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Wal-Mart on Thursday reported that its annual profits failed to grow. And failed by a lot.

Full-year net income tumbled to $16 billion, down by nearly $1 billion from the previous year.

That tells you a great deal about how hard the economy has been on the lower-income shoppers who make up Wal-Mart's core customer base, according to Charles Fishman, author of The Wal-Mart Effect.

"This clearly reflects the economic constraints on people who shop at Wal-Mart" Fishman said.

The holiday season was especially disappointing. For the three-month period that ended Jan. 31, U.S. same-store sales fell 0.4 percent. Wal-Mart had been predicting flat sales — not a decline. Overall, net profit for the final quarter fell to $4.43 billion, down from $5.61 billion in the same period a year ago.

Wal-Mart same-store sales continued to slide during the first half February, amid harsh winter weather.

The company says its customers are being hurt by cuts in government benefits, higher taxes, tighter credit and rising health-care costs.

The disappointing sales may help explain why Wal-Mart is not fighting Democrats' push to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 by 2016.

"We have not taken a position," Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar said in a phone interview. "We remain neutral."

Business

Demographic Shifts Contribute To The Changing Face Of Retail

There's another big breaking story from Ukraine, where earlier today an agreement was reached to hopefully end what in recent days had been a deadly series of clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces:

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who has been in jail since 2011 on what her supporters say were trumped-up charges aimed at silencing one of President Viktor Yanukovych critics, may soon be free again.

"Ukraine's parliament on Friday voted for amendments in the criminal code which could pave the way" for her release, Reuters writes.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "in a snap vote in parliament Friday to decriminalize the article of the criminal code that she was jailed under, 310 lawmakers voted in favor in the 450-seat chamber."

If Yanukovych refuses to sign the law, "the vote count Friday indicates there is enough support to override a veto, which requires 300 votes," the Journal says. "A court would then order her release once the law is printed in the official government newspaper."

As we've reported before, in 2011 the now-53-year-old Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison. A judge ruled she had overstepped her powers as prime minister in 2009 when she approved a gas deal with Russia.

The year before her conviction, Tymoshenko had narrowly lost a bid for the presidency in an election won by Yanukovych.

Time magazine reminds readers that Tymoshenko was a hero of Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution who "helped expose Yanukovych's fraudulent victory in the presidential elections that year. She was elected prime minister in 2007 and gained fame throughout the West."

"In December 2010," Time continues, "Ukraine's General Prosecutor's Office charged Tymoshenko with misusing state funds while serving as prime minister. She denied the allegations and argued she was being targeted for standing up to Yanukovych, saying 'The terror against the opposition continues.' After a trial that she called a 'political lynching,' Tymoshenko was convicted in October 2011 of abuse of power, banned from seeking office and sentenced to seven years in prison."

The Journal adds that "Tymoshenko is unlikely to make an immediate return to politics. She has for months requested treatment in Germany for a back complaint. Serhiy Vlasenko, a close ally and lawyer, said she can barely walk and will need at least a couple of months to recover."

Her image has been among those carried by protesters in Kiev in recent weeks as they pressed for Yanukovych to step aside.

China is stepping up war games in preparation for a possible conflict with Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, a tiny island chain in the East China Sea claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo, a senior U.S. Navy official says.

Captain James Fanell, deputy chief of staff intelligence and information operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, made the remark at a conference put on by the U.S. Naval Institute in San Diego last week.

Fanell said that after witnessing China's Mission Action 2013, a "massive amphibious and cross military" exercise that included ground and naval forces of the People's Liberation Army, U.S. analysts had concluded that "the PLA has been given the new task to be able to conduct a short sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea following with what can only be expected [as] a seizure of the Senkakus or even southern Ryukyu [islands]."

Beginning in the second half of last year, China's military training shifted toward what appears to preparation for "realistic maritime combat," he said.

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The crew of a United Parcel Service Airbus A300 freighter that crashed during an early morning landing at Birmingham, Ala. were forced to make a "non-precision approach" when a computerized landing system became overloaded, investigators told the NTSB on Thursday.

The plane crashed short of Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport in Birmingham, Ala., killing both the pilot and co-pilot.

The New York Times says:

"[Strong] parallels emerged to the crash of an Asiana passenger plane at San Francisco International Airport five weeks earlier: heavy pilot reliance on automation, possible failure to anticipate the limits of it, not enough experience landing without a full instrument system and failure to keep track of key parameters. In the Asiana crash, which killed three people and destroyed a Boeing 777, the issue was airspeed; in the Birmingham crash, of an Airbus A300, it was altitude. The safety board is also looking into fatigue in the Birmingham crash, which came shortly before 5 a.m. and killed both people on board."