Report: LA Wal-Mart lobbyist posed as reporter

Michelle Obama visited a Wal-Mart in February to extol the fresh, healthy food in the company’s grocery aisles. But Wal-Mart, Obama’s corporate partner in a campaign to make food healthier and more affordable, has been running into problems with food that is not so fresh.

By Dan Rayburn: Tuesday at 1pm ET, Walmart (WMT) along with UltraViolet partners Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures and Fox will announce Walmart's UltraViolet offering. Studio execs I have spoken with say that consumers will be able to bring their DVDs into Walmart, which will then charge the consumer between $2-$4 per DVD to give the consumer access to that movie in the UltraViolet cloud locker system.

LOS ANGELES — Michael Hastings, the war correspondent whose unflinching reporting from Afghanistan led to the resignation of a top U.S. army general, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, according to his employer and family. Hastings, who was 33, was described by many of his colleagues as an unfailingly bright and hard-charging reporter who wrote stories that mattered. Most recently, he wrote about politics for the news website BuzzFeed, where the top editor said colleagues were devastated by the loss.

Yesterday, we featured an important article by Noam Scheiber on how Obama insiders cash out on their connections once they leave the fold. Today, in the Wall Street Journal, we read of the Congressional version in terms of how a tip by a lobbyist (and former Congressional aide) connected to an investment research firm led to a Congressional decision being leaked to investors before it was announced officially.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. had the worst sales start to a month in seven years as payroll-tax increases hit shoppers already battling a slow economy, according to internal e-mails obtained by Bloomberg News. “In case you haven’t seen a sales report these days, February MTD sales are a total disaster,” Jerry Murray, Wal- Mart’s vice president of finance and logistics, said in a Feb. 12 e-mail to other executives, referring to month-to-date sales. “The worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company.”

ByAlex Cho:Wal-Mart (WMT) is a global retail chain, the stock is extremely undervalued going into 2013. Investors should anticipate a rapid recovery in valuation based on growth, cost control, and improving investor sentiment. Qualitative Analysis

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer, said it’s investigating how it got a license for a store in Mexico as the New York Times reported its local unit bribed an official to change a zoning map.