Walmart shopper pepper-sprays competitors

A shopper in Los Angeles pepper-sprayed her competition for an Xbox, and scuffles broke out elsewhere around the United States, as bargain-hunters crowded malls and megastores in an earlier-than-usual start to the madness known as Black Friday, the day that marks the start of the holiday shopping.

For the first time, chains such as Target, Best Buy and Kohl's opened their doors at midnight on the most anticipated shopping day of the year. Toys R Us opened for the second straight year on Thanksgiving itself, the harvest holiday. And some shoppers arrived with sharp elbows.

On Thanksgiving night, a Walmart store in Los Angeles brought out a crate of discounted Xboxes, and as a crowd waited for the video game players to be unwrapped, a woman fired pepper spray at the other shoppers "in order to get an advantage," police said.

Ten people suffered cuts and bruises in the chaos, and 10 others had minor injuries from the spray, authorities said. The woman got away in the confusion and it was not immediately clear whether she got an Xbox.

Protests were held Friday in places such as Chicago and Washington to get people to reconsider shopping at national chains on Black Friday, so called because of the accounting practice of recording losses in red and profits in blacky. Friday morning, police said, two women were injured and a man was charged after a fight broke out at a Walmart store in Rome, N.Y. And a man was arrested in a scuffle at a jewelry counter at a Walmart in Kissimmee, Fla.

Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest retailer, has taken steps in recent years to control its Black Friday crowds following the 2008 death of one of its workers in a stampede of shoppers in Valley Stream. This year, it staggered its door-buster deals instead of offering them all at once.Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter said Black Friday was safe at most of its nearly 4,000 U.S. stores, but there were "a few unfortunate incidents."