black friday, retailers are hoping the good times keep rolling today. it is cybermonday. online merchants offering deep discounts in the big of the day of the year for online shopping. mandy drury is here. wall street, thrilled with what they saw on black friday weekend. yeah, absolutely. as you said, it was a record breaking black friday weekend, chris, raking in $52 billion in sales. that s up over 15% from last year with a record 226 million shops are visiting stores and websites over the weekend. how much did you spend? the average holiday shopper spechbts spent $400 over the weekend. that is up from 365 per average shopper last year. the hope is, of course, chris, that all of that translates into a good day today. it is cybermonday which, by the way, was the biggest online shopping day of the year last year. so we have a lot to live up to. the stats say so far that over 50% of the adult u.s. population, that s about, what,
roughly, 123 million people do plan to shop today from the safety of their office or home computer. i say safety, chris, there is a woman who is under investigation, you might have seen this story, for allegedly attacking 20 shoppers at a walmart on black friday. yes. with pepper spray. authorities had alleged she was a quote competitive shopper. that s a nice way of putting it, who purposely used pep spray to gain advantage to grab an xbox game console on sale. she had two little kids with her, setting a fine example. might be safer to shop online today. mandy ddrry, thank you. the muppets were no match for the vampires this weekend. breaking down part i took in another $62 million since wednesday. check this out, worldwide, this film has brought in almost half a billion since opening on the 18th. the muppets debuted in second
in support of bernie fine, said it was all lies and that the accusers were just after money. obviously, he s backtracked on that statement to this point. here s part of what he said in a written statement last night. the allegations that have come forth today have disturbing and deeply troubling. i am personally very shocked because i have never witnessed any of the activities that have been alleged. he also says that he regrets saying anything that may have been insensitive to any potential victims here. he is calling for a full investigation. chris? jay gray in syracuse, thank you. in the meantime, the first critical court hearing penn st comes next week. what did they know about the allegations about football coach jerry sandusky? what did they do about it? nbc s chief investigative correspondent michael isikoff has been following the case throughout. what are we expecting at this hearing? reporter: this is the first
tennessee. half a foot of snow arc cumulating snow. generally a one to two in birmingham, enough to wet the streets and accumulate on the grassy areas. one to three in memphis. this wintry weather will be pulling off to the north and east with the area of low pressure and that means more snow arc cumulating snow for the ohio valley as we go from monday into tuesday and tuesday into wednesday eventually moving into parts of the northeast. chris, back to you. thank you so much. let s talk more about that breaking news. we told you about at the top of the hour, democratic congressman barn barney frank of massachusetts expected to announce he s retiring. frank has spent more than three decades on capitol hill, first elected to the house in 1980. as chairman of the finance services committee he helped pass legislation to overhaul the nation s financial system. barney frank, going to announce that he is retiring. now let s take a check of
nbc s jay gray is live in syracuse with the latest developments. that s hard to listen to, jay. let s start with the phone call. put it in context for us. reporter: well, chris, what we know that is it was recorded nine years ago by the initial accuser in this case, as you talked about, bobby davis, and he recorded this call secretly but legally because he was told by local newspaper reporters they needed more evidence. he brought the case to them initially, trying to figure out what to do and how to move forward and they said, look, we need more evidence. we need someone else to talk about this. obviously they did not think that was enough evidence at the time of the recordings. so it s been around for nine years and just coming to light last night, chris. what about the latest accuser to come forward, jay? reporter: it s interesting. his name is zack, he was abuses in a pittsburgh hotel in 2002, the same year, by the way, that recording was made. and says that he met bernie f