In July 2020, a small Florida-based investment firm announced that a man named George Devolder had been hired as its New York regional director. “When we had the opportunity to welcome him to our team, I was delighted,” the company’s founder and chief executive said in a news release. “He’s a perfect fit.”
Devolder is now better known as George Santos, the 34-year-old freshman Republican congressman from New York’s 3rd Congressional District who brazenly lied to voters about key details of his biography. And the company for which he was “a perfect fit,” Harbor City Capital,is no longer in operation. Its assets were frozen in 2021, when the Securities and Exchange Commission accused it of running a “classic Ponzi scheme” that had defrauded investors of millions of dollars.
The SEC complaint did not name Santos, who has denied knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing.
Court records, company documents and previously unreported footage of workplace Zoom meetings obtained by The Washington Post, as well as interviews with former Harbor City employees and investors, reveal how the firm nurtured Santos’s ambitions and acquainted him with business associates who have gone on to play notable roles in his scandal-plagued political career. When the company was shuttered in 2021, after allegedly collecting a total of $17.1 million from more than 100 individuals, Santos joined Harbor City executives in creating other businesses and political consultancies now under scrutiny after his election to Congress, according to business registration documents.
The Post’s examination found new details about how Santos came to work at Harbor City, and it revealed that Santos remained at the company long after a prospective investor told him the firm was using a fraudulent bank document.
Neither Santos nor his lawyer responded to messages seeking comment.
J.P. Maroney, Harbor City’s founder and the man who hired Santos, claimed in podcasts and YouTube videos that he had devised reliably profitable ways to generate sales leads online for other companies. He said he needed funding for this enterprise and was seeking risk-averse investors, people who might be elderly and who “can’t afford to start over,” as he once put it. He promised that the money they sent him would be safe and would fetch annual returns in the double digits, often at 18 percent.
But according to the SEC, Maroney siphoned off about $4.5 million of the investors’ money — more than a quarter of the amount raised — for his own personal use, including to buy a Mercedes-Benz and a waterfront home near Cape Canaveral, Fla. The home — a six-bedroom, eight-bathroom, 13,000-square-foot mansion — was the location for a fall 2020 fundraiser purporting to benefit President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, according to a planning document obtained by The Post.
Four Harbor City employees or associates, including Santos, were listed on the planning document as contacts for the fundraiser. Photos from the evening show Maroney was present. The event featured an appearance by Donald Trump Jr. and his fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, according to someone involved in the planning who, like many people interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. That person said an artist at the event painted Guilfoyle’s portrait live.
A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesman for the former president’s son and Guilfoyle said he had no information about the event.
Maroney, 52, did not respond to a request for comment from The Post. In court, he has denied the SEC allegations, which were brought in federal court in Florida. The company itself has not responded in court.
In one of the 2020 Harbor City Zoom recordings, Santos said he was pursuing wealthy investors who could write checks for a minimum of $5 million. But he said he could not get Maroney to answer key questions about the company and acknowledged not fully comprehending an obscure form of credit Harbor City claimed to be using to guarantee the safety of investor money.
“I still don’t understand it completely,” he said.
Still, he presented himself publicly as the face of Harbor City’s New York operations.
“I’m actually Harbor City Capital’s head guy for New York City,” Santos said in fall 2020, during an earlier failed run for Congress, in an interview recorded by the Metropolitan Republican Club. In another interview that fall, with the Cowboy Logic Radio podcast, he did not name Harbor City but said he was managing “$1.5 billion” with the average investor putting in “about $50,000 to $175,000.” (If the average investor put in $175,000, more than 8,500 clients would be required to reach $1.5 billion.)
“We just give them a better return than a traditional 401(k),” he said on the podcast. “In my private sector job, I am actually helping mainly retirees secure their future. So that’s what I’m about. I’m about helping people.”
After Harbor City shut down, and with assistance from a fellow former Harbor City employee, Santos in 2021 formed a company, the Devolder Organization, that paid him at least $3.5 million over the next two years, according to Florida business records and financial disclosure forms he filed as a candidate. The Post could locate no evidence of a public-facing profile for Devolder or any record of business activities. Santos loaned his campaign more than $700,000 but did not report any income from Harbor City despite having been paid by the company in 2021.
Santos won election to Congress from Long Island last year based on an impressive personal story. The grandson of Holocaust survivors. Educated at New York’s best schools. Employed by elite banks. Now that story has unraveled, and Santos is under scrutiny by prosecutors in New York and Rio de Janeiro.
Joseph Murray, an attorney for Santos, said on Thursday that his client had no knowledge of wrongdoing at Harbor City. “In light of the ongoing investigation, and for the benefit of the victims, it would be inappropriate to respond other than to say that Congressman Santos was completely unaware of any illegal activity going on at Harbor City Capital,” Murray told CNN.
‘The battle of my life’
Maroney is an entrepreneur who has said he built his first business, a T-shirt company called “Cool Alternative,”at age 19. Online and at investor conferences, he has pitched himself as a savvy businessman with more than two decades of experience growing companies.
But The Post found that he emerged from personal bankruptcy only a few years before starting Harbor City. Other key figures in the company also had histories of financial or legal trouble.
Harbor City’s former chief technology officer faced foreclosure proceedings after allegedly failing to pay his mortgage for six months in 2016. An attorney for the firm resigned from the Washington state bar in lieu of discipline for alleged misconduct, and he currently faces separate felony charges of fraud and money laundering in Arizona. Santos has his own history of financial woes: He twice faced eviction proceedings for failure to pay rent.
Maroney reached potential investors at conferences and via Facebook advertising and messages, according to court records and interviews. In a webinar for prospective investors in 2018, he said that his method of generating sales leads was such a guaranteed profit engine that if they gave him money, he could promise to pay them annual interest rates of 18 percent. An investment of $100,000, he said, would fetch monthly interest payments of $1,500, and then the entire principal would be paid back after two years.
Maroney also addressed questions he said he sometimes heard about whether he was running a Ponzi scheme similar to Bernie Madoff’s. He assured them he was not. “We don’t put investor capital at risk, period, the end,” he promised in the webinar.
The company’s Facebook page was populated with positive reviews from purported investors. The Post found that nearly all of the accounts that left the reviews on the company’s page used clip art or images of other people — two featured promo shots of professional models and another the headshot of a California real estate agent of a different name — as their profile images. The profiles showed little or no activity other than praising Harbor City, and most listed no Facebook friends.
Nevertheless, the company’s sales pitches succeeded in persuading more than 100 investors to send money, according to the SEC.
Gregory Vincent, a small-business owner in Northern California, told The Post he invested $400,000 in Harbor City. He said he had seen a Facebook advertisement featuring Maroney talking about the 18 percent returns he was earning.
“I had some money that I wanted to invest, and it sounded great. He sounded like a wonderful guy. He was an excellent speaker,” Vincent said.
Vincent, 58, said that while he received some payments from Harbor City, they stopped around the time of the SEC’s investigation, and he alleges in a lawsuit against Harbor City that his principal investment was never fully repaid. He said that after working extra hours for years, he has had to put off what he hoped would be an early retirement because of the money he lost.
“I worked my butt off to make the money that I did,” he said.
Some former employees said they saw signs something was amiss.
Ajit Kumar, of Mumbai, said he served as Harbor City’s chief financial officer in 2016 after meeting Maroney online. But he spoke to Maroney only occasionally and found that Maroney was unwilling to share key details about the company’s finances, Kumar told The Post. He quit in 2017 after less than a year.
“I had requested access to company books, bank accounts and other systems which were used in the organization, which were always promised but never provided,” Kumar said. “All I got were some Excel files with basic information.”
In December 2019, Maroney contacted Santos about Harbor City, Santos recounted in one of the Zoom recordings obtained by The Post. He said Maroney had been a “client” of his whom he came to know in meetings over breakfast and lunch. Santos said Maroney “came to me at 4 o’clock in the morning,” emailing him with details about the company’s bond offering.
“I jokingly said, ‘Are you hiring?’ He said, ‘Are you looking?’” Santos added, “I still have those emails, by the way.”
By January 2020, Santos had a Harbor City email address, according to a court-appointed lawyer overseeing liquidation of the firm’s assets. That was six months before Santos’s hiring was announced publicly.
Santos was in the early stages of his first run for Congress. His role at Harbor City was to find investors in New York, according to internal company emails and a former employee. Santos was not successful in that endeavor through the summer of 2020, the former employee said, but Maroney later told this person that Santos had located someone to invest. The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that Santos secured an investment for the company in the six figures.
In his work for Harbor City, Santosused his mother’s maternal surname, Devolder, part of what he described as an effort to compartmentalize his ambitions. “From a very early age, I became George Devolder the businessman and George Santos the politician. I’ve managed to keep that very separate,” he said in one of the Zoom recordings.
He said he did not want to mention his run for Congress in communications with potential Harbor City investors. “I can really go to jail if we send out an email saying, ‘As some of you may know, I’m running for office.’ It’s soliciting at that point,” he said. “I don’t need shiny silver bracelets.” Santos did not respond to a question about what he meant.
But he did, in one instance, leverage a political contact in his search for investors, according to a fellow congressional candidate.
Josh Eisen, a wealthy self-funded candidate who ran unsuccessfully for Congress from New York in 2020, told The Post he met Santos early that year at a Republican event. Eisen, 51, said Santos later approached him with two business opportunities, one involving a guaranteed-return investment and the other involving a chocolate business. He donated to Santos’s campaign but decided against investing with him.
In the Zoom recordings, Santos acknowledged the pressure he felt to perform. “Right now, I’m fighting the battle of my life at Harbor City,” he said in one, explaining, “I need to close a big deal. I need to show J.P. he didn’t make a mistake … I admire him a lot.”
Harbor City was then claiming that a “top tier” bank had issued it a Standby Letter of Credit, or an SBLC, designed to ensure the company’s ability to pay back investors, according to the SEC and draft investor pitches obtained by The Post. But no such SBLC ever existed, the SEC alleges.
In early June 2020, Santos spoke to a prospective investor who was considering cutting a check for at least $50,000, according to emails obtained by The Post. Another Harbor City employee sent her a document with a logo from Deutsche Bank, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, that appeared to show the bank had wired 5 million euros to a Harbor City account for the issuance of an SBLC. The Post obtained a pitch document circulated within Harbor City that included a placeholder for an image of Maroney holding up the purported Deutsche Bank transfer.
Emails show that the prospective investor, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive business matter, wrote to Santos to let him know that she had called Deutsche Bank and that the bank had told her the document was fraudulent.
“We are working to resolve this matter immediately,” Santos wrote in response, adding: “I will revert back to you as soon as I hear something on my end.”
A month later, after the prospective investor received additional pitches from the company, she wrote to ask Santos for an explanation.
“Please bear with us as we are nearing a conclusion and resolve this matter,” Santos wrote, according to the email. “I look forward to servicing you soon here at Harbor city capital.”
The prospective investor told The Post she did not hear from him again.
Emails show that Santos forwarded her concerns to Paul Donion, the lawyer for Harbor City who has been accused of misconduct in Arizona and Washington state. In an email replying to Santos, Donion said that the SBLC was in place and that any confusion was due to a “disconnect” between one of the firm’s partners and Deutsche Bank.
A spokesman for the bank told The Post, “Harbor City Capital was not a client of Deutsche Bank.”
Donion, who has pleaded not guilty to the Arizona charges, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Donion’s lawyer said that while Donion had been deposed in the Harbor City court case, he had been accused of no wrongdoing in that litigation. He emphasized that the Harbor City matter has no connection to the Arizona charges or Donion’s resignation from the Washington bar.
On the same day the prospective investor raised red flags via email, a user tweeted at Santos to say that the Deutsche Bank document was a “complete fraud.” Santos responded weeks later, writing that Harbor City’s SBLC was “100 % legitimate,” according to his archived tweets.
Around the same time, in June 2020, the Alabama Securities Commission barred Harbor City from selling securities in the state and added it to a “Con Watch” website, describing the company and Maroney as “fraudsters” out to deceive unsuspecting customers. The commission’s inquiry into Harbor City is ongoing, a spokesman told The Post.
Santos made his congressional campaign aware of the scrutiny in Alabama but assured the staff that he had done nothing wrong, according to someone familiar with the discussions.
‘Resilient people make it happen’
As Santos ran for Congress in 2020, he touted what he said were his 11 years of experience in the finance sector, including his work at Harbor City. “We are top, we’re within the Fortune 500 private-equity firms globally,” he told the Metropolitan Republican Club interviewer in October 2020.
The Post could find no evidence that Harbor City was ever named on a Fortune 500 list, and Santos did not respond to a question about the statement.
Santos has claimed he left Harbor City on March 1, 2021. He received payments from the company through April, the same month the SEC filed its complaint, The Post previously reported.
In the weeks after Harbor City was shut down, Santos formed new businesses with colleagues from the company.
One of those businesses was the Devolder Organization, the family company from which he has reported receiving an annual salary of $750,000 and dividends totaling at least $1 million per year in 2021 and 2022. Santos established that company with the help of a firm created by former Harbor City executive DeVaughn Dames. Dames did not respond to a request for comment.
It was an astonishing change in fortunes: His financial disclosure form from his run for Congress in 2020 shows he earned no salary that year, and just $55,000 in 2019, from LinkBridge Investors, a firm that hosts conferences for investors and asset managers. (That same year, Maroney spoke at a LinkBridge conference, according to a news release that described him as a seasoned investor and entrepreneur.)
A consulting company formed by Santos after the SEC crackdown, Red Strategies USA, also counts other former Harbor City executives’ companies as controlling members, according to corporate records. They include Dames, who described himself as Harbor City’s chief financial officer, and former chief technology officer Jayson Benoit. A company linked via a shared address to Nancy Marks, Santos’s campaign treasurer, is also listed as a controlling member.
Santos was an avid salesman for Red Strategies. According to GOP operatives familiar with the discussions, he encouraged Tina Forte, the Republican who ran unsuccessfully in New York’s 14th Congressional District last year against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), to sign with Red Strategies and to enlist Dames and Marks for her campaign. Santos made his pitch without disclosing that he had a stake in the company, the operatives said.
The Forte campaign paid more than $100,000 in 2021 to Red Strategies for fundraising and digital consulting, among other fees, federal records show. Forte split with the firm when she learned about its ownership, one of the operatives said.
Forte declined to comment. A Florida attorney who represented Red Strategies in the dispute did not respond to requests for comment.
Neither Benoit nor Marks responded to requests for comment.
In recent months, since Maroney was forced to shutter Harbor City, he has remained active on Facebook, posting about business, leadership and moneymaking methods. In August, with his assets frozen and amid the federal probe, he solicited input from his followers for a new podcast and book that he claimed would be forthcoming. Their purported title: “The Flop Factor: How To Fail Your Way To Success!”
Two months later, he secured a stay in the SEC case, saying that he was the target of a criminal investigation into the Harbor City matter. Neither Maroney nor Santos has been charged with a crime.
Santos was elected to Congress in November, helping the GOP secure its narrow majority in the House. He has apologized for what he called “résumé embellishment” but rejected calls for his resignation.
“Resilient people make it happen,” he said in one of the Zoom recordings from 2020, when he was struggling to sell investments in Harbor City. “It doesn’t matter how. They just make it happen. And that’s what I’m gonna do.”
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — A handful of centenarian survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor joined about 2,500 members of the public at the scene of the Japanese bombing on Wednesday to commemorate those who perished 81 years ago.
The audience sat quietly during a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the same time the attack began on Dec. 7, 1941.
Sailors aboard the USS Daniel Inouye stood along the rails of the guided missile destroyer while it passed both by the grassy shoreline where the ceremony was held and the USS Arizona Memorial to honor the survivors and those killed in the attack. Ken Stevens, a 100-year-old survivor from the USS Whitney, returned the salute.
“The ever-lasting legacy of Pearl Harbor will be shared at this site for all time, as we must never forget those who came before us so that we can chart a more just and peaceful path for those who follow,” said Tom Leatherman, superintendent of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial.
About 2,400 servicemen were killed in the bombing, which launched the U.S. into World War II. The USS Arizona alone lost 1,177 sailors and Marines, nearly half the death toll. Most of the Arizona’s fallen remained entombed in the ship, which sits on the harbor floor.
Ira Schab, 102, was on the USS Dobbin as a tuba player in the ship’s band. He recalls seeing Japanese planes flying overhead and wondering what to do.
“We had no place to go and hoped they’d miss us,” he said before the ceremony began.
He fed ammunition to machine gunners on the vessel, which wasn’t hit.
He’s now attended the remembrance ceremony four times.
“I wouldn’t miss it because I got an awful lot of friends that are still here that are buried here. I come back out of respect for them,” he said.
Schab stayed in the Navy during the war. After the war, he studied aerospace engineering and worked on the Apollo program. Today he lives in Portland, Oregon.
He wants people to remember those who served that day.
“Remember what they’re here for. Remember and honor those that are left. They did a hell of a job. Those who are still here, dead or alive,” he said.
Only six survivors attended, fewer than the dozen or more who have traveled to Hawaii from across the country for the annual remembrance ceremony in recent years.
Part of the decline reflects the dwindling number of survivors as they age. The youngest active-duty military personnel on Dec. 7, 1941, would have been about 17, making them 98 today. Many of those still alive are at least 100.
Herb Elfring, 100, or Jackson, Michigan, said was great that many members of the public showed interest in the commemoration and attended the ceremony.
“So many people don’t even know where Pearl Harbor is or what happened on that day,” he said.
Elfring was in the Army, assigned to the 251st Coast Artillery, part of the California National Guard. He remembers hearing bombs explode a few miles down the coast at Pearl Harbor but thought it was part of an exercise.
But then he saw a red ball on the fuselage of a Japanese Zero fighter plane when it strafed the ground alongside him near his barracks at Camp Malakole.
“That was a rude awakening,” he said. One soldier in his unit was injured by the bullets, but no one died, he said.
Robert John Lee recalls being a 20-year-old civilian living at his parent’s home on the naval base where his father ran the water pumping station. The home was just about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) across the harbor from where the USS Arizona was moored on battleship row.
The first explosions before 8 a.m. woke him up, making him think a door was slamming in the wind. He got up to yell for someone to shut the door only to look out the window at Japanese planes dropping torpedo bombs from the sky.
He saw the hull of the USS Arizona turn a deep orange-red after an aerial bomb hit it.
“Within a few seconds, that explosion then came out with huge tongues of flame right straight up over the ship itself — but hundreds of feet up,” Lee said in an interview Monday after a boat tour of the harbor.
He still remembers the hissing sound of the fire.
Sailors jumped into the water to escape their burning ships and swam to the landing near Lee’s house. Many were covered in the thick, heavy oil that coated the harbor. Lee and his mother used Fels-Naptha soap to help wash them. Sailors who were able to boarded small boats that shuttled them back to their vessels.
“Very heroic, I thought,” Lee said of them.
Lee joined the Hawaii Territorial Guard the next day, and later the U.S. Navy. He worked for Pan American World Airways for 30 years after the war.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs doesn’t have statistics for how many Pearl Harbor survivors are still living. But department data show that of the 16 million who served in World War II, only about 240,000 were alive as of August and some 230 die each day.
There were about 87,000 military personnel on Oahu at the time of the attack, according to a rough estimate compiled by military historian J. Michael Wenger.
JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (AP) — The U.S. military said Monday it’s ready to begin draining 1 million gallons (3.79 million liters) of fuel from three pipelines as part of an initial step toward closing a World War II-era fuel storage facility that leaked petroleum into Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year.
The pipelines run about 3 miles (4.83 kilometers) from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in the mountains above Pearl Harbor down to the military base.
Starting Tuesday, the military will spend six days draining the pipelines one by one. Fuel is expected to move through the pipes for a total of 12 hours during the six days.
The fuel has been sitting in the pipes since the military suspended use of the Red Hill facility last year after it leaked petroleum into a drinking water well serving 93,000 people in and around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Nearly 6,000 people, mostly military personnel and their families, sought medical attention for rashes, sores, nausea and other ailments after drinking and bathing with the contaminated water.
Shortly after, the state Department of Health ordered the military to drain fuel from Red Hill and shut the facility down. The military says 104 million gallons remain in the tanks themselves. It aims to remove this fuel by July 2024 after it makes necessary repairs to be able to drain the tanks safely.
Navy Rear Adm. John Wade, the commander of Joint Task Force Red Hill, said the state Department of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reviewed and approved the military’s plan to drain the pipelines. A third-party contractor also checked the plans, he said.
The most dangerous aspect of draining the pipelines is the potential for fuel to spill and enter the aquifer, Wade told reporters as a news conference.
“So everything that we’ve done, every focus of effort for the planning and the rehearsals has been focused on mitigating any chance of a spill,” he said.
The Red Hill facility sits just 100 feet (30 meters) above one of Honolulu’s most important drinking water aquifers.
Hawaii officials are concerned that last year’s spill contaminated the aquifer and are worried that any future spills would also pollute the aquifer, which normally supplies more than 20% of the water consumed in Honolulu.
Wade said representatives from the Department of Health and the EPA will be on hand while military drains the pipelines.
Task force members trained individually and as groups on how to respond if fuel spills while the pipelines are being drained, he said.
A Navy investigation found a series of mistakes over the course of six months caused last year’s spill.
It found operator error caused a pipe to rupture on May 6, 2021 when fuel was being transferred between tanks. This caused 21,000 gallons (80,000 liters) of fuel to spill. Most of it flowed into a fire suppression line and sat there for six months, causing the line to sag.
Then on Nov. 20, a cart rammed into the sagging line, releasing 20,000 gallons (75,700 liters) of fuel. A team thought they recovered all of this fuel, but they missed about 5,000 gallons (19,000 liters). Fuel they missed flowed into a French drain and from there into the drinking water well.
Fuel from the three pipelines will go to above-ground storage tanks and fuel barges which will then supply Air Force jets and Navy ships at the base, officials said.
NASA unveiled the deepest, sharpest infrared image of the distant universe ever captured on Tuesday.
Various estimates suggest Earth-like planets that could harbor life are abundant in the universe.
It’s easy to lose yourself in the James Webb Space Telescope’s first image. Snail-spiral galaxies, gleaming stars, and minuscule red dots surely represent billions of unknown worlds.
“The deep field image fills me with wonder and hope,” Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy at Cornell University and director of the Carl Sagan Institute, told Insider.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in the clean room at Northrop Grumman, Redondo Beach, California, in July 2020.
NASA/Chris Gunn
Webb’s image of the distant universe covers an area of the sky that you can blot out by holding a grain of sand at arm’s length. Still, it contains thousands of galaxies, according to Kaltenegger, along with the possibility of billions of Earth-like planets. So far, the hunt for signs of life beyond Earth has turned up empty.
But astronomers say there are likely an abundance of places where life might thrive. Looking at Webb’s pictures, it’s hard to believe otherwise.
There are up to 400 billion stars teeming with planets in the Milky Way alone. We don’t know for sure, but scientists have tried to calculate how many Earth-like planets are orbiting all those stars. Their estimates range from 300 million to 10 billion potentially habitable worlds.
Outside that, there are about 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the universe, each one home to 100 million stars, on average, and at least that number of planets.
Astronomers have already captured direct evidence of 5,000 planets beyond our solar system, according to NASA’s Exoplanet Archive. Hundreds of these worlds sit in the “Goldilocks Zone,” the orbital range around a star where the temperature is just right — not too hot and not too cold — for liquid water to exist on the planet.
Observations by NASA’s Kepler mission suggest that one out of every five stars has a planet orbiting it within this just-right distance, according to Kaltenegger. “I like our chances of finding other Earth-like planets, and hopefully other Earth-like planets that also host life,” Kaltenegger said.
The “Goldilocks Zone” around a star is where a planet is neither too hot, nor too cold, to support liquid water.
NASA
The possibilities for life aren’t limited to planets. Some ocean moons within our solar system are leading candidates for alien life. There’s Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which have oceans of liquid water deep beneath their ice crusts. Astronomers think there’s a chance life could thrive there. Surely, there are other Europas and Enceladuses in other star systems.
Still, despite the myriad galaxies and worlds already imaged and studied, astronomers are unsure about the odds of life arising elsewhere.
“We don’t know how easy or hard it is to make life — that is why the search is so exciting,” Kaltenegger said, adding, “Right now, I’d say the chances are between zero and 100%, but I am hopeful it won’t be zero.”
An artist’s concept illustrates the idea that rocky, terrestrial worlds like the inner planets in our solar system may be plentiful and diverse in the universe.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech)
To understand whether exoplanets, or planets around other stars, have the conditions to host life, researchers measure the chemical makeup of their atmospheres. They do this by looking at how starlight gets filtered by the atmosphere, which dips at very specific wavelengths that correspond to different molecules.
Astronomers typically look for the ingredients that sustain earthly life — liquid water, a continuous source of energy, carbon, and other elements — when hunting for life in distant worlds. For instance, detecting methane in an exoplanet’s atmosphere could be an indication of biology. According to Kaltenegger, these building blocks of life appear to be abundant in our solar system and the universe.
What’s more, a potential alien astronomer looking for life beyond their planet might pick up on signs of life from Earth in a similar way. In 2021, Kaltenegger co-authored a study that found that more than 2,000 stars, some with their own planets, have a front-row seat to look toward the Earth as it passes around our sun. “That’s just within 300 light-years, in our cosmic front yard, in terms of distance,” Kaltenegger said.
One limitation in scouring the cosmos for alien life is that scientists’ definition of what a life-supporting planet might look like is based on what we know about life on Earth. But by discovering and studying new worlds, astronomers can hone in on what makes a world habitable beyond a sample size of one — Earth.
The James Webb Space Telescope drifts away from the rocket’s last stage, on December 25, 2021.
NASA TV
Since the first world outside our solar system was confirmed in 1995, astronomers have searched for other planets orbiting sun-like stars. Because these worlds are so far away, space-based telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope have dramatically enhanced their planet-hunting capabilities, and the James Webb Space Telescope makes more such discoveries almost inevitable.
Webb will allow for unprecedented views into these distant planets. “With the James Webb Space Telescope, we can explore the chemical makeup of the atmosphere of other worlds — and if there are signs in it that we can only explain by life,” Kaltenegger said.
There are 70 planets scheduled for study in Webb’s first year alone. Already, Webb captured the signature of water, along with previously undetected evidence of clouds and haze, in the atmosphere of WASP-96 b — a giant and hot gas planet that orbits a distant star like our sun.
The James Webb Space Telescope observed the spectra of WASP-96 b, revealing its atmosphere has water, clouds, and haze.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
“While the Hubble Space Telescope has analyzed numerous exoplanet atmospheres over the past two decades, capturing the first clear detection of water in 2013, Webb’s immediate and more detailed observation marks a giant leap forward in the quest to characterize potentially habitable planets beyond Earth,” NASA said.
Kaltenegger is part of a team that will dedicate 200 hours of Webb’s telescope time in its first year to study faraway places, including worlds circling Trappist-1 — a cool, dim star 40 light-years from Earth.
“It is an amazing time in our exploration of the cosmos,” Kaltenegger said, adding, “Are we alone? This amazing space telescope is the first-ever tool that collects enough light for us to start figuring this fundamental question out.”
The U.S. Navy is planning to defuel Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, a massive World War II-era military-run tank farm in the hills above Pearl Harbor, after an investigation revealed multiple mistakes and mismanagement caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year.
The Hawaiʻi Department of Health released the Navy’s investigation on Thursday that found poor management and human error caused fuel to leak from the facility into a well that supplied water to housing and officers in and around Pearl Harbor. Thousands of people were poisoned and military families were forced to evacuate their homes.
FILE – In this Dec. 23, 2021, photo provided by the U.S. Navy, Rear Adm. John Korka, Commander, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC), and Chief of Civil Engineers, leads Navy and civilian water quality recovery experts through the tunnels of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, near Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. A Navy investigation released Thursday, June 30, 2022 revealed that shoddy management and human error caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year, poisoning thousands of people and forcing military families to evacuate their homes for hotels. The investigation is the first detailed account of how jet fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, a massive World War II-era military-fun tank farm in the hills above Pearl Harbor, leaked into a well that supplied water to housing and offices in and around Pearl Harbor. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Luke McCall/U.S. Navy via AP, File)
“Red Hill needs to be shut down as quickly as possible and we fully expect that the Navy will marshal all possible available resources to defuel and decommission the facility,” Deputy Director of Environmental Health Kathleen Ho said in a statement. “However, with the extensive repairs needed and the Navy’s history of spills from unsafe pipelines, our first priority continues to be ensuring that all defueling activities are performed safely for the sake of the people and environment of Hawai‘i.”
The report listed a series of mistakes from May 2021, when operator error caused a pipe to rupture and 21,000 gallons of fuel to spill when it was being transferred between tanks. The fuel spilled into a fire suppression line, sat there for six months and then spilled again when a cart rammed into it in November.
US WORLD WAR II SHIP SUNK IN FAMOUS BATTLE FOUND BY EXPLORERS, DEEPEST SHIPWRECK EVER DISCOVERED
FILE – Overhead lights illuminate a tunnel inside the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Jan. 26, 2018. A Navy investigation released Thursday, June 30, 2022 revealed that shoddy management and human error caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year, poisoning thousands of people and forcing military families to evacuate their homes for hotels. The investigation is the first detailed account of how jet fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, a massive World War II-era military-fun tank farm in the hills above Pearl Harbor, leaked into a well that supplied water to housing and offices in and around Pearl Harbor. (U.S. Navy via AP, File)
Some 6,000 people were treated for nausea, headaches, rashes and other illnesses, according to the report. The military moved about 4,000 mostly military families into hotels for months while they waited for their water to be safe again.
The report said the military failed to recognize the severity of the situation.
US DEFENDS SENDING AIRCRAFT THROUGH TAIWAN STRAIT AS CHINA GROWS INCREASINGLY AGGRESSIVE
In this photo provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, this 1942 Navy photo shows miners building one of the 20 fuel tanks of Defense Logistics Agency’s Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility at Joint Base Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which are connected by a miles-long tunnel. A Navy investigation released Thursday, June 30, 2022 revealed that shoddy management and human error caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year, poisoning thousands of people and forcing military families to evacuate their homes for hotels. The investigation is the first detailed account of how jet fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, a massive World War II-era military-fun tank farm in the hills above Pearl Harbor, leaked into a well that supplied water to housing and offices in and around Pearl Harbor. (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers via AP)
Adm. Sam Paparo, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told reporters at a news conference that the Navy was trying to move away from that. He called it an ongoing process “to get real with ourselves” and “being honest about our deficiencies.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“The lack of critical thinking, intellectual rigor, and self-assessment by key leaders at decisive moments exemplified a culture of complacency and demonstrated a lack of professionalism that is demanded by the high consequence nature of fuel operations,” the report said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Lorraine Taylor is an editor at Fox News. News tips can be sent to lorraine.taylor@fox.com or on Twitter @LorraineEMT.
Recent research out of India raises concerns over the transmission risks of a harmful and hard-to-kill fungal infection. The study found drug-resistant strains of Candida auris on apples that had been treated with fungicides. The findings suggest that apples and other fruits dosed with these chemicals can inadvertently fuel the emergence and spread of this germ, which is known to cause deadly outbreaks in hospitals.
C. auris is an emerging pathogen and yeast (microscopic fungus) that was first discovered in 2009. Though most people exposed to it don’t become sick, it can cause a severe infection in some, particularly people who are already sick or immunocompromised. That’s made the fungus a serious threat in hospitals and other health care environments. It’s also often resistant to the few antifungals usable against it. While C. auris outbreaks have been rare, doctors have already come across cases that were resistant to all available drugs, including in the U.S.
Despite its recent emergence in humans, the fungus is thought to have existed in nature for quite some time. Last year, researchers in Canada and India were the first to document it in the wild, living in the warm island regions off India. That same team is behind this latest research, published in mBio in March.
In 2020 and 2021, they collected and sampled the surfaces of 84 fruits that had been grown or sold in India, mostly apples, looking for disease-causing yeasts like C. auris. On eight of these apples (13%), they found a diverse variety of drug-resistant strains of the fungus. None of the apples freshly picked from an orchard had traces of C. auris, however; the apples stored and sold at stores often had other related species of Candida on them as well.
These findings indicate, the study authors say, that the process of treating apples and other fruits with fungicides—often done to keep them from spoiling—is helping foster the growth of these superbugs. A similar phenomenon can be seen in antibiotic-treated livestock or in people who are given antibiotics that don’t clear their entire infection, which then allow drug-resistant strains of bacteria to emerge.
G/O Media may get a commission
Stay on top of your health with high and low heart rate, and irregular heart rhythm notifications. Track your daily activity on Apple Watch, and see your trends.
“Our findings suggest that C. auris in the natural ecosystem may come in contact with agriculture fungicides and that stored fruits could be a significant niche for the selection of azole resistance in C. auris and other human fungal pathogens,” the scientists wrote.
While the team’s research has focused on finding C. auris in India, they warn that it’s not merely a local problem. Indeed, in recent years, outbreaks have been spotted in previously undocumented areas of the world, including Brazil and in new areas of the U.S.
More research is needed to understand the exact risk that fruits and vegetables may play in spreading C. auris and its other routes of exposure. But one thing is certain: It’s increasingly harder to avoid coming across this and other superbugs.
“When we look at human pathogens, we tend to look at what’s immediate to us,” study author Jianping Xu, a microbiologist at McMaster University in Canada, told Indian newspaper The Tribune. “But we have to look at it more broadly. Everything is connected, the whole system. Fruit is just one example.”
On Scotland’s west coast is the Firth of Clyde, a large saltwater inlet home to thousands of harbor porpoises—and one dolphin named Kylie.
Kylie hasn’t been observed with other common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) in at least 14 years—but she’s far from alone. On clear days in the Clyde, visitors to the marina can sometimes see Kylie swimming with harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena), cetacean cousins about two-thirds her size.
New research published in Bioacoustics this January suggests Kylie’s ties to porpoises are closer than scientists imagined. While a common dolphin’s vocal repertoire should include a diverse range of clicks, whistles, and pulse calls, Kylie doesn’t whistle. Instead, she “talks” more like harbor porpoises, which communicate using high-pitched bursts of clicks.
The study suggests that she may be communicating with the porpoises, or at least attempting to. It’s part of a growing body of work that illuminates a rich world of interactions between different cetacean species.
“Clearly, species in the wild interact much more than we thought,” says dolphin behavior expert Denise Herzing.
Porpoise code
Years ago, the Clyde’s lone dolphin resident was partial to a buoy at the mouth of a loch called the Kyles of Bute, so locals took to calling her Kylie. But nobody knows where she came from, or exactly why dolphins end up alone, says David Nairn, founder and director of Clyde Porpoise, a local organization devoted to researching and protecting marine mammals. (Kylie hasn’t been sighted in a year, but locals hope she will return soon.)
Some solitary dolphins end up alone after being separated from their natal groups by storms or human activity, or after being orphaned. Others still may simply be less sociable and prefer their privacy, according to a 2019 study on solitary dolphins worldwide.
To learn more about Kylie’s relationship with the porpoises, Nairn borrowed a hydrophone and towed it behind his sailing yacht, the Saorsa. Nairn captured audio of multiple encounters between Kylie and porpoises from 2016 to 2018.
“She definitely identifies as a porpoise,” says Nairn, who trained as an aquatic biologist in college.
Mel Cosentino, then a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, pored over thousands of ultrasonic cetacean clicks from the recordings.
While dolphins whistle almost constantly, porpoises never do. Instead, they communicate exclusively with what are called narrow-band, high-frequency (NBHF) clicks, with eight to fifteen amplitude peaks at around 130 kilohertz.
“To hear an NBHF click you have to play it about one hundred times slower,” Cosentino says. (When sounds are slowed down, pitch descends. Humans can hear between 20 hertz, roughly equivalent to the lowest pedal on a pipe organ, and 20 kilohertz.)
In the recordings, Cosentino identified lower-frequency clicks standard for common dolphins. But even when Kylie appeared to be alone, Cosentino found clicks with eight or more amplitude peaks at the key 130 kilohertz- mark—the frequency at which porpoises chat. In other words, Kylie talks like a porpoise even when solo. The researchers also found that Kyle never whistles, as other dolphins do.
Cosentino observed that the exchanges between Kylie and the porpoises had the rhythm of a “conversation” between members of the same species—turn-taking with little overlap—though naturally it’s unclear how much meaningful information is relayed in Kylie’s attempts at porpoise clicks.
“It might be me barking to my dog and him barking back,” Cosentino says.
Regardless, this behavior represents “an attempt” at communication that the “porpoises probably recognize,” says Herzing, research director of the Wild Dolphin Project who has studied the behavior of Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas for more than three decades. Herzing, who wasn’t involved in the study, commends the authors on the clever experimental design in a natural setting.
“The results are tantalizing,” she says. “What’s really telling is that Kylie doesn’t make any whistles, because dolphins always make whistles and porpoises never do.”
One of the greatest challenges of marine bioacoustics is identifying which creatures made what sound, says Laela Sayigh, an associate professor of animal behavior at Hampshire College. “They don’t make any external movement associated with sound, and most of the time you can’t see them anyways,” Sayigh says.
However, Kylie can be distinguished in this case—by her accent. “It still looks like she’s struggling” to get as high-pitched as the porpoises, Cosentino says—the peaks on her clicks aren’t as crisp as they should be, and there are some lower-frequency sounds mixed in with the high notes.
“If they were singers, Kylie would be Pavarotti and the porpoises would be Mariah Carey.”
Cetaceans in captivity are capable vocal mimics, Herzing notes, pointing to killer whales and belugas that mimicked bottlenose dolphin tankmates. And a 2016 bioacoustics study found that a cross-fostered Risso’s dolphin in an Italian marine park whistled more like the bottlenose dolphins it was raised with than wild members of its species.
However, that Kylie makes NBHF-like clicks while alone “draws into question” if she’s clicking to communicate with harbor porpoises or just mimicking the sound, Sayigh says.
Melon-headed conversation
Dolphins, porpoises, and whales are all cetaceans, descendants of land-dwelling mammals that made their way back to the water over millions of years. As they re-adapted to life in the ocean, “evolutionarily, the nostrils became the blowhole,” Cosentino says.
While toothed whales like dolphins and porpoises have only one open nostril, both nasal cavities are still present below the surface, each capped by a muscular structure called “monkey lips.” (Cetacean anatomy is often described in colorful terms, originating from descriptions by whalers). The monkey lips are somewhat analogous to our own vocal cords, controlling airflow—and when air is forced from the lungs through the “lips” on the left nasal cavity “it’s like letting the air out of a balloon,” creating warbling whistles, Cosentino says.
The right nasal cavity is responsible for the clicks used in both communication and navigation. It dead-ends next to a fatty deposit on the toothed whale’s forehead called a melon, which amplifies and focuses the cetacean’s vocalizations. Since both sets of monkey lips operate independently, some cetaceans, including bottlenose dolphins, can click and whistle at the same time—kind of like Mongolian throat-singing. (Learn more: The pioneering science that unlocked the secrets of whale culture.)
Kylie’s story is part of a broad field of research into how cetaceans interact with members of other species. “They’re very social, they’re very sexual, and they’re very communicative,” says Herzing. “These animals survive and adapt socially, and sound is a natural way they do it.”
Well-documented interspecies adoptions also demonstrate that species divisions may not be as clear-cut as once thought. Examples include a Canadian beluga pod that took in a narwhal calf and a spinner dolphin that lived among Tahiti bottlenose for 20 years.
Recent DNA analyses also demonstrate we’ve only scratched the surface of the extent of hybridization, Herzing emphasizes. Bottlenose dolphins have hybridized with at least 10 species in captivity and in the wild, including cetaceans as disparate as the pilot whale and the Guiana dolphin. Researchers hypothesize that cetaceans are able to hybridize so successfully because of their shared DNA—their species diverged only within the past 10 million years.
Besides attempts at communication, Kylie seems close to porpoises in other ways. On multiple occasions, Nairn has seen female porpoises bring their young calves to interact with Kylie. Since porpoise calves usually stick very close to mom until they’re weaned, Nairn was surprised to watch them swim with the dolphin in echelon, a position just behind her pectoral fin that researchers say is the cetacean equivalent to “carrying” a baby, Nairn explains.
Nairn has also observed male porpoises attempting to mount Kylie. But does she entertain their advances? “I would even say she courts, aye,” Nairn admits with a chuckle. Mating is theoretically anatomically possible, although there haven’t been any scientifically documented dolphin-porpoise hybrids, Herzing says.
Ever since a week of intense storms in February 2021 caused a massive drilling ship to become unmoored near her favorite buoy, Kylie has been missing. Nairn says it’s not out of character for her to relocate after a big disturbance to one of her “holiday buoys” elsewhere in the Clyde for months at a stretch, even up to a year, but he can’t help but worry.
Nairn and his colleagues say they’re eager to look—and listen—for Kylie as soon as the spring field season begins—and see what else she might teach us.
Watch your inbox over the next few days for photos, stories, and special offers from us.
Man jumps out of taxiing Southwest Airlines plane at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport: airline
PHOENIX – A man jumped out of a Southwest Airlines airplane that was taxiing around Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport on the morning of Saturday, Dec. 4, the airline said.
At around 8 a.m., flight 4236 coming into Phoenix from Colorado Springs experienced a 30-year-old man jumping out of a door from the back of the plane and locking himself in the fire department nearby, said Capt. Todd Keller with the Phoenix Fire Department said.
The airplane’s captain stopped the plane and contacted air traffic control, said Dan Landson with Southwest Airlines. Authorities arrived on the scene and the rest of the flight’s passengers were able to get to their gate.
“After a few minutes firefighters were able to get the adult male to unlock the door where he was then evaluated, treated and transported to a local hospital for a lower extremity injury,” Keller said.
It’s not known why the man jumped out of the plane or what the extent of his injury is.
Hours later, Phoenix Police identified the man as Daniel Ramirez. He’s being booked into jail on suspicion of two counts of felony trespassing.
Phoenix Police said of the incident, “We are aware of this incident, and at this time the investigation is ongoing.”
Keller with Phoenix Fire says the incident, although unexpected, was handled well by those involved.
“They were in constant communication as soon as this person was on the runway. Sky Harbor control tower had eyes on him the entire time and that’s how they notified us. It just shows you how much of a well-oiled machine they are out there,” Keller said.
Travelers respond to the ordeal
April and Sean Kelly flew in from Oregon and they’re wondering why would somebody do this – saying, “why and how, I mean, how would you jump off a plane?”
Billy Richardson from Denver remarked, “I would actually look to the stewardess and the people on the flight to help. I would expect that they would have been trained to know their job.”
Gary Keys who is also from Denver, says, “I would basically just disarm them and put them down in about less than 30 seconds. You have to take action …”
Dealing with unruly passengers is a growing issue. As of late fall, Sky Harbor staff and police have responded to nearly 3,000 calls of disruptive customers and assaults.
Nationally, the Federal Aviation Administration reported more than 5,400 unruly passenger reports so far this year.
Southwest Flight 4236 arrived safely in Phoenix from Colorado Springs, Southwest Airlines said in a statement.
“Initial reports indicate that while the flight was taxing to the gate, a Customer onboard exited the aircraft via a rear galley door,” Southwest Airlines spokesperson Dan Landson said. “The flight’s Captain stopped the aircraft and notified Air Traffic Control (ATC).”
It is unclear how the aircraft door was opened.
Phoenix Fire Station 19, which is located at the airport, was notified of the incident at around 8 a.m., Phoenix Fire Department Captain Todd Keller said in a statement.
The man landed on the tarmac and made his way to the fire station, entered the building and locked himself inside a dormitory room, Keller said.
“After a few minutes, firefighters were able to get the adult male to unlock the door where he was then evaluated, treated and transported to a local hospital for a lower extremity injury,” the fire captain added.
Authorities responded to the incident, after which the flight “continued to its designated gate,” Southwest Airlines said.
A Phoenix Police spokesperson told CNN they “are aware of this incident, and at this time the investigation is ongoing.”
Kamala Harris returned to the U.S. on Thursday, landing in Hawaii after her trip to Singapore and Vietnam.
But the vice president ignored reporters’ questions – whether about Afghanistan or other topics – as she got off Air Force Two for a stop at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
She also blocked reporters from attending her planned address to U.S. troops stationed at the base, according to reports.
The Pearl Harbor stop had been scheduled prior to Thursday’s terrorist attack at the Kabul airport that killed at least 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghans. An Islamic State group affiliate claimed responsibility for the attack.
After the attack, reporters traveling with Harris learned her Hawaii visit with the troops would be closed to the press.
“The VP’s staff informed the pool during the flight that her event with troops at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam would now be closed press,” the White House press pool said, according to the Washington Examiner. “No explanation given by the VP’s team for why it has been changed to closed press when asked by a member of the pool.”
Harris also canceled a campaign rally scheduled for Friday in California with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces a recall election next month, likely over the optics of attending a political event after a deadly terrorist attack.
AFGHANISTAN EXPLOSIONS: 13 US SERVICE MEMBERS KILLED IN KABUL AIRPORT BLAST, MORE WOUNDED, OFFICIALS SAY
Instead, she and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, who greeted Harris in Hawaii, flew directly back to Washington on Thursday – again without taking questions from reporters as she boarded Air Force Two.
Harris had flown to Pearl Harbor following a sweep through Southeast Asia this week.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris boards Air Force Two to return to Washington from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. (Associated Press)
Harris issued a statement about the events in Afghanistan.
“Today in Kabul, a terror attack killed 13 American service members. These courageous service members died while saving countless lives. They are heroes,” Harris wrote in a Twitter post Thursday evening. “Doug and I grieve for the Americans we lost, we pray for the Americans injured in the attack, and our hearts go out to their loved ones. We also grieve for the Afghan civilians killed and injured.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is received by Adm. Samuel Paparo, left, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, as she arrives at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, before continuing to Washington, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. (Associated Press)
“Our country is grateful to our women and men in uniform, and in particular, those working today to get Americans and our Afghan partners out of harm’s way. We will complete that mission. Today, we honor those who gave their lives in service to their nation. We will never forget.”
Afghans lie on beds at a hospital after they were wounded in the deadly attacks outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. (Associated Press)
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Harris’ office released a statement summarizing her stop at Pearl Harbor, according to the Examiner. The vice president “addressed 25 members of the military representing the six active-duty service branches and National Guard, thanking them for their service,” the statement said. “She and the Second Gentleman then talked individually with each service member.”
