In the UK a £19 million competition to support research and development in the low and ultra low carbon vehicle supply chain has been announced. The competition will be administered by the government-backed Technology Strategy Board and the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV). It is part of the Technology Strategy Board's Low Carbon Vehicles Integrated Delivery Program, which is focused on developing the UK's low carbon vehicle industry.

The program has so far raised over £120 million in public sector funding. The full details of the competition will be released in the New Year and a full launch is expected in February.

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Greenpeace made allegations that one of Unilever's sustainable palm oil providers was illegally cutting virgin rain forest to grow more palms, when it claimed to be a sustainable vendor. In response Unilever has cut ties with that particular supplier. In May of this year Unilever committed to switch to palm oil certified as sustainable by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Unilever had been fourth on Covalence's ethical ranking of multinational companies, but since the reports of illegal activities of their supplier from Greenpeace and the Wall Street Journal, the company's rating is in jeopardy.

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The Department of Transportation's (DOT) freight transportation services index (TSI) fell 10.5 percent in October from a year earlier. This is the biggest decline in the TSI in twenty years. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported that the TSI dropped 1.2 percent from September.

The freight index has fallen in 11 of the past 15 months and is off 5.8 percent in the first 10 months of 2009, DOT said. The TSI is a seasonally adjusted monthly index measuring the output of services provided by the for-hire transportation industries, including railroad, truck and local transit.

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In the UK, the Royal Mail has grown its profits by £7 million ($11.4 million) in the first half of their financial year despite a fall in the amount of post being sent. The Royal Mail made an operating profit of £184 million ($299 million) for the six months to the end of September, 4 percent more than last year's total of £177million ($288 million).

Royal Mail's profits would have been even higher, had it not been for the impact of the recession on General Logistics Systems (GLS), its European parcels division. Profits at GLS fell by almost a quarter, from £59 million to £45 million. The figures also showed another decline in the number of letters being sent in Britain. Royal Mail delivered an average of 72 million letters a day between April and September, 3 million a day less than the previous year and nearly 15 percent below the peak of 84 million a day in 2006.

In contrast, the United States Postal Service (USPS) announced back in August that it incurred net losses in 11 of the last 12 quarters. USPS's 2009 year-to-date net loss is stated at $4.7 billion, in spite of comprehensive, organization-wide cost reduction initiatives.

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