounting as rents rise faster than wages, while apartment construction increasingly targets tenants with six-figure incomes.

Staff/wire reports