USA DAWN: NEWS AND UPDATES

It’s that time of year again. The time when you book your flight, gather with family, stuff your face with turkey, and shop till your heart’s content. And thanks to modern consumerism, the Thanksgiving shopping glut that used to end with Black Friday now extends through Cyber Monday. But in recent years it has been extended by a day to flex your charitable spirit. It’s called Giving Tuesday and it was created five years ago to bring back the spirit of giving to Thanksgiving weekend. This one-day annual movement has spread to 70 countries, over 700,000 donors, and last year, raised over $116 million (up from $45 million the previous year). But as you settle into a turkey coma on that comfy couch, glancing at your phone, you may notice an endless stream of #GivingTuesday appeals cluttering your inbox from your favorite charities. One after the other, the message tend to be the same: "Flex your charitable spirit and give us money because we do great things and help ...

Kicking off the Thanksgiving holiday break with gusto, Disney’s animated adventure “Moana” opened with plenty of box office power and took in $2.6 million at Tuesday night preview showings starting at 7 p.m. in North America. The “Moana” gross doubled the $1.3 million Tuesday preview record set last year by Disney’s “The Good Dinosaur.” It’s also far above the $1.2 million preview gross from “Frozen,” the $1.4 million Thursday preview total for “Big Hero 6” and the $1.7 million Thursday preview for “Zootopia” in March. “Moana” is expected to easily top the holdover numbers for “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” during the five-day Thanksgiving holiday along with the openings for Brad Pitt’s thriller “Allied,” Billy Bob Thornton’s raucous comedy “Bad Santa 2” and Warren Beatty’s Howard Hughes comedy-drama “Rules Don’t Apply.” “Moana,” centered on the journey of a Polynesian teenage girl, is expected to dominate moviegoing with about $75 million at 3,875 locations d...