I have edited the file and run a REGEX debugger. It has an error when I try to upload it to you, though. Is there a section you want me to analyze or copy/paste?
One extra note--and you will recognize what a newbie I am when I tell you, my logs showed all these items ending in cloudfront.net, and I blocked them to see if it would matter. Could blocking those prevent the distribution? For example: [d3jdtixm7cvu7y.cloudfront.net]
Problem solved, but solution is vague. Here is what I did to resolve it:
I opened pihole -t and started logging. Then I went to github.com and tried to do a direct download of the new FTL distribution. It failed, but I found a few items that had been sent to 0.0.0.0 in the log. I whitelisted each one (there was an AWS domain, a pipe.aria item, and one that was akamaized). The system told me that they were NOT blacklisted, but it went through the motions.
Then I ran pihole -up, and it succeeded.
So I am not sure why this happened, but I'm up to date. Thanks.