Kristina Nicolas will proudly tell you that she’s been doing practically all her shopping online for years now. She will also tell you, in a more exasperated voice, that this has not remotely abbreviated the amount of time she spends going to stores.

The growth of e-commerce around peak shopping season is no longer a new story, and this year was no exception. But 2017’s peak season did raise some eyebrows for getting off to an unusually early start, with sales from Nov. 1 to Nov. 22 up 17.9 percent, year-over-year, according to Internet Retailer’s report on the peak shopping season.

The scene at the East Coast’s largest mall on a recent Friday morning would seem to fly in the face of the doomsday narrative surrounding U.S. retail centers. A steady stream of holiday shoppers walked the lacquered halls, browsing stores from Gap to Gucci. By noon, a line was snaking out of an outpost of the Shake Shack burger chain.

The millennial generation's embrace of renting rather than owning has spread far beyond housing and ride-sharing, and even some traditional major retailers are taking notice.

There are a lot ways to judge retailers during the holiday season. Is store inventory overflowing, as it was a couple of years ago? Are chains discounting like crazy? But what really matters for most retailers is whether they are successfully fighting off Amazon.com Inc.

President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday instructing his deputies to devise "a strategy to reduce the Nation’s reliance on critical minerals" that are largely imported and used to produce everything from smartphones to weaponry.

Children as young as eight miss school and toil in hazardous conditions to make shoes for the global market in Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal, campaigners said, calling on shoe brands to work with the local government to clean up their supply chains.

This week was a big moment for deals in the food industry. Campbell Soup Company announced that it would acquire Snyder’s-Lance for nearly $5bn, and the Hershey Company said it is buying Amplify Snack Brands in a deal valued at about $1.6bn.