(NEW YORK) — Just three weeks into the criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes, jurors have already heard allegations of lies, deception and alleged intimidation from those who worked directly under her — and the trial is expected to continue into December.

“I was scared that things would not go well,” one former Theranos scientist, Surekha Gangakhedkar, told prosecutors when asked why she made copies of internal communications and documents before resigning from the company. “I was also worried that I would be blamed.”

A full recap of last week’s proceedings is available on today’s episode of “The Dropout: Elizabeth Holmes on Trial” free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Theranos was founded by Holmes in 2003. The company claimed to be developing blood testing technology that used only small droplets of blood.

Nearly two decades later, Holmes is defending herself against charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud stemming from a “multi-million-dollar scheme to defraud investors, and a separate scheme to defraud doctors and patients,” according to prosecutors.

Gangakhedkar and Erika Cheung, two former Theranos scientists, testified under oath last week. They both conveyed the same information to the jury: Theranos’ Edison devices — their blood testing machines — rarely functioned properly.

Cheung told the court that Theranos would frequently cherry-pick data, deleting “any two data points that would not hit the metrics we needed.” She added that in March of 2014, about one in every four Theranos tests failed.

Cheung was one of the whistleblowers who first leaked information about Theranos to the Wall Street Journal in 2015. ABC News interviewed Cheung in the first season of “The Dropout.”

“Our quality controls were failing at one point … what seemed [like] almost every day,” Cheung told ABC News in 2019.

Gangakhedkar was the former manager of assay systems at Theranos and reported directly to Holmes. She told the jury that she didn’t think Theranos’ devices “were ready to be used for patient samples.”

Prosecutors presented several emails from 2013, in which Gangakhedkar reported the results of numerous failed tests on the Edison devices to Holmes directly. At the time, Theranos testing centers had already gone live in some Walgreens stores.

When prosecutors asked Gangakhedkar where this pressure to move forward before Theranos was ready came from, she swiftly responded “from Ms. Holmes.” Holmes’ defense has only just begun to question Gangakhedkar and will continue Tuesday.

The court granted Gangakhedkar full criminal immunity before she took the witness stand. She told the court she took documents with her upon her departure from the company, despite her non-disclosure agreement, “to protect myself and to have as a record in the event issues came up in the future.”

At the time Cheung was speaking with an investigative reporter in 2015, she believed she was being followed by people hired by Theranos. Soon after she started another job, she told jurors she was served a letter by an unknown individual at an address not many in her circle were aware of.

The jury was shown the letter, addressed from the firm Boies Schiller Flexner, and claimed she had disclosed Theranos’ “trade secrets and other confidential information without authorization.”

Recent Theranos financial documents made public via Holmes’ trial show the company paid $150,000 to private investigators for a project titled “E. Cheung & T. Schultz project.” Tyler Schultz was another Theranos whistleblower speaking with an investigative journalist at the time.

This week, Gangakhedkar will conclude her testimony.​​ Dan Edlin was once Theranos’ senior project manager and one of many friends recruited to the company by Holmes’ brother, Christian.

Holmes and her counsel did not respond to ABC News’ repeated requests for comment.

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(NEW YORK) — From Snoopy and Power Rangers to Hot Wheels and Pokemon, McDonald’s has long provided a jolt of joy with its kid-friendly toys inside the iconic Happy Meal. Now, the Golden Arches is making an earth-friendly move toward using sustainable materials in an effort to reduce plastic.

In the midst of Climate Week 2021, McDonald’s announced its goal that by the end of 2025, every toy in every Happy Meal sold around the world will be more sustainable and reduce conventional plastic by 90%, thus lowering demand on fossil fuel plastic production.

“Our next generation of customers care deeply about protecting the planet and what we can do to help make our business more sustainable,” Jenny McColloch, McDonald’s chief sustainability officer said in a statement. “With this transition for our toys, we’re working closely with suppliers, families and play experts and engineers to introduce more sustainable, innovative designs and help drive demand for recycled materials, to keep McDonald’s communities and beyond smiling for generations to come.”

McDonald’s said some of its toys such as “fan-favorite movie characters that used to be plastic figurines may reappear as 3D figures that can be built and decorated.” Other products such as mini board games with virgin fossil fuel-based plastic game pieces “may be swapped out in favor of accessories made from certified plant-derived or recycled materials.”

The transition to making toys with more renewable, recycled or certified materials will result in an approximately 90% reduction in virgin fossil fuel-based plastic use, which is nearly equal to the population of Washington, D.C., eliminating plastics from their lives for a year.

The fast food chain’s Happy Meal toy innovation efforts have been in motion since 2018 in other global markets including the U.K., Ireland and France, which McDonald’s said has reduced virgin fossil fuel-based plastic by 30%.

“Sustainable material sourcing is a necessary strategy for mitigating the impact of supply chains on our ecosystems and climate, including the plastic waste crisis,” said Sheila Bonini, the senior vice president of private sector engagement at World Wildlife Fund.

The lower demand for fossil fuel plastic will “instead create new markets for responsibly sourced renewable and recycled content,” Bonini said. “McDonald’s can engage its millions of daily customers around the world in the transition to a more sustainable, circular future.”

The company will continue to work with other industry partners to innovate renewable materials that meet both play and safety standards and can help remove the remaining conventional plastics within the toy portfolio.

McDonald’s was the first global restaurant company to set a science-based target to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today, McDonald’s said it is on track to meet its 2030 targets, achieving an 8.5% reduction in the absolute emissions of restaurants and offices and a nearly 6% reduction in supply chain emissions intensity, compared to 2015.

The California-founded fast food restaurant also noted in Tuesday’s press release that “by the end of 2020, McDonald’s was approximately 80% of the way to its goal to source all guest packaging from renewable, recyclable or certified sources by 2025.”

McDonald’s credited the achievements this year to cross-industry collaboration from suppliers, producers and franchisees as well as investments in renewable energy and its 2020 Responsible Sourcing Goals across beef, soy, coffee, fish, palm oil, packaging fiber and forests.

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