A black bear born without front legs has been sighted more or less thriving in the mountains of West Virginia. Though not unheard of, it’s wild to be able to see the animal’s natural movement, having been transformed, by consequence of his birth, from a quadrupedal animal to a bipedal animal like us. “The area […] The post Trail Camera Shows ‘Truly Amazing’ Bear–Born with 2-Legs and Living Large in West Virginia appeared first on Good News Network.

Books new releases All the New Fantasy Books Arriving in October 2024 An Imperial historian, an assassin, and a psychic are just some of the characters in this month’s batch of new science fiction titles. By Reactor | Published on October 1, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Here’s the full list of fantasy titles heading your way in October! Keep track of all the new SFF releases here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Release dates are subject to change. October 1 Candle & Crow (Ink & Sigil #3) — Kevin Hearne (Del Rey)Al MacBharrais has a most unusual job: He’s a practitioner of ink-and-sigil magic, tasked with keeping order among the gods and monsters that dwell hidden in the human world. But there’s one supernatural mystery he’s never been able to solve: Years ago, someone cast twin curses on him that killed off his apprentices and drove away loved ones who heard him speak, leaving him bereft and isolated.  But he’s not quite alone: As Al works to solve this mystery, his friends draw him into their own eccentric dramas. Buck Foi the hobgoblin has been pondering his own legacy—and has a plan for a daring shenanigan that will make him the most celebrated hobgoblin of all. Nadia, goth queen and battle seer, is creating her own cult around a god who loves whisky and cheese. And the Morrigan, a former Irish death goddess, has decided she wants not only to live as an ordinary woman but also to face the most perilous challenge of the mortal world: online dating. Meanwhile, Al crosses paths with old friends and new—including some beloved Druids and their very good dogs—in his globe-trotting quest to solve the mystery of his curses. But he’s pulled in so many different directions by his colleagues, a suspicious detective, and the whims of destructive gods that Al begins to wonder: Will he ever find time to write his own happy ending? Shadow of the Smoking Mountain (Chronicles of Hanuvar #3) — Howard Andrew Jones (Baen)He had crossed half a continent, venturing into the heartland of his enemies to wage a secret war of liberation! It almost seemed that the worst lay behind them. Hanuvar and his small band of allies had faced down warriors and horrors and sinister magics to free hundreds of their people from slavery. The emperor was dead, and his successor had so little interest in finding Hanuvar, he’d ordered his sorcerous revenants to cease their search and turn their sinister talents to other targets. But as Hanuvar shifted his efforts south, where hundreds of his people still labored under the Dervan yoke, other forces were advancing agendas of their own. Determined to prove Hanuvar still lived, the revenant legate secretly sought him with dark sorceries. A band of gladiators had rebelled and now wandered free, threatening the innocent and calling down the wrath of the legions. And upon the slopes of an ancient volcano, an ageless warrior mage worked to unleash a spell that would doom them all. The Great When (Long London #1) — Alan Moore (Bloomsbury)The year is 1949, the city London. Amidst the smog of the capital stumbles Dennis Knuckleyard, a hapless eighteen year-old employed by a second-hand bookshop. One day, on an errand to acquire books for sale, Dennis discovers a novel that simply does not exist. It is a fictitious book, a figment from another novel. Yet it is physically there in his hands. How? Dennis has stumbled on a book from the Great When, a magical version of London beyond time and space, where reality blurs with fiction and concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous, terrible beings. But this other, magical London must remain a secret: if Dennis cannot find a way to return this book to where it belongs, he risks repercussions, such as his body being turned inside out (or worse). So begins a journey delving deep into the city’s occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers—some from legend, some all too real, and all with plans of their own. Soon Dennis finds himself at the centre of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons forever. The Crescent Moon Tearoom — Stacy Sivinski (Atria)Ever since the untimely death of their parents, Anne, Beatrix, and Violet Quigley have made a business of threading together the stories that rest in the swirls of ginger, cloves, and cardamon that lie at the bottom of their customers’ cups. Their days at the teashop are filled with talk of butterflies and good fortune intertwined with the sound of cinnamon shortbread being snapped by laced fingers. That is, until the Council of Witches comes calling with news that the city Diviner has lost her powers, and the sisters suddenly find themselves being pulled in different directions. As Anne’s magic begins to develop beyond that of her sisters’, Beatrix’s writing attracts the attention of a publisher, and Violet is enchanted by the song of the circus—and perhaps a mischievous trapeze artist threatening to sweep her off her feet—it seems a family curse that threatens to separate the sisters is taking effect. With dwindling time to rewrite their future and help three other witches challenge their own destinies, the Quigleys set out to bargain with Fate. But in focusing so closely on saving each other, will they lose sight of themselves? The Undead Complex (Undetectables #2) — Courtney Smyth (Titan)Five months after they stopped The Whistler, business is booming for the Undetectables. Just not work that requires magical forensic investigators. So when Diana’s ex asks them to solve a murder—her own—Diana, Mallory and Cornelia can’t say no. Going undercover to investigate the set of the TV show, Undead Complex, Diana returns to her life as a propmaker. But even the appearance of a genuine-article Francine Leon dollhouse leaves her feeling pulled down a path of crime-solving she  doesn’t want to walk forever. Meanwhile, Theodore’s coming apart at the seams—literally—and Mallory is running out of ways to help him. Especially as he seems to be keeping secrets from her. As the clues—and the bodies—keep piling up, each one making less and less sense, the Undetectables find themselves in a race against time to find out what, exactly, the killer is up to—before the final cut. Catan: The Novel (Catan #1) — Klaus Teuber (Blackstone)Norway, 860. Half-brothers Thorolf, Yngvi, and Digur have conspired to help Asla—daughter of Halldor, a powerful Viking chieftain—to escape her father’s oppressive rule. However, when they are discovered the chieftain’s revenge is swift and mighty. Pillaging his way through the realms of his daughter’s liberators, Halldor banishes his kin and has the brothers driven from their land. Left with no other choice, the three brothers—together with family and their allies—depart their home, sailing for new shores and, after a treacherous voyage, finally reach their destination: Catan, Land of the Sun. But new challenges await on this island, and new discoveries must be made if they are to survive. Will the brothers be able to stand together and offer a better future for all the settlers, or will this new mission divide them even more? The City in Glass — Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot. And then the angels come, and the city falls. Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost—and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned. She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever. Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again. Marigold Mind Laundry — Jungeun Yun, tr. Shanna Tan (Dial)Born with mysterious powers she does not know how to control, young Jieun accidentally causes her family to vanish. She vows to live a million lives in search of them.  Finally, one night, she brings the Marigold Mind Laundry into existence. Its service: to remove the deepest pain from our hearts. Jieun listens while customers share their unhappy memories. As they speak, she transfers their sadness onto T-shirts as stains. After a spin in the washing machine, the stains become flower petals that soar into the air, and Jieun’s customers find solace. Five wounded souls come to Jieun for help: a frustrated young filmmaker, a spiraling social media influencer, a mother betrayed by her husband, a woman jilted by her lover, and a talented photographer who hides in the safety of a mundane job. As Jieun listens to each of their stories, she learns that the will to heal is not a rare gift, but a power we all possess—if only we are open to it. October 8 Sargassa (Ex Romana #1) — Sophie Burnham (DAW)Selah Kleios is twenty-two years old and suddenly one of the most important women in the empires. The role of Imperial Historian is her birthright, something she’s been preparing for since birth—but she was supposed to have more time to learn the role from her father, the previous Historian. In the wake of her father’s sudden and shocking assassination, Selah finds herself custodian of more than just the Imperial Archives, the towering central library that safeguards all collective knowledge of the Roman Imperium and its client empires. There’s also the question of the two puzzling classified items her father left in her care—an ancient atlas filled with landscapes that don’t exist, and a carved piece of stone that seems to do nothing at all. Soon, though, it becomes clear that the Iveroa Stone is more than just a slab of rock. With the reappearance of an old lost love who’s been blackmailed into stealing it for an unknown entity, Selah finds herself in a race to uncover the mysteries the Stone holds. But she isn’t the only one with an interest in it—she’ll have to contend with the deputy chief of police, an undercover spy, and her own beloved half brother along the way. What begins as an act of atonement and devotion ultimately pulls her into the crosshairs of deep state conspiracy, the stirrings of an underground independence movement, and questions that threaten to shake the foundational legitimacy of Roma Sargassa’s past, present, and future. Bells Hells—What Doesn’t Break (Critical Role #1) — Cassandra Khaw, Critical Role (Random House Worlds)For as long as she can remember, Laudna has had a friend. A mentor. A little voice whispering in her cropped ear, promising that, no matter how monstrous she becomes or how far she wanders, there will always be someone to guide her. And so, Laudna is content. But the thought of more—of life, of love, of the magic stirring in her still veins—is unrelenting in its familiarity. More is the dream of the young girl trapped behind the bloodstained walls of Whitestone, and the nightmare of the woman who now stalks the woods outside them. More, Laudna’s little voice reminds her, is dangerous. From Tal’Dorei to Marquet, the world is infested with heroes destined to rid their kingdoms of creatures like Laudna. The little voice is right, she knows. But still, she thinks of more. And when she reaches for that dream, what reaches back will change everything. Blood of the Old Kings — Sung-il Kim, tr. Anton Hur (Tor Books)In an Empire run on necromancy, dead sorcerers are the lifeblood. Their corpses are wrapped in chains and drained of magic to feed the unquenchable hunger for imperial conquest. Born with magic, Arienne has become resigned to her dark fate. But when the voice of a long-dead sorcerer begins to speak inside her head, she listens. There may be another future for her, if she’s willing to fight for it. Miles away, beneath a volcano, a seven-eyed dragon also wears the Empire’s chains. Before the imperial fist closed around their lands, it was the people’s sacred guardian. Loran, a widowed swordswoman, is the first to kneel before the dragon in decades. She comes with a desperate plea, and will leave with a sword of dragon-fang in hand and a great purpose before her. In the heart of the Imperial capital, Cain is known as a man who gets things done. When his best friend and mentor is found murdered, he will leave no stone unturned to find those responsible, even if it means starting a war. A Dark and Secret Magic — Wallis Kinney (Alcove Press)Hecate Goodwin, Kate to her friends, has curated the perfect life as a hedge witch, living in a secluded cottage with only a black cat for company. She spends her days foraging herbs from the Ipswich forest, gardening, and creating tinctures to sell at the apothecary she owns. Most evenings pass without her speaking to another human being, an arrangement she quite prefers. Kate’s solitude is thrown into disarray when her older sister, Miranda, reaches out and asks her to host their coven’s annual Halloween gathering. The day marks the beginning of the new year for witches and is also Kate’s birthday. The pressure from her coven to make the evening memorable mounts as the event draws near. To complicate things further, a handsome man from Kate’s past turns up at her cottage, asking for sanctuary. It is Kate’s duty as a hedge witch to honor this request, much to her dismay. Matthew Cypher is no ordinary lost soul—he’s a practitioner of forbidden magic who’s tricked Kate once before, and her guard is up. As she juggles Matthew’s arrival and the preparations for Halloween, Kate comes across an old tome shrouded in dark magic. She is horrified when she realizes the blood-red inscription is written in familiar handwriting: her recently deceased mother’s. Afraid to even touch the dark magic her mother secretly studied, Kate can turn only to Matthew for help. Her idealized memory of her mother begins to distort, and as she and Matthew grow closer, Kate has to reevaluate whom she can really trust. The Last Dragon of the East — Katrina Kwan (Saga)At the spry young age of twenty-five, Sai has led a quiet life, keeping the family teahouse up and running—even if that means ignoring the past-due notices—and taking care of his ailing mother. But he has a not-so-secret gift that he’s parlayed into a side career: he was born with the ability to see the red threads of fate between soulmates, which lends itself nicely to matchmaking. Sai has thus far been content not to follow his own thread, the only one he’s ever seen that’s gray and fraying.But Sai’s ordinary existence is about to be turned upside-down by a pair of shining dragon scales. When his mother’s doctor sells them to him, claiming them as a miracle cure, Sai is pretty sure he’s being scammed. When the medicine actually works—and the terrifying, ruthless emperor catches wind—Sai is thrust into the search for a dragon long thought extinct that will lead him into the throes of a brewing war and deep into foreign lands, facing down challenges both magical and mortal on an unexpected adventure. And for the very first time, as his own thread of fate begins to move, he may be able to solve the mystery of his Fated One at the other end of the line. The Mountain Crown (Crown of Ishia #1) — Karin Lowachee (Solaris)War between the island states of Kattaka and Mazemoor has left no one unscathed. Méka’s nomadic people, the Ba’Suon, were driven from their homeland by the Kattakans. Those who remained were forced to live under the Kattakan yoke, to serve their greed for gold alongside the dragons with whom the Ba’Suon share an empathic connection. A decade later and under a fragile truce, Méka returns home from her exile for an ancient, necessary rite: gathering a king dragon of the Crown Mountains to maintain balance in the wild country. But Méka’s act of compassion toward an imprisoned dragon and Lilley, a Kattakan veteran of the war, soon draws the ire of the imperialistic authorities. They order the unwelcome addition of an enigmatic Ba’Suon traitor named Raka to accompany Méka and Lilley to the mountains. The journey is filled with dangers both within and without. As conflict threatens to reignite, the survival of the Ba’Suon people, their dragons, and the land itself will depend on the decisions—defiant or compliant—that Méka and her companions choose to make. But not even Méka, kin to the great dragons of the North, can anticipate the depth of the consequences to her world. October 15 Januaries — Olivie Blake (Tor Books)Once upon a time in a land far, far away, a wish-granting spirit rapidly approaches burnout. Meanwhile, a banished fairy answers a Craigslist ad, a Victorian orphan navigates an occult situationship, and a multiverse assassin contemplates the one who got away. With both iconic fan-favorite stories and entirely original pieces, Januaries features modified fairy tales, contemporary heists, absurdist poetry, and at least one set of actual wedding vows. Escape the slow trudge of mortality by diving into these enchanting new worlds with a master of imagination. The Nightward (Waters of the Lethe #1) — R.S.A. Garcia (Harper Voyager)For 500 years Gaiea’s Hand has stood as a ward against the Dark. The Age of Chaos is a faded memory. The Goddess has left Gailand and given her Blessing to the Queens to rule in her stead. Princess Viella of the court of Hamber is the Spirit of Gaiea, presumptive heir to the throne and budding wielder of magic. And yet she’s still a child—not yet ten years old—and a day spent evading her teachers and her dutiful bodyguard, Luka, is much more satisfying than learning about telepathy, illusions, and other spells, or obeying even her mother, the Queen. There is time enough… until there isn’t. For the night the Queen hosts the Ceremony to confirm Viella as the next Hand of Gaiea, everything changes for her—in the most horrific way imaginable: the assassination of Viella’s mother. Now Viella is Queen. Luka, despite resenting his position as royal babysitter, does not hesitate. He rushes his charge from the Court and vows to keep her safe. Yet he is unsure how to help a burgeoning Hand of Gaiea, let alone contend with his place as a man in a matriarchal world and the secret that is burning inside him. Together, they are on the run from darkness in a world where the lines between magic and technology are blurring and it’s up to a child and her protector to bring clarity and light back to the Queendom. An Instruction in Shadow (Inheritance of Magic #2) — Benedict Jacka (Ace)Stephen Oakwood has emerged victorious against the schemes of his aristocratic family. Now he finally has the opportunity to do what he’s been wanting to do for a long time: track down his father. But doing so won’t be easy. Stephen’s not so isolated any more, but the contacts he’s making in the magical world—everyone from the corporation he works for to the mother he’s just beginning to reconnect with—all have agendas of their own. And now a new group is emerging from the shadows, calling themselves the Winged. Their leader, the mysterious Byron, promises that he can show Stephen how to find his father…but he wants something in return. Following that trail will throw Stephen into greater danger than he’s ever faced before. To survive, he’ll need to use all of his tricks and sigls, and pick up some new ones. Only then will he be able to prevail against his enemies… and find out who’s really pulling the strings. Strange Beasts — Susan J. Morris (Bindery Books)At the dawn of the twentieth century in Paris, Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, works as a researcher for the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena. But no one realizes how abnormal she is. Sam is a channel into the minds of monsters: a power that could help her solve the gruesome deaths plaguing turn-of-the-century Paris—or have her thrown into an asylum. Sam finds herself assigned to a case with Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter of the criminal mastermind and famed nemesis of Sherlock Holmes and a notorious detective whom no one wants to work with on account of her previous partners’ mysterious murders. Ranging from the elite clubs of Paris to the dark underbelly of the catacombs, their investigation sweeps them into a race to stop a Beast from its killing rampage, as Hel and Sam are pitted against men, monsters, and even each other. But beneath their tenuous trust, an unmistakable attraction brews. Is trusting Hel the key to solving the murder, or is Sam yet another pawn in Hel’s game? Rogue Community College (Liberty House #1) — David R. Slayton (Blackstone)Isaac Frost is an assassin. Raised in the Graveyard of the cruel and mysterious Undertaker, he has mastered the deadly art of the knife and the skill of survival, together with scores of others just like him—young men taken from their families to become the most infamous killers throughout the realms of elves and humans. But Isaac is unique: a single drop of another’s blood can confer upon him the knowledge and power of friend and foe alike. After crossing paths with the elf queen Argent, Isaac is sent to a strange magical school for wayward practitioners in the hopes that he can learn where he—and his unusual talent—fit in the world. Isaac is charmed by the school’s chaotic nature, and finds himself unexpectedly drawn to Vran, a Sea Elf haunted by secret knowledge. But Vran isn’t the only one with secrets, and Isaac’s arrival is no accident. The Undertaker has charged him with infiltrating the school for the purpose of destroying it utterly, and his future rests on completing his mission—before the Undertaker takes matters into his own hands. October 22 Metal From Heaven — august clarke (Erewhon)He who controls ichorite controls the world. A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national growth, and ambitious industrialist Yann Chauncey helms production of this miraculous ore. Working his foundry is an underclass of destitute workers, struggling to get better wages and proper medical treatment for those exposed to ichorite’s debilitating effects since birth. One of those luster-touched victims, the child worker Marney Honeycutt, is picketing with her family and best friend when a bloody tragedy unfolds. Chauncey’s strikebreakers open fire. Only Marney survives. A decade later, as Yann Chauncey searches for a suitable political marriage for his ward, Marney sees the perfect opportunity for revenge. With the help of radical bandits and their stolen wealth, she must masquerade as an aristocrat to win over the calculating Gossamer Chauncey and kill the man who slaughtered her family and friends. But she is not the only suitor after Lady Gossamer’s hand, leading her to play twisted elitist games of intrigue. And Marney’s luster-touched connection to the mysterious resource and its foundry might put her in grave danger—or save her from it. The Wood at Midwinter — Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scot is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees—and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods. One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst—and the path of her life is changed forever. Monstrous Nights (Witch’s Compendium of Monsters #2) — Genoveva Dimova (Tor Books)With her magic reclaimed and her role in the community of Chernograd restored, Kosara’s life should finally be back to normal—but, of course, things can’t possibly be that simple.She is now in possession of twelve witch’s shadows. Holding them may grant her unprecedented power, but that doesn’t mean they’re always willing to do her bidding.Across the wall in Belograd, Asen chases his only lead on the latest witch murder case. He follows the trail of smuggling kingpin Konstantin Karaivanov to an underground monster auction—which leads him right back to Chernograd.There, sinister events follow one after another: snow falls in midsummer, a witch with two shadows is found dead, and monsters that should only appear during the Foul Days are sighted. The barrier between worlds thins… and Kosara is certain it’s her fault—and her job to fix. The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook (Dungeon Crawler Carl #3) — Matt Dinniman (Ace)Earth has been transformed into the set of the galaxy’s most watched game show: Dungeon Crawler World, a nightmarish, multilevel, video game-like dungeon filled with traps, monsters, and mind-bending puzzles. Carl and Donut have survived so far, but this fourth level is unlike anything they could imagine. The Iron Tangle: an impossibly complicated subway system tied together into a knot of trains of all kinds, from classic steam engines to sleek modern cars. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations aren’t always what they seem, and the exit is perpetually just a few stops away. The top ten list is populated, and Carl and Donut have made it. But that popularity comes with a price. They each now have a bounty on their head. They must work with other crawlers to solve the puzzle of the floor, but how can they do that when they don’t know who to trust? The secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly useless book. Welcome, Crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon. The Republic of Salt (Mirror Realm #2) — Ariel Kaplan (Erewhon)After a near-disastrous confrontation with La Caceria, Toba and Asmel are trapped on the human side of the gate, pursued by the Courser and a possessed Inquisitor. In the Mazik world, Naftaly’s visions are getting worse, predicting the prosperous gate city of Zayit in flames and overrun by La Caceria. Zayit is notorious for its trade in salt, a substance toxic to the near-immortal Maziks; if the Cacador can control the salt, he will be nearly unstoppable. But the stolen killstone, the key to the Cacador’s destruction, could eliminate the threat—if only Barsilay could find and use it. Deadly allies and even more dangerous bargains might be the only path to resist La Caceria’s ruthless conquest of both the mortal world and the Maziks’, but the cost is steep and the threat is near. Exiled by Iron (Tainted Blood #2) — Ehigbor Okosun (Harper Voyager)With the end of Alistair Sorenson’s tyrannical reign, Dèmi has accepted Jonas’s proposal to rule as his Queen with hopes to finally free her people, the magical Oluso. Yet social prejudice, corrupt council members, and the continued distrust of the nonmagical Ajès throughout the kingdom prove seemingly implacable obstacles. To make matters worse, Dèmi struggles to control her newly awakened iron blood magic. As Ekwensi’s rebel army—led in part by Colin, her best friend and one-time lover—become more triumphant in their mission, war seems inevitable. Before long, a new evil appears that hunts Oluso and Ajè alike, promising desolation on a larger level than ever before. When the failed assassination puts the life of Dèmi’s loved one in danger as well as the future of the Oluso into question, Dèmi embarks on a treacherous journey to find an ancestral spirit whose aid could tip the scales in her favor. Whether her new powers will destroy the kingdom or heal the blood-soaked rifts that have pulled it apart, she does not know. Beyond the battles of swords and magic, there is the battle for Dèmi’s heart. Jonas—the former enemy prince—has divided loyalties despite his love for Dèmi. And Ekwensi and Colin have every intention of winning her to their side, while a past pledge hangs over Dèmi’s head. Dèmi is caught between the kingdom, her people, and the spirits, and must decide what sacrifices she is willing to make for peace, and whether she can outrun the greatest danger that constantly puts her in peril—her own heart. Only one thing is for certain… There will be blood. The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door — H. G. Parry (Redhook)Camford, 1920. Gilded and glittering, England’s secret magical academy is no place for Clover, a commoner with neither connections nor magical blood. She tells herself she has fought her way there only to find a cure for her brother Matthew, one of the few survivors of a faerie attack on the battlefields of WWI which left the doors to faerie country sealed, the study of its magic banned, and its victims cursed. But when Clover catches the eye of golden boy Alden Lennox-Fontaine and his friends, doors that were previously closed to her are flung wide open, and she soon finds herself enmeshed in the seductive world of the country’s magical aristocrats. The summer she spends in Alden’s orbit leaves a fateful mark: months of joyous friendship and mutual study come crashing down when experiments go awry, and old secrets are unearthed. Years later, when the faerie seals break, Clover knows it’s because of what they did. And she knows that she must seek the help of people she once called friends—and now doesn’t quite know what to call—if there’s any hope of saving the world as they know it.  The Hollow and the Haunted (Hollow and the Haunted #1) — Camilla Raines (Titan)Miles Warren hails from a long line of psychics. Resigned to a life in the family business, Miles is perfectly happy, thank you very much. Apart from the fact he hasn’t told anyone he’s gay, and that he’s constantly exhausted from long nights spent wrangling angry ghosts in creepy cemeteries. Perfectly happy. But Miles’s comfortable routine is interrupted when he starts having visions of an unfamiliar boy. He soon learns the stranger is Gabriel Hawthorne, whose family have a mysterious, decades-long feud with Miles’s own—and that the visions are a premonition of his murder. Gabriel is everything Miles expects from a Hawthorne: rude, haughty, irritatingly good-looking. But that doesn’t mean Miles is just going to stand by and let someone kill him. The two form an uneasy alliance, trying to solve Gabriel’s murder before it happens. As they begin to unravel the web of secrets between their families, and with dark magic swirling around them, Miles is horrified to realize that he doesn’t hate Gabrielquiteas much as he’s supposed to. He might even like him.Too bad Gabriel is probably going to die. October 29 Bindle Punk Jefe (Bindle Punk #2) — Desideria Mesa (Harper Voyager)Prohibition is in full swing, and the glamorous life of upper-class Kansas City is everything Rose (Luna) Lane ever hoped it would be. Being married to her best friend isn’t so bad either, considering their agreement to keep their real love lives out of the public eye. However, try as she might to continue her life of anonymity, her popularity as a land developer’s wife—and as a successful club owner—draws even more attention to her personal endeavors. Soon, the balancing act between the life of Luna and Rose becomes a full-time job itself, making visiting home harder than ever before. However, her haven, which once offered a place of acceptance, is growing more hostile. Her community of brujas criticizes her methods of using magic for economic and social gain while consorting with nefarious witches of the North. Meanwhile, the Pendergast Machine is running at full force, pushing his will and money all over the city. Keeping her true identity and powers a secret while posing for the society papers gets all the more dangerous as new enemies start to question her origins… and old ones creep up from dark realms. The pressure could force Rose to do questionable things for the greater good, distancing herself from her loved ones and who she wants to be. She may have mastered her earth magic, but she still has a lot to learn about the heart. Blood Over Bright Haven — M. L. Wang (Del Rey)For twenty years, Sciona has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry at the University of Magics and Industry. When Sciona finally passes the qualifying exam and becomes a highmage, she finds her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues are determined to make her feel unwelcome—and, instead of a qualified lab assistant, they give her a janitor. What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was not always a janitor. Ten years ago, he was a nomadic hunter who lost his family on their perilous journey from the wild plains to the city. But now he sees the opportunity to understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the privileged in power. At first, mage and outsider have a fractious relationship. But working together, they uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever—if it doesn’t get them killed first. The post All the New Fantasy Books Arriving in October 2024 appeared first on Reactor.

News Squid Game Squid Game Season 2 Trailer Asks if You Want to Play a Game Who’s up for a second round of life-or-death? By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on October 1, 2024 Screenshot: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Netflix The second season of Squid Game is inching ever closer, and Netflix recently released a trailer to get us prepared. For those of you who didn’t watch the first season of the Korean mega-hit series, the show involves individuals down on their luck opting to take part in an orchestrated game to win a substantial cash prize. The downside to this “game,” however, is that losing involves dying in various horrific ways, all for the pleasure of the rich elite. It’s clear that show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk was making a commentary on the ravages of capitalism, among other things. That didn’t stop Netflix from creating a “real” version of Squid Game, which appears to completely miss the premise of the fictional show that inspired it. But I digress. The released trailer suggests that the game is alive and well in Season Two. t centers on the man who gives potential contestants the choice to take part in the event, giving them the choice to compete for a large sum of money, potentially winning nothing (and actually losing their life, though they don’t know that) or walking away with a smaller sum they won through playing a game play a game of ddakji instead. Here’s the official synopsis for Season Two: Three years after winning Squid Game, Player 456 gave up going to the states and comes back with a new resolution in his mind. Gi-hun once again dives into the mysterious survival game, starting another life-or-death game with new participants gathered to win the prize of 45.6 billion won. The second season of Squid Game starts streaming on Netflix on December 26, 2024. [end-mark] Check out the trailer below. [end-mark] The post <i>Squid Game</i> Season 2 Trailer Asks if You Want to Play a Game appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Horror Read an Excerpt From Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife Five siblings unearth long-buried secrets when the supernatural bargain entwining their fate with their ancestral land is suddenly ruptured… By Kay Chronister | Published on October 1, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Bog Wife, a Gothic Appalachian horror novel by Kay Chronister, available now from Counterpoint. Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are governed by a strict covenant that is renewed each generation with the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch, and in return, the bog produces a “bog-wife.” Brought to life from vegetation, this woman is meant to carry on the family line. But when the bog fails—or refuses—to honor the bargain, the Haddesleys, a group of discordant siblings still grieving the mother who mysteriously disappeared years earlier, face an unknown future.Middle child Wenna, summoned back to the dilapidated family manor just as her marriage is collapsing, believes the Haddesleys must abandon their patrimony. Her siblings are not so easily persuaded. Eldest daughter Eda, de facto head of the household, seeks to salvage the compact by desecrating it. Younger son Percy retreats into the wilderness in a dangerous bid to summon his own bog-wife. And as youngest daughter Nora takes desperate measures to keep her warring siblings together, fledgling patriarch Charlie uncovers a disturbing secret that casts doubt over everything the family has ever believed about itself. Before her return, Wenna thought many times about what it would be like to see her family again and a few times, with half-guilty yearning, of how it would feel to see the land where she had grown up, but she had not considered how it would feel for the land to see her, and now she thought that was what she should really have been worried about. The bog looked eyelessly; it felt knowing. The white pines and maples, leaning on their above-ground roots, seemed to incline their heads toward the car. Her husband Michael would have said she was anthropomorphizing the plants. The first time he used that word, she asked him what it meant. He shrugged. It was a word he’d learned in school. Acting like things that aren’t human have human intentions, he said. Everyone learns that? Wenna asked. In school? She’d tried, after that, to see the vacancy in everything, but she felt now that Michael was wrong. The bog was not vacant. It had presence and intelligence, and, she realized, it had changed while she was gone in ways barely perceptible and too subtle to name. Were the trees farther apart? Were they taller? Had the moss on the trunks thinned some? When the car rounded the driveway’s final corner and the house came into view, Wenna drew in a breath. The Haddesley manor was a massive old heap of stone that had been crumpling for longer than Wenna had been alive, but now almost the whole west wing was collapsed. The trunk of an enormous tree stuck through the roof and impinged on the front second-story windows. The east wing was intact, but just barely. The entire house had the look of a rotting vegetable. The ground was puckered up around the foundation. Years’ worth of rotted leaves and soil lapped at the rubblework stone walls. Mud piled up before the front door. “We usually go in the back,” her brother Charlie explained. Wenna opened the passenger door and was almost flattened by the stench in the air. She closed the door with the quickness of a reflex. Charlie had gotten out of the car already. He seemed not to notice or to care about the smell. Cautiously, second-guessing her own senses, Wenna opened the car door again. The stench remained. It was an unwholesome, poisonous odor. The bog had never smelled like that to her before. Bogs were, in their own way, exceptionally clean places, all the stink of vegetable death sealed discreetly away under the surface. There was something wrong with a bog that had a perceptible odor. She was momentarily annoyed that Charlie didn’t offer to carry her bag to the door, until she noticed he was leaning on a cane that he’d gotten out of the back seat, his face wrinkled with an expression of intense focus. “The back door’s unlocked,” he said, before she could ask what had happened to him. This announcement was also the end of any conversation between them. Wenna carried her bag to the door. Buy the Book The Bog Wife Kay Chronister Buy Book The Bog Wife Kay Chronister Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget In the kitchen, it was the almost-comforting house-smell that she registered first: something between the musty paper-and-glue odor of an unkempt library and the putrid scent of vegetables left to rot in darkness. After a moment, her eyes adjusted. Every visible surface was so crowded with objects that Wenna could only register the whole as clutter. Even the stove was mostly covered, old magazines spilling from the mouth of a saucepan, a single burner perfunctorily cleared for use. Racks of dried herbs and greens hung from the ceiling, so long forgotten that they trailed dusty strands of cobweb; Wenna wouldn’t have been surprised to learn they had been harvested the summer before and left there through the winter. The floor was streaked with a palimpsest of dried boot prints. From one corner, a white possum regarded her warily. “Did you know that was in here?” Wenna said with a nod to the animal. She had a suspicion that the possum was a full-fledged member of the household. “It’s Nora’s,” Charlie said. He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “Eda said there was no point in cleaning, so.” He was embarrassed; Wenna was not hiding her disgust successfully. “I’m sure it’s been difficult,” she said, at a loss for any other vaguely appropriate response. “Sort of.” He cleared his throat, girding himself to say something else, but then Nora and Percy came thudding down the stairs. Her siblings had gone through growth spurts and puberty in Wenna’s absence and become young adults. They seemed to Wenna to have uncannily grown into each other, even more alike now than they had been as children. Their upturned Haddesley noses and indignant sharp Haddesley chins; even the feathery mushroom-colored hair that they wore in a cloud around their ears. Only, Percy wouldn’t really look at her, and Nora was looking at her as if her gaze could fix Wenna in place. “You came home,” she said, with a kind of awe. “I can’t stay long.” Wenna was surprised and vaguely appalled by her impulse to disappoint her sister, but Nora’s happiness felt oppressive. No one was supposed to be so affected by her coming back. “Just for the burial,” she added, lowering her voice as if it were a secret that their father was right now lying in bed dying. “I know.” Nora’s voice carried a defensive edge. She glanced sideways at Percy, as if checking to see whether he had noticed. Regaining herself, she asked: “Do you want something to eat?” “What have you got?” Wenna hadn’t eaten since getting on the bus, but she was less than confident that anything passably edible could be prepared with the kitchen in its current state. Percy went to the refrigerator, a 1980s behemoth that had been with the house since the Haddesleys, forty-some years late to the game, first acquired electricity. “Pickles,” he said. “Swiss cheese. Eggs.” “We should make eggs,” said Nora. “Eggs are for breakfast.” She sounded as though she were reciting something she’d read in a book but had not personally experienced. “Do you want coffee, Wenna?” “She can’t have both,” said Percy. “Not at once. There’s only one clean burner.” “I’ll have whichever,” Wenna said, and she settled into a spindly little dining chair that she recalled from childhood. The kitchen table was from the same familiar set, but it was now so deeply buried in clutter that barely any of the tabletop was visible. As Percy and Nora negotiated the single functioning stove burner, she fidgeted with a paper box of spoons, some of them ornate and expensive-looking, others bent and tarnished and otherwise unremarkable. All of them glossed by dust. Percy and Nora sat across from Wenna as she ate, their eyes politely averted, even their breaths measured. As if she were a wild animal they’d been lucky enough to stumble upon in its natural habitat. Only when the kettle began to shriek was their attention diverted. Nora rose and poured coffee for all three of them. “If we had milked Matilde, you could have had milk,” she said as she set Wenna’s cup before her. “But Percy is supposed to do it, so—” “I didn’t have time,” Percy insisted. “I had to do Charlie’s chores.” “It’s no trouble,” Wenna said, to head off whatever meaningless bickering was brewing. At least that much had not changed. She looked down into the cup, at the grounds adrift on the surface. “By the way, what happened to Charlie?” she asked, putting off her first sip. Nora’s eyes searched Percy’s as if he were responsible for the answer. Percy drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. “Is he all right?” Wenna heard the panic in her own voice. She hated that already she’d become entangled. She’d been in the house for ten minutes. “Well,” said Nora. She hesitated. “Did you see the tree on the roof?” “Of course.” “The place that the tree fell was Charlie’s room.” Wenna looked at Percy, who only nodded. “And he got hurt,” Nora continued. “He can walk now, but he can’t really do stairs and he mostly stays in his room.” “The room where the tree fell,” Wenna said, incredulous. “He sleeps in what used to be the study now,” Percy clarified. Wenna couldn’t even decide what to ask first. She felt as if she should have been told as soon as the accident happened, as if she had somehow been lied to, even though she would have said that she didn’t want to know. “What did he hurt?” she asked. Percy and Nora exchanged glances again. Neither of them answered her question before Eda came down the stairs, bearing a tray piled with empty dishes. It hurt to look at her older sister. In the malnourished light that the windows admitted, Eda might have been sixty instead of thirty-three. Her skin had the same waxy lusterless quality as Charlie’s. The dark half-moons beneath her eyes formed furrows down to her cheekbones. Wenna didn’t know whether she was supposed to embrace her sister or shake Eda’s hand or take the tray from her, and in the end she did nothing, paralyzed by the sensation that she and Eda were about to resume a fight they hadn’t finished ten years ago. “Wenna,” her sister acknowledged, as if she had been asked to identify Wenna in a lineup. Then, after a long and conspicuous silence, “Dad wants to see you.” Wenna steadied herself in her chair. She had not prepared herself for the trial of interacting with her father outside of the mercifully scripted context of the burial rites. “Does Dad know that I’m here? I mean, did someone tell him that I was coming?” “He knew that you were coming for the burial,” Nora offered. “Right, but—” “He might not be happy to see you,” Eda interrupted, sounding more exasperated than Wenna thought she had any right to be. “If that’s what you’re asking. He’s not happy to see me, most of the time, and I’ve been changing his bedpan for the past month.” “I didn’t have to come out here,” Wenna said. “Didn’t you?” Eda said, with a dismayed little huff of laughter. “Don’t go up there, if you don’t want to. Just know that he heard you downstairs and asked for you.” * * * Wenna ascended the stairs with the grim sensation that she was proving something. Her father’s bedroom was the first one to the left, the door open. She stood for a second in the hallway and absorbed that the figure on the curtained bed was really her father. It occurred to Wenna that she didn’t know what he was dying of. His skin had the same blanched waxy quality as Charlie’s and Eda’s, but worse. As she entered the room, his eyes narrowed, became unfocused, then regained their intensity. “Tell Eda that I don’t want more peas,” was the first thing he said. “I will,” Wenna said, too taken aback to protest. She took a deep breath, fortifying herself. It would have been easier if only he had been dead already. Her father’s eyes drifted from Wenna’s face to the other end of the room, the opened door, the dark hallway. He wanted something other than her. “Easier for everyone,” he said dreamily, “if I am empty when I go.” Wenna lowered herself into the dining chair at his bedside, awkwardly folding into her lap the worn old throw blanket that had previously occupied the seat. Everything in the room emanated a scent fainter but no less morbid than the rancid odor outside. “Empty?” she repeated. “My stomach,” he said, assuaging any fears she might have had that he was becoming philosophical at the end of his life. “People shit when they die, you know.” “Right,” Wenna said. “Do you think,” she ventured, knowing that she was being impolite but deciding that maybe they were past that now, “you’ll die today?” “It must be soon.” He looked entreatingly at her. “I have dreamed,” he said, with urgency, “of meeting on the road a man walking with a cart pulled by a mare impaled on a post.” Wenna crossed her arms to hide the gooseflesh that lifted on them. “I don’t know what that means,” she said firmly. “I should have gone a long time ago,” he whispered. “It never was right, after her.” Wenna’s throat closed as rage tightened her belly and her lungs. She could not think of one single thing to say that Alyson the therapist would have approved of. “I’m sorry that you’re dying,” she managed at last, staring ahead, inwardly cringing at herself for saying something so transparently insincere, when what she wanted to say was I am never going to forgive you, not even after you’re gone. When she dared to glance over at him, his gaze was distant. “You cannot go back, you know,” he said, “to wherever you have been. They need you here.” Wenna was perversely impressed. She should have known that the summons to bury her father was only a pretext. Of course she could not simply come back and then leave. She had been stupid to think that she was ending anything by coming here. But even her father could not possibly be so brazen as to think that on his deathbed he could make any demands about what she did or where she went after she had already squirmed free from the Haddesley noose once. “What right do you have?” she said under her breath, not really wanting or expecting an answer. “Tell me,” whispered Charles Haddesley with the rhythm of an incantation. “Tell me you will stay with them.” Wenna lost her patience. “You can’t ask me for things! I came for the exchange. That’s all you get. And it’s more than you deserve.” Her father’s look became urgent, almost wild. “I never hurt her,” he said imploringly. “You must know.” Wenna’s stomach turned. “If you didn’t do anything to her,” she said, slowly, “then where did she go?” Her father hesitated, and for a second Wenna felt a small gasp of hope that he was going to really answer her, that somehow there’d been a misunderstanding left for ten years uncorrected. But instead he exhaled, and a terse silence unspooled around them. He had no answer for her. “Like I thought,” said Wenna, and she stood to go. She hesitated at the doorway, thinking how disappointing it was that those were the last words she might ever exchange with her father. She did not look back at him. Excerpted from The Bog Wife, copyright © 2024 by Kay Chronister. The post Read an Excerpt From Kay Chronister’s <i>The Bog Wife</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge.  Social Security is almost out of money. They broke it, we bought it. This comes from the Congressional Budget Office, who just released a new report saying Social Security has just nine years until it runs out of money. Why? Because it’s a Ponzi scheme. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Basically, imagine you contributed to your pension company for 40 years, but they spent it all invading Ukraine. You turn 65, ask them for the money, and it’s gone. So first, what does this mean. Social Security actually ran out of money a long time ago or, putting it more accurately, it never had any money. Because giving Congress a dollar for safekeeping is like giving a Kardashian a Botox gift card. The dirty little secret of Social Security was they took the money and spent every last dime. Like that scene in “Indiana Jones,” they swapped out the money for IOUs and treasuries. For decades, those IOUs built up since Social Security was collecting more than it was paying in benefits. But starting in 2010, it went negative and they were paying out more than they were collecting. They were losing IOUs. So, when the CBO says it will run out of money, it means the IOUs will be gone. At which point the full annual Social Security deficit, $150 billion and rising fast, goes straight to deficit. At that point, they either have to cut benefits, raise taxes, or eat it and let the deficit ride. Cutting benefits could mean starting benefits later, maybe at age 70 or 75. Or means-testing benefits so if you work hard and save, you lose your Social Security. Or, the simplest, a 24% cut in benefits perhaps disguised by manipulating the inflation adjustment so seniors don’t realize they got robbed. The other way is taxes. You could tax a wider range of earnings, you could push beyond the $170,000 earnings cap. Or, again the simplest, a 35% hike in Social Security taxes. That would take the payroll tax to 19.6% on top of income taxes. Happily, there is a better way: Let people keep their Social Security accounts like a 401(k). The South American country of Chile, for example, does not spend the national pension. Instead it makes you invest it, like a mandatory 401(k). You can put part in high-risk that pays better, or low-risk that pays less. The result is Chile’s system is actually overfunded to the point they’re increasing pensions for poor Chileans. Why? Because in the 40 years their system existed, assets grew by over 8% per yearafter inflation. To his credit, then-President George W. Bush actually proposed this 20 years ago, and the left-wing media pilloried it as “privatization,” so it went nowhere. So, what’s next? Social Security is a Ponzi scheme headed for collapse. And it’s accelerating. My Heritage Foundation colleague Rachel Greszler estimates that unfunded liabilities are getting worse by more than $1 trillion per year. The Social Security office in Alexandria, Virginia (Peter Parisi/The Daily Signal) That’s on top of our $2 trillion deficit. And don’t forget Medicare, which is even worse. The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way: Other countries have shown how to manage an sustainable national pension. As always, they served us up rusty nails and an old boot for dinner, and it’s up to voters to throw it away and make something else. A new episode of the Peter St Onge podcast just dropped, rounding up all the week’s top stories. Check it out at Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you enjoy your podcasts. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.  The post Social Security’s Financial Time Bomb Is Ticking. Why Doesn’t Congress Hear It? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

New York Democrats Push for Radical Change to 'Equal Rights'

Google is at it again, forcing users to dig through 13 pages of search results before finally finding a story by Fox News in one search, and 14 pages before finding a story by the New York Post in another. These two results were the first U.S.-based right-of-center publications in two separate searches using the leftist search platform. Is Google living up to former President Donald Trump’s accusations of election interference?  Using the media list provided by AllSides that classifies publications based on their “right” to “left” bias, MRC researchers found that tech giant Google blanketed search results for “kamala harris presidential race 2024” and “donald trump presidential race 2024” with leftist, legacy media sources like CNN, The New York Times, NBC News and Politico. On Oct. 1, MRC researchers did not find any U.S.-based “lean-right” media outlets until Fox News appeared as the fifth result on the 13th page of Google search results for the aforementioned Harris search prompt. Likewise, Google buried the first U.S.-based “lean right” result for the aforementioned Trump prompt as the third result on the 14th page, as Google featured an article by the New York Post. This overt leftist bias is especially concerning considering that according to a November 2023 Pew Research survey, a rising number of American adults receive their news from search. The study found that 15 percent of U.S. adults prefer to get their news from search engines which is up from 13 percent in 2022 and 11 percent in 2021. Equally concerning, the Google search results are not only filled with radical leftist websites such as Vox and Al Jazeera, but also include publications owned and supported by wealthy Democrats. Billionaire and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post. SalesForce CEO and longtime Harris donor Marc Benioff owns Time magazine. FactCheck.org—a member of the George Soros-funded Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network—appeared before any U.S.-based sources on the right, as determined by AllSides.  Google did display a U.K.-based “lean right” website earlier in its results. However, the search giant even buried the U.K.-based outlet The Telegraph on the 10th page of the Harris prompt search results and on the seventh page of the Trump prompt search results. An earlier MRC study showed extraordinary bias in Google search results, revealing that the search engine had forced users trying to find the Trump campaign’s website to wade through a gauntlet of leftist articles before reaching it. Following the MRC study, Trump condemned Google’s behavior in a post on Truth Social, vowing legal action in a potential second administration. Google, on the other hand, absurdly tried to dismiss the study.  Now MRC has caught them again, but Google has a long record of bias and election interference dating back to 2008. Before Google began making users run the gauntlet of negative coverage to see the Trump campaign’s website, the search engine frequently buried the former president so far down that it did not appear on the first page of results. Google did this during the Republican National Convention and ahead of the July presidential debate between Trump and Biden. Google also did this while Trump was in the news due to a guilty verdict following Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s politicized prosecution of him.  This is just one of a myriad of ways that Google has interfered in American elections on behalf of its favored candidates. In fact, Google meddled in American elections no fewer than 41 times from 2008 to 2024, including by burying 83 percent of the Republican campaign websites for the most competitive Senate races of 2022. Methodology  For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Oct. 1 Google search results of the innocuous words “donald trump presidential race 2024” and “kamala harris presidential race 2024.” MRC Free Speech America utilized a VPN and private window utilizing the Brave privacy browser to analyze Google search results to limit the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies. MRC Free Speech America also utilized the AllSides media bias chart as a gauge to determine which outlets are “right” and “lean right.” AllSides notes it has a “patent on rating bias and use[s] multiple methodologies,” not a homogenous group or an algorithm. “Our methods are: Blind Bias Surveys of Americans, Editorial Reviews by a multipartisan team of panelists who look for common types of media bias, independent reviews, and third party data.” Readers should be aware that this report only uses the AllSides list to analyze ratings of outlets considered by AllSides to be “right” and “lean right” and does not necessarily reflect MRC’s characterizations of these outlets. Editor’s Note: Assistant Editor Gabriela Pariseau contributed to this report.

A Democrat senator with an anti-free speech ax to grind is once again attempting to trigger Big tech-government collusion just before the 2024 elections. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) insisted that President Joe Biden’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) coordinate more with social media platforms to crush alleged election “disinformation,” in a Sept. 26 letter to CISA director Jen Easterly. CISA was one of the notorious federal agencies exposed by the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit as working with tech companies on censoring free speech. Warner claimed now is “an opportune moment to ramp up such collaborations” with Big Tech. Big Brother approves. Warner wrote at length whining about alleged “disinformation,” including AI-generated Joe Biden messages and supposed Russian influence campaigns. His censorship aims became particularly clear as he urged First Amendment-violating coordination. “Within the vein of collaborative efforts, I also encourage CISA to work closely with all relevant parties, including academics and researchers, state and local officials, and private sector entities (such as technology companies and social media platforms) in an effort to increase information sharing,” he wrote.  He continued to hammer the proposal of increased government pressure to silence Americans. “I strongly encourage the agency to again coordinate efforts with platforms to combat election disinformation,” he pontificated. “In an election cycle where threats persistently grow but some platforms are dedicating fewer resources towards election integrity and content moderation efforts.” Warner even suggested CISA should be the middle-man for “facilitating communication between election offices and platforms,” allowing a triumvirate of Big Tech-government-election official censors targeting supposed “misleading information,” especially AI content. Warner has a track record not only of urging for government-tech censorship collusion, but also of falsely labeling users as Russian “disinformation” spreaders. For instance, in 2017, he aggressively urged tech companies like Twitter to censor alleged Russian disinformation, and lawmaker pressure ultimately contributed to Americans being wrongly censored as supposed Russian-affiliated users, according to the Twitter Files. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

On September 27, ICE revealed that it estimates there are roughly 13,000 non-citizen murderers running loose in the country, but of the three (ABC, CBS, NBC) broadcast networks only NBC found time to mention it on the September 27 Nightly News and on Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press. It should be noted the mention on Meet the Press (made by Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute) was immediately “fact-checked” by moderator Kristen Welker: “And DHS has said some of those stats actually go back as far as 40 years.”  But at least the stat got airtime on NBC.  It’s been three days since the report was released and so far ABC and CBS have remained silent on the shocking number, despite both networks doing stories on Vice President Kamala Harris’s border visit.  Over on CNN, Senator Linsey Graham brought up the 13,000 statistic on Sunday’s edition of State of the Union only to have host Jake Tapper immediately “fact-check” it:  Jake Tapper: “OK. So I saw that statistic. We dove into it, our fact-checker, that statistic is actually over decades. So some of those people you're talking about are people that came into the country during Trump. And second of all, some of them are in prison. A lot of them are in prison for- not ICE prisons, but federal prisons for their- for their crimes.” The September 30 print edition (September 29 online version here) of the Washington Post covered the 13,000 number on page 2 but only did so to trash Donald Trump in an article headlined: “Trump Skews Data in Ice Letter to Lambaste Immigrants.” The fact that ABC and CBS still refuse to report on the number shows how far they are willing to go to cover for the Biden-Harris administration.

Foreign policy reporting can be tricky. You have to explain what bad people think in an honest way without coming across like you endorse their position. Christiane Amanpour failed in this on Tuesday’s CNN News Central as she omitted key facts related to a recent ceasefire proposal that she claimed could have prevented Iran’s salvo of 180 ballistic missiles on Israel. Amanpour recalled, “And what the Lebanese foreign minister told me, and this is really extraordinary, and I had not heard it before. That just before the Israeli targeting of the Hezbollah headquarters that assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, that there had been a ceasefire, which the U.S. announced, but what the Lebanese prime minister said to me was that they had got Hezbollah to agree to that ceasefire and apparently they thought that Netanyahu would agree too.”     The ceasefire proposal Amanpour is referring to was for a 21-day temporary ceasefire that would have allowed for negotiations towards a permanent one parallel with a similar ceasefire in Gaza. Israel opposed it because if the first stage ended in failure, all it would have accomplished was allowing Hezbollah to regroup after much of its chain of command had been wiped out and communications sabotaged. Opposition to the plan was widespread in Israel. The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, declared any temporary ceasefire should last no more than seven days, while the head of the Democrats—a new party formed from the merger of the left-wing Labor and Meretz parties—suggested it be three days, not three weeks. As it was, Amanpour proceeded to give the Iranian view of things, “Now, the Iranian foreign minister told me in New York during the United Nations that they were showing, and this is again before Friday's assassination, that they were showing restraint and that Hezbollah was showing restraint as well. And that it wanted, you know, to deescalate all of this.” She continued: That was the word also from the podium at the United Nations by the Iranian president and they were saying that they are being entrapped and they're trying to resist the notion of being trapped into this war. So, then comes the assassination of their client, Hassan Nasrallah. Now, Hezbollah is not but there—Iran is not there to protect Hezbollah. It's the opposite, Hezbollah is meant to be the frontline troops of Iran. So, this response from Iran is more likely because it feels it has been left no choice, as [Javad] Zarif said to me, in New York, that they may be pushed into this kind of response because everyone is asking, hang on a second, what are you going to do now that your best friend has been assassinated in Lebanon and certainly the so-called Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khamenei’s was very close to Hassan Nasrallah. Amanpour claims Iran wanted a ceasefire, but it could’ve told Hamas and Hezbollah to quit, but it chose not to. Iran has taken the region to the brink. First by arming Hamas, then by watching as its Hezbollah friends joined the war for no justifiable reason, and now by launching a second massive missile barrage at Israel in the last six months. The tensions in the Middle East can be laid right at Khamenei’s door step. Here is a transcript for the October 1 show: CNN News Central 10/1/2024 1:01 PM ET CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: The second thing is that I've been speaking to foreign ministers from the region just today, the Lebanese foreign minister, who is currently in Washington speaking with the Biden administration and trying to get them, as he told me, to really use all their diplomacy and their influence with Israel and with whoever else they have influence with to stop this escalating. And what the Lebanese foreign minister told me, and this is really extraordinary, and I had not heard it before. That just before the Israeli targeting of the Hezbollah headquarters that assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, that there had been a ceasefire, which the U.S. announced, but what the Lebanese prime minister said to me was that they had got Hezbollah to agree to that ceasefire and apparently they thought that Netanyahu would agree too. Anyway, as you saw what happened on Friday night, which has led to this escalation. As for Iran, and now the Lebanese prime minister is very concerned that there will somehow be an attempt, whether it's to come to the rescue of Israel or whether Israel tries to get U.S. in. But the U.S. may end up joining this escalation in the Middle East, the foreign minister said. Now, the Iranian foreign minister told me in New York during the United Nations that they were showing, and this is again before Friday's assassination, that they were showing restraint and that Hezbollah was showing restraint as well. And that it wanted, you know, to deescalate all of this.  That was the word also from the podium at the United Nations by the Iranian president and they were saying that they are being entrapped and they're trying to resist the notion of being trapped into this war. So, then comes the assassination of their client, Hassan Nasrallah. Now, Hezbollah is not but there—Iran is not there to protect Hezbollah. It's the opposite, Hezbollah is meant to be the frontline troops of Iran. So, this response from Iran is more likely because it feels it has been left no choice, as Zarif said to me, in New York, that they may be pushed into this kind of response because everyone is asking, hang on a second, what are you going to do now that your best friend has been assassinated in Lebanon and certainly the so-called Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khameni was very close to Hassan Nasrallah. And there's been a lot of internal divisions inside Iran about how best to respond to what happened with the assassination of Nasrallah. So that is essentially what seems to be going on right now in terms of the big picture.