Over 300 Dead in Egyptian Terrorist Attack.
Militants attacked a mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed in Egypt's northern Sinai peninsula on Friday, killing at least 305 and wounding over 120. Officials said the attack was the worst in Egypt's modern history with survivors recounting explosions followed by the attackers spraying gunfire into the crowd of worshipers. The region has grappled with an Islamist militant insurgency since 2013 led by the Islamic State-affiliated Sinai Provence (read background), though the group has mainly targeted the military and the country's Christian population. Friday's attack was the first major offensive against Egyptian Muslims - in this case followers of Sufism, a widely recognized sect of Islam deemed heretical by the Islamic State. The attack puts pressure on Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has led a political crackdown in the name of fighting terrorism in Egypt.
Black Friday Online Sales Top $5B.
Online sales during Black Friday set a new record, hitting $5.03B by the end of Friday, a day after online sales set a Thanksgiving record of $2.87B. Total Black Friday sales were up 16.9% over 2016 and while the volume of online sales increased, the average per sale spend held steady around $135 per purchase - meaning more people opted to shop online this year. The biggest shift was to mobile purchases, with $2B of the total transactions conducted over mobile devices. Numbers for brick-and-mortar stores won't be known until earnings reports roll in, but analytics suggest foot traffic was down only 1-2% from last year. The numbers set high expectations for Cyber Monday, with analysts forecasting nearly $6.6B in sales today.
Pope Francis Visits Myanmar Today.
Pope Francis begins a trip to Myanmar today, whose government has been harshly criticized over its brutal crackdown on the Rohingya minority. The group is a Muslim minority in the majority Buddhist country's western Rakhine state (see background). Since August, over 620,000 Rohingya refugees have fled into neighboring Burma amid a crackdown by the state military, with reports of wholesale massacres of villages, killing thousands. Francis will make a symbolic decision to signal support for the persecuted group - he has been asked by local church leaders to avoid using the term 'Rohingya' because the group is not an officially recognized minority. See a timeline of the Rohingya crisis in maps.
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