The United States Postal Service still has two stamp printing firms under contract, but the ownership of one firm has changed. USPS spokesman Mark Saunders told Linn’s Stamp News that CCL Label of Clinton, S.C., has purchased longtime stamp printer Sennett Security Products and its Banknote Corporation of America operation. As a result, stamps printed from this merger “will carry the BCA mark,” according to the Postal Service.

The new Birds of Canada series that was to have taken flight with five new stamps Jan. 11 has been postponed. News of the postponement came after Canada Post announced Dec. 16 that it would not raise postage rates in January, as originally planned.

Also this week, Paul Newman's soon-to-be-released stamp pays tribute to his philanthropy, and a withdrawn Guatamala airmail stamp is in demand.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, issued a call Aug. 26 to Postmaster General Megan Brennan for the United States Postal Service to “offer more, not fewer, services.”

Australia Post has asked the ACCCommission to approve a 30-cent price increase for the postal rate on standard letters to $1 (Australian) and allow it two business days for delivery, according to Perth Now.

The American Philatelic Society prepared four new pictorial postmarks for its 2015 APS Stampshow in Grand Rapids, Mich. The show runs Aug. 20-23, and the four postmarks each commemorate one day of the show.

The Office of Inspector General of the United States Postal Service has been highly critical of the recent sales of the rare upright $2 Jenny Invert panes. Now the inspector general is seeking the public’s opinion on that stamp promotion.

From 1967 to 2006, Royal Mail (Great Britain’s post office) advertised all new issues with posters displayed in post offices. Most of these posters had pictures of the stamps along with basic information such as the date of issue, instructions for first-day covers, etc. Some were a little more elaborate.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are the two top users of the United States Postal Service’s mail surveillance program, The New York Times has disclosed. The Times, which published a detailed article on the “mail cover” program last year, published a follow-up story Aug. 14.

If you haven’t noticed, your mail likely is moving more slowly these days. A new report by the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General confirms that a lot of first-class mail is taking more time than expected to reach its destination.

Every quarter a small drama plays out over the latest United States Postal Service financial numbers that come out of USPS headquarters at L’Enfant Plaza in Washington.

“PostSecret: The Power of a Postcard,” an exhibition of more than 500 secrets submitted on postcards, opened Aug. 3 at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C., and will run through September 2016.

Remember all those anonymous, secret-filled postcards that were sent to Frank Warren and showcased on his PostSecret website? Well, they're now being showcased at the Smithsonian's National Postal Musuem in its new exhibition, "PostSecret: The Power of a Postcard."

The cash-hungry United States Postal Service has won what is described as an eight-month extension on its current stamp prices. That is the effect of a July 29 ruling by the Postal Regulatory Commission, which held that the USPS is entitled to an additional $1.191 billion under the emergency price hike it was granted on Dec. 24, 2013.

After much publicity, and many Kickstarter donations, the plug has been pulled on the effort to put in place a stamp mosaic on the facade of the Tietion, WA, post office.

The former USPS worker from Florida who landed a tiny gyrocopter at the U.S. Capitol April 15 seems likely to face a trial on charges growing out of the incident. Lawyers told a judge July 22 that Douglas Hughes, 61, had rejected an offer of a 10-month prison sentence over his celebrated protest that showed Washington’s vulnerability to small aircraft.

When a group of 26 members of the House of Representatives voted this summer to add a provision to an appropriations bill that would require the United States Postal Service to restore mail deliveries to the standards in place in 2012, the action attracted little attention.

The Tieton, Wash., post office is a simple 1935 cement block building with a slat wood facade. Townsfolk in the agricultural community of 1,200 in central Washington believe the post office could become a landmark, if only the United States Postal Service would allow them to cover the front with a stamp-like mosaic.

The inspector general of the United States Postal Service has sharply criticized the agency’s creation of the 100 panes of upright Jenny Invert stamps that were supposed to be randomly distributed along with the 2.2 million normal $2 Jenny Invert panes in 2013.