BENTONVILLE,
Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is building its own gas stations, reported the Dallas Morning News. Since the mid-1990s, the world’s largest retailer has been partnering with other companies, primarily Murphy Oil Corp., to operate gas pumps in more than 800 store parking lots under lease agreements.

But now it is opening stations under the Wal-Mart brand at its stores, said spokesperson Sharon Weber told the newspaper. It has already built four at Sam’s Clubs in Virginia and at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Pineville, Mo., 20 miles north of its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters.

PURCHASE, N.Y. -- MasterCard International has issued a global operations bulletin to its customers reinforcing the need to comply with rules governing the Internet sale and shipment of tobacco.

The bulletin cautioned that online cigarette transactions in the United States have a heightened risk of involving illegal activity. The U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives and state attorneys general have warned that such transactions nearly always run afoul of one or more of the following federal and local provisions: wire and mail fraud, contraband trafficking, counterfeiting, money laundering, tariff, smuggling or state tobacco laws.