USA DAWN: NEWS AND UPDATES

As Rhode Island's most famous lighthouse keeper, Lewis saved a number of lives from drowning, including the two soldiers that inspired the doodle. Today’s Google doodle marks the 175th birthday of Ida Lewis, a lighthouse keeper once hailed as “America’s Bravest Woman” for the numerous lives she saved from drowning. As the owner of the Lime Rock Lighthouse in Rhode Island, Google says Idawalley Zorada Lewis made her first save at the age of 12 and continued braving into the Newport harbor’s dangerous, cold waters to save drowning men and women all the way into her sixties. From the Google Doodle Blog: A lighthouse keeper required unwavering courage, sheer physical strength, constant diligence, and a willingness to put one’s own life on the line. Ida was so dedicated that supposedly she would rush into inclement weather without shoes or coat so as not a waste a single second. Her life and legacy were not only an honor to research and illustrate, but trul...

 A little girl paints her face to look like a sugar skull for the Día de los Muertos celebration at El Museo del Barrio in New York City. Photograph: Gonzalo Marroquin H alloween – America’s festival of sugar – will undoubtedly be on everyone’s minds on Monday as households across the country get ready to buy enough candy to feed a small village. Parents will return after a long day at the office and prepare to spend their evening awkwardly greeting neighbors as their kids – dressed as Kylo Ren or Iron Man (again) – excitedly wait for more Skittles and 3 Musketeers. But where are the ghosts or the macabre scenes from the past that more genuinely capture the spirit of Halloween? It’s a lament for those who would eschew the lame crop of sexy nurses for a more thoughtful celebration. But what if I told you there is a family-oriented holiday with 3,000 years of divine tradition that has a much deeper connection with the supernatural and the dead? A three-day festival wh...

So many Americans are slaughtered by gun violence that even the most sensitive of us has grown numb to some degree. An Islamic extremist turns a gay nightclub into a grisly abattoir and we all know what comes next: nothing. Regardless of your position on guns, two facts are beyond dispute: The National Rifle Association as a lobby is sufficiently powerful to stop confiscation laws dead in their tracks; and the astounding number of guns in America means even that if every gun manufacturer folded tomorrow, generations of Americans would still live in a nation awash in instruments of death, whether said death is directed at animals, intruders, or innocents. These two facts were best confirmed by President Obama, who  said  during a townhall meeting earlier this month that "the notion that I, or Hillary, or Democrats, or whoever you want to choose, are hell-bent on taking away folks' guns is just not true, and I don't care how many times the NRA says it. I'm about...

The United States men's national team is heading to the quarterfinals of the Copa America Centenario after a 1-0 win over Paraguay in their final group play match. Here are the highlights via  FOX Soccer : Clint Dempsey scored the match's lone goal and the game winner the 27th minute. He now has 51 in his international career, hot on the heels of the retired Landon Donovan, who scored 57. DeAndre Yedlin was sent off with his second yellow in the 48th minute. John Anthony Brooks was named Budweiser Man of the Match for his incredible performance on defense. Whether the ball was being played in the air or on the ground, he was there stopping the attack. It was an ugly, ugly match, but the Jurgen "Cool Hand" Klinsmann and the United States got the job done. As Jeff Carlisle of  ESPN FC  noted , "This result was no oil painting but sometimes cheap velvet is enough to do the trick." Paraguay and Costa Rica are eliminated. Columbia and...