Want to pay ground rates to ship holiday gifts? Today is USPS and FedEx deadline
CBSN
Want to get your holiday gifts to their destination by December 25 and pay the standard ground shipping rates? Better do it today, because December 15 is the deadline for both FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service.
This is the USPS's busiest week of the season, according to a recent statement from the postal service. Roughly 2.3 billion packages, greeting cards and other pieces of mail will be delivered this week alone, the USPS said.
That's a big hunk of the more than 12 billion letters, cards and packages the postal service expects to deliver between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.