Latest news with #Benji
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
What are yield coins? Yield bearing assets explained
What are yield coins? Yield bearing assets explained originally appeared on TheStreet. Tokenization isn't just for stablecoins. Ian De Bode, chief strategy officer at Ondo Finance, coined the term 'yield coins' to describe tokenized treasury funds that pay daily yield. In an interview with TheStreet Roundtable, De Bode explained that while stablecoins tokenize cash for global 24‑7 access, they typically don't pay out interest and have uneven investor protections. Yield coins address that gap by combining safety with automatic yield are yield coins? 'Yield coins is a term that we coined for any tokenized treasury fund,' De Bode said. Two of Ondo's flagship yield coins are OUSG and USDY. OUSG is a 3(c)(7) fund offered to qualifying purchasers and accredited investors worldwide. Investors onboard via a simple KYC process, deposit stablecoins and mint OUSG tokens 24‑7. Each token represents a share in U.S. Treasuries held in reserve and can transfer peer‑to‑peer among approved wallets. USDY is a continuous‑registration fund for non‑US investors. It behaves more like a stablecoin — quasi‑permissionless on secondary markets — yet automatically reinvests its yield into more Treasury holdings. Both products let users 'park their cash on‑chain and still earn yield on it on a daily basis,' De Bode noted, while maintaining industry‑leading reserve disclosures and legal yield coins work Traditional Treasuries run on financial rails with cut-off times: if you miss the daily window, you forfeit that day's interest. Yield coins operate on blockchain rails, so subscriptions settle instantly and begin accruing yield the moment tokens mint. De Bode explained, 'You can subscribe to our funds 24‑7 via stablecoins on chain the moment the subscription hits, which is instantly on crypto rails.' Once minted, yield coins can engage with decentralized finance. Investors may use OUSG or USDY as collateral for repo transactions or margin loans over weekends — capabilities unavailable to on‑chain holders of traditional Treasuries. Yield coins derive their yield by investing deposits into underlying Treasury instruments and tokenized Treasury funds — such as BlackRock's BUIDL fund and Franklin Templeton's Benji fund — and reinvesting the interest back into reserves. Currently, OUSG yields about 4.1% and USDY about 4.29%. Balancing stablecoins and yield coins De Bode likened the relationship between stablecoins and yield coins to checking versus savings accounts. Stablecoins remain the primary liquidity pairs in crypto trading, offering instant on‑ramps and off‑ramps without yield. Yield coins, by contrast, serve as a savings vehicle — letting users earn the risk‑free rate on‑chain until they need liquidity again. He advised that investors choose instruments based on need: 'It sometimes is still helpful to just have cash lying around that you can very easily send to other individuals without necessarily having to earn interest on it.' Getting started with yield coins OUSG requires accredited or qualified‑purchaser status while USDY is open to non‑US investors. Onboarding involves a brief compliance check, after which users can mint or burn tokens via stablecoins or traditional wires. By tokenizing Treasuries with built‑in yield and robust investor protections, yield coins offer a simple, flexible way to earn interest and access DeFi. As De Bode puts it, 'Until we tokenized our tokenized Treasury funds, it was very difficult to essentially earn the risk‑free rate on chain.' With yield coins, that is now a reality. What are yield coins? Yield bearing assets explained first appeared on TheStreet on Jul 30, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jul 30, 2025, where it first appeared. Sign in to access your portfolio
Vox
2 days ago
- Science
- Vox
See the bizarre life forms scientists discovered more than 30,000 feet under the Pacific Ocean
is an environmental correspondent at Vox, covering biodiversity loss and climate change. Before joining Vox, he was a senior energy reporter at Business Insider. Benji previously worked as a wildlife researcher. Collections of microbes at the bottom of a trench in the Pacific Ocean. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS The Titanic lies about 12,500 feet under the ocean. The pressure down there is so immense that even submersibles supposedly built for those conditions can, as we know, tragically fail. Now imagine taking a sub nearly three times deeper. That's what an international team of scientists did last summer. Led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the researchers took a manned submersible to the bottom of deep-sea trenches in an area in the northwest Pacific Ocean, roughly between Japan and Alaska, reaching a depth of more than 31,000 feet. The researchers weren't looking for a shipwreck. They were interested in what else might be lurking on the seafloor, which is so deep that no light can reach it. It was there that they found something remarkable: entire communities of animals, rooted in organisms that are able to derive energy not from sunlight but from chemical reactions. Through a process called chemosynthesis, deep-sea microbes are able to turn compounds like methane and hydrogen sulfide into organic compounds, including sugars, forming the base of the food chain. The discovery was published in the journal Nature. This was the deepest community of chemosynthetic life ever discovered, according to Mengran Du, a study author and researcher at the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Credit: Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Using a deep-sea vessel called Fendouzhe, the researchers encountered abundant wildlife communities, including fields of marine tube worms peppered with white marine snails. The worms have a symbiotic relationship with chemosynthetic bacteria that live in their bodies. Those bacteria provide them with a source of nutrients in exchange for, among other things, a stable place to live. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Among the tube worms the scientists encountered white, centipede-like critters — they're also a kind of worm, in the genus macellicephaloides — as well as sea cucumbers. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS The researchers also found a variety of different clams on the seafloor, often alongside anemones. Similar to the tube worms, the clams depend on bacteria within their shells to turn chemical compounds like methane and hydrogen sulfide that are present in the deep sea into food. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Unlike other deep-sea ecosystems — which feed on dead animals and other organic bits that fall from shallower waters — these trench communities are likely sustained in part by methane produced by microbes buried under the seafloor, the authors said. That suggests that wildlife communities may be more common in these extremely deep trenches than scientists once thought. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS 'The presence of these chemosynthetic ecosystems challenge long-standing assumptions about life's potential at extreme depths,' Du told Vox in an email.
The Advertiser
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Bambi in the public domain: A smart and bloody take on a childhood favourite
There's been an exciting trend in low-budget horror movies recently when iconic intellectual property, usually the ones associated with sweetness, hits that magic number where it enters into the public domain. Like the 2023 film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, where Christopher Robin has neglected his animal friends after leaving for college and so they go on a killing rampage. These twisted Winnie films - there's been a bunch of spin-offs and also-rans in the past two years - arrived on the scene just as AA Milne's original book, published in 1926, passed the 95-year mark required for the US public domain. The juggernaut that is Disney couldn't stop enterprising filmmakers jumping on this adaptation bandwagon when Steamboat Willie, the first on-screen appearance of Mickey Mouse, entered public domain in 2014, with recent horror films like Mickey's Slayhouse and Mouseboat Massacre hitting - well, they're not hitting cinemas, they're mostly appearing on horror streaming services like Shudder. Even my childhood favourite TV show characters The Banana Splits went on a malfunctioning animatronic killing spree in 2019's The Banana Splits Movie. Bambi: The Reckoning takes, yes, your sweet childhood memory, though for legal reasons, it draws from author Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods, and not the Disney adaptation that they still very much hold all rights for. Director Dan Allen starts the film with a rustic animation that certainly nods towards the Disney drawings, showing over the title credits a young fawn losing his mother and growing up into a giant buck. Except this deer, with his enormous antlers, lives in a woods being poisoned by men dumping green carcinogens in the water, the same men running over the buck and his mate with their trucks as they leave. We'll come back to that buck in a moment, but in Rhys Warrington's screenplay, we also have a young mum caring for her child. It is Xana (Roxanne McKee), mum to the bookish Benji (Tom Mulheron), who has just been let down once again by Benji's dad Simon (Alex Cooke), who had promised to take his son to a weekend with Simon's relatives in the country. Rather than disappointing her son, Xana packs Benji into a taxi and head off into the deep forrest home that grandmother Mary (Nicola Wright) lives in. It seems that Simon isn't the only disappointment in the family, as granny's home is full of Benji's awful relatives, like his obnoxious cousin Harrison (Joseph Greenwood) and Harrison's uncaring step-mother Harriet (Samira Mighty). But, as in all good fairy tales, the taxi ride to Granny's house is interrupted, not by a wolf, but by an enormous set of antlers smashing into the taxi head-on. The taxi driver is killed as the giant deer, feral with razor sharp teeth that drip blood, stomps the car's cabin, and Xana and Benji escape, running to Granny's house. But Granny has dementia and in her vague moments, seems to be psychically linked to the deer, and it turns out there's a strong family link to the beast and the reason it is haunting the woods and the humans, any humans, it sees as being destroyers. Dan Allen and Rhys Warrington's film is fun, if you like horror, but it's not the tongue-in-cheek horror that usually hits the multiplex cinemas. Bambi doesn't throw off witty one-liners as he despatches his prey, it is kill-and-move-on. The film's technical team is a small crew, the end credits were mercifully short, but they achieve good believable work with their CGI, keeping their scenes dark, only revealing the horror creatures when they need to. Perhaps the small tech crew and judicious withholding is the secret to good CGI, I thought as I recalled how many thousands of names were in the technical credits to the second Wonder Woman or The Flash movies, and remember how butchered and rushed those film's CGI looked. There's been an exciting trend in low-budget horror movies recently when iconic intellectual property, usually the ones associated with sweetness, hits that magic number where it enters into the public domain. Like the 2023 film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, where Christopher Robin has neglected his animal friends after leaving for college and so they go on a killing rampage. These twisted Winnie films - there's been a bunch of spin-offs and also-rans in the past two years - arrived on the scene just as AA Milne's original book, published in 1926, passed the 95-year mark required for the US public domain. The juggernaut that is Disney couldn't stop enterprising filmmakers jumping on this adaptation bandwagon when Steamboat Willie, the first on-screen appearance of Mickey Mouse, entered public domain in 2014, with recent horror films like Mickey's Slayhouse and Mouseboat Massacre hitting - well, they're not hitting cinemas, they're mostly appearing on horror streaming services like Shudder. Even my childhood favourite TV show characters The Banana Splits went on a malfunctioning animatronic killing spree in 2019's The Banana Splits Movie. Bambi: The Reckoning takes, yes, your sweet childhood memory, though for legal reasons, it draws from author Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods, and not the Disney adaptation that they still very much hold all rights for. Director Dan Allen starts the film with a rustic animation that certainly nods towards the Disney drawings, showing over the title credits a young fawn losing his mother and growing up into a giant buck. Except this deer, with his enormous antlers, lives in a woods being poisoned by men dumping green carcinogens in the water, the same men running over the buck and his mate with their trucks as they leave. We'll come back to that buck in a moment, but in Rhys Warrington's screenplay, we also have a young mum caring for her child. It is Xana (Roxanne McKee), mum to the bookish Benji (Tom Mulheron), who has just been let down once again by Benji's dad Simon (Alex Cooke), who had promised to take his son to a weekend with Simon's relatives in the country. Rather than disappointing her son, Xana packs Benji into a taxi and head off into the deep forrest home that grandmother Mary (Nicola Wright) lives in. It seems that Simon isn't the only disappointment in the family, as granny's home is full of Benji's awful relatives, like his obnoxious cousin Harrison (Joseph Greenwood) and Harrison's uncaring step-mother Harriet (Samira Mighty). But, as in all good fairy tales, the taxi ride to Granny's house is interrupted, not by a wolf, but by an enormous set of antlers smashing into the taxi head-on. The taxi driver is killed as the giant deer, feral with razor sharp teeth that drip blood, stomps the car's cabin, and Xana and Benji escape, running to Granny's house. But Granny has dementia and in her vague moments, seems to be psychically linked to the deer, and it turns out there's a strong family link to the beast and the reason it is haunting the woods and the humans, any humans, it sees as being destroyers. Dan Allen and Rhys Warrington's film is fun, if you like horror, but it's not the tongue-in-cheek horror that usually hits the multiplex cinemas. Bambi doesn't throw off witty one-liners as he despatches his prey, it is kill-and-move-on. The film's technical team is a small crew, the end credits were mercifully short, but they achieve good believable work with their CGI, keeping their scenes dark, only revealing the horror creatures when they need to. Perhaps the small tech crew and judicious withholding is the secret to good CGI, I thought as I recalled how many thousands of names were in the technical credits to the second Wonder Woman or The Flash movies, and remember how butchered and rushed those film's CGI looked. There's been an exciting trend in low-budget horror movies recently when iconic intellectual property, usually the ones associated with sweetness, hits that magic number where it enters into the public domain. Like the 2023 film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, where Christopher Robin has neglected his animal friends after leaving for college and so they go on a killing rampage. These twisted Winnie films - there's been a bunch of spin-offs and also-rans in the past two years - arrived on the scene just as AA Milne's original book, published in 1926, passed the 95-year mark required for the US public domain. The juggernaut that is Disney couldn't stop enterprising filmmakers jumping on this adaptation bandwagon when Steamboat Willie, the first on-screen appearance of Mickey Mouse, entered public domain in 2014, with recent horror films like Mickey's Slayhouse and Mouseboat Massacre hitting - well, they're not hitting cinemas, they're mostly appearing on horror streaming services like Shudder. Even my childhood favourite TV show characters The Banana Splits went on a malfunctioning animatronic killing spree in 2019's The Banana Splits Movie. Bambi: The Reckoning takes, yes, your sweet childhood memory, though for legal reasons, it draws from author Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods, and not the Disney adaptation that they still very much hold all rights for. Director Dan Allen starts the film with a rustic animation that certainly nods towards the Disney drawings, showing over the title credits a young fawn losing his mother and growing up into a giant buck. Except this deer, with his enormous antlers, lives in a woods being poisoned by men dumping green carcinogens in the water, the same men running over the buck and his mate with their trucks as they leave. We'll come back to that buck in a moment, but in Rhys Warrington's screenplay, we also have a young mum caring for her child. It is Xana (Roxanne McKee), mum to the bookish Benji (Tom Mulheron), who has just been let down once again by Benji's dad Simon (Alex Cooke), who had promised to take his son to a weekend with Simon's relatives in the country. Rather than disappointing her son, Xana packs Benji into a taxi and head off into the deep forrest home that grandmother Mary (Nicola Wright) lives in. It seems that Simon isn't the only disappointment in the family, as granny's home is full of Benji's awful relatives, like his obnoxious cousin Harrison (Joseph Greenwood) and Harrison's uncaring step-mother Harriet (Samira Mighty). But, as in all good fairy tales, the taxi ride to Granny's house is interrupted, not by a wolf, but by an enormous set of antlers smashing into the taxi head-on. The taxi driver is killed as the giant deer, feral with razor sharp teeth that drip blood, stomps the car's cabin, and Xana and Benji escape, running to Granny's house. But Granny has dementia and in her vague moments, seems to be psychically linked to the deer, and it turns out there's a strong family link to the beast and the reason it is haunting the woods and the humans, any humans, it sees as being destroyers. Dan Allen and Rhys Warrington's film is fun, if you like horror, but it's not the tongue-in-cheek horror that usually hits the multiplex cinemas. Bambi doesn't throw off witty one-liners as he despatches his prey, it is kill-and-move-on. The film's technical team is a small crew, the end credits were mercifully short, but they achieve good believable work with their CGI, keeping their scenes dark, only revealing the horror creatures when they need to. Perhaps the small tech crew and judicious withholding is the secret to good CGI, I thought as I recalled how many thousands of names were in the technical credits to the second Wonder Woman or The Flash movies, and remember how butchered and rushed those film's CGI looked. There's been an exciting trend in low-budget horror movies recently when iconic intellectual property, usually the ones associated with sweetness, hits that magic number where it enters into the public domain. Like the 2023 film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, where Christopher Robin has neglected his animal friends after leaving for college and so they go on a killing rampage. These twisted Winnie films - there's been a bunch of spin-offs and also-rans in the past two years - arrived on the scene just as AA Milne's original book, published in 1926, passed the 95-year mark required for the US public domain. The juggernaut that is Disney couldn't stop enterprising filmmakers jumping on this adaptation bandwagon when Steamboat Willie, the first on-screen appearance of Mickey Mouse, entered public domain in 2014, with recent horror films like Mickey's Slayhouse and Mouseboat Massacre hitting - well, they're not hitting cinemas, they're mostly appearing on horror streaming services like Shudder. Even my childhood favourite TV show characters The Banana Splits went on a malfunctioning animatronic killing spree in 2019's The Banana Splits Movie. Bambi: The Reckoning takes, yes, your sweet childhood memory, though for legal reasons, it draws from author Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods, and not the Disney adaptation that they still very much hold all rights for. Director Dan Allen starts the film with a rustic animation that certainly nods towards the Disney drawings, showing over the title credits a young fawn losing his mother and growing up into a giant buck. Except this deer, with his enormous antlers, lives in a woods being poisoned by men dumping green carcinogens in the water, the same men running over the buck and his mate with their trucks as they leave. We'll come back to that buck in a moment, but in Rhys Warrington's screenplay, we also have a young mum caring for her child. It is Xana (Roxanne McKee), mum to the bookish Benji (Tom Mulheron), who has just been let down once again by Benji's dad Simon (Alex Cooke), who had promised to take his son to a weekend with Simon's relatives in the country. Rather than disappointing her son, Xana packs Benji into a taxi and head off into the deep forrest home that grandmother Mary (Nicola Wright) lives in. It seems that Simon isn't the only disappointment in the family, as granny's home is full of Benji's awful relatives, like his obnoxious cousin Harrison (Joseph Greenwood) and Harrison's uncaring step-mother Harriet (Samira Mighty). But, as in all good fairy tales, the taxi ride to Granny's house is interrupted, not by a wolf, but by an enormous set of antlers smashing into the taxi head-on. The taxi driver is killed as the giant deer, feral with razor sharp teeth that drip blood, stomps the car's cabin, and Xana and Benji escape, running to Granny's house. But Granny has dementia and in her vague moments, seems to be psychically linked to the deer, and it turns out there's a strong family link to the beast and the reason it is haunting the woods and the humans, any humans, it sees as being destroyers. Dan Allen and Rhys Warrington's film is fun, if you like horror, but it's not the tongue-in-cheek horror that usually hits the multiplex cinemas. Bambi doesn't throw off witty one-liners as he despatches his prey, it is kill-and-move-on. The film's technical team is a small crew, the end credits were mercifully short, but they achieve good believable work with their CGI, keeping their scenes dark, only revealing the horror creatures when they need to. Perhaps the small tech crew and judicious withholding is the secret to good CGI, I thought as I recalled how many thousands of names were in the technical credits to the second Wonder Woman or The Flash movies, and remember how butchered and rushed those film's CGI looked.
Vox
23-07-2025
- General
- Vox
The government stepped in to clean up a disaster in North Carolina. Then they created another one.
is an environmental correspondent at Vox, covering biodiversity loss and climate change. Before joining Vox, he was a senior energy reporter at Business Insider. Benji previously worked as a wildlife researcher. POLK COUNTY, North Carolina — The small section of forest before me looked as though it was clear-cut. The ground was flat and treeless, covered in a thin layer of jumbled sticks and leaves. This region, a wetland formed by beavers near the South Carolina border, was flooded last September by Hurricane Helene. But it wasn't the storm that razed the forest. It was the machines that came after. They were part of a hurricane cleanup effort, bankrolled by the federal government, that many environmental experts believe went very, very wrong. Helene hit North Carolina in late September last year, dumping historic amounts of rain that damaged thousands of homes, killed more than 100 people, and littered rivers with debris including fallen trees, building fragments, and cars. In the months since, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has sponsored an enormous cleanup effort in western North Carolina. It focused, among other things, on clearing debris from waterways for public safety. Storm debris left in rivers and streams can create jams that make them more likely to flood in the future. A contractor hauls away woody debris from a river in western North Carolina. Benji Jones/Vox In some parts of the state, however, cleanup crews contracted by the federal government removed much more than just dangerous debris. According to several state biologists, environmental experts, and my own observations from a recent trip to the area, contractors in some regions cleared live trees still rooted in the ground, logs that were in place well before the storm, and other natural features of the habitat that may not have posed a risk to public safety. These experts also told me that the Army Corps of Engineers — a government agency tasked by FEMA to oversee debris removal in several counties — failed to coordinate with the state wildlife agency to minimize harm to species that are in danger of extinction. Those include federally endangered freshwater mussels, which are essential for their role in keeping rivers clean, and hellbenders, iconic giant salamanders that the federal government says are imperiled. In some stretches of rivers and streams, the contractors ultimately did more harm to the environment than the storm itself, the experts said. The many scientists and environmental experts I spoke to say the main problem is the compensation system for companies involved in disaster recovery: Contractors are typically paid by the volume of debris they remove from streams, creating an incentive for them to take more debris than is necessary. 'They just removed everything.' — Hans Lohmeyer, stewardship coordinator at Conserving Carolina That's what happened in this partially destroyed beaver wetland, according to Hans Lohmeyer, the stewardship coordinator with an environmental group called Conserving Carolina, who took me to the wetland in June. 'They just removed everything,' Lohmeyer told me, pointing at the bald patch of forest where he said live trees that had survived Helene once stood. 'It's more advantageous for them to remove it all because they're getting paid for it.' The damage from Helene was relatively minor here, Lohmeyer said. And he claims that debris churned up by the storm didn't pose a serious flood risk. The wetland is a large natural area with few homes or buildings and plenty of room for floodwaters, he said. Yet contractors still leveled parts of the forest with excavators, clearing important wildlife habitat. Hans Lohmeyer stands next to a patch of forest that was cleared by debris removal contractors. Benji Jones/Vox 'We've just seen tons of excessive debris removal,' said Jon Stamper, river cleanup coordinator with MountainTrue, a nonprofit that's being funded by the state to clean up debris in smaller waterways. 'I couldn't even begin to tell you how many reports and phone calls and public outcries we've had about this.' Plenty of contractors have done a good job, he said, but many seem to be 'simply grabbing anything they can to make more money.' Cleanup contractors have faced scrutiny before. In the months after deadly floods swept through southeastern Kentucky in 2022, a report by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting claimed that debris-removal contractors — including AshBritt and its subcontractors, one of the firms contracted by the Army Corps in North Carolina — took trees they shouldn't have and ignored complaints from residents, prompting lawsuits. (At least some of the claims against the company have since been dismissed, court records show.) Then there's the risk of climate change: Rising global temperatures are only likely to increase the need for debris removal, by making natural disasters like floods more frequent and severe in some areas. That will come at a steep cost to public safety and to the economy — Helene's costs have so far amounted to nearly $80 billion. And without better cleanup systems in place, it will be especially devastating for the wild animals that need intact ecosystems to survive. Scientists say government contractors were careless and likely killed scores of endangered species I initially traveled to North Carolina for a story about how damage from Hurricane Helene is pushing some already rare animals closer to extinction. For endangered salamanders like the Hickory Nut Gorge green — a striking amphibian with black skin and splotches of green — forest loss caused by Helene's floodwaters is a new and urgent threat. But as I spoke with experts for the story, they told me that a bigger problem for animals in some rivers and streams has actually been the cleanup after the storm. To clean up debris from Helene, counties in western North Carolina either enlisted help from the Army Corps of Engineers — which then hired contractors — or contracted debris removal companies themselves. In both cases, FEMA provided financial support. According to three state biologists and several other experts familiar with North Carolina's stream ecology, it was debris removal contractors working under the Army Corps that created the worst environmental problems. AshBritt, one of the Corps' big contractors, managed debris removal in Polk County, where I saw the partially deforested beaver wetland. I also visited a stream west of Hendersonville called Little River that was cleaned up by a different Army Corps contractor. Share a tip Do you have information about disaster cleanup in North Carolina? Reach out to or benjijones@ (encrypted). Find me on Signal at benji.90. In Little River, cleanup contractors severely damaged the stream ecosystem, which is home to the world's highest density of the endangered Appalachian elktoe mussel, said Luke Etchison, a biologist at the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC), the state wildlife agency. Giant excavators drove over the riverbed, almost certainly crushing elktoes and burying rocks used by hellbenders, the largest salamanders in North America, he said. The contractors also left parts of the bank bare and almost certainly removed natural habitat features that were not a flood hazard, according to Etchison. On a warm and sunny morning in June, Etchison and his colleague Michael Perkins, another state biologist, visited Little River for an informal survey. I tagged along. The river was shallow and calm with a rocky bottom and flanked by shrubs and trees. It looked like a pretty typical river — and it was beautiful. We threw on wetsuits, goggles, and snorkels and waded into the cold water. It was only when we swam around with our heads tilted to the riverbed that I started to see some of the impacts Etchison was describing: crushed elktoe shells, broken rocks, and hardly any of the debris that crayfish and hellbenders use, such as old logs and large, flat boulders. Perhaps most telling was that we saw fewer than two dozen elktoe mussels that day. Past surveys at this exact site turned up several hundred of them, Etchison said. Etchison holds up one of the many broken shells we collected while snorkeling in Little River. Benji Jones/Vox Perkins said that people often have the perception that debris removal is 'charitable work,' but it's not. 'This was a taxpayer-funded endeavor,' he said, and some contractors 'are making millions by removing not just woody debris but also thousands of live, healthy or otherwise undamaged trees and vegetation that pose no risk to life or infrastructure.' In another river, known as the West Fork French Broad, a technician working with NCWRC told me that he saw similar signs of damage. Rocks that hellbenders live under were fractured, covered in sediment, or pushed into the riverbed, he said. From his experience walking the stream before and after debris removal, he also claims that contractors removed habitat features that were not a flood risk — either because they were here before the storm or not obstructing the channel. 'I don't know what's a more telling sign that something is not a threat to a future flood than something that was in the river before this flood and in the exact same place after,' the technician told me. 'They were operating in these rivers, treating them like highways, driving up and down, crushing everything.' — Lori Williams, state wildlife biologist Etchison and two other state biologists allege that the Army Corps made little effort to coordinate with NCWRC to avoid harming threatened and endangered species. Once they learned that debris removal was underway, NCWRC sent Army Corps and other disaster recovery officials a one-page document with guidance on how to minimize harm to the ecosystems, such as by leaving stumps in place and, when possible, driving machines on the bank and not in the riverbed. The agency also produced detailed maps that marked areas with rare species, including the section of Little River that I visited. In those areas, the maps say, contractors should avoid running heavy machinery in the stream bed. NCWRC biologists asked the Corps to coordinate with them if they're clearing debris from rivers in those areas. A hellbender we caught in Mills River. Benji Jones/Vox 'We gave them [the Army Corps] all of this information and they ignored it,' Lori Williams, a conservation biologist and hellbender expert at NCWRC, told me. 'They were operating in these rivers, treating them like highways, driving up and down, crushing everything.' Early one morning I talked to a couple workers who were clearing debris from a stream north of Asheville. They were both from out of state and hadn't heard any complaints about their work. Locals were happy they were cleaning up, they told me. But I also heard another story. A man named Nathan Turpin, who briefly worked for a subcontractor of AshBritt doing debris removal, told me that he left the job, in part, because of the focus on 'production.' Related These photos are literally saving jaguars 'I ended up walking off the job just for the fact that we were pressured to produce a lot of yardage of debris every day to make a profit,' Turpin, who said he drove a dump truck, told me. 'There were a lot of plants and trees I saw that were being destroyed for no reason.' Who deserves blame — and are they accepting it? No single company or organization is at fault for the mismanaged debris removal, experts told me. Cleaning up involves a messy constellation of state and federal government agencies, private contractors and subcontractors, and independent monitors that audit the work. There are so many people involved that it's difficult to figure out who does what — and who's paying for it. And when you start asking questions, everyone involved tends to just point at each other. Key takeaways Scientists claim that cleanup from Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina was careless and damaged the environment and wildlife in some areas. They claim that contractors hired by the Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency, cleared far more debris from rivers than was necessary for public safety, removing habitat features there before Helene hit. They claim that those contractors were motivated by a perverse incentive common in the debris removal industry: companies are paid by volume, so the more debris they remove, the more money they stand to make. The Army Corps told Vox that its contractors follow strict environmental guidelines to avoid undue ecological harm and it does not tolerate over-clearing of debris. The Corps provided detailed comments that experts Vox spoke to generally disagree with. Debris removal is nearly finished, but environmental experts say there's a big opportunity to make future cleanup efforts less destructive — largely, by changing the incentives for contractors. FEMA declined an interview request. In a written statement, FEMA told Vox that North Carolina coordinated with federal and state agencies to provide guidance for debris removal to counties and the Army Corps including measures to minimize environmental impacts. Those measures include using high-profile machines in riverbeds, so they don't bottom out, and filling heavy machinery with biodegradable hydraulic fluid, FEMA said in the statement. The details of that guidance are not clear. FEMA directed my follow-up questions to the Army Corps, which declined to share the environmental guidance that contractors were given. The Army Corps similarly declined an interview request, though it shared detailed comments in response to our reporting. The Army Corps told Vox that its contractors and subcontractors are required to follow strict environmental rules to minimize environmental harm — though again, it's not clear what those rules are. The agency also said that it does not tolerate over-clearing of debris. 'Contractors that exceed limits receive warnings or are removed from the job,' according to the statement. Dave Connolly, chief of public affairs for the Corp's Wilmington District, said the agency has not issued warnings or removed contractors. The agency also said it 'constantly' has quality assurance specialists on site to verify that contractors are removing only what they're tasked to remove. Some environmental experts I spoke to said the Army Corps didn't have sufficient oversight over their contractors or subcontractors to know whether or not they were over-extracting debris. The Army Corps also told me that 'wildlife biologists and environmental experts have been involved throughout the operation, particularly in areas where endangered species are known to exist.' That ensures cleanup has a minimal impact on wildlife and their habitats, the statement said. The state biologists I spoke to said that at least some of the wildlife biologists hired by debris removal contractors have little knowledge of the local endangered and threatened species. The Army Corps noted that they shared 'mapping data' with the state wildlife agency that's meant to indicate where contractors would be working. According to the Corps, that gave NCWRC the opportunity to advise workers when debris removal is happening in ecologically sensitive areas. The agency said it would 'attempt to adjust the debris removal plan in that area, and/or allow wildlife specialists the opportunity to temporarily relocate any discovered wildlife until debris removal in that specific location is complete.' The state biologists I spoke to said Army Corps contractors showed little indication that they would adjust a debris removal plan to spare rare animals. And often, the state agency wasn't aware of where the cleanup was happening because the mapping data was so hard to parse. 'We were not given the chance to locate and move animals out of harm's way,' Williams said. Although AshBritt declined to comment on the record, the Army Corps defended its work with the company: 'USACE's decision to contract with AshBritt was made after a thorough evaluation of their capabilities, experience, and past performance in emergency response operations,' the Corps said in its statement. 'There is no evidence to suggest AshBritt is unable to successfully fulfill its contracts.' (See here for a more detailed response from the Army Corps to our reporting.) Most of the damage from cleanup is already done. Scientists are looking to the next natural disaster. Killing federally threatened and endangered species, like elktoes and another mussel variety known as longsolids, is typically a crime — because they're protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). And that's why some environmental advocates have suggested to me that debris removal in certain regions, such as Little River, may have been illegal. I raised this with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the ESA. Gary Peeples, the acting supervisor for the Asheville Field Office, told me that, at least so far, debris removal is not violating the act, even if it's killing endangered species. This is a bit wonky, but: Typically, the USFWS consults with federal agencies — in this case, FEMA, because it's financing the Corps's work — before taking actions that harm endangered species. Those agencies then receive what's called an incidental take statement, which creates an exception and essentially legalizes harm to federally protected species (assuming their actions don't jeopardize the entire existence of the species). In an emergency, however, consultation happens while the action is already underway, Peeples said. That's what happened here. In the coming weeks, he said, FEMA is supposed to report on how they've impacted endangered species, at which point the service will issue the agency a take statement. FEMA and the Army Corps have been 'diligently monitoring and documenting' the potential impacts of debris removal on threatened and endangered species, the Army Corps told me in its statement. A pile of woody debris on the banks of a stream north of Asheville. Benji Jones/Vox 'From the legal standpoint, we must remember that the Endangered Species Act does allow for harmful impacts to species,' said Peeples. Still, he added, the impact of debris removal 'pains' him. 'Not only am I a biologist who works here, but I'm a resident who lives here and recreates in these areas,' he said. 'It is grossly unfortunate how things have played out.' Beyond raising alarm among local environmental experts, the cleanup has also prompted significant public outcry. And those complaints haven't gone unnoticed. In May, a number of state residents, including environmental advocates, met with Rep. Chuck Edwards — a Republican who represents western North Carolina — to express their concerns. Afterward, Edwards announced a new agreement with FEMA and the Army Corps 'to improve accountability and transparency' in the cleanup process. Under that agreement, landowners can mark important trees and other landscape features with flags. 'These flagged areas will not be disturbed until the property owner, the county, and USACE [US Army Corps of Engineers] engage in a consultation,' according to the announcement. Edwards also uploaded maps of where the Army Corps is working to his website. Tread marks from heavy machinery that was used to clear debris from a stream in western North Carolina. Benji Jones/Vox It's not clear whether this flagging approach has worked, or whether it was simply too little, too late. Edwards's office declined an interview request and, along with FEMA and the Army Corps, did not respond to a request to see the agreement. The opportunity now, experts told me, is to make future debris removal better — to learn from what environmental advocates call egregious mistakes. There are really only two things that those advocates want. The first is to change the incentive structure in the disaster recovery industry. Paying contractors by volume is 'the biggest problem,' Williams, the state biologist, told me. 'It puts a dollar sign on literally every leaf, stick, twig, [and] blade of grass out there. That's how these people are making money.' Instead, Williams, Lohmeyer, and other experts recommended paying contractors by linear foot — meaning the more distance they cover, the more money they make — or by job. A job might be, say, clearing debris from a particular creek or property. The other key ask is that the Army Corps and disaster recovery companies coordinate with regional environmental experts — the people, like Williams and Etchison, who typically know the ecology of the rivers far better than contractors. State biologists are not asking to stop or even slow debris removal. Just to take more care in regions known to contain incredibly rare creatures. Where cleanup has gone right(ish), hellbenders still lurk In some regions of North Carolina river, cleanup left a much smaller scar. According to Etchison and some of his colleagues, waterways in counties that opted to work with a contractor called Southern Disaster Recovery (SDR) instead of Army Corps contractors were generally left in better shape. SDR tended to listen to state biologists, he told me. 'They've done a pretty good job coordinating with us,' Etchison said. For example, when Etchison asked an SDR subcontractor to avoid removing specific bits of habitat, such as a log home to freshwater mussels, the contractor listened, Etchison said. That may be because SDR and their subcontractors are paid by linear foot to remove debris (though they're paid by volume to haul it away). As a result, Etchison said, there's still lots of large woody debris and big rocks for hellbenders to hide and nest under. After the survey in Little River, I drove with Etchison and Perkins to the banks of Mills River, which was cleaned up by SDR. This river, Etchison told me, was a good place to find hellbenders — in part, he said, because cleanup didn't wreck the waterway. There are still plenty of logs and bramble on the bank and big rocks for hellbenders to hide and nest under. 'If you have to do it, it was done the right way,' Etchison said of debris removal here. We slid down the bank and stepped into the cold water, which was waist deep and moving quickly. The water was murky, so we couldn't see the bottom, making walking tough and finding a hellbender tougher. Etchison and Perkins used their hands and feet to feel around for the kinds of rocks that these Hulkish salamanders love — large and flat, with a gap underneath that they can squeeze into. When they found such a rock, Perkins would position a seine in front of it and Etchison would lift the rock up. Then we'd check the net to see if a salamander had entered. We did this for more than an hour, catching mostly leaves and mud and a few crayfish and small fish. But eventually, somehow, this approach worked. Etchison lifted up a small slab of concrete on the riverbed and when Perkins lifted up the net, there was a squirming hellbender. These animals are famously ugly-cute: slimy brown with wrinkly skin, tiny eyes, and pudgy little hands. They look like something out of a Miyazaki film. The hellbender we caught. Benji Jones/Vox Perhaps worrying about the future of unconventionally attractive animals like this is not a priority for everyone in the wake of disaster. Biologists have a hard time rallying the public around salamanders, especially compared to animals of the large and fluffy variety. Yet it's the hellbenders and the mussels and the crayfish and the fish that make these ecosystems so unique and healthy enough to support our own needs. Mussels clean the water. Crayfish break down debris. Hellbenders tell us when rivers may be polluted. While traveling in North Carolina I was constantly reminded that natural disasters are disasters for these animals, too. And that's troubling for North Carolina's utterly epic array of creatures because many regions — including the American Southeast — will likely face more flooding in the decades to come as the planet warms. The least we can do is be smart about how we react to it.
Time of India
17-07-2025
- Time of India
12-Year-Old Behind Bomb Hoax: Cops
New Delhi: A 12-year-old boy was allegedly the source of the threatening emails sent on Tuesday to St Stephen's College in North Campus and St Thomas School in Dwarka, police said on Wednesday. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The Class VIII student, who studies at a different school in the city, sent the emails as a prank, according to police. He was apprehended briefly and later released. Meanwhile, the spate of bomb threats targeting the city's educational institutions continued for the third consecutive day on Wednesday, as schools across Delhi received bomb threats via email, triggering panic and evacuations. However, after thorough checks, no suspicious devices or substances were found on any of the premises. A Delhi Fire Services official said distress calls were received by several prominent schools, including St Thomas School in Dwarka at 5.26am, Vasant Valley School in Vasant Kunj at 6.30am, Richmond Global School in Paschim Vihar at 8.12am, Mother's International School in Hauz Khas at 8.14am, Prudence School in Ashok Vihar at 9.23am, and Prudence School in Pitampura at 10.25am. Two other schools — Sardar Patel Vidyalaya in Lodhi Estate and St Thomas School in Paschim Vihar — also received similar threats. The email read: "Good Morning. Explosive devices are hidden inside backpacks and placed around the classrooms of the school. This is extremely serious. You will all pay for your sins. Roadkill and Benji are the persons responsible for this bloodbath. Release our names to the press/media." A police source said that the threat emails were routed through a German domain provider, and senior officials have written to the agency concerned to help trace the sender. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "The emails are being sent via VPNs, which makes the tracking process extremely difficult and allows the sender to remain anonymous while issuing these hoax threats," the source added. A security operation was launched across the schools that were affected, with Delhi Police's bomb disposal squads, cybercrime units and dog units conducting thorough checks of the premises. Ambulances also remained on standby. The fire department said one fire tender was sent to each school, and complete sweeps were conducted in coordination with bomb squads and local police. During the inspection, sniffer dogs searched classrooms, corridors and open areas in the schools while bomb detection and disposal squad personnel used necessary equipment to scan for potential explosive devices. School administrators also took immediate action. A senior police officer said, "On receiving the information on Wednesday, police teams immediately rushed to the schools and the premises were thoroughly inspected. CCTV footage was also reviewed. Teams are working to find the sender of the email." Tuesday's mails, which were sent around 7.15am, had claimed that four IEDs and two RDX explosives had been planted on the college premises, including the library, and warned they would detonate by 2pm. DCP (Dwarka) Ankit Singh said, "Immediately after the threat was received, standard protocol was followed and a thorough search confirmed that there was nothing suspicious. Following that, our special staff team along with the cybercrime unit began tracing the source of the email, which eventually led them to a 12-year-old boy." A senior police officer added, "During questioning, the child admitted that he had sent the emails as a prank. He was apprehended and later released after undergoing counselling." "The general public, school staff, students and parents are requested not to panic. The situation is under control, and all precautionary and investigative measures have been taken," DCP Singh said. Meanwhile, AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal slammed BJP on social media platform X, stating: "For the third day in a row, bomb threats have been issued to Delhi schools. Neither Union home minister Amit Shah nor BJP's four-engine govts seem to care about the safety of Delhi's children. The BJP is hell-bent on turning Delhi into a jungle-raj." On Monday, threat mails had been received at Navy Children School in Chanakyapuri, CRPF Public School in Dwarka Sector 16 and CRPF School in Rohini, triggering panic and causing anxiety among parents.
