News sources indicate that a 34-year old WalMart employee was trampled to death as he tried to hold back the crowds at a Long Island store at 5 am on Black Friday. The crowd took the doors off their hinges and stormed the store, crushing the employee in the process.

WalMart has received justifiable flack for not having a line system in place, nor any security. The crowds were able to surge through the doors and crush the employee all too easily. More on this as it develops:

Walmart and Kmart are enticing consumers to get a jump on their holiday shopping by holding a series of "Black Friday-style" sales well before the Friday after Thanksgiving. The price cuts go into effect tomorrow, Saturday, November 8th. Walmart is offering up a 15.4-inch Compaq CQ-139WM laptop with 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive for only $298. They are also selling a PlayStation 2 bundled with a $30 Walmart gift card for $129 and a PlayStation 3 bundled with a $100 gift card for $399.

Over at Kmart, they are offering up a 32-inch Sylvania LCD HDTV for $439.99 and starting on Sunday, Wii Fit will be available for just $89.99, balance board included. Get shopping!

The BlackBerry Bold is now free at Walmart if you are willing to sign a two year contract with AT&T. This comes after a rebate, of course. Head on over to Walmart for the deal and make sure you fill out those rebate forms afterwards.

Walmart is lowering some of the prices on its MP3 music store. Currently, most of the tracks cost 94 cents, but soon the "Top 25" songs will begin to be sold for 74 cents. Maybe this is an attempt to be more competitive for the upcoming holiday season.

Other changes to the store is that the store finally works with firefox instead of just IE7. Unfortunately, I’m still stuck using the incredibly and increasingly bloated Apple iTunes. Maybe now I can kick the hideous iTunes habit and still save a pretty penny or two. I’m in!

A new twist on shoplifting as a guy, who thought he was so smart, switched price tags on a 42-inch plasma TV and went through WalMart’s self checkout line, hoping the $4.88 price ticket would work.

Oooops, store officers approached the man and demanded a receipt. He ended up wearing handcuffs and was on his way to the Ouachita Correctional Center.