There’s a bad news from DHL today. The international courier company is discontinuing its U.S. air and ground service, resulting in an additional 9,500 job cuts.

DHL plans to close its U.S. ground hubs and cut the number of stations from 412 to 103, resulting in the thousands of job losses.

The withdrawal from all ground and air domestic deliveries is a radical response by Deutsche Post to the widening losses in DHL’s US express business.

According to reports, DHL will cease shipping US ground and air packages effective Jan. 30, 2009. The company will shift its focus to international deliveries, CEO John Mullen said Monday.

The company said this latest action would add $1.9 billion to its restructuring costs, for a total of $3.8 billion over two years, most of it during 2008. The cuts would trim down the annual operating costs of DHL U.S. Express to less than $1 billion, from its current cost of $5.4 billion.

It is uncertain as to what it means to the future of DHL but it couldn’t come at a worse time for the staff with Christmas just around the corner.

Obviously, it’s good news for FedEx and UPS.