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Black Friday
Police in California evacuated a shopping mall Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, after a shooting left two people with gunshot wounds. The shooting was an isolated incident, the San Jose Police Department said on the social platform X. Officers evacuated and cleared Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara to confirm there was no threat to public safety. The wounded were taken to a hospital, police said. San Jose and Santa Clara are neighbouring cities about 80 kilometres south of San Francisco. The day after Thanksgiving, known in the retail industry as Black Friday, marks the official start of the holiday shopping season in the US and is the biggest shopping day of the year.
Black Friday may no longer be the retail bacchanalia of years past, when the promise of one-time bargains caused people to leave Thanksgiving tables for malls where some customers got into fistfights over toys or TVs. But the event still has enough enthusiasts to make it the biggest shopping day in the US. For that reason, the day retains its crown as the official start of the holiday shopping season. This year's kickoff comes as companies navigate an uncertain economic environment and wrestle with the volatility of President Donald Trump's wide-ranging tariffs on imported goods. Many have absorbed some of the costs and pulled back on hiring instead of raising prices for customers. Consumer confidence in the US economy fell this month to the lowest since April when Trump announced his tariffs in the aftermath of the government shutdown, weak hiring and stubborn inflation, according to a report The Conference Board issued Tuesday. Shoppers nonetheless have remained resilient and ..
It's show time. After weeks of pushing early deals, retailers in the United States and some other countries are promising bigger discounts on Black Friday, the sales event that still reigns as the unofficial kickoff of the holiday shopping season even if it's lost some luster. Department stores, shopping malls and merchants big and small see the day after Thanksgiving as a way to energise shoppers and to get them into physical stores at a time when many gift-seekers do the bulk of their browsing and buying online. Enough traditionalists must still be around, because Black Friday remains the biggest day of the year for retail foot traffic in the US, according to retail technology company Sensormatic Solutions. Black Friday is still an incredibly important day for retailers, Grant Gustafson, head of retail consulting and analytics at Sensormatic, said. It's important for them to be able to get shoppers into their store to show them that experience of what it's like to browse and to