Walmart

BOCA RATON, Fla. - Responding to widespread changes in consumer shopping patterns, ACNielsen U.S. today announced a comprehensive retail measurement solution that offers significantly enhanced coverage of the complex U.S. consumer packaged goods marketplace.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart said sales of Easter-related apparel and merchandise through April 9 beat its expectations and says it expects total April sales at U.S. stores open at least a year to rise between 4 percent and 6 percent.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. today reported net sales for the five-week March period ending April 2, 2004, of $25.131 billion, an increase of 14.0 percent over the $22.049 billion in the same five-week period in the prior year.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Voters in Inglewood, Calif., have rejected a ballot measure that would have cleared the way for a colossal Wal-Mart in this Los Angeles suburb, according to an Associated Press report.

LOS ANGELES - Citizens of Inglewood, a working-class Los Angeles suburb, will decide today whether to approve a ballot initiative sponsored by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. to authorize plans for a new shopping center adjacent to Hollywood Park race track.

JONQUIERE, Quebec - Wal-Mart Canada employees here rejected unionization by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union late Friday, Dow Jones Business News reports. According to the UFCW Canada Web site, the vote against union representation was 74 to 65.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - A new magazine to be published by Time Warner will initially be sold only at Wal-Mart Stores, according to published sources.

BALTIMORE -- Giant and Safeway supermarkets in the Baltimore-Washington area, as well as the union representing 29,000 of their employees, are facing a Tuesday deadline for a new contract -- and the possibility of a strike that could affect hundreds of local supermarkets and prompt thousands of workers to join picket lines, the Baltimore Sun reports.