Walmart

New York -- Walmart plans to significantly boost its sourcing from domestic suppliers over the next decade. The plan was announced during an address by Bill Simon, Walmart U.S. president and CEO, at the National Retail Federation's annual convention in New York. Simon also announced the company is committed to helping part-time associates who want to be full time, make that transition.

New York -- Wal-Mart Stores is set to announce in a Tuesday address at the NRF convention in New York City that it is prepared to hire more than 100,000 veterans over the next five years.

The pledge will come as part of U.S. CEO Bill Simon’s Tuesday keynote address at the 102nd annual BIG Show.

The hiring pledge will begin on Memorial Day, and applies to veterans within 12 months of leaving active duty. Most of the jobs will be in Wal-Mart's stores or its Sam's club locations. Some will be in the company's distribution centers.

Flower is the name of a new proprietary cosmetics line developed by Walmart in conjunction with Drew Barrymore and cosmetics manufacturer Maesa.

The new brand is positioned as offering department store quality at mass market prices and consists of 181 products in the eye, face, lip and nail categories with prices ranging from $4.98 to $13.98.

In December, the retailers that increased their page counts were balanced out by those that decreased their page counts. However, of those retailers that did reduce their page counts, only two also reduced the number of inserts distributed by more than 2%. 

Keeping with their November strategy, Walmart continued its aggressive promotions this month, and has shown a significant increase in both drop of flyer and pages per flyer. They showed the highest growth compared to other advertisers in page counts, and the second highest growth in number of flyers.

The head of Walmart’s Chilean operation will assume responsibility for all of Latin America following the retirement of current president and CEO Eduardo Solorzano.

Bentonville, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores announced that Enrique Ostale, president and CEO of Walmart Chile, formerly D&S, has been named EVP, president and CEO of Walmart Latin America, where he will oversee Walmart's operations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua.

Walmart has committed $670,000 to help fund a first-of-its-kind program in its home state known as the Arkansas Payment Improvement Initiative (APII).

New York -- According to multiple reports on Thursday, congressmen Henry Waxman (D-Rep., Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Rep. Md.) have said that Wal-Mart Stores CEO Mike Duke and other senior-level officials at the retailer were informed about allegations of bribery in the retailer’s operations in Mexico in 2005.

The two congressmen cited documentation obtained by their staffs, which discussed allegations of corruption regarding a store in Teotihuacan.