Thanksgiving shopping on the rise, but retailers see a Black Friday drop
Thanksgiving Day is eating into Black Friday shopping.
Shoppers spent $9.74 billion at stores in the U.S. on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that’s typically the busiest shopping day of the year. That’s a 13.2 percent drop from a year ago, according to data released Saturday afternoon by retail research firm ShopperTrak. However, combined spending over Thanksgiving and Black Friday rose 2.3 percent.
A few retailers opened stores on Thanksgiving for the last few years. This year, at least a dozen major retailers did so, with some opening earlier in the day. That led some analysts to question whether the Thanksgiving openings would take away sales on Black Friday.
Online sales on Thanksgiving Day also rose, climbing 19.7 percent compared with a year ago, according to IBM Benchmark data.
Egypt begins voting on draft constitution, moving to democracy
CAIRO — The panel amending Egypt’s suspended constitution began voting Saturday on some 250 changes, the first step toward democratic rule following the July military coup that ousted the country’s president.
The constitution before the 50-member committee makes drastic changes in ensuring civil liberties, fighting discrimination, criminalizing torture, protecting religious freedoms and giving lawmakers power to remove the president. Yet the draft also allows Egypt’s powerful military to choose its own chief and try civilians in military tribunals.
The constitutional changes come amid a heavy handed crackdown on dissent that’s left the country largely divided between supporters and opponents of the military that toppled Mohammed Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president.
“This is the path of rescue from the current condition,” said Amr Moussa, the elder Egyptian statesman leading the constitutional panel. “It is the transition from disturbances to stability and from economic stagnation to development.”
The military suspended the Islamist-drafted, voter-approved 2012 constitution in the July 3 coup that ousted Morsi. The constitutional panel, dominated by secularists, has been working on changes as part of a military-backed timeline that calls for voters to approve it. It plans for parliamentary and presidential elections to be held early next year.
Detained elderly tourist apologizes for war crimes, N. Korea says
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea state media claimed Saturday that an elderly U.S. tourist detained for more than a month has apologized for alleged crimes during the Korean War and for “hostile acts” against the state during a recent trip.
North Korean authorities released video showing 85-year-old Merrill Newman, wearing glasses, a blue button-down shirt and tan trousers, reading his alleged apology, which was dated Nov. 9 and couldn’t be independently confirmed.
Pyongyang has been accused of previously coercing statements from detainees. There was no way to reach Newman and determine the circumstances of the alleged confession. But it was riddled with stilted English and grammatical errors, such as “I want not punish me.”
“I have been guilty of a long list of indelible crimes against DPRK government and Korean people,” Newman purportedly wrote in a four-page statement, adding: “Please forgive me.”
The statement, carried in the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, said the war veteran allegedly attempted to meet with any surviving soldiers he had trained during the Korean War to fight North Korea, and that he admitted to killing civilians and brought an e-book criticizing North Korea. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.
By wire sources