Black Friday 2012 Retail Foot Traffic Rises 3.5%, Retail Sales Fall 1.8%: ShopperTrak

Black Friday was a good-news, bad-news kind of day for U.S. brick-and-mortar retailers, based on estimates released by researcher ShopperTrak Saturday. The good news was that Black Friday retail foot traffic rose 3.5 percent, to more than 307.67 million store visits, between last year and this year. (The comparable figure in 2011 was an increase of 4.7 percent.) The bad news was that Black Friday retail sales fell 1.8 percent, to about $11.2 billion, from last year to this year. (The comparable figure in 2011 was an increase of 6.6 percent.) Nonetheless, there are sound reasons for retailers of both the offline and the online varieties to be feeling pretty chipper about this holiday shopping season. One reason appears on the calendar: Last year, Thanksgiving Day was Nov. 24, and this year, it was Nov. 22, which means the holiday shopping season will be a whole two days longer in 2012, when it will be 32 days, than it was in 2011, when it was 30 days. Bill Martin, the founder of Chicago-based ShopperTrak, covered another reason in his company's data release. “Black Friday continues to be an important day in retail,” Martin noted. “This year, though, more retailers than last year began their ‘doorbuster’ deals on Thursday, Thanksgiving itself. So while foot traffic did increase on Friday, those Thursday deals attracted some of the spending that’s usually meant for Friday.”The fact Black Friday shopping is continuing to expand into Thanksgiving Day means it "will impact the way we look at all of the ‘Black’ weekend results, since more shopping hours allows for more shopping visits and a smoothing of sales across all of the days,” Martin pointed out. Comparing Black Friday retail foot traffic by region from last year to this year, ShopperTrak found it was up 12.9 percent in the Midwest, up 8.7 percent in the South, up 7.6 percent in the Northeast, and down 11.3 percent in the West.

Restore The Shore!

I'am sure we have all heard about hurrican Sandy.  New Jersey residents battered by Hurricane Sandy find help from neighbors, government, and local non-profit groups such as a new non-profit start up "Restore The Shore." Frustration, anger, devastation and loss still grips many in the Northeastern part of the United States, as victims of Hurricane Sandy try to pick up the pieces of their lives, after returning home to find their world shattered from the storm. Dubbed a "Superstorm," Sandy barreled her way through the Northeast Coast late in October, causing an estimated $50 billion in damage, and claimed at least 120 lives during its rampage from the warm waters of the Caribbean, to the snow topped mountains of West Virginia. Sandy threw one hell of a punch at the East Coast, however the people of The Garden State refuse to stay down. There is no doubt the road back will be a long, hard and costly for many in the hardest hit communities, however, with help from neighbors, government and charitable organizations, there is no doubt that the Jersey Shore will bounce back better than ever. Both the Jersey Shore and New York City were brutally devastated when Hurricane Sandy hit back in late October.  Many have lost their homes while others still remain without power. Last night MTV personalities came together for the “Restore the Shore” telethon to help raise funds for those in need. The cast of “Jersey Shore” as well as many other MTV personality guests gathered in MTV’s Times Square studio to collect donations that are to go towards helping restore the Seaside Heights boardwalk as well as help local businesses and residents in the area.

Egyptian Train Hits School Bus, Killing 50 Kindergartens

As i was flipping through the newspaper I came across this article and it really just made me feel very sad. A speeding train crashed into a bus carrying children to their kindergarten on Saturday. Fifty children and the driver were killed. Distraught families searched for signs of their loved ones along the tracks and angry villagers berated officials in the aftermath of the latest disaster to hit the country's railway system. The bus was carrying about 60 children ages four to six when it was hit near al-Mandara village in Manfaloot district in the province of Assiut, a security official said. He said it appeared that the railroad crossing was not closed as the train sped toward it. Egypt's railway system has a poor safety record, mostly blamed on decades of badly maintained equipment and poor management. Books, school bags and children's socks were strewn along the tracks near the blood-stained, mangled bus. Parents of the missing wailed as they looked for signs of their children. An Associated Press reporter at the scene said many of the remains were unrecognizable. A woman who called herself Um Ibrahim, a mother of three, was pulling her hair in distress. "My children! I didn't feed you before you left," she wailed. One witness said the train pushed the bus along the tracks for nearly a kilometre. As one man picked up a body part he screamed: "Only God can help!" Two hospital officials said between seven and 11 wounded were being treated in two different facilities, many with severed limbs. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

President Obama's Victory Speech

great debate