They Fell Sick After Cleaning Up a TVA Toxic Disaster. A New Book Details Their Legal Battle

Arts & Culture, Books

With coal ash, one date stands out: Dec. 22, 2008.

Before then, relatively few people in the United States knew or thought much about the residue left behind at the hundreds of power plants that were then burning coal—even though it amounted to one of the largest sources of industrial waste. For a report I did in 2002 when I worked for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, an engineering expert helped me calculate that one year’s worth of the nation’s coal ash, placed on a football field, would extend more than 11 miles high.

By the early- to mid-2000s, just a handful of environmentalists were trying to get the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to classify the material as hazardous waste. A few scientists had documented how the toxic chemicals and heavy metals in coal ash were deforming frog tadpoles and fish. And in Pines, Indiana, where coal ash had been used to fill wetlands and build roads, the contamination polluted water wells and resulted in the designation as an EPA Superfund site.

Electric utilities were storing much of their coal ash in leaky, unlined pits, and one of the largest stockpiles was at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant, located near Knoxville. When construction was completed in 1955, Kingston was the largest coal-burning power plant in the world—a distinction, according to TVA, that it held for more than a decade.

But in proving the old adage of what goes up must come down, Kingston’s 60-foot-tall mountain of black, sodden ash collapsed in a flash in the dark of night, 16 years ago this week.

Tennessee journalist Jared Sullivan, in his new book, “Valley So Low,” described the moment this way: “When it did, more than a billion gallons of coal-ash slurry—about fifteen hundred times the volume of liquid that flows over Niagara Falls each second—broke forth. A black wave at least fifty feet high rushed northward with the power and violence of water punching through a dam.”

A levee of ash had given way, smothering some 300 acres and spilling into two rivers. Three homes were destroyed and dozens more were damaged. It took seven years, but the disaster prompted the Obama administration to adopt the first national regulations managing coal combustion wastes in 2015, including a requirement for closing unlined ash pits like the one at Kingston.

Published in October by Penguin Random House, “Valley So Low” is a courtroom drama that focuses on a small-town lawyer and his efforts to help the workers who came to clean up the mess, then paid with their health and lives.

The workers won a jury verdict in 2018 that found Jacobs Engineering, TVA’s cleanup contractor, had failed to protect the workers, concluding their exposure to toxic heavy metals and radiation in the coal ash could be responsible for their illnesses, from skin rashes to lung disease to cancer. The litigation ended with a legal settlement.

Author Jared Sullivan and his book “Valley So Low.”

Sullivan writes in his book that both Jacobs Engineering and TVA, which was not a party in the workers’ lawsuit, disputed much of his reporting. The Associated Press has reported that Jacobs “has always maintained that it safely handled the cleanup and was not at fault for the workers’ illnesses.” It has since rebranded itself as Jacobs Solutions Inc.

In 2023, Jacobs agreed to pay 220 workers a total of $77.5 million, Sullivan reported in his book. “Once the attorneys took their fees—about $26 million—and subtracted their expenses, the workers would be left with roughly $49 million, or about $222,000 each,” Sullivan wrote. “From that sum, they would have to reimburse their insurance companies whatever money they’d spent to cover their medical expenses. The sickest workers, as a result, would likely end up with very little cash.”

I talked with Sullivan this month and asked him about “Valley So Low,” which The New Yorker recently listed as among the best books of 2024. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

JAMES BRUGGERS: There have been many news stories about what happened at Kingston and how it affected environmental policy, but not as much attention paid to the cleanup workers. Who were these people and how was their health affected?

JARED SULLIVAN: When the coal ash dike collapsed, and this big, almost biblically sized wave swallowed the countryside, it was basically the middle of the Great Recession. A lot of people were out of work. 

Union reps started working the phones and calling to get as many people as they could to come to Kingston to start cleaning it up. Many of these workers were delighted to get the call because they were fathers and family men, and they needed the work. So 900 people from across the country descended on Kingston over the next few months.

They were blue-collar guys and mostly men. None of them were going to die rich, but they had made great careers for themselves with their union jobs. 

I followed several workers and one of them is this worker named Ansel Clark. Ansel grew up in Knoxville, and he was in his 50s when he first got out there, and he was in good health. The problems started in late 2009 when this coal ash started baking under the Tennessee sun and started blowing around the job site.

That’s when the workers’ health started to deteriorate. At first, they felt sluggish. They started having a hacking cough. They started passing out in their trucks. They started coughing up blood. And then that’s when they knew it was not just them pushing themselves too hard and that something is wrong. And they’ve been told throughout the whole cleanup process that, more or less, in various ways, the ash is safe.

Ansel got congestive heart failure. He got blood cancer. Many other workers had various sorts of cancers and various lung issues. And now, more than 50 of the men who worked out there are now dead.

BRUGGERS: You mentioned 50 workers have died. Is that some sort of official tally? Where did that number come from?

SULLIVAN: I was given a list by the plaintiffs’ attorneys. This is tricky. It’s very hard to conclude in these big cases that your direct exposure caused your death or illness. The whole point of these cases is to prove that, and they never got to that phase—they settled before they could determine damage for each specific person.

But all the workers had medical testing. I’ve seen the reports where they have uranium in their blood. They have high levels of arsenic. I went through and verified that each of these people did, in fact, work at Kingston and in fact, passed away. And that’s the number that Knoxville News Sentinel has also been reporting. So I feel like it’s accurate.

BRUGGERS: A lot of the book focuses on an attorney, Jim Scott, who decides to take on this big federal power company and its major contractor. Tell us about him.

Knoxville attorney Jim Scott. Credit: Houston Cofield

SULLIVAN: He’d worked some big cases over the years, but he had not worked for a big, high-powered law firm. His office, when I met him, was in a very humble strip mall in Knoxville. He has a big heart and he was basically the only person who would listen to these Kingston workers once they fell sick. 

They had heard about him through word of mouth, that this guy is a well-meaning attorney and that they should go see him. And they did, and he believed them, and he spent the next 10-plus years of his life dragging their case through federal courts. 

It wrecked his life. He went through a horrible divorce. He nearly died. He had a stress-related stroke. He had to move out of his family home. He’s a quirky guy, about five foot eight, and has a mess of hair. The case got thrown out in 2015 and he had the brass to appeal it and take it to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and was victorious there. And that, much to his credit, speaks to his ability as an attorney.

BRUGGERS: Why did this case take a decade to get to a settlement?

SULLIVAN: The short of it is the TVA contractor had every incentive to drag the case out for as long as possible. They’ve filed a ton of motions attempting to discredit the workers. I feel like they contested almost every single thing that the plaintiffs’ attorneys tried to do for the workers. They got the case appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals twice, which every time that happens, that’s an automatic almost like two years added on to the lawsuit. 

And their playbook worked. They settled, as I have written, for $77.5 million for about 230 of the plaintiffs, which works [out] to about a couple hundred thousand dollars each. But $77.5 million is a small fraction of Jacobs’ profits in any given year.

This story is funded by readers like you.Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.Donate Now

Lars Windhorst and H2O: scandal, spies and the superyacht | FT Film

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

You can enable subtitles (captions) in the video player
My story has been, from the beginning, entrepreneurship, hard work, risk-taking, the relationships which you build through the business. This is a story of superyachts, spies, and scandal. This is a story about the lives of two consummate risk-takers colliding, through their collaboration destroying hundreds of millions of investors’ money. Bruno Crastes, one of the finest fund managers of his generation. Lars Windhorst, a racy financier with nine lives. My estimated exposure is beyond 1.5mn euros. Real people, people’s pensions, people’s investments. Some of the underlying transactions could qualify as money laundering. I made mistakes and I do work hard to rectify mistakes I made and people who have suffered because of my mistakes and lost money too. The big question for me is: where has the money gone? At the heart of this story, you have H2O Asset Management and its founder, Bruno Crastes, one of the biggest stars of European Investment, coming under the thrall of Lars Windhorst, a charismatic financier with a criminal past. My name is Lars Windhorst. I’m the founder and CEO of Tennor Group, which is a private equity investment holding company. Why did you agree to do the interview? It’s just my own gut feeling. I mean, how bad can it be? It’s much better than hiding and not showing up. The impression people might have is that I am driven by money, that I’m flamboyant. The reality is the opposite. Relationships motivate me more than money. My shortcoming has been that I have sometimes cared too little about money. My name’s Robert Smith. I’m the corporate finance editor at the FT. I’m Cynthia O’Murchu. I’m an investigative reporter. I’ve been following Lars Windhorst for the past decade, and Bruno Crastes and H2O. I first started looking at Lars in 2017, and we realised that H2O was a really big part of the story very shortly afterwards. Lars Windhorst is one of the most enigmatic figures in European finance. He’s got friends in high places – Michael Douglas, the Hollywood actor, to Wladimir Klitschko, the heavyweight boxing champion. Since an early age, I had the dream to build a business empire. My first proper business was started when I was 14-years-old in 1991. By accident into the PC business, I got a phone call from my main supplier, a Chinese businessman. I met the guy. “I’m Lars Windhorst. We have an appointment.” “What? You? You are 12. You are not 16.” About a month later, he said: “Look, everyone thinks it’s crazy but there’s something about you.” The Chinese friend and business partner then moved into the guest room of my parents’ home and we started. He went on a business trip with Chancellor Kohl, who was one of the most powerful politicians in Germany. This is not long after the Berlin Wall has fallen. Germany has this kind of yearning for this economic renaissance, and here, burst onto the scene, this teenager. During that trip we got closer, me and the chancellor and became friendly. He invited me into a kind of informal economic advisory council of the government. I joined him on many different state visits to Asia, to America. He was in all the media. It was a big circus around this young kid. Lars is planning to build the tallest skyscraper in Vietnam, Windhorst Tower. He gets dubbed the ‘German Bill Gates.’ He’s the wunderkind of German business. Quite soon, into his business career, questions started to emerge. Allegations of financial impropriety, business partners suing him. He has a string of lawsuits in his 20s. It became a need to correspond to this amazing image. The beginning of the end or the beginning of the first big failure, because it was too much, too quick, too fast, led to me becoming a bit careless. In the 2000s, Lars has a string of corporate bankruptcies. He has a personal bankruptcy. He has criminal charges. I had to ask my mother, grandmother, sister, father, a Chinese group to give me some money because I could not access any cash. A painful period for me, also for my parents. They accused me of delayed bankruptcy filing, fraud, and breach of trust. The legal advice was, this may take 10 years. I decided at that time in 2009 to do a plea bargain where I had to pay a fine and accept a suspended sentence, and I had a criminal record from then. It got deleted after 10 years. And he avoids going to prison. But he has to stand up in court and he has to admit that he misappropriated company funds. I did not procure properly signed board resolutions. To admit this is a lesser problem for me than to have a fraud charge. I did not have a hidden bank account where I misappropriated funds. Some people might have been destroyed by all of this – not him. Lars is a great corporate survivor, but he’s also a literal survivor. He survived a plane crash. The plane needed to do a fuel stop on the way, which was Almaty, Kazakhstan, and it was winter. Immediately, when it was in the air it started to shake and then almost flipped 90 degrees to the right. The plane broke apart and the back part exploded. The front part, where I was in, separated. The one pilot, sadly, died. The other one had a more severe injuries than me. The German ambassador, when I woke up was there. A Kazakh nurse came in and started to, with the scissors, cut my jeans. I said: “Stop. I have only one jeans with me. Don’t destroy my jeans. I need to go to Hong Kong.” And then the ambassador said: “Listen, shall I bring a mirror? You will not go anywhere.” A week or so later, he announces that he’s become one of the biggest shareholders in Air Berlin. The deal from the hospital bed. After the criminal conviction his reputation in Germany is pretty in the dirt. So what does he do? He sets up in London. Mayfair is the place where Russian oligarchs and billionaire sheikhs strike deals. The most fascinating and intellectually interesting and challenging business, which is kind of that, in my view, the Champions League of business is finance. That is the lubricant, the fuel which keeps the whole world economy going. He basically starts brokering investments for people. This is a world of low interest rates, quantitative easing. It’s quite hard for people to make a buck, and he turns a lot of heads. His office in Mayfair is on Savile Row and the office is incredible. The penthouse floor, he totally remodels the place. It becomes all black marble, modern art, floor to ceiling wine fridge. A lot of people are bamboozled by the glitz. OK. This guy has some skeletons in his closet. But as the thousand-pound wine is tinkling into their glass, all those concerns seem to melt away. It has been useful to have an office in London Mayfair the last 10 years to receive and meet clients and investors from all over the world. It is beneficial for a banker, who lends money to a client, to have a relationship and to know firsthand what’s going on, what is he thinking, how is he feeling? Does he look good? Does he look confident? Does he look scared? I think all of these soft factors do matter, even in the age of Zoom calls and emails. Well, money begets money. A billionaire is more likely to talk to someone who he thinks is also a billionaire. So he had this amazing yacht called ‘The Global.’ It’s like 74 metres. It had space for 12 guests. It got sold a while ago, but when I had a yacht I did use it, again, for meeting people, for relationships. He was bringing Bruno Crastes on the yacht, the families of Bruno Crastes. Bruno Crastes is a suave silver fox. It’s got this winning smile and this deep Mediterranean tan. Here you have a guy who says, I’m going to take a lot of risks, but I’m going to make you rich. So Bruno sets up H20 Asset Management, his own firm, in 2010. He took big risks. He used a lot of leverage. He took big bets. He’s someone who held his nerve when things got really tough. That trait has brought him riches, to not go where the crowd goes and the ability to hold steadfast. It served him really well in the time of the financial crisis against all odds. They got seed investment from Natixis and they took off. His investment philosophy is that risk management and regulation make you cut your positions when they go against you. He says that’s when you should hold your nerve. Ordinary savers can put their money in H2O. I’m Lionel Paillet. I’m French. The money I invested into H2O funds came from savings, and it’s essentially family money. When I looked at H2O, I didn’t know that company. The performance that was discussed by the H2O from my advisers was exceptional, but also de-risked by the names on the tickets. When you look at Natixis, you look at KPMG, CACEIS, you’re like, wow, you feel confident. Vincent Chailley is the chief investment officer of H2O. Our strategic positions are doing really well. He’s essentially like Bruno’s business partner. Vincent was the one that first established this relationship with Lars. Some people even said Vincent was besotted with Lars. In 2015, H2O started entering into transactions with Lars Windhorst and related companies. Right from the start it appeared to go wrong. H2O is called H2O Asset Management because it’s supposed to invest in liquid and transparent financial products. What Lars is selling are illiquid investments, incredibly hard to sell and incredibly opaque as well. There’s some very complicated transactions. So H2O is often doing something called repo. These were repurchase agreements where Windhorst companies would sell H2O a bond. That bond would then get repurchased by a Windhorst company. It would go on and on and on and on, happening multiple times – buy, sell, buy, sell, buy, sell. Bonds were not just moving up, down towards H2O and down to Windhorst companies and back. They were also moving sideways from one Windhorst ladder company to another. So you’d have the holding company of Lars buying bonds related to a lingerie company, for example, from a company that was set to back an oil venture. It’s pretty strange. It’s a bit like the shell game. You have to follow where all this money is and you can’t. Back then we did a number of transactions which looked to us not too exotic, intra-group activity within companies we controlled. In retrospect, you can look at it and say, was that the smartest thing to do? There was liquidity in our bonds and there was a wider audience of investors trading those bonds. The things we did were not out of the ordinary. Some of these companies, their funding, it comes out later in court they’re making loans to Lars himself. There’s a sort of intermingling of Lars’s personal finances and the corporate finances. And you got to ask, who’s paying for the private jet? Who’s paying for the superyacht? Who’s paying for the Savile Row office? Who’s paying for the wine? I do not believe that there has been mingling between private and business because everything we have done, I have done, I spent my time on… the last years has been predominantly business. The real big turning point came in 2017. They started pouring money into Lars Windhorst related companies. Chailley himself is worried about this. He sends an email to Bruno saying Lars is leveraging himself on our balance sheet, borrowing too much money from us. And he says, we have to do something. Lars, in his communications to H2O, he’s pretty up front. There’s emails he sends to Bruno where he says we need to clean the balance sheets of various companies. And he essentially asks H2O can you buy some of these bonds to take them off the balance sheet before a sort of auditor or bank looks at them? If someone asks you to help them clean their laundry, that’s probably OK. But someone asking you to help clean their balance sheet should set off a few alarm bells. At the start it seems like Bruno might be a bit sceptical about Lars. It’d take five minutes of looking on the internet to see if there might be some red flags. He seems to get seduced by Lars. Bruno wrote to Lars to thank him for a week-long New Year’s trip on the yacht, and said it was a family relationship. Lars Windhorst likewise replies, says, it’s also, for me, extended family. And this is when the kind of personal and professional lives of Lars Windhorst and Bruno Crastes really start to intertwine. It was like Bruno and Vincent were like brothers. And then Lars turns up, charismatic, charming, also very much into risk-taking. Bruno’s always insisted that he thought that there was great upside. By betting this money he could make even more for his investors. They may have believed that there was value in this. Or there’s something else going on, something darker. I’m Dominique Stucki. I’m a partner in Paris. I’ve been working on the H2O case for five years now. Some of the underlying transactions that have been made by Tennor with the funding of H2O could qualify as money laundering. One of the intriguing subplots in this is the link between Lars Windhorst and a bank in Switzerland called Falcon Private Bank and its former chairman, an Emirati businessman called Khadem al-Qubaisi. Falcon Bank and al-Qubaisi were implicated in the 1MDB scandal. This is the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. Billions of dollars were syphoned off by high level Malaysian officials and their associates and then laundered all over the world. Some of that money went through Falcon Bank. In 2016, Swiss and Singaporean regulators found that Falcon Bank had breached money laundering regulation on some of these trades. KPMG did an internal investigation into Falcon and found that al-Qubaisi had a fund at the bank which carried out 100 transactions linked to Lars Windhorst. KPMG was concerned that some of them didn’t make any economic sense, and that some were used to help Windhorst manipulate prices and benefit him. We can see from emails between Lars and H2O that Lars suggested a number of transactions with Falcon Bank, in some cases even after serious questions were raised about Falcon and 1MDB. One of the early trades H2O did with Lars involved Falcon. H2O had to chase Lars and Falcon for weeks to settle the trade. It really was a warning sign for trading problems to come. One in 2016 was very convoluted. So Lars asks H2O to do a quick and urgent trade, and it involves bonds and cash moving from one party to the other in a daisy chain. When Vincent asks why Falcon is selling the bond, Lars explains that the point of the daisy chain is to get money to a third party altogether. Two banks refuse to clear the trade on compliance grounds, leaving them to look for someone else to step in. We asked H2O about these trades but they didn’t specifically address them. 12 years ago, 13 years ago, Falcon Private Bank, as a bank, decided to invest into various opportunities we brought to them – securities, stocks, and bonds, not even directly from us, but through the issuing bank who issued those securities. There has been a bank to bank transaction like it is usually being done in the financial markets. And what then the bank does with the securities they have bought on their own book is solely a decision and a discretion of the bank, and nothing where we can be and have been involved with. We had no direct business relationship with Khadem al-Qubaisi. I cannot imagine, given the nature of how transactions were executed and booked, that a money laundering risk could be something which would face us or them. Lars has had so many near-death experiences in a corporate sense, and we keep hearing, oh, well, he got out of this scrape because H2O gave him some money. What evidence is there for this? I spent quite a bit of time pulling together all the amounts, all the different companies that we knew were connected to Lars Windhorst. We were thinking, you know, maybe this will spit out a few hundred million. If it gets to half a billion that’d be great. That’s a nice, sexy round number. And we got to over 1.4 billion. We can hardly believe it. One of the most revered fund managers in Europe has bet over a billion euro with a guy with a criminal conviction behind it all. Days before we publish our investigation, Vincent sends an email talking about all the problems with this exposure related to Lars. And he says confidence takes a long time to build, but it can vanish quickly. At this moment he doesn’t realise that confidence is about to vanish very quickly in H2O. It’s like a bomb going off. The stock price of H20’s parent company, the French bank Natixis crashes. There’s questions raised about the liquidity of H2O’s funds. Investors got really spooked and started yanking their money out, around about eight billion euros in eight days. And in the middle of this, Bruno tries to sort of halt this crisis of confidence. If he talks directly to investors, he can stop the stampede. And there’s a couple of video addresses he does. There was a number of investors who originally pulled money out. There was other investors who were convinced. Bruno, as we understand, really thought this was going to blow over in no time. The second video was less confident. We never gated, and we will never gate. Volatile periods have always been a great opportunity. “We will never gate the funds.” He will never stop investors from being able to withdraw their money. And it’s sort of a magic spell that stops the stampede. Those messages gave me zero confidence. Natixis was trying to get out of H2O. You’ve got, like, very tangible information out there. I understand you’re trying to calm everybody down, but there is bad news. Why hide it? Bruno’s a risk-taker. He’s ramped up all these leveraged positions and he runs into the Covid crash. H2O’s funds crash. They crash as much as 50 per cent. And that’s really problematic because Bruno has to stay within regulated caps on how much illiquid exposure they have. And as the liquid investments crash in value, the illiquid investments become a bigger proportion of the funds, and you start to breach some of these thresholds. Again, it’s this holding the nerve, going against the grain that everybody else does, which is kind of the tagline of H2O. H2O’s approach is, and has always been always to go where others don’t. Bruno promised to investors that he’d never gate the funds. Regulators effectively do that for him. And a whole number of funds were frozen. Essentially the investors could not take their money out anymore. What H2O does, it carves out these Windhorst bonds. It creates a sort of wall around this toxic exposure, and it walls off 1.6bn euros of investors’ money and says, we can’t give you this back until we get the money back from Lars. I looked at my bank statements. Every month you just see the valuation of that asset diminishing and diminishing like snow under the sun. It’s dark. My opinion about them is really… is very poor, to say the least. According to the investors who are suing H2O, they’ve calculated that H2O was exposed by between 2.3 and 2.7 billion to Lars Windhorst related companies. H2O disputes that figure. This document, which is in minutes by the H2O Executive Committee – you have this sentence at the beginning of the document that states: “Currently H2O Funds’ exposure to the Tennor Group, nine entities, amounts to 2.7bn euros.” The French regulator holds an enforcement hearing. H2O gets handed down the biggest fine for an asset manager ever in French history, 75mn euros. He’s had to pay a massive settlement to avoid a fine in the UK. Bruno Crastes was fined 15mn. But more seriously, they ban him from fund management. Bruno isn’t allowed to run funds for half a decade. This is the most serious sanction against a fund manager in France, and it’s handed down to someone who once one of its biggest stars. It’s an incredible fall from grace. Vincent Chailley fined three million, a lesser fine because he had raised the alarm. But they continued on. Vincent Chailley remains as chief investment officer. Bruno was re-titled group corporate and strategy director. It’s easy to point at H2O, but that’s not the entire story. We’re not only suing H2O, we’re also suing Natixis investment managers, KPMG, and CACEIS bank. Natixis is responsible for supervising the management of its affiliates. Relating to internal control, money laundering control, CACEIS banks should have checked whether all the assets in the funds were duly invested in liquid securities. KPMG, the auditor of the funds, also have an oversight responsibility. At the heart of this there’s ordinary saver’s money. Billions that were placed with what seemed like a reputable investment firm have sort of gone up in smoke. The safety valves that are built into the financial system failed to operate properly. Internally in H2O, why did these safety valves not work? In the case of the FCA, H2O basically tried to cover things up. It submitted false documents to the regulator. It created board minutes for meetings that didn’t happen. When they asked them, oh, have you had any sort of personal trips with Lars, they didn’t really tell them anything. Bruno had flown around the world and taken these superyacht trips. When it comes to the FCA, rather than fining them more, they were settling with them to get H2O to pay back investors. The decision by the FCA states that 250mn euros would be dedicated to all investors, whether they decide to sue or not. H2O has decided to discriminate against those who want to get their money back. They can either take a relatively small amount of money, these 250mn, divided amongst all these investors, and it’s a fraction of what they believe that they’re owed, and in return not sue any of the other parties that should have, in the eyes of the investors, had a responsibility from preventing this from happening. Or they can wait, and H2O has indicated that they might have to wait six years. You need to trust asset managers and the financial markets. As a private investor, I think this really goes against it. It will bring, like, a lot of distrust to the system. And time has passed, so time is not making the story better. It smells worse. Right amidst the whole scandal, Lars Windhorst announced he was going to buy Hertha Berlin Football Club. He was supposed to have paid a down payment, and he turned to H20 to give them the liquidity and the money to pay. One person he didn’t get on with was the president of the club called Werner Gegenbauer. Well the problem is, is the president’s elected by the members. So Lars can’t just fire the guy. Lars turns to a team of Israeli private spies. It’s founded by former Mossad agents. They run a smear campaign against Gegenbauer. A campaign that included setting up fake fan forums. They even go to the extent of having caricatures created of Gegenbauer depicted as the Grim Reaper, the devil. Anyone logging on and seeing this stuff probably think, wow, the fans really have it in for this guy, when really it’s a bunch of Israeli private intelligence guys who are pulling the strings. Lars doesn’t pay the spies, and the spies end up suing swimming Lars, and Lars has to sell the club in disgrace for a fraction of the money he invested. Lars later claimed that he asked the Israeli spies to look into Gegenbauer, but he didn’t commission the smear campaign. I had a legitimate reason to ask professionals to help me investigate. What happened with the money I had invested? I now know what they did. I regret this has happened. This is not right and not appropriate. Lars has had lawsuit after lawsuit, different creditors chasing him through the high courts. He had to testify under oath in 2023, but he already seems to be on to the next chapter. In the summer he hosted this big party, and he introduced Nathaniel Rothschild, who’s a scion of one of the biggest banking dynasties in Europe. Rothschild said, oh, I’m going to be Lars’ new executive chairman. I’m going to invest some money with Lars. A testament to him and to his incredible drive. I’ve never seen anyone who works as hard as Lars. It’s quite remarkable. If I were speaking with Bruno Crastes right now, I would tell him, why on earth did you invest that amount of money in someone that you knew had this history of failures, history of bankruptcies? My estimated exposure is beyond 1.5mn euros. I really think, like, you’ve been played. You’re just trying to fight back and say, why? And now it’s like five years. And we are told it’s going to be 11 years. Do I feel great? I feel terrible. Lars seems to get 2bn euros from H2O in one form or another to fund his ventures. But where does it all go? One school of thought is that he did invest it, but that the investments went bad. Did the money go into the companies, but not in a liquid and fast enough fashion, therefore killing the companies? Or did they go wandering off somewhere else? Was it being poured into these businesses or was it helping fund his lifestyle? The yacht I bought before I met H2O. I cannot be always right. I might spend money where it wasn’t justified. We do spend money and do things which are justified, because those activities and those expenditure have created, over the last few years, new opportunities which enabled us to repay certain amounts every year, the last few years. I think there’s a Wild West underbelly in finance. We’ve got Lars Windhorst as one of the central figures. He’s not been chastised by any regulators in this story. If he’s not regulated, he can suggest a trade, and then it’s down to the regulated company to decide, do they want to play the game or not? It is my strong desire to rectify any mistakes, to rectify losses created because of these mistakes. I feel sorry. The only thing I can do is, on the one hand to repay and keep repaying H2O, which, again, since 2019, every single year we have done. There will be opportunities in the future to repay people or to rectify losses. The game isn’t over. We are maximum at halftime.

literacy Books Dolly Parton’s Literacy Legacy: Millions of Free Books for Kids Across America Advocates in New York, where Parton’s Imagination Library is available in 79 locations, want Gov. Hochul to take the program statewide. Linda Jacobson

Arts & Culture, Books

Education is at a Crossroads: Help Us Illuminate the Path Forward. Donate to The 74 In between winning Grammy awards and funding life-saving vaccines, country music legend Dolly Parton has built a massive book delivery program that puts over 2 million free books in young children’s hands each month.  Now literacy advocates in New York, where…

Holger Thorsten Schubart: Combining Mathematics, Science, and Open-Mindedness to Lead Us Out of the Energy Crisis

Science and Health

Throughout history, innovation has always emerged when humanity dared to explore new ways of thinking and reimagining the boundaries of science.Today, as the world grapples with an escalating energy crisis, a breakthrough approach combining mathematics, scientific rigor, and open-minded exploration is lighting the way forward. At the forefront of this movement stands Holger Thorsten Schubart, a visionary whose work exemplifies how knowledge and creativity can converge to redefine our energy future. Schubart’s ability to harness mathematical principles, scientific discoveries, and unconventional ideas positions him as a leading figure capable of solving the challenges of our time. 

The Role of Mathematics: From Abstraction to Real-World Solutions

Mathematics, often described as the universal language, underpins virtually every technological innovation. It is not just a tool for understanding patterns or solving equations; it is the backbone of all scientific progress. When applied to energy systems, mathematics allows us to model, predict, and optimize processes that can increase efficiency and reduce waste.Holger Thorsten Schubart’s success rests on his ability to translate mathematical principles into practical solutions. His work with neutrinovoltaic technology, for example, relies heavily on advanced mathematical modeling. By understanding the behavior of neutrinos and other invisible radiations, Schubart and his team at the Neutrino Energy Group have successfully designed systems that convert these phenomena into usable energy.

At the core of this innovation lies the principle of kinetic energy transfer, which can be described using equations derived from classical mechanics. Schubart’s application of E=mc^2, Einstein’s famed equation, reinforces that energy exists in even the smallest and least understood forms of matter. Through this mathematical lens, the immense potential of neutrinos—subatomic particles that constantly move through the universe—becomes clear. The power to harness their energy lies not in guesswork, but in calculations refined through years of rigorous scientific inquiry. 

Scientific Ingenuity: Turning Theory into Reality

While mathematics provides the framework, science transforms theoretical ideas into tangible breakthroughs. From the early stages of conceptualizing neutrinovoltaic technology to the current advancements in the Neutrino Power Cube, Schubart’s journey illustrates the transformative power of scientific exploration.Science, at its core, thrives on curiosity and experimentation. Schubart and his team have exemplified this spirit, testing the boundaries of known energy sources and venturing into new territories where others might hesitate. Their efforts began to gain momentum following the groundbreaking discovery in 2015 that neutrinos have mass, a revelation that upended prior assumptions and validated decades of theoretical physics.

Building upon this discovery, the Neutrino Energy Group developed multilayer graphene-based nanomaterials capable of capturing the energy generated by the interaction of neutrinos and invisible radiation with matter. These materials exploit the atomic vibrations of graphene’s carbon lattice, converting kinetic energy into electrical current. This process, rooted in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, epitomizes how scientific ingenuity can solve modern challenges.

Unlike traditional renewable energy sources such as wind or solar, which depend on favorable weather conditions, neutrino-based technology operates continuously, unaffected by environmental variables. This advantage positions it as a critical component in addressing energy gaps and stabilizing electricity supplies during crises such as the recent “dunkelflaute” events that have crippled parts of Europe. 

Open-Mindedness: Breaking Through Conventional BarriersProgress requires more than expertise in mathematics and science; it demands open-mindedness—the willingness to explore unconventional ideas, challenge established norms, and embrace the unknown. Holger Thorsten Schubart embodies this quality, demonstrating how thinking beyond traditional limits can lead to revolutionary discoveries.The energy sector has long relied on conventional sources such as fossil fuels, coal, and natural gas. Even with the advent of renewables, the limitations of solar, wind, and hydroelectric energy have raised doubts about their ability to serve as comprehensive solutions to the world’s energy crisis. Schubart recognized early on that addressing these challenges required a fundamentally different approach—one that embraced invisible energy sources that had long been overlooked or dismissed.

This mindset of curiosity and exploration enabled Schubart and his team to pioneer neutrinovoltaic technology. Initially met with skepticism, their work now stands as a testament to the power of open-mindedness and perseverance. By refusing to be constrained by established paradigms, Schubart has unlocked possibilities that hold the potential to reshape global energy systems.Open-mindedness also fosters collaboration, another cornerstone of Schubart’s work. The Neutrino Energy Group is not a single entity working in isolation; it is a collective of international scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs united by a shared vision. Their diverse expertise and perspectives have driven the development of technologies such as the Neutrino Power Cube, ensuring that the solutions they create are robust, scalable, and adaptable to real-world conditions. 

The Neutrino Power Cube: A Solution for the Energy Crisis

As the global energy crisis continues to deepen, the Neutrino Power Cube offers a beacon of hope. Unlike conventional power systems, which rely on finite fuel sources, this groundbreaking technology generates electricity without burning fossil fuels or relying on external inputs. By harnessing the kinetic energy of neutrinos and invisible radiation, the Neutrino Power Cube delivers a consistent and reliable power supply, regardless of weather conditions or geographic limitations.The technology behind the Neutrino Power Cube represents a convergence of mathematics, science, and open-minded innovation. At its heart lies a sophisticated system of graphene-based nanomaterials capable of converting atomic vibrations into usable energy. This process, meticulously engineered and rigorously tested, eliminates the need for combustion or environmentally harmful emissions. 

Charting a Path Forward: Holger Thorsten Schubart’s LegacySchubart’s journey is not just about technological achievement; it is about inspiring a new way of thinking—one that values curiosity, collaboration, and the courage to challenge convention. By embracing these principles, we can overcome the challenges of today and create solutions that will benefit generations to come.

(This article is part of DMCL Consumer Connect Initiative, a paid publication programme. DMCL claims no editorial involvement and assumes no responsibility, liability or claims for any errors or omissions in the content of the article. The DMCL Editorial team is not responsible for this content.)

N.J. weather: Snow, freezing rain, ice in Christmas Eve travel forecast

Travel

Snow, freezing rain and the potential for a glaze of ice in parts of New Jersey could turn roads slick on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest days of the year for travel. Most of the state is expected to see snow Tuesday morning with temperatures in the 20s overnight. The amounts should remain below 1 inch, according to the National Weather Service.The bigger concern is a change to freezing rain in parts of southern New Jersey that could leave a coating of ice.A quick shot of snow Monday night into Tuesday could include some freezing rain and ice for parts of New Jersey on Christmas Eve morning. Snowfall accumulations of less than 1 inch are expected through most of the state. A winter weather advisory has been issued for areas that could see a coating of ice.National Weather Service and AccuWeatherThe National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. for Camden, Gloucester and Salem counties as well as Philadelphia. “Roads, and especially bridges and overpasses, willlikely become slick and hazardous,“ the weather service said in the advisory. ”Plan on slippery road conditions. The hazardous conditions could impact the Tuesday morning commute.”Icy conditions could extend into Atlantic, Burlington, Cape May, Cumberland, Ocean counties, though the weather service said there is less confidence in that forecast. No advisories have been issued for those counties. A quick shot of snow Monday night into Tuesday could include some freezing rain and ice for parts of New Jersey on Christmas Eve morning. Snowfall accumulations of less than 1 inch are expected through most of the state. A winter weather advisory has been issued for areas that could see a coating of ice.National Weather Service and AccuWeatherMost New Jersey residents woke up Monday morning to temperatures below zero or in single digits. “These are some of the coldest temperatures we’ve experienced in about 2-3 years in most areas,” the weather service said. Monday’s forecast calls for highs in the 30s under sunny skies before the snow and freezing rain arrives overnight. “Surface temperatures will be in the 20s through tonight,not warming up to above freezing until later Tuesday morning,” the weather service said. “As a result, initial precipitation will fall as snow.”A quick shot of snow Monday night into Tuesday could include some freezing rain and ice for parts of New Jersey on Christmas Eve morning. Snowfall accumulations of less than 1 inch are expected through most of the state. A winter weather advisory has been issued for areas that could see a coating of ice.National Weather Service and AccuWeatherThe snow and freezing rain should end around midday on Tuesday as temperatures rise to the upper 30s and low 40s. The forecast for Christmas Day on Wednesday calls for dry and sunny conditions with highs in the 30s to low 40s. That’s still about 5 degrees below normal for this time of year, though it will be a welcome change from the bitter cold weekend temperatures.
Thank you for relying on us to provide the local news you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

N.J. weather: Snow, freezing rain, ice in Christmas Eve travel forecast

Travel

Snow, freezing rain and the potential for a glaze of ice in parts of New Jersey could turn roads slick on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest days of the year for travel. Most of the state is expected to see snow Tuesday morning with temperatures in the 20s overnight. The amounts should remain below 1 inch, according to the National Weather Service.The bigger concern is a change to freezing rain in parts of southern New Jersey that could leave a coating of ice.A quick shot of snow Monday night into Tuesday could include some freezing rain and ice for parts of New Jersey on Christmas Eve morning. Snowfall accumulations of less than 1 inch are expected through most of the state. A winter weather advisory has been issued for areas that could see a coating of ice.National Weather Service and AccuWeatherThe National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. for Camden, Gloucester and Salem counties as well as Philadelphia. “Roads, and especially bridges and overpasses, willlikely become slick and hazardous,“ the weather service said in the advisory. ”Plan on slippery road conditions. The hazardous conditions could impact the Tuesday morning commute.”Icy conditions could extend into Atlantic, Burlington, Cape May, Cumberland, Ocean counties, though the weather service said there is less confidence in that forecast. No advisories have been issued for those counties. A quick shot of snow Monday night into Tuesday could include some freezing rain and ice for parts of New Jersey on Christmas Eve morning. Snowfall accumulations of less than 1 inch are expected through most of the state. A winter weather advisory has been issued for areas that could see a coating of ice.National Weather Service and AccuWeatherMost New Jersey residents woke up Monday morning to temperatures below zero or in single digits. “These are some of the coldest temperatures we’ve experienced in about 2-3 years in most areas,” the weather service said. Monday’s forecast calls for highs in the 30s under sunny skies before the snow and freezing rain arrives overnight. “Surface temperatures will be in the 20s through tonight,not warming up to above freezing until later Tuesday morning,” the weather service said. “As a result, initial precipitation will fall as snow.”A quick shot of snow Monday night into Tuesday could include some freezing rain and ice for parts of New Jersey on Christmas Eve morning. Snowfall accumulations of less than 1 inch are expected through most of the state. A winter weather advisory has been issued for areas that could see a coating of ice.National Weather Service and AccuWeatherThe snow and freezing rain should end around midday on Tuesday as temperatures rise to the upper 30s and low 40s. The forecast for Christmas Day on Wednesday calls for dry and sunny conditions with highs in the 30s to low 40s. That’s still about 5 degrees below normal for this time of year, though it will be a welcome change from the bitter cold weekend temperatures.
Thank you for relying on us to provide the local news you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

DeSci: Is Decentralized Science The Next Big Thing In Crypto?

Science and Health

KEY POINTSDeSci aims to leverage blockchain to provide scientist with a more open and incentivized environment for their researchNeos, $DNA, $DNX, and VitaRNA are just some of the hot topics in the segment in recent weeksThere is concern about whether some DeSci projects can be tagged legitimate without peer reviewThe cryptocurrency community may have reached a “calm” state amid an ensuing market downtrend following multiple highs in November and earlier this month, but despite the laid-back atmosphere around the space, a new hot topic is making rounds across the broader blockchain industry: DeSci.There’s DeFi, SocialFi, and now there’s DeSci (decentralized science). What is this emerging concept, and why has it been trending over the weekend among crypto users on social media?What is DeSci?For starters, decentralized science is the concept that leverages blockchain technology to achieve a more open and community-driven system around scientific research. The big news is that DeSci aims to become an incentivized ecosystem wherein blockchain tech will be used to ensure the immutability of scientific studies while also reducing or completely eliminating barriers that prevent entry into the space.The ultimate goal of DeSci is to democratize scientific research by providing a decentralized platform for scientists and other related experts to share their valuable insights, run critical experiments, and even raise funding for projects with much potential.Why is DeSci Trending on X?#DeSci was a top trend on X over the weekend as crypto users started discussing the emerging blockchain segment with much gusto.Projects such as decentralized platform ResearchHub, Neos Research, DNA, Dynex (DNX), and VitaRNA are just some of the DeSci projects that are gaining attention in recent weeks.For instance, Neos, a decentralized research network that seeks to incentivize humans and AI agents to solve research interest points (RIPs) through Proof of Research, is trending in the crypto space as crypto users anticipate the network’s launch in the first quarter of 2025.
Additionally, the DNA token from Muhdo Hub, which is set to launch Monday, has attracted a lot of interest over the weekend as it announced reaching over $1 million in total value locked (TVL) in pre-staked DNA coins.Staking is Now Closed! 🔒Thank you to everyone who participated in MuhdoHub’s staking program! The staking period is now officially closed, and we’re thrilled by the incredible support from our community. Over $1,000,000 TVL in $DNA tokens has been staked pre-launch!Who is… pic.twitter.com/zBDhNTzUXT— Muhdo (@Muhdohealth) December 23, 2024
Muhdo is a blockchain-powered epigenetics and AI project. Epigenetics studies heritable traits that take place without changing the DNA sequence. Muhdo Hub envisions a world where healthcare is personalized.
The Case for DeSci and Pseudo ScienceDecentralized science has been making significant waves in the crypto space, but there have also been concerns about the issue of “legitimacy,” especially in scientific research, wherein peer-reviewed outputs are critical.The democratization of scientific studies through blockchain technology has raised questions on whether DeSci projects not published in reputable journals can be defined as DeSci at all.Innovative Bioresearch (INNBC), which claims to be the “original creator of decentralized science” since 2016, asserts that DeSci projects cannot be deemed “legit science by the scientific community” unless they produce “actual peer-reviewed studies.”The project went on to state that “a token is not science,” nor is a “narrative.” INNBC, which allows for the permanent storage of biomedical data onchain, has been featured in the BioMedCentral Journal.DeSci has a long way to go before it blows up like other segments in blockchain and crypto. On the other hand, it continues to gain traction due to its promise of providing scientists with an environment where they can openly share new and even unconventional research ideas that may help change the world for the better.

The Best Of The Year For The Chronically Online

2024 Election

From left: Haliey Welch, Kamala Harris, Moo Deng and Tracy Chapman. Illustration: Jianan Liu/HuffPost. Photos, from left: Frank Franklin II/Associated Press; Spencer Platt/Getty Images; Valeria Mongelli/Anadolu via Getty Images; Kevin Winter/Getty Images This is for the chronically online. We laughed at all the tweets about Kate Middleton’s “disappearance” before correcting course once we learned the…