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After our national campaign over the holidays focusing on product safety, an Associated Press report about the use of Cadmium in Chinese made products, especially children’s jewelry, and a huge crib recall back in November comes news of a second crib recall.

The Associated Press reports that more than 600,000 cribs are being recalled today after an infant died because of faulty hardware. Twenty models of cribs are being recalled due to issues with drop-side hardware and with slats that can break. The cribs were manufactured in China and Vietnam and sold at Walmart as well as other retailers.

According to the AP, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the company producing the cribs,

“have received 31 reports of incidents involving drop-side cribs, including six incidents of children being trapped between the mattress and the drop side. The agency and company have also received 36 reports of broken slats, including two reports of trapped children.”

This second recall highlights a disturbing trend of dangerous products on Walmart’s shelves. Walmart has a history of using its size and clout to push suppliers to produce at a lower cost, forcing them to cut corners to meet Walmart’s price demands and still make a profit. One of the areas that suppliers could cut corners is product safety. Walmart has repeatedly carried products that have been identified as unsafe or dangerous by reputable consumer safety organizations and the CPSC. It is truly sad that it took a death to bring attention to these cribs.

You can read the full article here and the full CPSC press release here for more information.

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The speak out stories keep rolling in. Our latest entry comes from a New Jersey department manager. From low wages to managerial abuse to recalled products, things don’t seem to be going well at this Garden State store. Read the story below for a full account.

“I am a department manager at a NJ store and in every single morning meeting (which are held on the sales floor in front of customers); we are yelled at for whatever the “catch of the day” is. We have a skeleton staff because they are firing and cutting hours. We are now being verbally abused each morning. Also, during the day, managers are screaming at us to go unload trucks, get carts from the parking or run registers over the walkies.

All the customers hear everything that is said to us in the meetings and over the walkies. No one lives above the poverty level. You have to take 2 days off to be paid for one sick day. A scam if you asked me. You have to work for nine, not eight hours because management will force you to take an unpaid lunch hour. The benefits are expensive and awful. There are mice and cats running around and if the customers knew where the food sat before it went out on the floor, they would not shop there. In addition, nothing is made in the USA – everything is made in China and the quality is very poor. We now have a huge number of recalls due to lead being in a lot of products and appliances being recalled for overheating or leaking dangerous fumes. We at our store have notified the ethics department because we cannot handle the abusive harassment anymore.

The store manager does not want any more women managers. He said women are the troublemakers. The open door policy is a joke, if you have something you need to address with them it comes back to bite you. We get no cost of living raises and the most you can get once a year is .60/hour. That is the most and they are not giving that anymore. Almost 50% of our store is now out looking for another job. Most are going to give Target a try. Please as a consumer, do not shop at Wal-Mart, it is not a USA minded company and the products are overpriced and inferior and some are dangerous.”

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A pair of stories - infant formula in Texas and continuing tax issues in Connecticut.

First, from Texas. Texas Wal-Marts are asking customers to check the dates on any infant formula sold within the state, after the office of the Attorney General learned that the retail giant had been selling expired product. There doesn’t appear to be a lawsuit on the horizon...the AG’s office simply asked Wal-Mart to remove the expired formula from shelves, inform customers, and make restitution. That most likely means refunds, but state penalties are not out of the question either.

The second story comes from Connecticut, where the neverending double taxation story has gotten life breathed back into it yet again. Here is our most recent post on the subject. And this, from the Hartford Courant:

Sue Drobinski of New Britain says that despite Wal-Mart entering into an agreement to follow state laws on taxes involving even exchanges, its employees in New Britain are not following the law.

I sent her email to state Consumer Protection Commissioner Jerry Farrell Jr. this morning, who has responded that his legal department will contact Wal-Mart to bring up this and other similar complaints.

Read on for more on both stories…

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No longer will your tootsies be kept tender by Wal-Mart’s “all man-made” Tender Tootsie slippers. The main problem, apparently, is that while Wal-Mart advertises that its slippers use 100% man-made materials, it turns out that in reality those slippers are lined with real rabbit fur.

So, either Wal-Mart is claiming to be the inventor and subsequent mass-producer of the bunny, or Wal-Mart’s packaging is inaccurate. I say it’s a coin-flip, but either way the mass retailer and uber rabbit farmer has pulled all of its Tender Tootsie slippers from store shelves in Canada after the Animal Defence League of Canada discovered the products were incorrectly labelled and contained real fur.

Marley Daviduk, a spokeswoman for the Vancouver branch of the national organization, found the slippers while shopping last week and the Ottawa and Vancouver branches of the Animal Defence League immediately contacted both Wal-Mart Canada and the product’s London, Ont.-based importer. “I knew right away it was real rabbit fur, but it said on the tag that there were no man-made materials,” she said.

The slippers, manufactured in China, apparently slipped past Wal-Mart’s quality control despite the fact that the company states it has a strict no-fur policy. Maybe next we should start checking the fur coats, to see if, ohhh, perhaps a real mink got slipped in there every so often?

Wal-Mart pulls slippers after animal-rights group complains [CanWest News Service]

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One and a half years after Kelly Stiles reported being chemically burned by a pair of flip flops purchased at Wal-Mart, a Texas man is making a similar complaint about a pair of work boots. 

According to KTRK-TV in Texas, Jay Kowolski suffered chemical burns while working in the Bhrama boots, an in-house Wal-Mart brand, after the shoes got wet in the rain. Kowolski’s wife investigated and found similar experiences had happened to at least two other people. In 2007, Wal-Mart eventually pulled the flip flops from its shelves after receiving multiple complaints about chemical burns from customers, though the retailer never responded directly to Stiles’ complaint. In this case, Kowolski’s wife has sent a letter to Bentonville explaining about the Brahma boots, but just like last time, the company hasn’t responded.

How long until Brahma boots go the way of the flip flops?

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On October 6, CBS19 in Charlottesville, Virginia, told us how a diabetic woman in Barboursville ended in the hospital after an insulin overdose.  Her insulin level was stabilized, but having lived safely with diabetes for 20 years, she wondered how she overdosed.  The culprit?  Several mislabeled “Reli-On” syringes, purchased from Wal-Mart, had made their way into her box of syringes.  They delivered a near-deadly overdose dose.  When she contacted Wal-Mart, they offered her a replacement box and according to CBS19, Wal-Mart and Reli-On (owned by Covidien Ltd.), both said: “ they were looking into the matter but have not recalled the item.”

Today, a full month later, Covidien finally announced a voluntary recall of over 450,000 mislabeled syringes that were sold exclusively at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores. The Food and Drug Administration said that the syringes have the potential to deliver 2.5 times the normal dosage, in a story from the Associated Press - an amount of insulin that can cause hypoglycemia or even death. The syringes effected were labeled: ReliOn 1cc, 31-gauge, 100 units for use with U-100 insulin.  The FDA said there was only one reported incident and that the syringes were sold from August 1 through October 8. 

According to Reuters, Wal-Mart, in a good-faith effort, actually sent out 16,500 letters of warning to consumers that likely resembled this one, that Reli-On posted on their website. Hopefully such action won’t be necessary in the future, if more oversight is used when buying medical supply and quicker recall action is taken when and if an accident occurs . 

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SANTA TO WORK LONGER HOURS WITHOUT OVERTIME THIS YEAR
Wal-Mart announced this week that it will start cutting toy prices almost three months before Christmas. To which Santa Claus replied, “Seriously?”

Wal-Mart starts the discounting early this year [BloggingStocks]

According to The Wall Street Journal, “Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. said it will cut prices on some of the most popular toys and speed up the opening of Christmas shops in its stores nationwide as it tries to lure budget-conscious shoppers and jump start its biggest selling season.”

Wal-Mart: Coal In The Retail Industry’s Stocking [24/7 Wall St.]

Wal-Mart’s action is a typical method for burying the competition. It can afford almost endless inventory build-ups for the busy shopping season. It can pull in the very modest amount that the consumer has to spend and leave other retailers with scraps off the table.

In which Walmart explains why we’re all doomed. [Writing on the Wal]

Obviously, I’m a masochist. I actually read Walmart’s press release on its early rollback of toy prices. While the Play-Doh Ice Cream Shop would be tempting if it weren’t Walmart we’re talking about here, I was much more struck by the survey results at the bottom of the document. Most notably:

Sixty-one percent of Americans do not plan on making cut-backs on how much they spend this Christmas season.

*Those who do plan on making cut-backs, plan on cutting back $50 or less.

Don’t you think that result seems just a tad self-interested? Why is that stat there if not to convince people to spend more whether they can afford to or not? I suspect Walmart has declared Christmas early because they’re afraid nobody will have any money left in December.

After the jump, Wal-Mart shuts down DRM music downloads, managers make up their own rules and 210,000 toasters get recalled.

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Like an old dog that can’t learn new tricks, Wal-Mart still hasn’t learned how to remove recalled products off its shelves.  And according to from the Straits Times, this sort of negligence can be deadly.

On September 12, we noted that Wal-Mart stores in Shanghai had not removed milk powder from their shelves, despite ongoing recalls around the rest of China.  According to an article from Ifeng, milk sales were continuing “as usual”.  Now, the media is reporting that “up to five per cent of infants in Shanghai could have kidney stones after drinking tainted milk formula” and that a Wal-Mart store in Macao is still selling Chinese milk.

How many children must die before Wal-Mart learns how to effectively recall products? From melamine tainted infant formula to bassinets with strangulation hazards and to lead tainted bibs and toys, Wal-Mart has continually dragged its feet on recalling dangerous products, particularly for children and babies - making clear that the retailer’s profit motives come before the safety of their customers.

Please, Wal-Mart, before we read the headline next week “Macao Mother Looses Child Due to Melamine Tainted Milk from Wal-Mart” take action and remove these products from your shelves in a systematic, responsible way.

5% of Shanghai kids ill [Straits Times]

UP TO five per cent of infants in Shanghai could have kidney stones after drinking tainted milk formula, media reported on Friday, as publicity surrounding the scandal was muted by China’s manned space launch.

Beijing is battling public alarm and international dismay after thousands of Chinese children were hospitalised, sick from infant milk formula tainted with melamine, a cheap industrial chemical that can be used to cheat quality checks.

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Several stories are out today warning consumers about dangerous dog food and soccer goals that are available at Wal-Mart and other retailers. 

But the biggest story here is the ‘voluntary recall’ of 600,000 more ‘Simplicity’ bassinets available at Wal-Mart and other retailers, in a story from Wall Street Journal.  This, barely three weeks after the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a recall of 900,000 similar bassinets that Wal-Mart took its sweet time removing from their website.

The CPSC, in cooperation with the retailers affected by this week’s recall - including Wal-Mart - issued this statement.  I wonder why then, Wal-Mart appears to still be selling several of the models (Camille and Providence) listed as dangerous by the CPSC (and Wal-Mart themselves!) on its website?

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According to a recent article in Bloomberg, a series of babies have fallen ill with kidney stones across seven provinces in China - one has died.  It is suspected that melamine contaminated powdered milk manufactured by Sanlu Group is responsible.  The Chinese ministry of health stated that Sanlu has recalled the milk powder while the investigation proceeds. 

Bloomberg also notes that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is said to be pulling Sanlu milk powder off its shelves, citing Wal-Mart China spokesman Dong Yuguo.  However, in a report from Ifeng Finance (China), Wal-Mart stores in Shanghai are still selling powdered milk “as usual”. 

Exacerbating this horrific situation, “contaminated baby formula may also have reached the U.S., according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which warned consumers that illegally imported Chinese milk powder may contain melamine.”
China Says Sanlu Milk Likely Contaminated by Melamine [Bloomberg]

China’s health ministry said milk powder produced by Sanlu Group Co., 43 percent owned by Fonterra Cooperative Group Ltd., may have been tainted with the chemical melamine and could be linked to kidney stones in infants.

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We’ll be extremely busy this weekend relaxing and celebrating the valiant efforts of American workers, so in the meantime - a brief round up of the week’s Wal-Mart blogs.

DEADLY BASSINETS SOLD AT WAL-MART

Wal-Mart Still Selling Dangerous Cribs [WakeUpWal-Mart.com Blog]

Wal-Mart has long been plagued with recalls of dangerous products, and it has often been implicated in taking too little action about such products. Now it seems Wal-Mart is still selling a dangerous crib that is responsible for two deaths.

CPSC uses new authority against defiant manufacturer of dangerous bassinets after another tragic death [U.S. PIRG blog]

Here is the story yesterday at Consumeraffairs.com. I hope Wal-Mart (mentioned in this story) and other retailers have stopped selling these products, since being notified of the imminent hazard warning. And I assure readers, if SFCA’s defense somehow prevails in court, that the Congress will be quick with a technical correction to the new law.

After the jump, Wal-Mart’s local food, more on the company’s mandatory meetings and the new Marketside stores.

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Wal-Mart-owned Asda has added its latest entry into the company’s history of bizarre stories.  The grocer was recently forced by outraged consumers to recall pet toys made with real animal fur at 275 of its stores.  One of the toys was confirmed to have been made with rabbit’s fur, which infuriated animal rights protests, arguing that fur is acquired barbaric conditions.  The activists suspect that many of the toys could be made with dog or cat fur, since Asda asks few questions of its Chinese suppliers.  (Read: your cat could be chewing on its cousin’s skin.) They have also called on the government to mandate labeling so that consumers can be aware which fur is real and which is synthetic.  Asda’s manufacturer has called it a ‘slip-up,’ but this most recent business blunder surely leaves writers thinking “you can’t write stories this good.”

Read the full story below:

Outrage as supermarket giant sells real fur toy [Sunday Herald (U.K.)]

OUTRAGED CONSUMERS have forced supermarket giant Asda to remove pet toys made out of real fur from 275 of its stores. The consumer campaign has exposed how many items, which customers are buying on the high street in the belief that they are made from fake fur, are actually made from real fur.

Animal rights protesters noticed the Swipe’n’Sway toy, a cuddly mouse for cats to play with, in an Asda store in the Wirral near Liverpool and sent it for testing. It was found to be made from rabbit fur. Animal groups are warning that there is a chance that toys from other stores could be made from cat or dog fur because Chinese suppliers are not honest about what they are selling.

The toy found its way on to shelves after a slip-up by manufacturer, Hartz.

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The U.S. House of Representatives passed a consumer product safety bill yesterday, culminating months of debate over the mandate, purpose, and enforcement techniques of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It shored up a lot of the product safety concerns expressed by many consumer rights advocates, who had been calling for increased regulation and more stringent testing in the wake of 2007, labeled by some as the “year of the recall.”

Foremost amongst the provisions outlined in the bill is a partial ban on plastic-softening chemical called phthalates. Additionally, the bill calls for an essential elimination of lead from toys and children’s products. In today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, E.R. Anderson, a spokesman for Wal-Mart said the bill sets forth “clarity and consistency” for the retail giant. Wal-Mart earlier emphasized that “we are very pleased that this bill acknowledges that 50 separate state standards is unworkable and inefficient.”

Behind the veneer of Wal-Mart’s praise for stricter toy regulations, however, lies a tempered joy over what the bill does not decree: mandatory governmental testing of children’s products. Instead, the bill settles for a patchwork of third-party and independent testing, as reported by ConsumerAffairs.com:

Consumer Safety Bill Clears Key Hurdle [ConsumerAffairs.com]

Require mandatory third party safety certification of products made for children 12 and under. Upon CPSC accreditation, firewalled labs could be allowed to test products if they provide equal or greater consumer protection than available third party labs. Authorizes CPSC personnel to enter and inspect any firewalled lab certified under the Consumer Product Safety Act and withdraw accreditation if necessary. 

The little product testing that Wal-Mart conducts is untrustworthy at best and perhaps even deliberately misleading. Without proper regulation, Wal-Mart’s incentive to test its products has always been mired in vested interest, leading to lower standards. Wal-Mart has exemplified this strategy through its cozy relationship with Consumer Testing Laboratories (CTL), a private, for-profit company based in Bentonville that derives 85% of its revenue from Wal-Mart. As reported in the Wall Street Journal in March, the partnership has enabled an overt lack of transparency. Even more egregious, however, was the lack of credentials held by CTL. Without proper accreditation, CTL had little wherewithal to properly test Wal-Mart products. A wave of recalls has been the result.

Wal-Mart should follow in the spirit of a bill that prioritizes the safety concerns of consumers by bringing greater transparency and stricter inspections to its own product line.

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SHAREHOLDERS MEETING: MORE SHOW, LESS SUBSTANCE
Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban are going to be performing in Bentonville next week! And some band we’ve never heard of called Lifehouse (and Taylor Swift)! WE’RE SO EXCITED ABOUT THE ENTERTAINMENT WE CAN’T EVEN REMEMBER WHY THE MEETING IS HAPPENING IN THE FIRST PLACE oh wait, yes we do.

Wal-Mart to Shareholders: Just Say No [The Iconoclasts]

Lay up groceries and rent some DVDs before the Wal-Mart shareholders descend on Fayetteville and occupy the city next week. The big annual meeting is scheduled for June 6 at the University of Arkansas, the corporate giant’s wholly-owned subsidiary. They are coming to be entertained and to vote against any shareholder proposals to reform policy or hold management responsible for their actions.

Wal-Mart’s habit of entertaining visitors rather than conducting actual business has everyone raising eyebrows:

Wal-Mart’s green efforts becoming a smokescreen? [BloggingStocks]

Next week’s annual shareholder’s meeting in Fayetteville should once again be more spectacle that business.Last year, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) seemed to spend more money lining up speakers, having pieces of its global operations dance with flags and having a pep rally rather that digging into issues.This year, expect the same—as the retailer has already opposed all the shareholder proposals anyway, so it should be a nice, big party full of entertainment. Nothing else.

Wal-Mart’s emphasis on entertainment have activists decrying the retailer’s lack of commitment to the social issues on this year’s proxy. Pam’s House Blend states,

Call me less than flabbergasted, but Wal-Mart is opposed to a shareholder proposition to add gender identity and expression to their non-discrimination policy...this is the second major corporation we’ve tracked at Pam’s House Blend that has used their DiversityInc rating (Wal-Mart was no. 41 of top 50 company’s for diversity in 2007; Verizon was no 1 on the same list for 2008) as to why the corporation doesn’t feel a need to specifically add gender identity and expression language into their non-discrimination policies.

After the jump, Menu Foods settles with pet owners over melamine-tainted food, Wal-Mart’s environmental policy, classified ads and look out! There’s scorpions in the watermelons!

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WAL-MART’S MULTIMILLION DOLLAR CAMPAIGN ON SAVING MONEY
Wal-Mart launched a new website this week devoted to how shoppers can save money. The surprising upshot: shop at Wal-Mart!

Financial Advice From Wal-Mart? No Thanks. [Debt Kid]

Looks like Wal-Mart launched a new personal finance blog called “Make Your Dollar Stretch” hmmm, I think I’ll stick to the good finance blogs I know.

Writing on the Wal rightfully notes that you can’t save money and spend money at the same time. Consumers are learning the hard way that the best way to save money is to just shop less.

More on Stretching Those Dollars… [Writing on the Wal]

This is not about teaching consumers how to consume (and spend) less. It’s about convincing them to spend what dollars they at Wal-Mart.

Helping you stretch your dollars with a new website [BloggingStocks]

Wal-Mart is looking as this as a promotional offshoot of http://www.walmart.com, but it has to reach further. There must be millions of shoppers who visit Wal-Mart several times per week but who rarely visit Wal-Mart’s website. These are the customers Wal-Mart needs to reach with a decent frequency if it really wants to get the concept of “Save Money. Live Better” to the majority of its customers

Maybe the best financial decision consumers can make, however, is to not invest in Wal-Mart’s mutual funds.

Wal-Mart sued over excessive mutual fund expenses [BloggingStocks]

If you’re wondering about how you should invest your own money, here’s a hint: the lawyers for the plaintiff compared Wal-Mart’s high-cost managed funds to the ultra-low cost funds offered by Vanguard. For example, the actively managed retail fund available to Wal-Mart investors has an expense ratio 1.59% vs. 0.55% for a comparable fund. Over time and many billions of dollars, that adds up: The suit is seeking to recoup at least $60 million in allegedly excessive fees.

After the jump, Menu Foods settles over pet food recalls, Wal-Mart Canada gets a new PR firm and Wal-Mart’s lobbying expenditures raise some eyebrows.

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More news from Wal-Mart’s Department of Ironic Double Standards: mere hours after promising to raise toy quality standards, Wal-Mart got slammed today by the Baltimore Health Commissioner for selling kids’ jewelry with 117 times the legal limit of lead in it. Because as long as Wal-Mart can put out press releases with appealing promises, it doesn’t actually matter what the company is doing.

Before Wal-Mart tries to raise the quality standards for its toys, it needs to meet its current standards first. More testing, more oversight, fewer corners cut in overseas factories and fewer press releases.

Children’s jewelry with high lead levels found in city stores [Baltimore Sun]

Two city businesses have received citations for selling children’s jewelry with excessively high levels of lead, Baltimore health officials announced today.

The Wal-Mart at 2701 Port Covington Drive was cited for selling stud earrings with blue hearts produced by Girl Connection, which were found to have 70,400 parts per million of lead. The Murray’s at 2317 E. Northern Parkway was cited for two vending machine necklaces that had lead levels of 2,940 parts per million and 3,740 parts per million, according to the Baltimore City Health Department.

The products were identified as part of 17 items of children’s jewelry tested last month by the health department. City regulations adopted in September limit children’s jewelry to no more than 600 parts per million of total lead content.

As a result of the citation, Wal-Mart management has stopped selling Girl Connection merchandise at stores across the nation, according to city Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein.

City officials say they have banned the items from being sold in Baltimore and also alerted the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

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It’s already been almost a year since Kelly Stiles got chemically burned from a pair of $3 flip flops she bought at Wal-Mart, and the company STILL hasn’t responded. Kelly wasn’t the only one who got burned, either. After going public with her complaints, Kelly got dozens of responses from other people with identical burns. Despite the obvious problem, Wal-Mart has never responded to Kelly’s complaints. The company never recalled the flips flops, and never addressed the underlying issue of poor manufacturing.

1 Year Later: Feet Scarred From “Chemical Flip Flops,” Walmart Still Not Talking [Consumerist]

It’s been about a year since Kelly Stiles’ feet were (somehow) injured by a $3 pair of Walmart flip flops. In that time, Kelly says her feet haven’t fully healed and she still can’t wear sandals or flip flops. She says she still has pain where she was injured.

Walmart is saying nothing at all, although Stiles says that of the 200-350 people who contacted her after she posted photos of her “burns” on the internet, a few have “settled with Walmart for undisclosed amounts.” The retailer has pulled the flip flops in question from store shelves, but they do still sell shoes from “chemical flip flop” manufacturer.

Kelly told WCSC, “So far I have been contacted by no less than 200 hundred and I think no more than 350 people who have said you know I had the same thing happen.”

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This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

Wal-Mart has often found itself on the wrong end of a gun.

The company sells more firearms than any retailer on the planet, but this week Wal-Mart took aim at its own lax guns sales policies---and hit the target with some powerful potential political allies.

Wal-Mart told the media that it has joined New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, in an initiative called The Responsible Firearms Retailer Partnership. Wal-Mart pledged to implement new gun sale rules at less than one-third of its American stores. The retailer said it will create a new record and taping system for guns that are subsequently used to commit a crime. If the gun purchaser returns to Wal-Mart to buy another firearm, the system would warn the clerk not to make the sale. The system would also allow the police to view the tapes as part of a crime investigation. Wal-Mart said it would also institute tougher background checks for its “associates” who work in the firearms department. Wal-Mart admitted that the new policies would cost the company money. “The costs are, we think, part of what it takes to be responsible. Everything is not pain-free,” the company’s spokesman told the Associated Press.

Wal-Mart has had its own troubled history with guns. For example, in January of 2005, an investigation by the California Attorney General’s office revealed that Wal-Mart allegedly violated the state’s gun laws 2,891 times over a three year period. Wal-Mart illegally sold a gun to someone in California 2.6 times everyday from 2000 to 2003. The violations included selling to 23 people prohibited from owning guns, selling guns before waiting for a criminal background check, failing to identify the buyer’s identity, and allowing people to make “straw purchases” on behalf of another person prohibited from owning guns.

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Growing concern about the safety of toys sold in the U.S. has lawmakers, retailers and parents wondering how to address the problem. While big retailers like Wal-Mart undoubtedly play a huge role in the problem, other players are stepping up to try to address the issue. Washington state has just passed a bill setting strict restrictions for lead content in children’s products. Washington lawmakers have the best intentions for kids in mind, and major toy retailers have predictably balked at the prospective regulations. Though Washington’s bill is a great step forward, toys are already exceeding existing lead standards, indicating the problem is not so much with the laws but with compliance. How does Washington intend to enforce these standards? Will the state increase funding for toy testing and inspection?

States Alter Rules of Game On Safety for Toy Makers [Wall Street Journal]

In a move that has alarmed the toy industry, lawmakers in the state of Washington have overwhelmingly passed a bill that would set the toughest restrictions in the nation on the lead content of children’s products.

The bill would reduce the allowable level of lead in toys and other goods to 90 parts per million—and possibly as low as 40 parts per million, the recommended limit of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and far below the current federal standard of 600 parts per million. It would also set tough limits on cadmium, a metal used in paints and plastics, and on plastic-softening chemicals called phthalates that have been linked to childhood developmental problems, in some studies.

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THE BRAIN DAMAGE JOKES JUST WRITE THEMSELVES
The Center for Environmental Health released findings this week that several Hannah Montana products - manufactured in China and sold at Wal-Mart - contain high levels of lead. While it seems all too easy to link the Hannah Montana phenomenon and brain damage, the truth is that it’s not just HM products that pose a risk to young’uns. This is only the latest in a long line of product warnings about merchandise made in China and sold at Wal-Mart. A pattern, perhaps?

Hannah Montana’s Killing Spree: It’s Not Over Yet [Idolator]

Not content with potentially maiming fans who would dare to buy boots branded with her name, Miley Ray Cyrus/Hannah Montana is continuing her reign of merchandise terror, this time through the use of toxic levels of lead paint in somewhat-innocent-looking vinyl purses.

Do Not Chew Your Hannah Montana Toys [Glitterati]

Miley Cyrus may be a good influence on her young fans, but Miley-branded products - manufactured in China for Disney and sold at Wal*Mart - are loaded with lead, according to CNN and the Center For Environmental Health. Oops.

Don’t Lick Miley Cyrus! [E! Online]

Chinese-made Hannah Montana products - like her backpack and purses - have been found to contain up to 14 times the federal standard for lead in paint, the Center for Environmental Health says.

After the jump, we can’t get enough of the celebrity gossip!, Dell moves in to China and Wal-Mart gets taken to task for selling Guitar Hero.

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