As American consumers rush to stores for Black Friday sales and frantically enter credit card numbers into online checkouts, others are marking the frenzied post-Thanksgiving sales day as “Buy Nothing Day.” International “Buy Nothing Day” falls on the day after the U.S. holiday each year. Celebrated since the 1990s, the counterpoint to Black Friday is meant to inspire worldwide action against mass consumerism, according to Adbusters, a not-for-profit anti-consumerism magazine. “Buy Nothing Day isn’t just about changing your habits for one day it is about rediscovering what it means to live freely,” according to Adbusters. “Join millions of us in over 60 countries on November 25, 2016, for Buy Nothing Day and see what it feels like to take a stand against corporate domination.” It may not be clear how shopping contributes to corporate domination, but whatever. (USA Today)
In other big news, the actor mostly known as Mrs. Brady, Florence Henderson, has died. That’s sad, but, seriously, this should not be one of today’s top stories. It is, along with shopping stories. (NPR)
Top Stories
More than 120,000 people, most of them children, are at risk of starving to death next year in areas of Nigeria affected by the Boko Haram insurgency, the United Nations is warning. Intense fighting in parts of Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon has left more than 2 million people displaced, farmers unable to harvest their crops and aid groups unable to reach isolated communities. One small state in Nigeria has more displaced people than the entire refugee influx that arrived in Europe last year. (Guardian)
And drought in Madagascar threatens famine afflicting more than 300,000 (Guardian)
Tropical storm Otto moved out to sea on Friday after battering Nicaragua and Costa Rica with hurricane-force winds and torrential rains, killing at least three people and forcing thousands to evacuate. Otto landed as a hurricane but weakened rapidly after hitting the southeastern coast of Nicaragua and became a tropical storm by early Friday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, as dangerous flooding thrashed both countries. (Reuters)
The death toll from a car bombing south of Baghdad claimed by the Islamic State group rose to 73 on Friday, including about 40 Iranian pilgrims, as Iraqi forces continued to inch closer to the center of the northern city of Mosul in street-to-street fighting east of the Tigris River. (AP)
In Zimbabwe, where worthless $100 trillion notes serve as reminders of the perils of hyperinflation, President Robert Mugabe is printing a new currency that jeopardizes not just the economy but his own long grip on power. (Reuters)
Warming seas killing sea life. As the world’s oceans absorb carbon dioxide that is building up in the atmosphere, seas have become 30 percent more acidic than they were before the industrial era, said Carol Turley, a senior scientist at Britain’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory. The increasingly corrosive water threatens a wide range of sea life, particularly shellfish such as oysters and scallops, making it hard for them to form and maintain shells. (AllAfrica)
Aleppo residents only 10 days from starving, White Helmets organization says (Reuters)
Colombia finalizes new peace agreement (Telegraph)
Thousands in Asia protest abuse of Myanmar’s Rohingya (Reuters)
Opinion/Blogs
The microbes have won again. Laurie Garrett critiques downgrading Zika emergency (Scientific American)
Sharing stories on social media and collecting data can protect women and girls (ONE)
The genocidal logic of South Sudan’s gun class (IRIN)
Ten ways to tell if your president is a dictator (Foreign Policy)
