These People Got Way Too Aggressive On Black Friday

If it's worth waking up for at 3 a.m., it's apparently also worth waking up for at 3 a.m. and then punching someone in the face. 

Welcome to Black Friday, the annual tradition where bargain-crazed shoppers gather at big box stores and reenact scenes from Lord of the Flies.

At a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, bystander Adolfo E. Arzaga captured a chaotic scene as a scrum of shoppers scuffled over discounted flat-screen TVs:

In Springfield, Virginia, a college student waiting in line at a Best Buy told Fox 5 that he was attacked by a woman who tried to save a spot at the front of the line by leaving a chair there, then returning hours later.

“She was angry, and I was telling her, ‘No, you’re not getting in the front of the line. I’ve been here since 12 [p.m.],'” the student, Ahmad Shukrey told the outlet. “And she proceeds to attack me with the chair, pushing into my friend, knocking me over and twisting my ankle.”'

Steven Boone, another man in line, told the station the woman "refused to calm down" and ended up getting arrested.

Lady cut Blk Fri line @BestBuy, assaults cust & police, gets arrested. Officer very professional. @fairfaxpolice pic.twitter.com/fag1pcPTU2

— Al Luna (@AlLunajr) November 26, 2015

Not to be outdone, shoppers at the Alexandria Mall in Alexandria, Louisiana, were treated to the sound of gunfire Thursday night after a fight in the mall parking lot escalated, reports the Town Talk. One person was injured.

Police said afterward that the "dispute [appeared] unrelated to shopping or mall operations."

Real estate search site Estately crunched the numbers last week and came up with the top 10 states most likely to see fights over Black Friday deals. Be careful out there, discount shoppers.

Map of which states are most likely to have #BlackFriday sale fights https://t.co/OmY6z9Z1Zu pic.twitter.com/YaQRk0SGrx

— Estately (@estately) November 23, 2015

Also on HuffPost:

The Case For A Meat Tax

A lot of the talk around fighting climate change is focused on big business and the auto industry. But what about meat? 

The livestock sector generates nearly 15 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2013 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. That footprint is roughly equivalent to the one created by cars, planes, trains and boats combined: Transportation produces around 14 percent of global emissions.

Though public awareness of the environmental effects of meat and dairy consumption is relatively lower, a new report suggests that people are willing to adopt financial incentives, like a meat tax, that would encourage them to shift their diets away from those items.

Researchers at Chatham House, a London-based policy institute, surveyed people across 12 countries and focus groups in Brazil, China, the United Kingdom and the United States, and found that many would welcome a food charge if it helped alleviate high emissions levels -- though concerns about costs and alternatives to meat remain.

The report cautions that consumer knowledge alone won't be enough to cut back on these emissions. The push will have to come from government policy and business coalitions, including retailers and producers in the food supply chain.

"You only see the impact on consumer behavior when you put additional incentives," said Antony Froggatt, a senior research fellow at the institute who co-authored the study. A meat tax, in addition to helping curb emissions, could also benefit people's health and generate tax revenue.

Less visibility might explain why people are more attuned to the environmental impact of their cars, for example, than their meals. Refilling a gas tank over a lifetime reinforces the connection between a driver and gas pollutants, while most people's initial reaction to emissions resulting from food is centered on packaging, not the consumption itself, Froggatt said.

Participants in focus groups reported limited access to meat alternatives, which also tend be more expensive. "There's concern about prices and the impact on poorer people," Froggatt said. Unless alternatives are easily available, something like a meat tax would be "detrimental," he added.

The researchers say that stores and schools could lead the way in raising awareness of these foods. Offering fruit and vegetables at the front of a supermarket, for example, could significantly boost shoppers' likelihood of selecting something other than meat or dairy. The government could also provide subsidies for plant-based foods to support low-income households.

With the COP21 climate talks set to begin in Paris next week, many expect the participating countries to reach a global agreement about curbing carbon emissions. Some of the world's biggest polluters, including the U.S. and India, have already made reduction commitments for 2020.

But a deal on meat consumption is unlikely to be on the table. As of last month, only 21 of the national proposals include commitments to reducing livestock emissions.

"This is very low on the policy agenda," Froggatt said. "But part of the discussion will be what do we do next, and how do we increase our ambition. We hope diet is given greater consideration. Attention placed on the food sector is overdue."

Why Mark Zuckerberg's Paternity Leave Is A Win For Women

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Hoodie-wearing Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced recently that he’ll take time off -- two whole months! -- after his wife Priscilla Chan has their first baby.

This is a big deal for working men both at Facebook and in the U.S. (and their families). Guys here rarely take paternity leave -- few companies even bother offering it. For the chief executive of a Fortune 100 company to take leave, is just unheard of.

Zuckerberg’s move signals that it’s OK for men to prioritize family over their jobs -- at least for a hot second when you have a brand-new infant at home. There’s a good chance he’ll inspire other fathers to take time off.

And that is amazing news for women -- that’s right, women -- who face serious penalties and discrimination at work for becoming mothers. When men take paternity leave, it is a signal that juggling work and family isn’t just “lady business,” it promotes real understanding and empathy between the sexes at work and goes a long way in eliminating outdated, useless stereotypes that harm everyone.

“It fosters a different sense of cooperation when the women and men are both taking leave and understanding what it’s like to have newborns at home,” Nancy Altobello, the vice chair for talent at the consulting firm EY, told The Huffington Post this summer while explaining why the firm encourages fathers to take paternity leave.

Working women and men are both up against certain stereotypes and expectations when they become parents. For men, this mostly works in their favor on the job and hurts them at home. Women, well, they’re just screwed either way.

Priscilla and I are starting to get ready for our daughter's arrival. We've been picking out our favorite childhood...

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on  Friday, November 20, 2015

There’s a cultural expectation that a good father prioritizes his job because he is the breadwinner -- indeed, fathers often make more money after having kids, studies have found.

And despite the fact that women are the sole or primary breadwinner in 40 percent of U.S. households with children, it’s assumed they’ll prioritize family over work and, as a result, become less reliable and less hard-working.

“Mothers are less likely to be hired for jobs, to be perceived as competent at work or to be paid as much as their male colleagues with the same qualifications,” Claire Cain Miller explained last year in the New York Times, citing an extensive 15-year study that showed women’s pay decreased 4 percent for each child they had. Men’s pay increased more than 6 percent after having kids.

Some research has found that the pay gap between mothers and non-mothers is wider than between men and women. 

If a woman signals that work is her priority -- over her children -- she runs into problems. She’s judged extremely harshly for being a terrible mother.

“Women are fundamentally [supposed to be] oriented to the family not to work," Robin Ely, a professor at Harvard Business School, who studies gender expectations at work, explained to HuffPost a few months ago. “The expectation is if you don’t do it, then you’re not a good mother.”

When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced this fall that she’d only be gone a couple of weeks after she gives birth to twins in December, critics pounced. “Marissa Mayer’s Two-Week Maternity Leave Is Bullsh*t,” was the Daily Beast's headline. There were similar hot takes all around the internet.

Referring to Mayer’s two-week maternity leave stint in 2012 after she had just landed at Yahoo, the Telegraph summed up her double-bind pretty well: "Her 14-day maternity leave caused many to question her priorities as a parent. Others cast doubt on her dedication to her career."

Men face a different challenge: one that's become more problematic as more young dads of Zuckerberg's generation actively want to be more involved parents. These men run into problems because guys are often stigmatized or penalized if they demonstrate that work isn’t their top priority.

“The idea of a guy taking paternity leave was just [makes face] for my managers. Guys just don’t do that. They teased me," one consultant at a prominent firm told researchers from Boston University in a recent study.  "Then one of the partners said to me, ‘You have a choice to make: Are you going to be a professional or are you going to just be an average person in your field? If you are going to be a professional then that means nothing can be as important to you as your work.'"

Tell that to his little baby. Men who take paternity leave set themselves up to be more involved parents for that child's entire life. Seems important, yah? Oh, and fathers who are more involved at home certainly make life easier for their partners. Too often it's working women who wind up taking on more of the parenting work in dual-income couples.

Men want time with family, stigmas often keep them from doing so. @JoshLevs #AllIn

— marcyheinz (@marcyheinz) November 22, 2015

Paternity leave is a really powerful lever in changing these outdated paradigms. In Sweden, which provides paid time off for fathers, women’s earning potential rises 7 percent on average for every month a dad takes off. 

Some enlightened employers are recognizing this -- including Facebook, Spotify and Netflix -- and treat parental leave in a gender neutral way, offering equal amounts to men and women.

Facebook offers four months leave to dads -- but most do like Zuckerberg and only take two.

There’s still a long road till we get to equality. 

Microsoft Is More Male Than Last Year, Insists This Is Progress

Back in December, Microsoft’s chief executive publicly vowed to do better at diversity. The company, like its rivals in the tech industry, is overwhelmingly white and male. “We will make progress every year towards building a more diverse workforce,” CEO Satya Nadella told shareholders.

One year later, the company is even more male-dominated -- and ever-slightly less white -- according to Microsoft's latest report on demographics, released Monday afternoon. 

The overall percentage of women the company employs declined to 27 percent from 29 percent in 2014, according to the report. And 8.9 percent of the company’s workers are either black or Hispanic, up from 8.5 percent last year. Asian employees comprised 29.3 percent of workers, up from 28.8 percent.

Yet, because Microsoft did place a couple more women in leadership roles and because much of the decrease in female employees comes from overseas layoffs, the company is actually framing the news as positive overall.

“If we’re seeing gains at the top, we’re technically progressive,” Gwen Houston, Microsoft general manager of global diversity and inclusion, told The Huffington Post. “The trend is moving in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go.”

Tech companies are under increasing pressure to diversify. Publishing an annual diversity report is now a standard practice in the industry, though the reports typically contain depressing news. Facebook, Google and Twitter's diversity reports all revealed a similar level of blinding white-dudeness.

Though the numbers aren't getting much better, tech companies' increased attention and openness to diversity has certainly moved the needle in certain ways. Many tech companies are now doing training on unconscious bias, and some -- including Microsoft and Facebook -- are insisting that managers at least consider at a diverse slate of candidates before they choose someone to hire. 

At least people are talking about this stuff.

The drop in female employees at Microsoft this year was a direct result of the company’s decision to restructure its smartphone business, Houston said. The company laid off 7,800 employees on the struggling phone side -- a disproportionate number of whom were women working in overseas factories making the phones, she said.

Houston emphasized that three of the 11 people who report directly to Nadella are women, up from two last year. In the boardroom, if shareholders approve, three of Microsoft's 11 directors will be women, up from two out of 10 a year ago.

"The goal at the leadership level is to dial up the numbers, so women and people of color can see their presence affirmed at the top of the house," Houston said.

At the lower end, 31 percent of the company’s interns are women, up from 28 percent last year. And 30 percent of entry-level hires were women, up from 27 percent.

A big problem in tech is the so-called "leaky pipeline" -- women leave tech in higher numbers then men because, the theory goes, the culture is overwhelmingly male and often hostile to women.

Earlier this year, Microsoft increased the amount of parental leave it offers to workers to 20 weeks -- a move that may help retain more women in the long run, though Houston said it was too soon to tell.

“All our efforts to hire is for nothing if we can’t retain folks,” Houston said.

And more than a year ago, the company got rid of its famously harsh annual performance review system that pitted workers against one another. Studies have found that performance reviews can often be biased against women.

The new system is more inclusive and drives collaboration between workers, said Houston. And that helps retain women and people of color, she said.

For the past 15 years, Microsoft has been sponsoring a program to get more high school girls interested in tech careers, and it’s just now paying off, Houston said. “They’ve finished high school and college and now they’re working inside Microsoft,” she said.

She said the company has also instituted mandatory unconscious bias training, which is also available to the public. 

Nadella faced criticism last year for saying women don't need to ask for raises and should simply have faith that the system will deliver fair pay.

Since then, he's been more mindful about what he says. 

Houston said Nadella initiated a new practice to check in with people at the end of a meeting to see if everyone feels their voice was heard. "He'll ask, 'How did we do? Did people feel heard?'" she said. 

Now, other managers are also doing this at the end of meetings.

It gives employees a license to speak up, Houston said. “It sounds little but was powerful.”

As Chevy Ends Award-Winning Sustainability Plan, The Climate Is Just As Screwed As Ever

Should an automobile company be applauded for its contributions to the environment when its core business is fundamental in destroying it? Well, Chevrolet is trying its luck. 

The company just completed a five-year carbon reduction initiative. It spent $40 million buying carbon offsets from over 30 different projects across America. When a company buys a carbon offset, it usually pays another company to reduce emissions, in order to "offset" emissions elsewhere. Chevy bought offsets that reduced the amount of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere by 8 million metric tons.

"That's like planting a forest the size of Yellowstone," according to the initiative's website. It's also equivalent to about 3 percent of the annual carbon pollution from cars that Chevrolet's parent company, GM, sells in a single year.

Though the magnitude is small compared to the damage that cars do across the U.S., the 8 million metric tons of offsets that Chevy bought over the last five years made up a huge chunk of the voluntary carbon market. 

The company also won an award from the Environmental Protection Agency in early 2015 for the Campus Clean Energy Campaign it created as part of Chevy's offsetting initiative. The campaign helped universities set up the right protocols to be able to sell their own carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market. Chevy then bought credits from the universities.

"Our purchases were really swinging the voluntary market," said Pat Nye, a senior consultant on carbon and renewable energy for the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, which ran the program for Chevrolet. That says more about the market than it does Chevrolet. Carbon offsets are a largely voluntary market in the U.S. since only a few regional regulators make companies buy carbon credits. 

But there's obviously a disconnect here. The language about Chevrolet's environmental initiatives glosses over the fact that it makes cars. It's part of an even larger corporation dedicated to manufacturing automobiles. We can't talk about stemming CO2 pollution without talking about where that pollution is coming from. Chevrolet's raison d'être is to sell carbon dioxide-producing machines. And this environmental effort is a marketing tool to sell more cars. 

"As a company, we view sustainability as a business approach, a mindset, on maximizing long-term stakeholder value," said David Tulauskas, the director of sustainability at General Motors. "We are focused on the customer and they expect us to do a lot."

The EPA estimates the average car emits 4.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. Therefore, 8 million metric tons of carbon is, incidentally, about equal to the annual emissions total of the number of cars Chevrolet sold in the United States in 2010, when Chevy launched its offsetting initiative. With about 2 million Chevy cars sold in 2014, that emissions total is up to about 9.4 million metric tons. 

Chevrolet's parent company, GM, sold almost 10 million cars around the world in 2014. That would put GM's indirect carbon emissions at 47 million metric tons for 2014, while it offset only 1.6 million metric tons. And the initiative won't continue now that Chevy has met its five-year goal. 

Climate change is not just Chevy's problem, it's humanity's problem, created in part by every automaker, every car owner and every person who has ever used a car as transportation.

 

The real lesson here is that a huge, award-winning corporate environmental initiative can only manage to make up for about 3 percent of the carbon pollution that the brand's parent company causes per year -- even when it takes over the voluntary carbon market. Chevrolet put a band aid over a gaping, still-bleeding hole in environmental conservation.

This is not to point the finger only at Chevy -- it's a company that's at least thinking about sustainability, though the impact is limited. Climate change is not just Chevy's problem, it's humanity's problem. It's a global catastrophe created in part by every automaker, every car owner and every person who has ever used a car as transportation.

Chevy is not attempting to completely absolve itself of the carbon its cars put into the atmosphere. Tulauskas said that when the company originally started planning this initiative, it wanted to make Chevrolet a "carbon-neutral vehicle brand." But, he said, the company quickly realized that "you can’t buy your way to carbon neutrality." Instead, it tried "to do something that had a measurable impact in communities across America."

Over the longer term, part of the solution is more electric vehicles, which GM is slowly moving toward. Chevrolet has one all-electric car, the Volt. But automakers are still automakers. GM also sold nearly a million large SUVs, known colloquially as "gas guzzlers," in 2014. (Let's not talk about this truck.) 

"We’re not making a commitment where we foresee a world where we are just going to get rid of petroleum," said Tulauskas. 

The real point, though, is the world cannot rely on corporations to do the right thing, because the right thing is rarely good for the bottom line. "Supporting strong regulations is the most important thing a car company can do from a climate standpoint," said Carol Lee Rawn, the transportation program at Ceres, a non-profit that focuses on sustainability advocacy.

Climate change is a society-wide problem and will require a society-wide solution.

Here's How Ikea's Helping Make Greek Kindergartens More Joyful

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ATHENS -- There was a joyful and busy atmosphere at the the premises of the Neos Kosmos municipal kindergarten in Athens last Saturday. Boxes of all sizes were unloaded. The building’s entrance transformed into an improvised workshop. Volunteers and employees from Swedish furniture giant Ikea tore up packages at a hectic rate and, with a little help from the manual, transformed them into furniture in no time.

Room by room, the children’s quarters took on color and became more welcoming and more functional.

Since 2013, Ikea has partnered with Greek municipalities in the framework of the Social Responsibility program “Joyful Nurseries” to give color and care to kindergartens across the country.

Ikea has furnished more than 25 kindergartens so far. The first ones were located in the western port city of Thessaloniki, in the region of Epirus, near Albania, and the eastern municipality of Thessaly. The collaboration between Ikea and the municipal Athens kindergarten began this year -- and seven nurseries in the region will be equipped. Next year, Ikea will add another 10 nurseries to the program, which it wishes to extend further.

Natassa Christofi,who’s responsible for marketing at IKEA, hailed the collaboration as an important one for both parties.  “We are really moved when we learn of the reactions of the children as well as of their parents, when they see the new surroundings -- the nursery instructors describe them to us," she told The Huffington Post Greece. "The children draw big drawings and express their joy in this way.”

So far, Ikea has sponsored products costing up to 150,000 euros, or about $160,000, and it is expected to increase up to 200,000 euros when the 10 nurseries scheduled for next year are completed.

 “We get in touch with the municipality and they tell us what kinds of needs exist and in which nurseries, ” Christofi said. “Then we pay a visit to the nursery, take pictures and receive plans of the space and our decorators start designing and figuring out which products are needed. We meet with the municipality again, as well as with the nursery instructors, for them to assess whether what we have planned will meet their needs. We draw a final account of the stuff needed, agree on its positioning, order the products and, roughly within a month, we are ready and set an appointment with the nurseries to execute the whole operation on a Saturday.”

On Monday, fun and games at Neos Kosmos. The nursery takes care of babies up to the age of two and a half. They may not actually grasp the transformation of the space that surrounds them, but their parents are impressed by the new decor. The furniture is practically designed, safe -- and lots of toys await the children.

This story originally appeared on HuffPost Greece and was translated into English. 

Big Coal Just Suffered Yet Another Crushing Defeat

London's "fog" -- really just the industrial smog of coal-choked Dickensian England -- may be gone, but the power plants that produced it remain largely intact.

Not for long.

The British government on Wednesday announced plans to shutter all coal-fired power plants in the country by 2025, phasing them out with tighter restrictions two years before that.

The move, which positions the United Kingdom as a leader in reducing carbon emissions, comes ahead of the COP21 climate talks in Paris that begin Nov. 30.

"It cannot be satisfactory for an advanced economy like the U.K. to be relying on polluting, carbon intensive 50-year-old coal-fired power stations," Amber Rudd, the energy and climate change secretary, said in a statement. "Let me be clear: this is not the future."

The news marks yet another defeat for coal, which is already losing its power within the fossil fuel industry. In the United States, the coal business has been in decline for decades. Over the last year, a burgeoning movement among institutions and municipal governments to divest endowments and pension funds from the coal industry has gained steam. Now, even big banks and lenders -- once drawn to coal's ubiquity and swelling demand for coal in China -- are souring on the fuel. 

Coal use has decreased in Britain, too. Electricity produced by coal fell 23 percent last year, according to data from the country's Department of Energy and Climate Change.  

Still, the move to shutter all coal-burning plants by 2025 could be hasty, considering the nuclear projects meant to replace them aren't scheduled to begin operating until that year.

"This is a lot of posturing ahead of Paris," Deepa Venkateswaran, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in London, told The New York Times. She said the decision "appears premature."

But the haste may be necessary as negotiators, who have previously failed to secure meaningful climate deals, gear up to work out an agreement to stave off a disastrous rise in global temperatures above 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. Scientists agree that such an increase would be unsustainable for human civilization. And there's no time to waste -- this year is on track to be the hottest on record yet. 

"We need to build a new energy infrastructure, fit for the 21st century," Rudd said. "Our determination to cut carbon emissions as cost effectively as possible is crystal clear and this step will make us one of the first developed countries to commit to taking coal off our system."

Tech Companies Step In To Help After Paris Attacks

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Droves of companies paid tribute this weekend to the victims of the attacks in Paris, brandishing their websites and social media profiles with the blue, white and red of the French flag. Chief executives offered words of support. 

But a few companies -- namely tech firms with vast international social networks -- stepped in to help amid the upheaval caused by the Friday string of mass shootings and suicide bombings that left 132 dead and 349 injured.

Home-renting service Airbnb -- which has its largest market in Paris -- urged hosts to house victims and those stranded by delays for free. The company created a site where people can request places to stay and hosts can offer space for no charge. By Sunday afternoon, 19 pages of listings were available.

"If you are able, we hope you will strongly consider helping those who are in need by making your listing available at little or no cost," the company wrote in an email to users on Saturday.

Airbnb also enabled a feature allowing hosts to extend an existing guest's visit free of charge.

Facebook activated its Safety Check tool, allowing people to alert friends that they are safe in the aftermath of the attacks. Until Friday, the feature had only been available during natural disasters. It was first activated last October after the deadly earthquake in Nepal. 

Still, the move took heat from critics who said debuting the feature for the attacks in Paris -- but not after the twin suicide blasts that killed more than 40 people in Beirut on Thursday -- demonstrates a higher value placed on lives of people in Western countries.

"You are right that there are many other important conflicts in the world," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post addressing the criticism. "We care about all people equally, and we will work hard to help people suffering in as many of these situations as we can."

Skype and its Google-owned rival Hangouts, which charge money to make calls to phone numbers, both made all calls to France free. 

Even small companies rallied to help victims. 

In Boston, where memories of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing are fresh, companies in the city's burgeoning tech industry started a fundraiser with a goal of $10,000.

"Boston tech helped heal a tragic event with the marathon bombing, and in the process received amazing international support from our brothers and sisters in the EU. Let's reciprocate their gifts of friendship and humanity," Phil Beauregard, founder of the software startup Objective Logistics, wrote on the fundraising page. "Let's let the world know we all stand united against cowardice and treachery. Most importantly, let's help those affected by this despicable event with our financial support."

Read More Paris Coverage

• A Message Of Support For Muslims After Paris Attacks Is Lighting Up The Internet
• Syrians In Paris Look For Ways To Help
• Thousands Use #MuslimsAreNotTerrorist To Combat Islamophobia
• 10 Quotes That Summarize The Horror And Complexity Of Paris
• 20 People Found Refuge In A Famous Paris Bookstore During Attacks
• Parisians Show Solidarity And Strength From Paris To New York 
• PHOTOS: World Reacts In Solidarity With Paris
• Colbert Chokes Up Talking About Attacks 
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• Stadium Attack Survivor Says Phone Saved His Life
• Read French Coverage At HuffPost France

More Bad News For Macy’s Ahead Of Holiday Shopping Season

It's been a bad year for Macy's, and it just keeps getting worse.

The company said on Wednesday that it has seen a 5.2 percent drop in sales between the beginning of August to the end of October, and is responding to these figures by speeding up closures of struggling department store locations and doubling down on its discount store chain.

Macy's announced in September that it would close 35 to 40 poorly performing department store locations. On Wednesday, the retailer's CEO, Terry Lundgren, said he'd close more stores once those locations are all shuttered, according to the Cincinnati Business Courier.

The iconic retailer launched Macy’s Backstage -- which, much like competitors Nordstrom Rack or Off Fifth, has bare-bones decor and carries clearance items year-round -- in August. It currently has six locations in the greater New York City area, and the company announced plans on Wednesday to open 50 more of the stores over the next two years.

Lundgren also intends to experiment with adding Macy's Backstage sections to 10 department store locations, the Business Courier reported.

A key reason for the decline in Macy's sales is the growing popularity of so-called off-price stores like T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, as many customers who prioritized bargain-hunting during the recession have maintained their frugal habits.

So-called off-price or discount retailers saw their sales grow 44 percent from 2009 to 2014, according to The Wall Street Journal.

 

 

 

Macy’s share of department store sales actually rose significantly from 2006 to 2013, according to the Journal. However, department stores’ share of overall merchandise sales dipped during that same period.

News about declining sales prompted Macy's share price to fall 14 percent on Wednesday, the Journal reported, bringing the total drop to 40 percent on the year. Since Macy's is the first department store to report earnings, investors interpreted the news as an ominous sign for other traditional retailers. The stock prices of Kohl's, Burlington Stores and Hudson’s Bay Company, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, all fell the same day.

Macy’s will open its doors to shoppers at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, and offer Black Friday sales until 1 p.m. the following day.

H&M, by contrast, announced on Tuesday that it will close its stores nationwide on Thanksgiving Day. It joins a growing number of retailers, including Nordstrom, Costco and BJ’s, that have chosen to close all of their U.S. stores on Thanksgiving Day out of consideration for their employees.

Also on HuffPost:

Hack Reveals Prison Phone Company Recorded Attorney-Client Calls

Whenever a prisoner makes a phone call, that call is recorded. Prison phone giant Securus Technologies says on its website that it makes an exception for calls from inmates to their lawyers.

Yet The Intercept reported Wednesday that a massive hack, compromising over 70 million calls in 37 states over two and a half years, shows that Securus is not only recording attorney-client calls, but that the company's "secure" recording and storage systems are, in fact, porous.

By recording privileged calls with lawyers, Securus may have violated prisoners' constitutional rights.

“This may be the most massive breach of the attorney-client privilege in modern U.S. history. ... A lot of prisoner rights are limited because of their conviction and incarceration, but their protection by the attorney-client privilege is not,” the ACLU's David Fathi told The Intercept.

The Intercept's Jordan Smith and Micah Lee identified 14,000 calls that prisoners made to their attorneys between winter 2011 and spring 2014, but this figure only covers calls to publicly listed lawyers' phone numbers. Calls to unlisted numbers, such as cell phones, are not included, although they could still be covered by attorney-client privilege.

"In other words, the 14,000 attorney calls are potentially just a small subset of the attorney-client calls that were hacked," Smith and Lee wrote. Securus' phones, they said, "are supposed to be set up to allow certain phone numbers to be logged and flagged so that calls to those numbers are exempt from being recorded -- let alone stored."

Securus said in a statement Wednesday evening that it had contacted law enforcement regarding the leak.

Securus was also hacked in 2014, Smith and Lee reported. It appears that someone accessed three calls placed by Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots player and convicted murderer. In an email thread discussing the 2014 hack, one Securus employee told another, "OMG........this is not good! ... The company will be called to task for this if someone got in there that shouldn’t have been.”

Lawyers are often responsible for giving the government their contact information so their phone numbers can be excluded from recording. It is then prison administrators' responsibility to add those number to the Securus system, and Securus' job to keep any recordings it makes secure.

On that point, at a minimum, The Intercept shows Securus failed. 

"In short," Smith and Lee said, "it turns out that Securus isn’t so secure."

This story has been updated to include information from Securus Technologies' statement.

Joe's Crab Shack Becomes First Major Chain To Drop Tipping

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Joe’s Crab Shack is now the first major restaurant chain to start paying workers a living wage. 

The seafood chain will experiment with dropping tipped-wages in 18 of its stores, the head of its parent company said.

"Servers, hosts, bartenders are paid now higher, fixed, hourly wages," Ignite CEO Ray Blanchette said, according to CNBC. "It's expected to result in an improved team atmosphere, a significant reduction in turnover and greater financial security for the employees."

Employees who were once paid around $2 an hour plus tips will now be paid at least $12 an hour, Blanchette said. Experienced staff stand to make even more.

According to Restaurant Business, the company actually began rolling out the policy in August but only announced the change in a call with investors last week. 

The move follows famed New York restauranteur Danny Meyer's announcement last month that all of his eateries were getting rid of tipping. Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio is also experimenting with the policy.

The Trucking Industry Is Struggling, But Maybe Not For Long

Trucking, the backbone of American commerce, is in a tough spot.

There might be a future, a very long time from now, when long-haul drivers are replaced by fully self-driving vehicles. But today, trucking has the opposite problem. It's looking at a significant shortage of drivers -- 48,000 open positions in an industry of 800,000 -- and trying to figure out how it will fill that hole.

Is trucking in crisis or is the pendulum about to swing the other way? 

The industry accounts for more than two-thirds of the freight tonnage moved throughout the country in any given year (the rest is moved by rail and air) and more than 80 percent of freight transportation revenues, according to Bob Costello, the chief economist at the American Trucking Association, a trade group for the industry. But despite its importance, it poses a perennial problem: It's a difficult job to do.  

A long-haul driver without much experience has years ahead of him (it's almost always a him) without much control over his schedule. He might be on the road for days or weeks at a time, with designated places he is allowed to refuel and restrictions on the routes he can take. He'll get paid decently for a guy without a college degree, but not great, probably somewhere between $35,000 and $40,000 a year, maybe a little more. (That's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The industry says it's higher.) His pay could go up to $55,000 - $60,000, if he makes it in the industry. But he'll have to keep driving, through rain and snow and sleet, for a few years before that happens.

Pay in the industry tracks pretty closely with inflation. The fact that pay has grown below inflation for the last few years -- meaning drivers are seeing pay cuts in terms of what they can buy, if not in their salary itself -- is a fairly easy explanation for why there's a shortage of drivers today.

But things may be changing. Since late 2013, long-haul truckers' average pay has increased 17 percent, according to National Transportation Institute numbers reported by the Wall Street Journal. By contrast, wages in the U.S. overall "rose by less than 4% over the same period," notes WSJ. 

Higher pay will likely plug the industry's driver shortage, for now. But turnover may continue to be a problem. It's hard to be a hiring manager at a trucking business. 

The long-haul industry is what an economist would call nearly perfectly competitive. It's fairly easy to start a company -- you just need a truck and a driver -- so any move that a company makes that doesn't fit with market conditions means that that company's business can quickly and easily go elsewhere. 

Traditionally, driver turnover in the industry is very high, and in recent years has been  between 90 and 100 percent, if not higher. That means for nearly every new recruit who gets his commercial driver's license, someone else quits. 

In addition, it's illegal for people under 21 to drive a truck commercially across state lines. That makes sense: Younger people are worse at driving and tend to make more reckless decisions behind the wheel. But practically, it presents a recruiting problem for the industry. It's such a problem that the industry is trying to lobby Congress to change the rule and allow 18-year-olds to drive trucks across state lines. 

"We miss out on the folks that are coming out of high school who don’t go to the military," said Costello. "They can’t sit around to wait [to turn 21]." Instead, they go out and get different kinds of jobs, and don't turn to trucking as a potential career until much later. At training centers, companies mostly see guys in their mid-30s, said Costello.

"It's not clear where the new truck drivers are coming from as baby boomers age out," said Stephen Burks, an economist who studies the trucking industry at the University of Minnesota Morris.

About 70 percent of long-haul trucking is done on a contract basis, according to Burks. The contracts can last a year or longer, meaning companies agree to a set price for trucking for long periods, during which time plenty of things can change in the economy. This means that trucking companies can have trouble reacting to economic forces quickly because their prices are set so far in advance. That can lead to driver shortages in the short term.

An upcoming paper that Burks will publish with Kristen Monaco at the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that "[w]hile the business problem facing [long-haul] firm managers gets more difficult to solve when freight demand increases, over time wages rise and the turnover rate comes back down."

Trucking's current shortage might end up being a lag in the market, rather than a true scarcity of available drivers -- although a company trying to figure out how to get more drivers on the road may not care about the distinction. But, Burks says, that's the nature of the industry. "It’s not like you could choose a different business model."  

In other words, trucking is tough but the challenges are predictable. When pay rises, driver shortages disappear. Eventually, though, pay stagnates and the cycle starts up again.

U.S. Job Growth Surged Last Month

WASHINGTON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - U.S. job growth surged in October after two straight months of tepid gains, with the unemployment rate hitting a 7-1/2-year low in a show of domestic strength that makes it almost likely the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates in December.

Nonfarm payrolls increased 271,000 last month, the largest rise since December 2014, the Labor Department said on Friday.

In addition, average hourly earnings increased 9 cents last month. The solid gains added to robust automobile sales in painting an upbeat picture of the economy at the start of the fourth quarter.

The unemployment rate fell to 5.0 percent, the lowest level since April 2008, from 5.1 percent the prior month. The jobless rate is now at a level many Fed officials see as consistent with full employment.

Payrolls data for August and September were revised to show 12,000 more jobs created than previously reported.

With speeches from several Fed officials, including Chair Janet Yellen, suggesting a low bar for a December rate increase, economists say monthly job gains above 150,000 in October and November would be sufficient for the central bank to lift benchmark overnight borrowing costs from near zero.

Minutes from the Fed's Oct. 27-28 meeting and subsequent comments from Yellen have firmly put a rate hike on the table at the central bank's Dec. 15-16 policy meeting.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast nonfarm payrolls increasing 180,000 last month and the unemployment rate unchanged at 5.1 percent.

The employment report joined October's strong services sector and auto sales data in supporting views that economic growth will regain momentum in the fourth quarter after braking sharply to a 1.5 percent annual pace in the July-September period.

Last month's rise in wages, which have been almost stagnant despite a tightening labor market, lifted the year-on-year reading to 2.5 percent. That was the biggest increase since July 2009 and could give Fed officials confidence that inflation will gradually move towards their 2 percent target.

There were improvements in other labor market measures that Fed officials are eyeing as they contemplate raising rates for the first time since 2006.

A broad measure of joblessness that includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment fell two-tenths of a percentage point to 9.8 percent, the lowest level since May 2008.

But the labor force participation rate, or the share of working-age Americans who are employed or at least looking for a job, held at a near 38-year low of 62.4 percent.

Employment gains in October were broad-based, though manufacturing added no jobs and mining shed 4,000 positions.

Manufacturing has been hit by a strong dollar, efforts by businesses to reduce bloated inventory and spending cuts by energy companies cutting back on well drilling and exploration in response to lower oil prices.

Mining employment has declined by 109,000 since peaking in December 2014. Oilfield services provider Schlumberger last month announced further layoffs in addition to the 20,000 jobs it has already eliminated.

Construction payrolls, however, increased 31,000 last month, the biggest gain since February.

The services sector added 241,000 jobs last month, with large gains in retail, health and leisure. Government payrolls increased 3,000 last month. (Reporting by Lucia Mutikani)

Top Black Engineer Blasts Twitter's Lack Of Diversity

Twitter say it's committed to creating a more diverse workforce, but, like the rest of the tech industry, it has yet to succeed. This week, a former employee offered a glimpse into the beleaguered microblogging company's struggle to be more inclusive.

"With my departure, Twitter no longer has any managers, directors, or VP’s of color in engineering or product management," Twitter Engineering Manager Leslie Miley wrote on Medium on Tuesday. Miley was among those laid off from the company in October, although he made clear his intention to leave before the company announced the cuts, according to TechCrunch. 

Elaborating about his time as one of Twitter's few black engineers, Miley critiqued the company for failing to push back against unconscious bias as it seeped into hiring practices and culture:

Personally, a particularly low moment was having my question about what specific steps Twitter engineering was taking to increase diversity answered by the Sr. VP of Eng at the quarterly Engineering Leadership meeting. When he responded with “diversity is important, but we can’t lower the bar.” I then realized I was the only African-American in Eng leadership.

There are few African-American or Latino employees in any part of the company -- and none at the top, according to the company's own diversity data, released in August.

This, however, is not just a Twitter problem. It's a tech industry problem, as Miley noted in a separate post, written earlier in October, about diversity in his field. Miley presents a theory as to why this is the case: It's about pattern matching. Successful people think future successful people are going to look like them (or the people they see around them). When a company hires for a specific pattern, it's not a surprise that everyone begins to look the same.

This is why Miley thinks that younger tech companies are actually less diverse than the older companies. From Miley's post: 

This shows up in recruiting organizations targeting specific schools, employee referrals, and promotions of like minded individuals. Yahoo > Google > LinkedIn > FaceBook > Twitter. After Yahoo each of these companies’ diversity numbers have been worse than the company that followed them. I believe this is because Google recruited from Yahoo, LinkedIn from Google, and so on. Each subsequent company becomes less diverse due to the sub-conscious amplification of educational, cultural and work history biases.

Twitter, meanwhile, is sticking to its diversity commitment.

A spokesperson told The Huffington Post by email that the company is "committed to making substantive progress in making Twitter more diverse and inclusive. This commitment includes the expansion of our inclusion and diversity programs, diversity recruiting, employee development, and resource group-led initiatives."

CEO Jack Dorsey fired 336 employees -- about 8 percent of Twitter's workforce -- just two weeks before the firm posted a disappointing revenue forecast and user growth that was weaker than expected. 

'Candy Crush' Maker Sold To Activision Blizzard For $5.9 Billion

Video game maker Activision Blizzard Inc. said it will buy "Candy Crush Saga" creator King Digital Entertainment for $5.9 billion to strengthen its games portfolio.

Activision, which owns popular game franchises such as "World of Warcraft," "Call of Duty" and "Diablo," will pay $18 in cash per King share, a premium of 16 percent to King's closing price on Monday.

The addition of King's highly-complementary business will position it as a global leader in interactive entertainment across mobile, console and PC platforms, Activision said.

"With a combined global network of more than half a billion monthly active users, our potential to reach audiences around the world on the device of their choosing enables us to deliver great games to even bigger audiences than ever before," said Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Bobby Kotick.

 

Video game publishers are shifting to the lucrative digital business from physical sales of games as consumers shift from consoles to playing on smartphones and tablets.

King, which makes games for social media platforms and mobile devices, will continue to be led as an independent operating unit by Chief Executive Riccardo Zacconi, Chief Creative Officer Sebastian Knutsson, and Chief Operating Officer Stephane Kurgan, the companies said in a statement late on Monday.

King, which went public last March, has been struggling to boost bookings, an indicator of future revenue, as new game launches are planned only toward the second half of the year.

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Uber's Surge Pricing Doesn't Do What It Claims To

Uber has long stirred controversy and consternation over the higher “surge” prices it charges at peak times. The company has always said the higher prices actually help passengers by encouraging more drivers to get on the road. But computer scientists from Northeastern University have found that higher prices don’t necessarily result in more drivers.

Researchers Le Chen, Alan Mislove and Christo Wilson created 43 new Uber accounts and virtually hailed cars over four weeks from fixed points throughout San Francisco and Manhattan. They found that many drivers actually leave surge areas in anticipation of fewer people ordering rides.

“What happens during a surge is, it just kills demand,” Wilson told ProPublica. “So the drivers actually drive away from the surge.”

When contacted this week, Uber said that their own analysis has shown that surge pricing does, in fact, attract more drivers to surge areas. “Contrary to the findings in this report — which is based on extremely limited, public data — we’ve seen this work in practice day in day out, in cities all around the world," Uber spokeswoman Molly Spaeth wrote in an email.

The researchers also uncovered a few tips about how to avoid surge prices. They found that changing your location, even by a few hundred feet, can influence the price you get. They also discovered that you can often get back to normal fare levels by waiting as few as five minutes.

“The vast majority of surges are short-lived, which suggests that savvy Uber passengers should ‘wait-out’ surges rather than pay higher prices,” the authors wrote in a new study they are presenting at a conference in Tokyo on Friday.

The Northeastern scientists found that Uber’s price scheme divides cities into “surge areas” and calculates prices for each one independently. The boundaries are not known to consumers. “[T]wo users standing a few meters apart may unknowingly receive dramatically different surge multipliers,” the scientists wrote. “For example, 20 percent of the time in Times Square, customers can save 50 percent or more by being in an adjacent surge area” a block or two away.

The researchers sketched out those boundaries in their paper, and ProPublica has developed them into maps. Uber users in Manhattan can more easily cross from current surging to non-surging zones than users in San Francisco. The areas in Manhattan are smaller, and therefore more walkable; San Francisco’s price areas also tend to surge together.

The Northeastern researchers also found significant differences between the San Francisco and Manhattan markets. While an Uber blog post last year stated that surge pricing “affects a tiny minority of all Uber rides, less than 10 percent of trips,” the researchers documented that the price of Uber in Manhattan surged about 14 percent of the time, and 57 percent of the time in San Francisco. When asked about these findings, Uber said that they sounded unrepresentative, but not outside of the realm of possibility.

Like other online marketplaces in the “sharing economy,” Uber promises efficiency and openness. When using Craigslist, AirBnb, or eBay, for instance, buyers and sellers have the same information about what products are available, and for how much — both sides have a lot of information with which to make price comparisons. Uber is an outlier, these researchers explained, because under the Uber model, neither side of the transaction has all of the information.

“With Uber, the drivers don’t know what’s going on, and the customers don’t know what’s going on,” said Wilson. “There’s an algorithm behind the scenes that determines what the prices are, and you essentially have no idea what’s happening.”

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REI CEO Says Closing On Black Friday Is A 'Radical Idea'

REI will be sacrificing one of its top business days when it closes its 143 retail stores on Black Friday to encourage customers to spend time outside.

CEO Jerry Stritzke told HuffPost Live on Wednesday that the decision to close up shop for the day wasn't "made lightly," and admits that "it's a bit of a startling idea from a retail perspective."

"[We] certainly had to think hard about it. This is new news. I haven't spoken to very many of my contemporaries about the issue, but I'm excited by the idea," Stritzke said. "I think it's intriguing that we can create this conversation [about] something so central to our brand and kind of who we are."

This is the first time REI will close on Black Friday, even though the day after Thanksgiving has historically been a "top 10 business day" for the company, according to Stritzke. However, the company's decision exemplifies some retailers' recent opposition to keeping stores open on what is traditionally a family holiday, and the day after.

Online shoppers will still be able to purchase items from REI on Black Friday, though they'll initially be directed to a blackout screen imploring them to explore the outdoors. Online sales aren't the initiative's priority, however.

"It's easier to leave [the website] on than turning it off," Stritzke explained.

Watch Jerry Stritzke's conversation with HuffPost Live in the clip above.

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