The U.S. Postal Service is concluding the study of its Area Mail Processing (AMP) plant network, which it hopes to reduce from 461 facilities currently to fewer than 200 during the next few years, Post & Parcel reported, and the new-look AMP plant network could be fortified by “hub” facilities.

During the Mailers’ Technical Advisory Committee meeting earlier this week, USPS executives said the surviving mail processing plants could be fortified by hundreds of smaller area hub facilities for more localized distribution of processed mail. The hubs could be set up in existing USPS sites—those with ancillary functions like business mail entry and retail facilities—or subcontracted out to distribution partners, Post & Parcel said.

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The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) released an important update to its business plan for returning to profitability and long-term financial stability. While fundamentally consistent with the approach advanced by the Postal Service over the past year, the plan released today incorporates important refinements of financial projections and recommended legislative reforms.

“The plan we have developed requires a combination of aggressive cost reduction, rethinking the way we manage our healthcare costs, and comprehensive legislation to reform the business model of the Postal Service,” said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe. “If provided the flexibility to quickly implement this plan, we can return to profitability and better serve the American public. If not, we risk becoming a significant burden to the American taxpayer.”

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A rare first edition of John James Audubon‘s illustrated “The Birds of America” depicting more than 400 life-size North American species in four monumental volumes was purchased at auction for $7.9 million.

Christie’s auction house identified the buyer as an American collector who bid by phone.

The winning bid was within the presale estimate of $7 million to $10 million for the work, considered a masterpiece of ornithology art.

Another complete first edition of “The Birds of America” sold at Sotheby’s in London in December 2010 for $11.5 million, a record for the most expensive printed book sold at auction.

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From Bruce Hainley’s To Whom it May Concern:

“With Tina Fey finally agreeing to co-showrun for a season, NBC’s picked up my new series for Amy Sedaris, Sub Marina, about a Marina Abramović stand-in who subs when the artist is absent (as everyone knows, her “art” has been made in absentia for decades). The sub lives in a sub-basement of MoMA, from which Klaus Biesenbach doppelgängers try constantly to evict her, and, although born and raised in West Virginia, she’s forced to speak with a Serbian accent. In the pilot, Marini (Sedaris) has to (1) keep an appropriate gaze despite staring at a person whose cross-eyes, Marty Feldmanesque, accentuated by a caterpillar unibrow, make it impossible to focus soulfully; and (2) figure out a way to retrieve an e-mail before it’s opened (commissioned to review the updated [Robert Wilson intro!] paperback of James Westcott’s biography, When Marina Abramović Dies, for Wmagazine, Marini mistakenly attaches, instead of her final version, a draft of her text, at a point when she was still stuck on how to go further than her opening line: “Not soon enough.”). Hijinks ensue.”

Read more of Bruce Hainely’s essay here.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus is trying to close the Son of Black Liquor tax loophole that has already provided U.S. paper makers with a windfall of more than $1 billion.

The committee’s staff estimates the move would save $2.786 billion over the next four years, which Baucus would use to help pay for highway construction and other infrastructure projects. The staff has not revealed the basis for its calculation, a tricky matter because it requires assumptions about the future taxable income of more than a dozen paper companies.

“Black liquor qualified for the alternative fuel mixture [AFM] tax credit and the cellulosic biofuels tax credit,” a news release from the committee noted Friday. “Congress never intended for black liquor to qualify for these credits and, in 2010, prohibited the credit for black liquor sold or used on or after January 1, 2010. This provision would prohibit taxpayers from claiming the alternative mixture credit or the cellulosic biofuels credit on any new or amended returns made on or after February 3, 2012.”

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Locog’s hit headlines again, but for all the wrong reasons. This time it is its decision to award the American company, Weldon, Williams & Lick of Fort William, the contract to print London Olympics tickets that has got the business community fuming.

Eleven million tickets for the Olympics and Paralympics Games will be printed in Arkansas, air-freighted 4,500 miles to the UK before being distributed to ticket holders at a £6 delivery cost.

So does no British firm have the requisite ability to print tickets for what will possibly be one of the biggest events in the UK’s history?

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RR Donnelley & Sons, a $10.6 billion global printing company, is closing its Windsor location in March, putting 117 people out of work.

In a press release the same day of the announcement, the CEO told investors that 2011′s cash flow would be better than previously projected — instead of having $600 million in profits (not counting capital expenditures, taxes and debt service), it will have $650 million to $700 million.

In its third-quarter earnings report, the company said profits tripled from the same time last year, and sales increased 8 percent.

“We continue to have success in the marketplace, winning new work and expanding customer relationships. Given the challenging global economic environment and sluggish financial markets activity, we are pleased with our results,” said Thomas J. Quinlan III, RR Donnelley’s president and chief executive officer. According to Forbes Magazine, he was paid $2.64 million in 2010, and owns $6 million in stock in the company.

In Windsor, 69 production employees, 12 managers and 36 administrative employees, from accountants to database coordinators to operations clerks, will lose their jobs when the printing plant closes.

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In Numbers is a survey of artists’ serial publications between 1955 and the present—a neglected art form that is neither artists’ book nor ephemera, but is entirely its own unique object. From the small press in the 1960s to the DIY zine culture in the 1980s and early 1990s, artists have seized on the magazine/ postcard format as a new kind of art production.

A large cross-section of publications is surveyed, from 1950s LA to present day Japan. The diversity of the list reflects the backgrounds of the producing artists and the wide range of techniques and media. The exhibition is accompanied by the publication In Numbers: Serial Publications by Artists Since 1955, edited by Philip Aarons and Andrew Roth (New York: PPP Editions, 2010).

25 January–25 March 2012

Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)
The Mall
London, SW1Y 5AH
England

Bridgestone Corp. announced it has developed a revolutionary new printing technology for tires that is different from any tire printing or coloring process on the market today.

Bridgestone’s advanced tire printing technology consists of the layer to protect from discoloration as the base, inks newly developed for this technology, and the layer to protect from external damages on the surface. Through this new technology, Bridgestone can realize the more creative showcase of tires while also considering environmental concerns such as fuel efficiency, without any additional weight to the tire.

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Eastman Kodak Co. is in advanced talks with Citigroup Inc. to provide bankruptcy financing as the unprofitable imaging company prepares for a potential filing, said three people familiar with the matter. The stock plunged.

Kodak may seek protection from creditors within weeks and then hold an auction to sell its patent portfolio, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Kodak may seek about $1 billion in so-called debtor-in- possession financing, though terms may change, two people said.

Read more here.