This past Friday was a tough one for uncovering buried press releases.

While the economy is grim, Black Friday is still a biggie for retail and business journalists. There were indeed, many releases uploaded late on Friday touting things like increased traffic to online circular sites as shoppers prepped for battle.

But the battle was literal and the news grim as one Wal-Mart shopper was trampled to death, and two Toys R Us shoppers fatally shot each other.

Toys R Us uploaded a brief statement. Wal-Mart's statement was a bit more specific.

As I write this, the search 'Wal-Mart AND death' yields 2,500 news stories and 'Toys R Us AND shooting' yields 254. We can only hope people keep their cool next year, and retailers don't continue to market Black Friday as some kind of necessary, frenzied starting point of the holiday season.

Meanwhile, there are surprisingly few press releases up dealing with the attacks in Mumbai India. There was a statement from the Anti-Defamation League. Also, Wikipedia has a thorough round-up of the worldwide reactions. A Pakistani paper details the bumbling of the official statements by India. Also see "The Perils of Blaming Pakistan" in TIME for more information on the delicate situation.