Retailers coax Black Friday shoppers into stores with big discounts and giveaways NEW YORK (AP) — Retailers in the U.S. have used giveaways and bigger-than expected discounts to reward shoppers who ventured out on Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving still reigns for now as the unofficial kickoff of the holiday shopping season even if it’s lost some luster. Analysts reported seeing the biggest crowds at stores that offered real savings. They say many shoppers are being cautious with their discretionary spending despite the easing of inflation. Stores are even more under the gun to get shoppers in to buy early and in bulk since there are five fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. Online sales figures from Thanksgiving Day gave retailers a reason to remain hopeful for a lucrative end to the year. Southwest Airlines says it is ending cabin service earlier to reduce chance of injury Southwest Airlines is ending its cabin service earlier starting next month. Beginning on Dec. 4, a company spokesperson says flight attendants will begin preparing the cabin for landing at an altitude of 18,000 feet instead of 10,000 feet. The company says it's making the changes to reduce the risk of in-flight turbulence injuries. For passengers, that means they will need to return their seats to an upright position or do other pre-landing procedures earlier than before. While turbulence-related fatalities are quite rare, injuries have piled up over the years. Why your favorite catalogs are smaller this holiday season PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — While retailers hope to go big this holiday season, customers may notice that the catalogs arriving in their mailboxes are smaller. Many of the millions of catalogs getting sent to U.S. homes were scaled down to save on postage and paper. Some gift purveyors are sending out postcards. In a sign of the times, the American Catalog Mailers Association rebranded itself in May as the American Commerce Marketing Association. Despite no longer carrying an extended inventory of goods, industry experts say catalogs help retailers cut through the noise and still hold their own in value because of growing digital advertising costs. Canada's Trudeau returns home after Trump meeting without assurances that tariffs are off the table WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is returning home after his meeting with Donald Trump without assurances the president-elect will back away from threatened tariffs on all products from the major American trading partner. Trump says the dinner talks Friday night at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida were “productive.” But he signaling no retreat from a pledge that Canada says unfairly lumps it in with Mexico over the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States. Trudeau spoke of “an excellent conversation” but offered no details. Trump said in a Truth Social post later Saturday that they discussed “many important topics that will require both Countries to work together to address.” Trump and Republicans in Congress eye an ambitious 100-day agenda, starting with tax cuts WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans swept to power on Election Day and now control the House, the Senate and the White House, with plans for an ambitious 100-day agenda come January. Their to-do list includes extending tax breaks, cutting social programs, building the border wall to stop immigration and rolling back President Joe Biden's green energy policies. Atop that list is a plan to renew some $4 trillion in expiring tax cuts that were a signature domestic achievement of Republican Donald Trump’s first term as president. It's an issue that may define his return to the White House. The ruble's in a slump. For the Kremlin, that's a two-edged sword Russia’s ruble is sagging against other currencies, complicating the Kremlin’s efforts to keep consumer inflation under control with one hand even as it overheats the economy with spending on the war against Ukraine with the other. Over time a weaker ruble could mean higher prices for imports from China, Russia's main trade partner these days. President Vladimir Putin says things are under control. One wild card is sanctions against a key Russian bank that have disrupted foreign trade payments. If Russia finds a workaround for that, the ruble could regain some of its recent losses. Iceland votes for a new parliament after political disagreements force an early election REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — Icelanders are electing a new parliament after disagreements over immigration, energy policy and the economy forced Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson to pull the plug on his coalition government and call early elections. This will be Iceland’s sixth general election since the 2008 financial crisis devastated the economy of the North Atlantic island nation and ushered in a new era of political instability. Opinion polls suggest the country may be in for another upheaval, with support for the three governing parties plunging. Benediktsson, who was named prime minister in April following the resignation of his predecessor, struggled to hold together the unlikely coalition of his conservative Independence Party with the centrist Progressive Party and the Left-Green Movement. Massachusetts lawmakers push for an effort to ban all tobacco sales over time BOSTON (AP) — A handful of Massachusetts lawmakers are hoping to persuade their colleagues to support a proposal that would make the state the first to adopt a ban meant to eliminate the use of tobacco products over time. Other locations have weighed similar “generational tobacco bans.” The bans phase out the use of tobacco products based not just on a person's age but on birth year. Lawmakers plan to file the proposal next year. If approved, the bill would set a date and ban the sale of tobacco to anyone born after that date forever, eventually banning all sales. Vietnam approves $67 billion high-speed railway project between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam has approved the construction of a high-speed railway connecting the capital Hanoi in the north with the financial capital of Ho Chi Minh in the south. It is expected to cost $67 billion and will stretch 1,541 kilometers (957 miles). The new train is expected to travel at speeds of up to 350 kph (217 mph), reducing the journey from the current 30 hours to just five hours. The decision was taken by Vietnam’s National Assembly on Saturday. Construction is expected to begin in 2027 and Vietnam hopes that the first trains will start operating by 2035. But the country has been beleaguered by delays to its previous infrastructure projects. Inflation rose to 2.3% in Europe. That won't stop the central bank from cutting interest rates FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Inflation in the 20 countries that use the euro currency rose in November — but that likely won’t stop the European Central Bank from cutting interest rates as the prospect of new U.S. tariffs from the incoming Trump administration adds to the gloom over weak growth. The European Union’s harmonized index of consumer prices rose 2.3 percent, up from 2.0% in October, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat. However, worries about growth mean the Dec. 12 ECB meeting is not about whether to cut rates, but by how much. Market buzz says there could be a larger than usual half-point cut in the benchmark rate, currently 3.25%.Apple Cash: How to use it to send and receive money

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The 2024 calendar year is shaping up to be one of the best-ever years for ( ) shares. The stock is currently up 26% year-to-date. However, as we all know, past performance is not a reliable indicator. So, the question is – can NAB deliver another good return in 2025? The market is clearly more confident about the bank's prospects than at the start of 2024. However, the recent was not exactly inspiring. Statutory declined 6.1% to $6.96 billion, while cash earnings fell 8.1% to $7.1 billion. The bank grew its full FY24 by 1.2% to $1.69 per share. NAB blamed the result on a lower . The NIM is the profit that a bank makes on its lending. It compares the loan rate to the cost of funding those loans (such as term deposits). The NIM decline primarily reflected "home lending competition, higher term deposit costs and deposit mix impacts". The bank's costs increased 4.5% due to of wages, restructuring costs and continued investment in technology modernisation and compliance capabilities. But, FY24 is the past. Let's consider what the outlook is for 2025. A report from Creditorwatch explained how high asset prices are helping maintain the profitability of banks. A high house price minimises the chance of a bad debt for the bank if the property needs to be sold to repay the mortgage from the bank. It said: Elevated and/or rising asset prices are likely an important explanation of this conundrum, with the household sector in aggregate having deleveraged significantly in recent years as house and share prices have risen sharply. And for many of the still relatively low share of households getting into financial difficulty, the 20-40% rise in house prices since before COVID generally means that the asset can be sold often at a profit and almost always without a significant impact on bank losses. This is not to say that many are not doing it tough – indeed we hear frequently of significant increases in demand for food support services. However, the data so far suggests that these pressures are not showing up in significantly increased pressures or losses for financial institutions. Where there is some greater pressure reported is on newer non-bank lenders. The broker UBS is quite pessimistic about the valuation. It currently has a sell rating on NAB shares. A price target tells investors where an expert thinks the share price will be in 12 months from the time of the investment call. UBS currently has a price target of $35 on the bank, implying a possible fall of approximately 10% within the next year. UBS is expecting weaker-than-the-market loan growth, worsening loan arrears and rising credit losses, increased competition in business banking, and higher costs. When UBS issued the note in November, when the NAB share price was $39.33 – said NAB shares were trading on a 2-year forward price-earnings (P/E) ratio of 16.5x, compared to its 15-year historical average of 11.6x. In other words, they're trading expensively. UBS is forecasting that in FY25, owners of NAB shares could see their bank generate $20.85 billion of revenue, $10.2 billion of pre-tax profit and $7.2 billion of net profit. That would mean slightly higher profit generated than FY24, though not enough for UBS to think it's compelling, it seems. However, growing profit is one of the best things NAB can do to improve shareholder returns over the long term, not just in 2025.