Wal Mart Stores Inc

The Duarte City Council last week approved a development agreement with the Arkansas-based retail giant, striking a deal for land at the intersection of Mountain Avenue and the Foothill Freeway. The 127,000-square-foot store would provide more than $400,000 a year in sales tax revenue to the city, said Mike Yelton, assistant city manager. "It should be open within a year," he said. To attract the store, the city agreed to cut the price of the land by $1.8 million, city officials say.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, will eliminate some 11,200 jobs at its Sam's Club stores as it brings in an independent marketing firm to perform in-store product demonstrations. Outsourcing the in-store demonstrations to Shopper Events, a marketing firm based in Rogers, Ark., will trim about 10,000 jobs, or 9% of the company's workforce, the company said. Most of these positions are part time, the company said. The retailer also will eliminate about 1,200 jobs in business membership recruiting, or about two positions at each of its U.S. warehouse clubs.

Norway said its more than $240-billion global pension fund would no longer invest in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. because of what the country called "serious and systematic" abuses of human and labor rights. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman declined to comment.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said Monday that it would close 10 underperforming Sam's Club stores, including four in California. In the Southland, the warehouse club operator will shut stores in Irvine, La Quinta and Vista. Other closures will include stores in the Sacramento, Houston and Phoenix markets. Spokeswoman Susan Koehler said the stores are scheduled to close Jan. 22. She said she didn't know why so many California locations were affected. "It's not related to the economy," she said.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is testing cashing of payroll checks as it expands the financial services it offers customers. The test began in a limited number of stores recently, the retailer said. Wal-Mart already rents space in more than 900 locations to local banks and offers money orders and wire transfers.

Mall Redesigned in Deal With Wal-Mart, Indians: A developer has redesigned a shopping center in Paso Robles, Calif., anchored by a Wal-Mart store, conceding to Native American activists who feared it would disturb ancient Chumash Indian burial sites. The National Congress of American Indians last summer threatened to call a nationwide boycott of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. if developer James Halferty kept on with his plans for the 40-acre center in the Central California town.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s British supermarket chain Asda has approached Safeway Plc with an offer to buy 70 of its stores for close to $3.48 billion, sources close to the situation said. Safeway and Wal-Mart declined to comment. Wal-Mart shares fell 14 cents to $52.81 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Wal-Mart Buying 120 Woolco Units in Canada: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is continuing its march across North America by entering Canada with the purchase of 120 Woolco discount stores from Woolworth Corp. The No. 1 retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., is already in a partnership with Mexico's largest retailer, Cifra. Details of the transaction were not released, but Woolworth said it will receive about $300 million in cash from the deal.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it would install solar-power systems to provide some of its electricity at 22 locations in Hawaii and California. The systems, built by SunPower Corp., BP and SunEdison, will provide as much as 30% of the power used at 21 stores and a distribution center, Wal-Mart said. The purchase price wasn't disclosed.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it rolled out all-occasion gift registries in all of its 2,600 U.S. stores. The gift registry, located in the jewelry department, allows customers to create a wish list for birthdays, holidays, weddings and births, the world's largest retailer said. Rival discounter Target Corp. already has registry services available online and in stores for weddings and newborns. Wal-Mart shares fell 39 cents to $51.59 on the NYSE.

With another tough holiday season looming, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is ratcheting up a price war that could be good for shoppers but has competitors fearing the worst. The world's largest retailer has for years snatched sales from department stores, discounters, supermarkets, electronics sellers and mom-and-pop shops. Its intensive markdowns helped drive chains such as Circuit City and Mervyns out of business over the last year. Now Wal-Mart is using its enormous clout to wrest the advantage during what is expected to be another weak Christmas season.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., intensifying competition in the low-cost mobile service market, said Wednesday that it would begin selling prepaid cellphone service starting at $30 a month. The Straight Talk service, which will include an unlimited calling plan for $45, will be available for purchase at more than 3,200 Wal-Mart stores nationwide beginning Sunday. The $30 monthly plan includes 1,000 minutes, 1,000 texts, 30 megabytes of mobile Web access, nationwide coverage and 411 calls at no extra charge.

After the success of its "10 for $10" toy program last year, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is expanding its lineup of $10 toys for the holiday season to more than 100 items. The deals are expected to hit store shelves today. The move is the latest in an increasingly heated holiday toy battle as retailers race to attract frugal shoppers. Wal-Mart said it had worked with its suppliers over the last year to offer an assortment of top brands, classic toys and newly released items for $10, including Barbie dolls and Transformers action figures.

One hundred and forty-five years after Gen. Ulysses S. Grant first fought Gen. Robert E. Lee, another conflict is brewing on the Wilderness Battlefield: whether to let Wal-Mart build a superstore where 29,000 soldiers were wounded or killed. To stand on the battlefield at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in rural central Virginia is to go back in time. It looks almost as it did on May 5, 1864, when 160,000 troops clashed over two bloody days -- a tangle of woods that trapped men in brutal, hand-to-hand combat and gave the field its name.

A San Bernardino County Superior Court judge has ordered the city of Rialto to invalidate its approvals for a proposed Wal-Mart supercenter because the city did not adequately analyze the project's environmental effect, among other factors. In two companion cases, one filed by a grass-roots organization and the other by the city of Colton, Judge Donald R. Alvarez decided last week that Rialto's approval violated the California Environmental Quality Act and other land-use laws.

The death of a temporary employee who was crushed in a stampede of post-Thanksgiving shoppers at a Wal-Mart store could have been prevented, federal officials said Tuesday as they proposed fining the world's largest retailer $7,000 -- as much as it makes in about 18 seconds. The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it was citing Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for inadequate crowd management after the Nov. 28 death of Jdimytai Damour at a Long Island store.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, plans to open as many as 15 stores in China next year. Wal-Mart, which has 40 outlets in major cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen, will focus on smaller provincial cities, Joe Hatfield, chief executive for Asia at the Bentonville, Ark.-based company, said U.S. and European retailers are stepping up plans to expand in a $553-billion retail market now dominated by Chinese companies such as Shanghai Bailian Group.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. paid Chief Executive H. Lee Scott $29.7 million last year after sales grew at the slowest pace in more than two decades. Scott, 58, received a salary of $1.3 million and stock valued at $15.3 million, Wal-Mart said in a regulatory filing. The Bentonville, Ark.-based company also awarded him bonuses of $4.29 million and $8.08 million in stock options.

The San Diego County Sheriff's Department took the unusual step Thursday afternoon of issuing a statement to try to stamp out a rumor that gang-initiation killings were planned at local Wal-Marts. "These rumors, which have become widespread in San Diego County, are false," department officials announced after they received dozens of panicky calls from would-be shoppers. The rumor, apparently fed by the Internet, has surfaced in numerous communities across the country in recent days.

Wal-Mart is stepping up the competition to draw cost-conscious shoppers, promising that store-brand products will be tastier, smell better and look more attractive. The retailer outlined plans to reformulate hundreds of items in the Great Value store brand line, which it says is the country's biggest food brand in terms of both sales and volume.