(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is back on the stand Tuesday, facing questions from prosecutors after she tearfully told the jury Monday about what she described as nearly a decade of mental and physical abuse at the hands of her former romantic partner and company COO, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.
Holmes, 37, said that Balwani, 56, forced her to have sex with him and “prescribed” her a schedule which included who to meet with and what to eat.
“He impacted everything about who I was,” said Holmes, who paused before continuing. “And I don’t fully understand that.”
“He would force me to have sex with him when I didn’t want to because he would say that he wanted me to know that he still loved me,” Holmes also told the court while being questioned on the stand by her lead attorney, Kevin Downey.
Balwani was charged as her co-defendant but was granted a severed trial in March after learning that Holmes’ lawyers might use the abuse claims as part of their defense.
Balwani’s trial is scheduled for early 2022. He denies all allegations.
The former Theranos CEO, who dropped out of college at 19 and went on to launch the once burgeoning biotech start-up that promised to revolutionize blood testing, is charged with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She could face decades in prison if convicted. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Holmes testified that Balwani did not force her to make misleading statements to the press and investors. But the impact of Balwani’s alleged abuse on her was pervasive, she said.
Holmes also testified that before she met Balwani, she was raped by someone else while attending Stanford University, which she said factored into her decision to drop out and “pour” herself into building Theranos.
“I decided I was going to build a life by building this company,” she told jurors.
Holmes was 18 years old when she met Balwani, then 38, overseas in China. She said she understood at the time he was a “really successful business person” and asked his advice on building a company.
The pair dated from 2005 to 2016, a relationship Holmes characterized as persistently abusive.
“He told me that I didn’t know what I was doing in business … that he was astonished at my mediocrity … and that I needed to kill the person that I was to become what he would call a new Elizabeth who could be a successful entrepreneur,” Holmes said.
Santa Clara Law professor Ellen Kreitzberg said the bombshell allegations about Balwani could be used by her counsel to argue she had no intent to defraud — a key element of the charges leveled against her.
Prosecutor Robert Leach should be “very focused on her intent to defraud in [his] questions,” she said.
“[His] tone should also be non-confrontational, especially to start since she projected a sympathetic figure yesterday,” Kreitzberg added. “They need to be able to argue that, even if she was influenced by Balwani, she knew information was false, she intentionally gave it to investors, and she did so to get money from them.”
(NEW YORK) — As holiday shopping season ramps up, Walmart CEO John Furman addressed the concerns of prices and how long supplies will last.
Furman told Good Morning America that President Joe Biden, who met with retail executives this week, and his administration have “been a great help.”
“We’re all working together to make sure that customers have what they need over the holiday season and ended our third quarter up in inventory,” Furman said. “It took a lot of work on behalf of our team and they’re working really hard.”
As the calendar dwindles down on 2021, Furman said that “it’s always a good idea to shop early” and “just like every year there’s something hot, a hot toy — like game consoles — but we have a couple things we can help with.”
“Last week we had our biggest day ever in terms of delivery,” he said of their Walmart Plus membership program. “But there’s some categories like Christmas decor — that are selling quick.”
Other trends that Furman said Walmart has seen and prepared for, are people “spending a lot more time together in groups.”
For Thanksgiving alone, he said “we sold over 10 million turkeys, which is about 2 million more than last year, so it tells you a bit about how many families are getting together and spending time together.”
The Federal Trade Comission has launched a probe into the supply chain issues, which Furman said Walmart just learned about, and said he is optimistic about the company’s position in the market.
“A lot of what you see in stores and online, all the products and what’s available, these are the results of plans, in most cases, that started over a year ago. Our merchants work about 12 months out to determine what they think the trends are, what people will be looking for,” he said. “And we’re proud of our inventory position at this point.”
(NEW YORK) — Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Travel Tuesday? Tuesday marks a potentially big day for saving if you’re looking to snag a deal on a trip in 2022.
“A lot of folks in the travel industry are trying to encourage people to not just buy things over the holiday weekend, but buy experiences as well,” Scott Keyes, Scott’s Cheap Flights founder and author of Take More Vacations, said. “Buy travel and treat yourself to that gift of those lifetime memories from trips you take.”
Paul Couch, a city surveyor from Akron, Ohio, is looking to do just that. He will be scouring the airlines’ websites for a reasonably-priced getaway this travel holiday.
“I’m hoping for the best,” he said. “Just kind of checking the different locations out and if something strikes my eye, you know a place I haven’t been to, then I’ll look for travel dates and book a flight and hotel and all that.”
In 2019, before the pandemic, online booking platform Hopper said it saw more flights discounted on Travel Tuesday than on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
“We typically see about 34 deals per second here at Hopper,” Hopper economist Adit Damodaran told ABC News. “That’s 30% more than we usually see on any other day throughout the year. So, that’s really a great time to be booking those flights for 2022.”
Several airlines have announced promotional discounts over the last few days: JetBlue is offering $50 off one-way and $100 off round trip tickets; Aer Lingus is offering up to $200 off economy fares and up to $300 off business class fares from the U.S.; Air New Zealand, Fiji Airways, Icelandair, and many more are offering discounts for certain destinations.
But Keyes says the real “hidden secret of the travel world” is that the best deals actually come from un-advertised sales.
“Just in the past two or three days alone, we’ve seen flights nonstop to Hawaii for $158 round trip nonstop, to Costa Rica for $176 round trip nonstop, down to Aruba for $226 round trip,” he said. “These are fares that have been popping up that are not getting any advertising dollars behind them. You’re not going to see them in your inbox from the airlines promoting them, but they’re quietly offering these fares, and so the key is to be able to find out about them before they disappear.”
If you’re looking for a deal tomorrow, Keyes recommends looking at the fine print.
“You’re going to see a lot of airlines say ‘25% off,’ ‘50% off,’ ‘This is one of our biggest sales of the year,'” he warned. “But oftentimes, that doesn’t include taxes and fees, all of these types of things that oftentimes can make up the majority of what a ticket costs. So, seeing what the actual price looks like, and then trying to compare it to well, is this a good deal? Is this significantly cheaper than what I might have expected to pay last week or what I might expect to see next week?”
And don’t worry if you can’t find that perfect price, Keyes says, you still have plenty of time.
“Cheap flights are constantly popping up throughout the year, and so don’t put extra pressure on yourself to book something on Travel Tuesday,” he said. “If it just seems like an OK deal you can rest assured that constantly deals are going to continue to pop up throughout the rest of this year and certainly into next year.”
(NEW YORK) — The holiday season is in full swing and tree farmers across the country are preparing for the Christmas crowds.
At Boyd Mountain Christmas Tree Farm in Waynesville, North Carolina, customers can cut down their own Christmas tree. Darren Nicholson, who works at the farm, said he is grateful to see people “coming out in record numbers to get the perfect Christmas tree.”
Across the country, wholesale tree grower The Jonsteen Company packages live tree saplings and seed growing kits. The California-based company specializes in Giant Sequoias and Coast Redwoods but offers a variety of different trees, including evergreens, giving customers a chance to plant their own Christmas tree and watch it grow over the years.
One Jonsteen customer, Martin Harmon, and his family, who live south of Atlanta, planted their Christmas tree years ago and now it’s a full-grown evergreen.
The Fowler family from Lexington, Kentucky, planted their Jonsteen tree in their front yard and have already decorated it with lights.
Other small businesses all over the country are gearing up for the holiday rush, like Authenticity50. The California-based bedding and home goods company was co-founded by husband and wife Jimmy and Steph McDonald.
Last year, they started using their materials to sew masks in the middle of the pandemic.
All of their products are 100% American made. The McDonalds said the cotton is from California, the yarn is spun in Georgia, the sheets they sell are cut and sewn in South Carolina, their button are from Connecticut and their packaging is made in Illinois.
The McDonalds said the advantage of having their products made in the U.S. is that they are fully stocked during ongoing supply chain shortages.
“We haven’t had to deal with container ships stuck at port,” said Jimmy McDonald.
“Buying local helps us sustain our small business and 1,000 local jobs from coast to coast,” added Steph McDonald.
(NEW YORK) — Japanese car giant Nissan Motor Co. said it plans to invest $17.6 billion to accelerate its electrification plans, as the industry as a whole pivots away from gas-powered autos.
Nissan said it will invest 2 trillion Japanese yen over the next five years (just under $17.6 billion) and will launch 23 new electrified models, including 15 new electric vehicles.
The company said it is aiming to have a 50% electrification lineup by 2030 as part of its “Nissan Ambition 2030” initiative, which will put electrification at the center of its long-term strategy.
“The role of companies to address societal needs is increasingly heightened,” Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida said in a statement. “With Nissan Ambition 2030, we will drive the new age of electrification, advance technologies to reduce carbon footprint and pursue new business opportunities.”
“We want to transform Nissan to become a sustainable company that is truly needed by customers and society,” Uchida added.
Nissan wants to launch an electric vehicle with its proprietary all-solid-state batteries by fiscal year 2028 and prepare a pilot plant for EVs in Yokohama, Japan, as early as fiscal year 2024. The company promises that its all-solid-state batteries will significantly reduce charging time and make electric vehicles more efficient and accessible.
Nissan was among the original pioneers of mainstream electric vehicles with its battery-powered Leaf, which first launched in 2010. A growing number of major carmakers, from Ford to General Motors, have similarly announced recent plans to invest heavily in electrification.
“We are proud of our long track record of innovation, and of our role in delivering the EV revolution. With our new ambition, we continue to take the lead in accelerating the natural shift to EVs by creating customer pull through an attractive proposition by driving excitement, enabling adoption and creating a cleaner world,” Nissan COO Ashwani Gupta said in a statement Monday.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden announced a set of actions aimed to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks and signed an executive order that set a goal of having half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 be zero emissions vehicles.
(NEW YORK) — Jack Dorsey is resigning from his role as CEO of Twitter, the social media platform he co-founded in 2006, he announced in a tweet on Monday.
“There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led,'” Dorsey wrote. “Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”
Dorsey has been in his most recent role as CEO since September 2015. He said that Twitter’s chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal, will replace him as CEO.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — For any mom who’s ever been asked if they “enjoyed their vacation” during maternity leave, Kristen Cuneo has the perfect reply.
Cuneo, who works for a technology company in the San Francisco Bay area, created a data visualization showing as data points every bottle feed, breastfeed and diaper change she completed in the first seven weeks after giving birth to her daughter, Autumn, in January.
Just a few seconds into the visualization, the data points take up an entire screen.
“Objectively, it’s a lot, and every data point took time, ranging from five minutes for a diaper change to 30 minutes for a feeding, on average,” said Cuneo, presenting the data to coworkers. “The real kicker is when it happens, 24 hours a day.”
Cuneo’s presentation was shared on TikTok by her husband, Michael DiBenigno, co-founder of Flow Immersive, a California-based company that focuses on data storytelling.
It quickly went viral, with hundreds of thousands of likes and over 2,000 comments.
“And that does not include laundry, bathing, well baby checkups, getting baby to sleep, fussy baby or the fact that baby needs to be held constantly,” wrote one commenter.
“All while recovering from a major medical procedure! Moms of newborns are absolutely amazing,” wrote another commenter.
Another commenter alluded to the fact that there is currently no federal paid leave in the United States, writing, “This woman needs to be in front of Congress.”
Only 27% of private industry workers currently have access to paid family leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Cuneo told “Good Morning America” she considers herself lucky to have had a “very generous” five months of maternity leave.
She said she also feels grateful that her presentation has helped so many people “feel so seen and heard.”
“It is a shared experience, even though it is hard,” Cuneo said of being a new parent. “The response that we’ve gotten has been completely mind-boggling, that so many people can have this experience, and yet something like this could resonate so powerfully for them whether or not they’re currently raising a child or maybe they did 20 years ago.”
Cuneo and DiBenigno created the presentation by using data compiled in a baby habit-tracking app they started using when Autumn was a newborn.
“We had heard over and over that being a new parent, you never sleep, but it’s hard to understand what that really felt like,” said DiBenigno. “It wasn’t until we saw the data points and put together this visualization that we were like, ‘Wow, you see that continual, never-ending cycle of the mundane, routine labor of all these things that are just necessary.'”
(NEW YORK) — The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank more than 900 points on Friday over concerns about the spread of the new COVID-19 variant detected in South Africa.
Anxiety among investors grew as countries ramped up responses to the variant, called B.1.1.529, first detected in Botswana. The United Kingdom and European Union quickly moved to propose travel restrictions to southern Africa, while new cases of the variant were found as far away as Hong Kong, Belgium and Israel.
The Dow fell 2.53%, to 34,899, while the Nasdaq fell 2.23%, to 15,492, and the S&P tumbled 2.27% to 4,595.
Trading ends early on Black Friday, often the slowest day of the year. Fewer trades can mean increased volatility, and at one point the Dow had fallen more than 1,000 points.
Global health authorities have now confirmed 87 cases — 77 in South Africa, six in Botswana, two in Hong Kong and one each in Israel and Belgium — and said they’re expecting hundreds more diagnoses.
Over the summer, markets tumbled as the delta variant spread throughout the U.S.
“Investors are likely to shoot first and ask questions later until more is known,” Jeffrey Halley, a senior market analyst for Asia Pacific at Oanda, a foreign trading company, wrote in a report, according to The Associated Press.
Investors are worried that supply chains already stretched thin may suffer further as the new variant spreads, potentially threatening more labor shortages, according to the AP. The variant also is putting pressure on central banks, which are contemplating whether to raise interest rates to stave off rising inflation.
(NEW YORK) — Classic car shows have long been a staple of car enthusiasm — a place for gearheads to gather with fellow enthusiasts to show off their antique rides.
“The vibe is usually really, really chill. It usually happens pretty early in the morning on the weekend,” says Kristen Lee, deputy editor of automotive news site, The Drive. “People bring their dogs, they get all their cars polished up and they come and they park, and they kind of just walk around and admire everybody’s ride.”
A recent show in New York City featured the usual classics. Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Corvettes and Chevelles, Pontiac Firebirds, and Dodge Challengers from the ’50s and ’60s were all well represented. The cars weren’t the only throwbacks either — music from Billy Joel and Elvis Presley echoed around the event from carefully placed speakers.
But Lee says if you’ve been to enough of these shows, you might start to notice some trends.
“For me, as a kind of a showgoer for so long, it’s kind of felt like a gatekept community. Like, no one, obviously, has turned me away, but a lot of the shows that I grew up going to was a lot of people my parents’ age,” says Lee, adding: “it never really looked like something I could participate in.”
And an older audience tends to favor older cars, says Bradley Brownell, a writer at automotive website Jalopnik.
“There’s always been this line of delineation at 1973 with the oil crisis,” he says.
Brownell says 1973 is an important year in car culture because it marks the beginning of what some call the “Malaise Era,” a term popularized after President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 “Crisis of Confidence” speech, despite the fact the word “malaise” never appears in the speech. New regulations from the federal government designed to crack down on poor fuel economy resulted in a 1970s automobile market that many complained was not as exciting as the decade prior – and echoes from that time reverberated for decades.
“Traditional enthusiasts will tell you that after ’73, everything’s garbage. ‘It’s emissions controls. fuel injection, it’s impossible to work on,'” says Brownell.
But Brownell isn’t a traditional enthusiast. He’s the co-founder of “Radwood” — a car show that caters to vehicles that came after the Malaise Era, specifically “between 1980 and 1999.”
And it all started with one of his own cars: a 1983 Porsche 944.
“I loved that car,” he says. “And I invested so much time, and occasionally money into that car.”
But the energy that went into the Porsche wasn’t always appreciated, Brownell says, which is where the idea for Radwood was born.
“I took it to a car show and when I went to pay the entry [fee], they were like ‘are you sure you want to come into this car show? You know what we’re doing here, right?'” says Brownell. “I kind of had that feeling like, ‘there needs to be a place for people like me, where I have so much emotional investment in this car, and I love this car, but it’s kind of a misfit.'”
He says the types of cars you’ll see at Radwood vary based on the region in which the show is taking place, but can feature everything from Geo Metro convertibles, to Ferrari 348s and Lamborghini Diablos. Porsche and BMW are often the best-represented marques, however.
“That’s the crazy thing about Radwood is literally everything from that era is welcome and encouraged and appreciated.”
Brownell says on average every show also features at least one Delorean – the car from the 1985 film “Back to the Future.” And it’s not just cars that are setting their flux capacitors back a few decades, according to Lee.
“Radwood kind of embodies, like, a very powerful nostalgic vibe. So people play a lot of eighties music, people dress up in eighties attire.”
The first Radwood took place in southern California in 2017, and since then it has travelled to more than a dozen cities across the country. Brownell says over the years, the show has attracted car enthusiasts from all walks of life, from “people who weren’t alive when these cars were built to people who owned them brand new.”
Lee says the success of Radwood and shows like it highlight a broader shift in car culture.
“These new shows feel a lot more inclusive, there’s a lot less gatekeeping. It feels like a safer space,” says Lee. “I think that’s – that’s also indicative of the way that automotive enthusiasm is moving as well.”
“What we’re seeing in some of the mainstream media and stuff like that – they say that ‘car culture is dying, with the introduction of the electric vehicle, car enthusiasts just no longer exist.’ And that’s not true.” says Chad Kirchner, Editor In Chief of electric car news site EV Pulse.
Kirchner says there’s a new type of car enthusiasm brewing amid the broader shift to electric power in the automotive industry. That includes everything from Tesla-specific tuner shops to homemade EV conversions of gas-powered cars.
“People on TikTok that I see that are electrifying Chargers and Challengers and all of this stuff, just homebrewing this,” he says.
Kirchner says EV enthusiasm requires a different set of skills than traditional gearheads may be used to, but it still brings out the same passion for cars that made Radwood a success.
“Sometimes hacking, sometimes it requires engineering, but what it definitely does require is enthusiasm,” says Kirchner.
That’s why he recently teamed up with Brownell to create another car show called “Autopia 2099.” The show, set to take place in early December in Los Angeles, is focused on all-electric vehicles.
“It’s supposed to be a bunch of people hanging out and expressing their enthusiasm for electrified propulsion, whether it is a brand new Tesla or whether it is – maybe somebody has a GM EV1,” says Kirchner.
“One of the things we want to do is we want to break down the barriers of fancy EV technology. We want people who are curious about EVs and how they work and how they charge to come out and meet people who actually own them and drive them every day,” says Brownell.
Brownell says they’re expecting to see everything from EV-converted Mustangs and BMWs to an electric VW Microbus. One car not likely to make it to Autopia 2099, however, is Brownell’s own EV project car: A Porsche Boxster into which he’s planning to install a Tesla motor. He says the goal is for the car to develop around 1200 horsepower.
“That’s part of why it’s not done yet. I’m afraid of what my own brain has thought up.”
(NEW YORK) — T-Mobile will pay some $19.5 million as part of a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission after a 12-hour outage in June of last year resulted in the failure of tens of thousands of emergency 911 calls.
The FCC announced the agreement that would resolve its investigation into the matter, saying T-Mobile has agreed to pay the multi-million dollar settlement and implement a compliance plan with new commitments to improve the 911 outage notices given to public safety answering points, as well as provide follow-up notices to them within two hours of the initial outage notifications.
On June 15, 2020, a 12-hour and 13-minute outage took place that led to congestion across T-Mobile’s 4G, 3G and 2G networks, according to the FCC, and resulted in the “complete failure” of more than 23,000 911 calls. The outage also resulted in tens of thousands of 911 calls without location or call back information made available.
“We understand how critical reliable connectivity is to ensure public safety and we take that responsibility very seriously,” T-Mobile told ABC News in a statement Wednesday. “We have built resiliency into our emergency systems to ensure that our 911 elements are available when they’re needed.”
“This was a short-term isolated outage and we immediately took steps to further enhance our network to prevent this type of event from happening in the future,” the company added. “Now we are moving on from the FCC’s investigation and continuing our focus on our ongoing network build.”
The settlement announcement this week comes on the heels of a separate cyberattack saga T-Mobile recently disclosed to customers. In August, the company said that the personal information of millions of current and prospective customers had been compromised in a data breach that was the result of a “highly sophisticated cyberattack.”
