Midday Roundup: Put away the turkey, it's time to go shopping

Hit the stores. The traditional Black Friday shopping day again started last night, with many stores opening at 5 p.m. The idea quickly has caught on with the usual hordes of shoppers who normally have to wait until this morning to push, shove, and elbow their neighbors in a bid to get the best deal possible. Stores were packed and lines were long across the country. Not surprisingly, shoppers took a break and slept in this morning, judging by the sparse crowds in many places. More stores joined the push to open on Thanksgiving Day this year in part because of last year’s lackluster Black Friday sales, which slumped 13.2 percent over the year before. Analysts predict this year’s sales will rise by 4.1 percent. Taking advantage of a captive audience, activists in St. Louis held rallies at several Walmart and Target stores to protest the grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo.

Thanksgiving miracle. Two New York families are feeling very thankful today after two boys, ages 9 and 7, were rescued from a snowbank where they were buried for hours. The boys were playing in a parking lot near their homes on Wednesday night when a snowplow drove by and buried them under about five feet of snow. Their families didn’t realized they were missing for several hours and didn’t call the police until 10 p.m. Members of the community joined law enforcement officers in the search, focusing their attention on the parking lot. When an officer spotted a shovel sticking out of the snow, the rescuers began digging with their bare hands. The boys were alive and well. Miraculously, the snow covered them in a dome shape, leaving an air pocket big enough for both of them to survive. Their families told local media they were doing well and recovering.

First menu. The first family spent a “quiet”Thanksgiving at the White House. But that doesn’t mean they had a simple meal while watching football. The Obamas had quite a feast for four people, including six pies to share between them for dessert. For the main course, the White House chefs prepared thyme-roasted turkey and honey-baked ham, cornbread stuffing and oyster stuffing, braised winter greens, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, sweet potato gratin, mashed potatoes, and dinner rolls. The pie list included banana cream, coconut cream, pumpkin, apple, pecan, and cherry.“The proper way to eat your pie is you should have just a little whipped cream on top,” the president told ABC’s Robin Roberts during a pre-Thanksgiving interview.“We go all out on pies. We don’t play with pie.”

Back to court. A man who has been detained on no charges for more than nine years will get another chance to prove his case in immigration court. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled an immigration judge improperly withheld evidence in the case of Sylvester Owino, 38, whom WORLD profiled in September, reversing a Board of Immigration Appeals decision that denied Owino’s claim for asylum under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The 9th Circuit ruled the board must consider all the evidence in the case, including whether a government breach of Owino’s right to confidentiality results in a new asylum claim. Owino, a Kenyan immigrant, served a three-year sentence for second-degree robbery but then was transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, where he has remained since 2005.

Died. British mystery writer P.D. James died yesterday. She was 94. During her long career as the “queen of crime,”James was described as a natural successor to the writers of the “Golden Age”of mysteries, including Dorothy L. Sayers. James’most popular recurring character was the sensitive Scotland Yard detective Adam Dalgliesh. Her books sold millions of copies around the world. “The greatest mystery of all is the human heart, and that is the mystery with which all good novelists, I think, are concerned,” she said in a 1997 interview. “I’m always interested in what makes people the sort of people they are.”

J.C. Derrick and the Associated Press contributed to this report.