picture alliance/dpa | Marijan Murat
How long letters have to travel and how often they are delivered to you is stipulated in a law. The federal government now wants to change that.
The government gave the green light to a raft of changes this week. This could become effective in the spring if the Bundestag and Bundesrat have approved the change in the law.
For consumers, this means that the waiting time for letters will probably be longer.
The federal government wants to fundamentally reform the postal law for the first time in a quarter of a century. The cabinet accepted a proposal from the Federal Ministry of Economics on Wednesday. An overview of the most important questions and answers about the reform.
Why the postal reform?
When the Postal Act, which is still largely valid today, came into force in 1998, the Internet only played a minor role and orders from online retailers were an exotic thing. However, writing letters for communication was still common. This seems like ancient times: today, emails and chats dominate written communication. Letters have gone out of fashion and packages have become commonplace. The legislature therefore wants to adapt the regulations for the postal industry to the changed reality.
Why does the postal law even exist?
The Federal Post Office was privatized in the 90s. The postal law should ensure competition, but at the same time guarantee the population’s basic supply of postal services. As a “universal service provider”, Deutsche Post has to comply with very strict regulations. In return she gets tax breaks. The competition has worked rather poorly: the yellow giant has a market share of 85 percent in the mail segment and more than 40 percent in the parcel segment. The letter competitors include Arriva and Citipost, the parcel competitors DPD, Hermes, GLS, UPS and the delivery service from Amazon, the latter is number 2 in Germany behind Post/DHL.
What should be changed in the law?
In the future, the post office should have less time pressure when sending letters. This allows it to reduce costs by, for example, avoiding night flights to transport letters. So far, the post office has to deliver 80 percent of the letters posted today on the next working day, and on the next working day the quota must be 95 percent. According to the Federal Ministry of Economics’s proposal, in the future there should only be a minimum value of 95 percent for the third working day after being put in the mailbox. On the fourth working day, 99 percent of the letters should reach the addressee. The letters should therefore be transported more slowly, but arrive reliably.
How else could consumers notice the consequences of the reform?
The group has almost 13,000 post offices nationwide, most of which are post office counters at retailers. In some outskirts of town and larger villages, however, there are no post offices to be found, although the post office should have branches there – this is what a government regulation stipulates. The gaps in the branch network are sometimes because the last supermarket or kiosk there has closed and the post office cannot find another partner. ATMs could provide a solution, but are not yet recognized in the branch network requirement. This is set to change in the future, even if only in individual cases with the approval of the Federal Network Agency.
Will postage become more expensive again?
Yes, the postage will most likely be more expensive. However, this will not be regulated in the legal reform, but in a separate official procedure next year. The previously valid postage – 85 cents for a standard letter and 70 cents for a postcard – expires at the end of 2024. The Federal Network Agency will grant the post office a price increase corridor, which the company will use. The amended law is intended to prevent the price from rising too much: a standard letter should not be more expensive than one euro.
What is controversial about the reform?
The use of subcontractors in the parcel industry always causes dissatisfaction. Customs reports cases of undeclared work and illegal employment, and the Verdi union is calling for a ban on subcontractors. The Federal Ministry of Economics’s proposal doesn’t go that far, but the rules should be tightened. In the future, clients should be obliged to check their subcontractors according to defined criteria.
This is not enough for the Greens and Social Democrats; they are calling for a ban on passing on orders to sub-subcontractors or sub-subcontractors. But the FDP doesn’t think much of this – from their point of view, there are black sheep among the subcontractors who need to be punished, but overall it is a functioning and proven system. The situation among parcel companies is different: market leader DHL hardly relies on subcontractors, while its competitors rely heavily.
What else causes criticism?
As a universal service provider, the post office should be granted sales tax exemption for its corporate customer mail. This would put small, regionally active mail competitors under pressure as they would then have a price disadvantage. They now fear for their existence. The already weak competition in the mail market could come to a standstill.
How should working conditions be improved?
Hauling packages is done on the back, and delivery people sometimes have to carry heavy gardening and sports equipment and even dumbbells to the upper floors of apartment buildings. In the future, heavy packages weighing 10 kilos or more should be marked so that the parcel carrier knows and doesn’t make a mistake. From 20 kilos onwards, two-person transport or technical aids should be mandatory.
The Verdi union, however, demands that such heavy packages only be allowed to be transported by two people. The SPD member of the Bundestag Sebastian Roloff also sees it that way – it is “required for occupational health reasons,” he says. From the point of view of the liberal Reinhard Houben, electric hand trucks are sufficient: they are a significant relief for the delivery people, says the FDP member of the Bundestag.
What other problem is being addressed?
Since last year, the network agency has received an unusually large number of complaints about quality deficiencies in the postal industry. It’s about late, incorrectly delivered or lost shipments; in most cases the anger is directed at Deutsche Post/DHL. Network agency boss Klaus Müller keeps raising his index finger in warning – but he can’t do much more. That is set to change in the future: His authority should be able to impose hefty fines on the universal service provider Deutsche Post for the first time. However, compared to the ministry proposal, the legal text on the fine framework adopted by the cabinet was somewhat weakened.
What happens next with the postal law reform?
The federal government’s stance on postal reform has now been determined. It will then be the Bundestag and Bundesrat’s turn; the reform could be completed in spring 2024.
dpa/lp
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Planning issued a warning to more than 100 jewelers for violating the jewelery labeling law
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Today, Tuesday, the Ministry of Planning announced that it had issued a warning to more than 100 jewelers for violating the jewelery labeling law.
The Ministry stated in a statement received by the (INA), that “the Standardization Department in the Central Organization for Standardization and Quality Control decided to issue a penalty to draw attention to (118) jewelers in the governorates of Babil, Wasit, Diwaniyah, and Dhi Qar, for violating the Jewelry Labeling Law No. (83). For the year 1976 as amended).
She added, “The violating jewelers must visit the agency’s headquarters to complete the procedures within (30) days,” warning that “legal measures will be taken against them.”
She continued, “These measures come as confirmation of the strategic goal of raising the level of awareness and community culture among citizens and to enhance and raise the level of coverage of procedures for marking standards, local and imported gold and silver,” pointing out that “the violating jewelers were distributed as follows (47) jewelers in Dhi Qar Governorate, and (34) (37) jewelers in Babil Governorate, and (37) jewelers between Wasit and Diwaniyah.
Planning issued a warning to more than 100 jewelers for violating the jewelery labeling law
“BlackCat Ransomware Gang Claims Responsibility for Cyberattack on UnitedHealth Group Subsidiary Optum”
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BlackCat Ransomware Gang Strikes Again: Cyberattack on Optum Shakes Healthcare Industry
In a shocking turn of events, the notorious BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware gang has claimed responsibility for a devastating cyberattack on Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group (UHG). This attack has resulted in a widespread outage that has affected the Change Healthcare platform, the largest payment exchange platform used by over 70,000 pharmacies across the United States. The repercussions of this attack are far-reaching, considering that UHG is the world’s largest healthcare company by revenue, employing a staggering 440,000 people worldwide and collaborating with over 1.6 million physicians and care professionals in 8,000 hospitals and care facilities.
BlackCat, known for its audacious cyberattacks, released a statement on their dark web leak site, claiming to have stolen a massive 6TB of data from Change Healthcare’s network. This stolen data allegedly includes sensitive information belonging to thousands of healthcare providers, insurance providers, and pharmacies. The magnitude of this breach is alarming, as it encompasses critical and sensitive data from various Change Health clients.
The ransomware gang further asserts that they have obtained the source code for Change Healthcare solutions, as well as sensitive information from prominent partners such as the U.S. military’s Tricare healthcare program, the Medicare federal health insurance program, CVS Caremark, MetLife, Health Net, and numerous other healthcare insurance providers. The stolen data contains a vast array of personal information on millions of individuals, including medical records, insurance records, dental records, payments information, claims information, patients’ personally identifiable information (PII) such as phone numbers, addresses, social security numbers, email addresses, and even active U.S. military/navy personnel PII data.
Optum has been diligently working to restore the impacted systems and bring them back online. However, at the time of writing this article, the restoration process is still ongoing. Optum, UnitedHealthcare, and UnitedHealth Group systems have not been affected by the cyberattack, according to a dedicated status page provided by Optum.
While the BlackCat gang has taken credit for the attack, UnitedHealth Group VP Tyler Mason has refrained from confirming their involvement. However, Mason did mention that over 90% of the affected pharmacies have transitioned to new electronic claim procedures to mitigate the issues caused by the Change Healthcare platform outage.
Interestingly, BlackCat has denied allegations that their affiliates exploited a critical ScreenConnect authentication bypass flaw (CVE-2024-1709) during the breach. This contradicts earlier reports from sources familiar with the investigation, as disclosed by BleepingComputer.
The severity of this attack has prompted the FBI, CISA, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to issue a warning. They highlighted that BlackCat ransomware affiliates primarily target organizations within the U.S. healthcare sector. The agencies revealed that since mid-December 2023, the healthcare sector has been the most frequently victimized, likely in response to an administrator’s post by ALPHV BlackCat encouraging affiliates to target hospitals after operational action against the group and its infrastructure in early December 2023.
This is not the first time BlackCat has wreaked havoc. The FBI has previously linked the ransomware gang to over 60 breaches between November 2021 and March 2022. During this period, the gang amassed a staggering $300 million in ransoms from over 1,000 victims. In an effort to combat their malicious activities, the U.S. State Department is now offering up to $15 million for any information leading to the identification or location of BlackCat gang leaders and individuals associated with their ransomware attacks.
The cyberattack on Optum and the subsequent outage of the Change Healthcare platform have sent shockwaves throughout the healthcare industry. The breach of sensitive data and the potential compromise of millions of individuals’ personal information raises concerns about the security measures in place within the healthcare sector. As organizations continue to grapple with the aftermath of this attack, it is crucial to prioritize cybersecurity and implement robust measures to safeguard sensitive data from the ever-evolving threat landscape.
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