Biden’s False Ground Zero Claim and Disturbing Beau Comparison Ignite Fury

Luis Cornelio
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Biden’s False Ground Zero Claim and Disturbing Beau Comparison Ignite Fury

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) President Joe Biden’s Monday speech in Alaska has stirred controversy not only for his comparison between his son Beau Biden’s death and the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, but also for a demonstrable lie made about Ground Zero.

During his speech, Biden falsely asserted that he was present at Ground Zero on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the terrorist attacks, adding to the scrutiny surrounding his remarks.

Addressing the audience, Biden stated, “To anyone here or anyone here or across the country grieving a lost child, parents, friend or co-worker, to all those that bear the wounds from the searing September morning, I know how hard it is on a day like this.”

In the same speech, Biden made another statement that has come under scrutiny. He falsely claimed to have been present at Ground Zero the day after the terrorist attacks. However, according to CSPAN video records, Biden delivered a speech before the Senate Floor on that day, not in New York City.

“I join you on this solemn day to renew our sacred vow: never forget; never forget; we never forget,” Biden began. “Each of us, each of those precious lives stolen too soon when evil attacked Ground Zero in New York. I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building. I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell. It looked so devastating.”

Reactions to these remarks have been swift. Critics have accused Biden of either being dishonest or having a lapse in memory. Twitter account End Wokeness tweeted that Biden’s claim “never happened.” Collin Rugg, co-founder of Trending Politics, asked, “Is Joe Biden a liar, dumb, or both?”

Prominent Twitter account ALX pointed out, “You would think one would remember voting on a resolution to condemn the worst attack on American soil the day after it happened.” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine commented, “I can’t remember Biden being at Ground Zero on September 12.”

Fox News guest host Guy Benson chimed in, saying, “It may be too much to ask of Joe Biden, but since he chose to become the first POTUS not to attend a memorial at one of the attack sites on a 9/11 anniversary, he could’ve at least had the decency to get all the details correct when he finally delivered his remarks.”

Biden’s contentious remarks come two days after veterans slammed him for failing to visit Ground Zero or making remarks from the White House on Sept. 11. Mark Geist, a Marine Corps veteran, told the Washington Examiner, “By not visiting the sites, President Biden will miss an opportunity to demonstrate his dedication to upholding the values and principles that define our nation, and it may leave some questioning his understanding of the significance of this solemn day in American history.”

Calif. School District Owes $2.25M in Suit Involving Teacher Who Had Student’s Baby

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Calif. School District Owes $2.25M in Suit Involving Teacher Who Had Student’s Baby

(Headline USA) A Southern California school district will pay $2.25 million to settle the latest lawsuit involving a teacher who became pregnant by one of at least two students she was accused of sexually abusing.

The settlement brings to $8.25 million the amount paid by Redlands Unified School District to Laura Whitehurst’s victims since her 2013 arrest, the Southern California News Group reported Sunday.

In August 2016, the district agreed to pay $6 million to a former student who impregnated Whitehust while she was his teacher.

The latest lawsuit was filed in 2021 by another former student who alleged he was preyed upon and sexually abused at Redlands High School by Whitehurst in 2007 and 2008 when he was 14, according to the plaintiff’s attorney, Morgan Stewart.

Whitehurst admitted to police in 2013 she had sex with the youth 10 to 15 times in her classroom and at her apartment, a police report stated.

Redlands Unified spokesperson Christine Stephens said Friday that the district was aware of the recent settlement, but could not comment due to confidentiality agreements.

In the other lawsuit, the boy who fathered Whitehurst’s child alleged that Redlands Unified officials knew of his relationship with the teacher and failed to warn his family.

Whitehurst gave birth in 2014 after having sex with the boy for a year, starting when he was 16.

Whitehurst, who taught English and was a soccer coach, pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with three former students. She served six months in jail and registered as a sex offender.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Did George Soros Help Ghostwrite the Woke New ‘James Bond’ Novel?

Robert Jonathan
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Did George Soros Help Ghostwrite the Woke New ‘James Bond’ Novel?

(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) The latest official installment in the James Bond literary canon is so woke it seems like it could have been dictated by far-left, globalist oligarch George Soros or one of his underlings.

The storyline of the new novel, On His Majesty’s Secret Service, ties in with last May’s coronation of King Charles III, but critics say it comes across more as an instruction manual for the New World Order.

New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat summarized the politicized, progressive plot which could also perhaps have been crafted in the offices of the BBC or MSNBC:

“In the newest Bond novel … 007 is charged with protecting King Charles III from a dastardly plot hatched by a supervillain whose nom de guerre is Athelstan of Wessex—in other words, a Little Englander, a Brexiteer, a right-wing populist, apparently the true and natural heir to Goldfinger and Blofeld.”

In a rebuke to globalists, Brexit was the U.K. referendum that took the country out of the dictatorial European Union.

On the personal side, the novel depicts the fictional MI6 agent and legendary Lothario in a situationship with an immigration lawyer who is dating other men too. The lawyer is female, though.

The book, written by Charlie Higson, also takes metaphorical shots at Hungarian President Viktor Orban (the yarn takes place, at least in part, in Hungary), former U.S. President Donald Trump and French conservative leader Marine Le Pen—and the bad guy, perhaps, may been inspired by Brexit architect Nigel Farage.

“People who are skeptical about mass immigration or transgenderism or the erosion of free speech are simply itching to engage in mass terror attacks in the heart of London, apparently,” Niall Gooch of the Spectator quipped.

One of the cartoonish Bond villain’s sins, moreover, is that he has surrounded himself with co-conspirators who are insufficiently diverse.

Most people, let alone Bond movie fans, are probably unaware that rights-holder Ian Fleming Publications has contracted out to various authors to write new Bond books, including prequels and spinoffs.

Some say the Higson book has turned 007’s “license to kill” into a license to shill for the elitist agenda. Leftists, meanwhile, are likely to lap it up as the greatest piece of fictitious propaganda tied to an MI6 agent since the Steele dossier.

That this novel — which is meant to be taken seriously rather than regarded as satire—could be turned into a Bond movie, however, is an issue and doesn’t bode well either for consumers who just want action-fueled escapism.

The Bond on-screen series is already undergoing change. The most recent film in the long-running franchise, No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s finale in starring as the British secret agent, was mostly boring, overly long, and seemed more of a soap opera than a spy thriller.

With Craig’s successor yet to be announced, producer Barbara Broccoli  has even floated the idea that character going forward could be nonbinary.

Earlier this year, the publisher began the process of editing offensive material from James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s original novels—which provided the basis for many of the original Bond cinematic installments—after so-called sensitivity readers reviewed the content.

Witness to JFK Assassination Speaks Out, Refutes Lone Gunman Narrative

Jacob Bruns
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Witness to JFK Assassination Speaks Out, Refutes Lone Gunman Narrative

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A man who witnessed the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy has broken his silence, explaining his experience of the fateful moment,  DYNUZ reported.

Paul Landis—a Secret Service agent who was just feet away from Kennedy when he was shot in Dallas, Texas, 60 years ago—acknowledged that the long accepted “lone gunman” theory of the assassination may have serious problems.

According to the official narrative, JFK was hit by two copper-jacketed 6.5 millimeter bullets, one of which hit the president from behind, exited through his throat, and continued to hit then-Texas Gov. John Connally, simultaneously wounding his back, chest, wrist and thigh.

The narrative also suggests that the bullet was found on Connally’s stretcher at the hospital after the shooting.

But Landis’s own account contradicts the above narrative. According to Landis, he found the bullet himself, lodged in the back of the seat behind where Kennedy was sitting.

He then took the bullet and put it next to the president on his stretcher. He told the New York Times in a recent interview that he removed the bullet in order to protect it from souvenir collectors.

“All the agents that were there were focused on the president,” he noted.

“This was all going on so quickly. And I was just afraid that — it was a piece of evidence, that I realized right away. Very important. And I didn’t want it to disappear or get lost. So it was, ‘Paul, you’ve got to make a decision,’ and I grabbed it.’”

Landis’s experience would suggest that the bullet struck JFK in the back, but did not penetrate deeply.

In his view, this may suggest that a second shooter could have been on the scene.

“At this point, I’m beginning to doubt myself,” he said, casting doubt on the official narrative. “Now I begin to wonder.”

Landis, 88, will describe his experience at length in his forthcoming memoir, The Final Witness, which will come out in October.

Last month in Cleveland, the former agent told a reporter that he has no political agenda, and simply wants to describe what he saw that day.

“There’s no goal at this point,” he said. “I just think it had been long enough that I needed to tell my story.”

S.F. Hires New Tourism Official to Rehab Its Tattered Image

Corine Gatti
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S.F. Hires New Tourism Official to Rehab Its Tattered Image

(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) Crime-infested San Francisco was clearly in damage control last week, hiring a tourism boss to reclaim the City by the Bay to its former glory days before the Left destroyed the city with their failed crime policies, the New York Post reported.

After launcing a $6 million campaign in May, the San Francisco Travel Association, the city’s tourism and marketing division, hired Scott Beck as its new president and CEO on Thursday.

Beck—who has held similar posts in Toronto and Salt Lake City—will begin Oct. 30, succeeding 18-year tourism and marketing veteran Joe D’Alessandro, who saw the city re-emerge from the dot-com bubble burst to become the hub of social-media and venture-capital startups, only to see the pendulum quickly swing as many fled the city during the COVID lockdowns and social-justice reckonings of 2020.

Beck’s hiring follows a string of high-end store closures—including the flagship stores of companies like Nordstrom’s and T-Mobile, which were unable to protect their profitability due to smash-and-grab retail theft. 

He told the San Francisco Chronicle that he hoped to reverse the “ongoing narrative about San Francisco as a monolithic experience, when it’s clearly not”—despite a recent analysis by San Francisco’s comptroller that found its business district has become a s**t show, quite literally in some instances.

Even the city’s mayor London Breed hired a poop patrol team in 2018 to clean up the sidewalks and admitted that she’s never seen so much waste on the sidewalks. 

The new hire blamed the media coverage for the city’s soft-on-crime policies, adding, it was “not 100% accurate,” although San Francisco’s homeless population and open-air drug markets gained national notoriety on theirs own merits.

Most recently, workers SF’s Nancy Pelosi Federal Building were advised to remain home “for the foreseeable future” because of crime in the area, which has little to do with the media.

Meanwhile, in a desperate attempt to showcase the alarming state of urban decay in the city, a street guide who turned out to be a former city commissioner attempted to launch a unique tour called “Doom Loop Walking Tour.” However, he soon resigned from his post, likely out of frustration at the government’s lack of response to the problem.

A recent Gallup poll found 46% of Americans felt San Francisco was not a safe place to live or visit, while safety was viewed differently by Democrats and Republicans, with 74% of Democrats perceiving the city as safe and 32% of Republicans agreeing.

San Francisco mayoral spokesman Jeff Cretan claimed that there was a political divide due to the “pervasive impact of right-wing attacks,” including those by the media.

Danish Actor Baffled When Asked about Lack of ‘Diversity’ in 18th-Century Drama

Molly Bruns
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Danish Actor Baffled When Asked about Lack of ‘Diversity’ in 18th-Century Drama

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The historical revisionism of über-woke Hollywood propagandists on shows like the Netflix hit Bridgerton has now led leftists to demand that all filmmakers cast aside accuracy in service of their agenda.

A reporter confronted Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen and director Nikolaj Arcel about the lack of diversity in their upcoming film, The Promised Land, questioning why they did not include more actors of color in the 18th-century western Eurpoean tale.

The movie is set in Denmark in 1755, telling the story of Ludvig Kahlen—a man hell-bent on becoming king, but who ran into trouble with a local landowner, according to the Daily Caller.

Despite the fact that the setting of the film obviously did not lend itself to a great amount of diversity, a reporter from the filmmakers’ home country asked Mikkelsen and Arcel if they were concerned this would not lead to any critical acclaim.

“Hello, I am from Denmark and it’s a pleasure to be here,” the reporter began. “So you’re a little bit into it, this is a cast and Danish production, which is entirely Nordic, it therefore has some lack of diversity you would say.”

The reporter then attempted to make reference to a controversial new diversity requirement recently imposed by the Academy Awards, which excludes movies from consideration unless they meet a certain quota of minority crew-members.

“There’s also new rules implied in Hollywood…” he began.

However, Mikkelson promptly interrupted the reporter, a look of disbelief on his face.

“What are you onto?” he asked incredulously.

The reporter reiterated the question, wondering if the lack of diversity was for “artistic reasons” and if they were concerned about their chances of winning an Oscar.

“Are you?” Mikkelsen shot back. “You’re putting us on the spot so you answer the question.”

The reporter mentioned Parasite, a South Korean movie released in 2019, met diversity quotas for American awards shows (simply by virtue of its South Korean setting).

“I don’t understand the question,” Mikkelsen said.

Director Arcel attempted to answer the question, noting the film’s commitment historical accuracy.

“Well, first of all, the film takes place in Denmark in the 1750’s, we do have a big plot line you know about a girl of color who is being subjected to racism and you know and which was very rare [to have] any people of color in Denmark and almost nobody, she was probably at the time the only one in the entire country of Denmark,” he said. “I would say that it… wasn’t a thought in our minds, that I think it would be a little weird, you know, if – it’s just a historical [portrayal] of how it was in 1750.”

Appeals Court Upholds Ban on Biden Censoring Social Media

Ken Silva
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Appeals Court Upholds Ban on Biden Censoring Social Media

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In a win for free-speech rights, an appeals court has upheld the landmark July 4 district court decision banning the U.S. government from pressuring social media companies to censor First Amendment-protected content.

 “This is a significant victory for the American people,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in a statement, celebrating Friday’s ruling.

 “And it confirms what we have said from the very beginning: the federal government is not permitted to engage in viewpoint suppression, no matter your political ideology.”

The decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans stems from a lawsuit the attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana filed against the Biden administration in May 2022.  They sued Biden, former press secretary Jen Psaki, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Mayorkas, the new director of DHS’ “Disinformation Governance Board” Nina Jankowicz, and others.

The attorneys general argued that Biden and his officials colluded with big tech companies, including Meta, Twitter, and Youtube, to censor truthful information about a range of issues— including the coronavirus, election integrity and Hunter Biden’s laptop—under the guise of combating “misinformation.”

In a landmark ruling released July 4, a lower court agreed with the plaintiffs.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’” U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty said in his scathing judgment, which granted a injunction on the Biden administration from pressuing social media companies to censor.

Democrats and left-leaning media criticized the ruling at the time, claiming that the judge had a conservative bias. But the Fifth Circuit largely upheld the lower court injunction on Friday.

“Ultimately, we find the district court did not err in determining that several officials—namely the White House, the Surgeon General, the CDC, and the FBI—likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content, rendering those decisions state actions,” the appeals court said.

“In doing so, the officials likely violated the First Amendment.”

In its decision, the appeals court cited numerous examples of the Biden administration acting unconstitutionally.

“For example, one White House official demanded more details and data on Facebook’s internal policies at least twelve times, including to ask what was being done to curtail ‘dubious’ or ‘sensational’ content, what ‘interventions’ were being taken, what ‘measurable impact’ the platforms’ moderation policies had, ‘how much content [was] being demoted,’ and what ‘misinformation’ was not being downgraded,” the justices said.

The Biden administration has ten days to appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Long-Awaited Performing Arts Center to Open at WTC’s Ground Zero Site

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Long-Awaited Performing Arts Center to Open at WTC’s Ground Zero Site

(Headline USA) In a mammoth room behind translucent marble walls, workers are setting the stage for the World Trade Center’s newest addition.

It isn’t another office tower, nor is it a monument, at least explicitly, to the memory of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It’s a theater complex.

Envisioned two decades ago to add vibrancy and draw people to a place of devastation and mourning, the Perelman Performing Arts Center is finally arriving at a very different ground zero.

The site is ringed by new skyscrapers and located in a neighborhood that has more residents than before the attacks. Annually, millions of visitors come to the memorial and museum.

Still, organizers believe the arts space, also called “PAC NYC,” has an important role to play in one of the most sensitive, historic spaces in the United States.

“The memorial is here for people to come and grieve and pay their respects. The museum is for people to learn, be aware and never forget,” says Khady Kamara, PAC NYC’s executive director. “And the Performing Arts Center is here for people to celebrate life and really celebrate the resilience of New Yorkers and of the country.”

Perhaps befitting a space for theatrical drama, the $560 million institution has been through no shortage of its own. There were financial roadblocks, political buffeting and a yearslong wait for construction to begin while its designated spot accommodated a temporary transit hub. Leaders, architects, design and occupants changed.

Now the curtain is set to rise Sept. 19 with the first of five concerts focused on a theme of refuge. They follow invitation-only events, including an open house for Sept. 11 victims’ families and first responders on the 22nd anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the trade center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

“A day doesn’t go by where I don’t think about 9/11 and the responsibility that we have to that community,” artistic director Bill Rauch said recently from the cube-like building, which stands 138 feet tall.

Daylight filters through the Portuguese marble walls and turns them into a radiant amber quilt patterned by chocolate and caramel veins. Sedate by day, the building’s boxy exterior is designed to glow from within at night. Its nearly 5,000 marble panels are backlit by chandeliers in a corridor surrounding theater.

Nearby but out of sight is the 9/11 Memorial, which is obscured by the half-inch-thick stone, subtly encased in glass for protection and energy efficiency. The windowless design keeps the buzz of theatergoers at a respectful distance from people who are paying tribute at the memorial, and vice versa, architect Joshua Ramus explained.

“I didn’t want to treat the memorial like a spectacle,” he said.

The arts center was built largely with private donations, including $130 million from former Mayor Mike Bloomberg and $75 million from investor Ronald Perelman, plus $100 million from a government-financed redevelopment agency.

“There’s never been anything like it in the area, and it’s going to continue fueling the city’s comeback from the pandemic — just as the arts helped fuel our comeback after 9/11,” Bloomberg said in a statement.

With moveable walls, seats, floor sections and even balconies, the space can transform from a 1,000-seat venue into three smaller spaces. Those, in turn, can be arranged into a total of 62 different stage-and-audience configurations, with some as intimate as 100-seat rooms.

Special walnut paneling deals with the acoustical challenges of variable audience sizes and stage locations. Foot-thick rubber pads beneath the theaters absorb the sound and vibrations of a hive of subway and commuter train lines.

The opening season includes works as reflective as an opera about a case of racist hazing among U.S. soldiers in the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, and as exuberant as Cats reimagined in drag ballroom culture.

The Matrix actor Laurence Fishburne is premiering a one-man show. Authors and presidential daughters Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush are talking about parenting. Native American comics are coming together for a night of stand-up.

“We didn’t want to avoid the subject of trauma, but we also didn’t want to soak in it,” Rauch said. He and Kamara emphasize that the institution aims to feel accessible and draw a wide range of people, with ticket prices starting at $40 and free performances planned in the lobby, which will be open to the public daily.

Yet the center has confronted questions about its impact on the community and cultural scene.

When activists pressed this year to increase affordable housing in a planned skyscraper elsewhere at the trade center, their campaign argued that too much redevelopment money has gone to lavish, nonresidential buildings while many New Yorkers have been priced out of the area. Its median household income and median rent are about double the citywide average.

“The performing arts center is kind of an amenity for a luxury neighborhood that they built,” said Todd Fine, who runs a advocacy business for historical preservation in lower Manhattan. He said the facility needs “to prove that the public is going to benefit.”

Many lower Manhattan arts groups struggled after 9/11, and an early conceptual blueprint for redevelopment called for “strengthening existing cultural institutions” while developing new ones.

Early on, the arts center was to house three established groups — two theaters and a visual arts museum — plus a new museum celebrating freedom. Those plans then changed, though the 9/11 Museum took shape in a separate space underground.

Rauch says the Perelman center is committed to collaborating with local arts groups. The head of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, an advocacy organization, believes the facility will foster an arts-district ambiance that stands to draw attention to local groups, not compete with them.

“It’s a huge statement to have such a beautiful building dedicated to theater on that sacred ground,” said council CEO Craig Peterson.

On a recent day, James Giaccone pointed out the arts center to bystanders from the edge of one of the 9/11 Memorial’s waterfall pools. That edge bears the name of his brother Joseph Giaccone, a 43-year-old finance executive, father of two and husband.

James Giaccone, a volunteer with Sept. 11-related organizations including Tuesday’s Children, initially was wary of the political controversies surrounding early plans for the arts space.

Then he came to see it as a step forward for the trade center and on a personal level, an embrace of living life fully. His and his brother’s families love going to the theater.

“So I think he would appreciate it,” Giaccone said.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Connecticut Town Keeps U.S. History Alive by Burning Traitor in Effigy

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Connecticut Town Keeps U.S. History Alive by Burning Traitor in Effigy

(Headline USA) A month before the British surrender at Yorktown ended major fighting during the American Revolution, the traitor Benedict Arnold led a force of Redcoats on a last raid in his home state of Connecticut, burning most of the small coastal city of New London to the ground.

It has been 242 years, but New London still hasn’t forgotten.

A crowd of several hundred revelers, some in period costume, marched through the city’s streets Saturday evening chanting, “Burn the traitor!” before watching as officials set Arnold’s effigy ablaze for the Burning of Benedict Arnold Festival, recreating a tradition that was once practiced in many American cities.

“I like to jokingly refer to it as the original Burning Man festival,” said organizer Derron Wood, referencing the annual gathering in the Nevada desert.

For decades after the Revolutionary War, cities including New York, Boston and Philadelphia held yearly traitor-burning events. They were an alternative to Britain’s raucous and fiery Guy Fawkes Night celebrations commemorating the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, when Fawkes was executed for conspiring with others to blow up King James I of England and both Houses of Parliament.

Residents “still wanted to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, but they weren’t English, so they created a very unique American version,” Wood said.

The celebrations died out during the Civil War, but Wood, the artistic director of New London’s Flock Theatre, revived it a decade ago as a piece of street theater and a way to celebrate the city’s history using reenactors in period costumes.

Anyone can join the march down city streets behind the paper mache Arnold to New London’s Waterfront Park, where the mayor on Saturday cried, “Remember New London,” and put a torch to the effigy. The crowd chanted “U-S-A” as the life-sized Arnold burned.

Ellen Warfield, of Mystic, brought her 9-year-old son, Lucian Bace, because she said their ancestors fought in the Revolution and she hoped to get her son excited about the history that surrounds him.

“It’s wild to show the kids something like this,” she said. “You get to see it in real life, rather than see it play out on TV. They spend too much time on their screens today.”

Lucian had a singular focus.

“I just can’t wait to see them burn that man,” he said. “Burn that turncoat!”

Arnold, a native of nearby Norwich, was initially a major general on the American side of the war, playing important roles in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and the Battle of Saratoga in New York.

In 1779, though, he secretly began feeding information to the British. A year later, he offered to surrender the American garrison at West Point in exchange for a bribe, but the plot was uncovered when an accomplice was captured. Arnold fled and became a brigadier general for the British.

On Sept. 6, 1781, he led a force that attacked and burned New London and captured a lightly defended fort across the Thames River in Groton.

After the American victory at Yorktown a month later, Arnold left for London. He died in 1801 at age 60, forever remembered in the United States as the young nation’s biggest traitor.

New London’s Burning Benedict Arnold Festival, which has become part of the state’s Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival, was growing in popularity before it was halted in 2020 because of the pandemic. The theater group brought the festival back last year.

“This project and specifically the reaction, the sort of hunger for its return, has been huge and the interest in it has been huge,” said Victor Chiburis, the Flock Theatre’s associate artistic director and the festival’s co-organizer.

The only time things got a little political, Chiburis said, is the year a group of Arnold supporters showed up in powdered wigs to defend his honor. But that was all tongue-in-cheek and anything that gets people interested in the Revolutionary War history of the city, the state and Arnold is positive, he said.

In one of the early years after the festival first returned, Mayor Michael Passero forgot to notify the police, who were less than pleased with the yelling, burning and muskets firing, he said.

But those issues, he said, were soon resolved and now he can only be happy that the celebration of one of the worst days in the history of New London brings a mob of people to the city every year.

A mob that included a very satisfied 9-year-old.

The coolest part was “probably the head falling off,” Bace said. “I really liked it.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Utah Researchers Let Mosquitoes Feast on Blood for Science

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Utah Researchers Let Mosquitoes Feast on Blood for Science

(Headline USA) It’s lunchtime at the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District and a colony of sabethes cyaneus — also known as the paddle-legged beauty for its feathery appendages and iridescent coloring — find their way to Ella Branham.

“They’re not very aggressive and they’re kind of picky eaters,” said Branham, a technician, as she exhaled into a glass tank to attract the insects to the carbon dioxide in her breath. “So I’ll be feeding them with my arm.”

Branham had volunteered to let the South American mosquitoes feed on her blood so they can produce eggs and maintain the colony for education and research at the lab in the Salt Lake City district.

It’s one of the many mosquito control districts around the United States that seek to hold in check one of the world’s deadliest animals — one well-positioned to thrive in a warmer and wetter environment.

The blood-sucking insects have been in the news recently due to outbreaks of mosquito-borne viruses, which some may be extra sensitive to following the airborne COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreover, globalist billionaires like Bill Gates have signaled their intention to use mosquitoes in research for the potential involuntary transmission of vaccines, echoing controversial biowarfare experiments that took place in the South during the 1950s.

The combination of factors has led some to suspect that the next COVID-scale pandemic may be insect-borne, meaning that perhaps Salt Lake City could be the next Wuhan—although any major lab-borne outbreak likely would have its roots in controversial gain-of-function experiments like those that the National Institutes of Health had helped fund in the Chinese research facility.

Most existing mosquito-borne viruses are currently survivable, with already available treatments and vaccines, such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, that make them of little benefit to the pharmaceutical industry unless a more virulent strain can be manufactured.

Mosquitoes can carry viruses including dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika. They are especially threatening to public health in Asia and Africa but are also closely monitored in the United States. Local agencies reported more than 1,100 cases of West Nile virus in 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Most humans who contract West Nile show no symptoms. But for some, it can cause vomiting, fever and in rare cases seizures or meningitis. Over roughly the last 25 years, nearly 3,000 deaths and more than 25,000 hospitalizations linked to West Nile were reported throughout the United States — most of them in August.

West Nile deaths have been reported this year in states including Texas and Colorado, and mosquitoes are thought to be the source of “locally acquired” malaria infections of people in Maryland, Florida and Texas.

Ary Faraji, an entomologist and the executive director of the Salt Lake City mosquito abatement district, said monitoring shows the mosquito season starting earlier and lasting longer as the climate has warmed. The district used to historically shut down each year in mid-September, but that has gotten later and later. Last year, district workers were still setting and checking traps until Thanksgiving.

And this year — where an abnormally snowy winter and a very rainy spring left more water across the landscape for mosquitoes to breed in — his staff estimated that there were five times as many mosquitos in May compared to the average year.

That’s where the health threat comes in. While both males and females feed on sugar or nectar throughout their lives, females require blood meals to nourish and develop their eggs.

“They are the true vixens,” Faraji said. “Some can be so beautiful and yet some can be so deadly.”

Faraji’s staff — made up of scientists and college and doctoral students — traps, sorts and tests mosquitos for viruses using drones, boats and ATVs. Their work takes into account how trends ranging from weather patterns to population growth will affect disease transmission.

“The more people you put in a closer vicinity of where the mosquitos are, the higher chance of pathogen transmission,” he said, noting the challenges of the wetland areas surrounding Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

Though dangerous, mosquitoes are also critical to ecosystems throughout the world, with various species serving as pollinators or food sources to fish, birds and frogs.

“We try to maintain a balance and suppress them to the point that they’re not negatively affecting communities,” Faraji said. “Taking them away would definitely negatively impact our ecosystem overall.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

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