competition rules. Last month the commission ruled that the German postal

service, which is partially privatized, had used public funds to subsidize its

parcel shipping service in the mid-1990s. The commission said that DP had used

the money to reduce pricing below that of private-sector competitors, a charge

DP chairman Klaus Zumwinkle denies. "The commission's decision is so clearly

disputable that only a judgment in favor of Deutsche Post is conceivable," he

said in a statement. Zumwinkle insisted that public funds had never been used

to support DP's parcel business. He also alleged that the commission's

decision was based on a number of procedural errors and legal inconsistencies.

United Parcel Service, which brought the initial complaint and has doggedly

pursued it for years, claimed victory, but Deutsche Post immediately filed

suit to overturn the decision.

another run for Congress. Helen Delich Bentley of Maryland, former chair of

the Federal Maritime Commission and a five-term congresswoman, has announced

that she is the Republican candidate for her former seat in the House of

Representatives. Bentley, 78, was the highest-ranking woman in the federal

government during the Nixon administration. The Nevada native began her career

in Baltimore as a reporter covering the maritime industry and was instrumental

in gaining support to build the Port of Baltimore into the regional economic

engine it is today. In announcing her candidacy, Bentley said that her

decision to run for office was largely motivated by the "unique perspective"

on maritime security that she could bring to Congress.

national database of all radioactive materials, including those used in

industrial, medical and research settings. The bill was prompted by the recent

apprehension of a suspected Al Qaeda agent who allegedly intended to release a

"dirty" bomb containing radioactive material. In announcing his proposal,

Schumer noted that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was responsible for

monitoring use of the widely available materials but had no means of tracking

who was using radioactive materials outside of the nuclear power industry and

where they were located. The legislation as proposed would affect shippers by

tightening security requirements during the production, storage,

transportation and disposal of radioactive materials.

new one: Banks, financial service consultants and providers of software that

manages the payment and settlement process are calling the flow of money from

buyer to seller the "financial supply chain." Although the term frequently

appears in relation to international trade transactions, it also pops up in

promotional literature and consultants' white papers about domestic payment

procedures. The analogy most likely arose from the nature of the payment

process, which in the case of international transactions may involve numerous

parties and requires a complex series of steps and exchanges of information.

marketer in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1902 and evolved into a public warehouse and

third-party logistics service provider over the years. The company lays claim

to several industry firsts, saying that it was the first public warehouse to

offer consolidated less-than-truckload refrigerated service (1958) and the

first public warehouse to offer online inventory management (1976). Fires,

floods and the unexpected death of its CEO in the 1980s led managers to

reorganize the company as Total Logistic Control and expand nationally. Today,

publicly traded TLC owns or operates 20 logistics facilities nationwide and

employs 1,400 associates.