Magnus Carlsen is sounding a little cocky — and history suggests he may have a right to preen.
There have been some 60 or so world championship matches (the numbers get a little fuzzy with the Split Crown Era of the late 1990s and early 2000s) since the mid-19th century, and there have been no real shocking upsets on the order of Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson or the 1969 Mets winning the World Series.
Challengers and slight underdogs have won the crown, but Bobby Fischer beating Boris Spassky and Vladimir Kramnik dethroning Garry Kasparov didn’t exactly blindside the oddsmakers.
So the Norwegian world champ could be excused for some less-than-laudatory comments about his challenger, Russian GM Ian Nepomniachtchi, ahead of their 14-game title match that begins Friday in Dubai. Carlsen, the world’s No. 1-rated player for the past decade, has far more title match experience (three successful defenses so far) than his opponent, comes in on a hot streak and appears to have an edge in temperament over the sometimes inconsistent Nepomniachtchi.
The match — with just five rest days — has a $2 million overall purse and runs through Dec. 14, with a rapid and blitz playoff Dec. 16 if needed.
In recent comments to a Norwegian broadcasting outlet that he may one day regret, Carlsen suggested his opponent doesn’t react well to adversity and that Chinese GM Ding Liren or U.S. No. 1 Fabiano Caruana — both higher rated than the Russian — would have been a tougher pairing.
“I thought [before the Candidates tournament] that anyone else winning would be a good outcome for me, and I still feel that way,” Carlsen said.
“Nepo,” for his part, might want to channel the energy for former champs Alexander Alekhine of Russia and Max Euwe of the Netherlands, who pulled off the two biggest upsets in championship match history.
Cuban Jose Raul Capablanca, who had defeated the great Emanuel Lasker just six years earlier, was considered near-unbeatable when the up-and-coming Alekhine took him on in Argentina in the fall of 1927.
But the champ got off on the wrong foot with a Game 1 loss and suffered a shocking 6-3 defeat over the course of the 34-game match. The first game’s Winawer French was the only king’s pawn opening of the match, which would feature a near-interminable string of Queen’s Gambits, and the champ’s butter-smooth positional style is nowhere to be seen.
White’s clumsy 10. Nd1?! 0-0 11. Ne3 Nxe3 12. Bxe3 Rfe8 13. Nf4 (the knight has “no future here,” Alekhine later wrote) Bd6! 14. Rfe1 (14. Nxd5?! Bxh2+ 15. Kxh2 Qxd5 16. c4 Qh5+ 17. Rad8, with a rook lift coming, looks dangerous, but why White rejects the natural, reinforcing 14. c3 here is a mystery) Nb4 15. Qb3 Qf5 16. Rac1? (tougher was 16. Nd3 Nxd3 17. Qxd3 Qxd3 18. cxd3 Bb4 19. Rec1, though Black clearly has the better endgame structure) leads to the loss of a clear pawn after the simple 16…Nxc2! 17. Rxc2 Qxf4 and White can’t recapture because of the back-rank mate.
Capablanca regroups and puts up a spirited fight (22. Bd2!, temporarily sacrificing a pawn, offers real drawing chances), but Black’s 30. Qd1 Re6!, giving up the extra material to liberate the d-pawn and dominate the e-file, keeps Black on top.
After 35 Rd8 d4, Black has obtained the ideal set-up for the final assault, and Alekhine characterizes White’s next move as a sign of “despair”: 36. a4 Re1+ 37. Kg2 Qc6+ 38. f3 Re3 (the White defensive fortress cannot hold) 39. Qd1 Qe6 40. g4 Re2+ 41. Kh3 (Kf1 Rh2 42. Kg1 Qe5 wins) Qe3 42. Qh1 Qf4! (decisive — White’s queen can’t stop …Re2-f2 and continue guarding the f-pawn) 43. h5 Rf2, and Capablanca conceded in the face of lines like 44. hxg6+ Kg7 45. Rd7 Rxf3+ 46. Kh4 Qh6 mate.
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Alekhine in turn was a heavy betting favorite over Euwe in their 1935 match, only to go down to a stunning 15 1/2-14 1/2 defeat. (Alekhine would get back the crown in a 1937 rematch.)
Euwe showed a hint of his underappreciated strength, handing the champ his only loss in a strong tournament in Zurich in 1934 in their last head-to-head encounter before the first title fight. It’s a rare game in which the great Alekhine is outplayed in pretty much every phase of the contest.
Black’s QGD Janowski Defense (3…a6) is actually a pet line for Carlsen as well, but here after 17. Rab1 Re7 18. a4, Euwe as White has obtained a nice positional edge while Black’s pieces, especially the bishop on b7 and the knight on h4, are not really doing much.
White’s 19. a5 b5 saddles Alekhine with a terminally backward c-pawn, and worse, reduces the aggressive champ to passive, defensive chess for the remainder of the contest. White breaks open the center with 28. e4!? (Ne2 Nd7 29. Nxd7 Rxd7 30. Nf4 Rf6 31. Nd3 preserves the bind on Black’s cramped game) Nxe4 29. Nxe4 dxe4 30. Rxe4, and cements his edge with a neat tactical finesse.
Thus: 30…f6? (see diagram; 30…Ne7 31. Rce1 f5 allows Black to slog on) 31. Nf7! Qe8 (sadly for Black, 31…Kxf7 leads to 32. Qh5+ Ke7 33. Rxe6+ Kxe6 34. Re1+ Kd6 35. Qc5+ Kd7 36. Qf5+ Kd6 37. Qe6 mate) 32. Rxe6 Qxe6 33. Nd8!, cheekily squatting on the Black queen’s home square and winning the ill-favored Black c-pawn after all.
White’s technique is impeccable, providing shelter for his king before marshaling his pieces for the finale: 43. Qe4+! (trading queens on White’s terms) Qxe4+ 44. Rxe4 Kg8 (Rd7 45. Re8 Nd6 48. Ra8) 45. Nb8 Kf7 (Ra7 46. Re8+) 46. Nxa6 Rd7 47. Rd4 Ne7 48. d6 Nf5 49. Rd5 Nxd6 50. Nc5 Rd8 51. Ne4 Nb7 (Ke6 52. Rxd6+ Rxd6 53. Nxd6 Kxd6 is an elementary win for White) 52. a6! — clever to the last.
It’s over on 52…Ke6 (Rxd5 53. axb7 Rd8 54. Nd6+ Ke6 55. Nc8 and wins) 53. Rxd8, and Black resigns ahead of 53…Nxd8 54. a7, giving White a new queen.
Capablanca-Alekhine, World Championship Match, Game 1, Buenos Aires, September 1927
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) – Slovakia’s leaders have proposed a national lockdown as hospitals across the European Union country are hitting their limits amid a record surge of coronavirus infections.
Inspired by neighboring Austria, the Slovak government is set to discuss a lockdown for all – vaccinated and unvaccinated alike – at its session Wednesday. Prime Minister Eduard Heger said it’s necessary to act “immediately.” His four-party coalition government was mulling a two or three-week lockdown.
“It’s an unpopular measure, but absolutely unavoidable,” President Zuzana Caputova said Tuesday after visiting a major medical facility in the capital of Bratislava.
Caputova said what she saw at Bratislava University Hospital “was tragic, was horrible.”
“Experts are clear,” she said. “It’s necessary to restrict people’s mobility, we need a lockdown … unfortunately, it’s a measure that has to affect everyone.”
Slovakia reported 9,171 new virus cases on Friday, surpassing the previous record of 8,342 set only a few days earlier.
On Monday, Slovakia imposed new restrictions targeting the unvaccinated, who are banned from all nonessential stores and shopping malls. They’re also not allowed to attend any public events or gatherings and are required to test twice a week to go to work.
The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients rose by 161 to 3,182 on Monday, well above the 3,000-bed level considered critical by Slovakia’s Health Ministry. It said more than 82% of the patients have not been fully vaccinated.
At 45.3%, Slovakia’s vaccination rate is one of the lowest in the EU, well below the 27-nation bloc’s average of 65.5%.
Overall, the nation of 5.5 million has registered 621,423 virus cases with 13,985 deaths.
“Good Morning America” co-host Michael Strahan is going to space next month.
Strahan, who turned 50 on Sunday, will join Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard, on the Dec. 9 mission aboard the New Shepard, a spacecraft named after her father and the first American in space.
The Blue Origin flight, the company headed by Jeff Bezos, will also carry four paying customers and will be the third by the New Shepard craft this year to shuttle humans to space.
Blue Origin has not disclosed the ticket price for paying customers.
The 10-minute flight, five minutes less than Alan Shepard’s 1961 Mercury flight, will launch from West Texas carrying six people, two more than the previous two flights this year with humans aboard.
Similar to previous jaunts, Strahan’s flight is likely to include about three minutes of weightlessness and a view of the curvature of the Earth. Passengers are subjected to nearly 6 G’s, or six times the force of Earth’s gravity, as the capsule descends.
Strahan, who played for 15 years in the National Football League with the New York Giants, reported on the first Blue Origin flight for “Good Morning America.”
“I want to go to space,” Strahan told “GMA.” “I think being there at the first launch, it really was mind-blowing.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Star Trek star William Shatner flew to space on separate New Shepard flights this year. Shatner became the oldest person in space, eclipsing the previous record – set by a passenger on Bezos’ flight in July – by eight years.
Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson went into space in his own rocket ship in July, followed by Bezos nine days later on Blue Origin’s first flight with a crew. Elon Musk’s SpaceX made its first private voyage in mid-September, though without Musk on board.
NEW YORK (AP) – Santa is back this year, but he pleads caution as he continues to tiptoe through the pandemic.
“Be smart. Be caring. If you have the tiniest tickle in your throat, the tiniest feeling, worry about yourself and worry about everybody else, and know Santa will always be there next year,” said 57-year-old Kevin Chesney, who’s been donning the big red suit since he was a kid.
Amid a downturn in Jolly Old Elves – about 15 percent fewer in one large database – Chesney is busier than ever from his North Pole in Moorestown, New Jersey. The photo studio where he works quickly sold out its 4,500 appointments to sit with him and the seven other Santas in the studio’s stable.
They’re among the brave in Santa’s ranks with full-contact visits, lap sitting included, though Chesney wears a mask until just before the photos are taken.
Other Santas might not be wearing masks or plastic face shields, or hanging out in protective snow globes like many did last year, but it seems 50-50 this season that they’re not quite ready for hugs, whispers in their ears for secret wishes, and kids smiling or sobbing on their knees.
Some Santas will remain behind barriers that popped up last year for safety. At Minnesota’s Mall of America, the big man will be housed in a log cabin behind a window with guests seated on benches in front of him. At 169 locations for the outdoor retailers Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s, benches will also be used, with plastic partitions deployed at some stores for Santa’s photo ops.
Other retailers and Santa hosts are offering the option of no or full contact, even when mandates to distance aren’t in place. And many require or encourage reservations online to cut down on the number of people waiting.
More than 10 million U.S. households visited Santa in a mall or store in 2019, according to GlobalData Retail’s managing director, Neil Saunders. Nearly 73% of them also spent money at nearby restaurants or stores, he said. Last year, the company’s research found that 6.1 million households visited Santa, with fewer retailers and malls offering the holiday star in person. Of those visitors, 62% ate or shopped nearby.
Saunders said projections this year have about 8.9 million households expected to visit Santa in person, with virtual visits still a big option.
“Lingering concerns about the virus and ongoing restrictions in some states and localities continue to act as a brake on visiting Santa in person,” he said.
Chris Landtroop, a spokeswoman for Santa vendor Cherry Hill Programs, is optimistic. The new rollout of vaccinations for children 5 to 11 will certainly help.
“Santa is so back and we are super excited about that. Last year was incredibly tough,” Landtroop said.
The company has been sourcing Santas all year for the 800 malls, big-box stores and other locations it serves, with options for no-contact visits, too. Cherry Hill requires its Santas and other employees to be vaccinated and those with exemptions to be tested regularly.
“At the end of the day, we want guests to feel comfortable,” Landtroop said.
Luther Landon has been providing the Santa Experience at Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, for nearly two decades. Last year, he hit on the log cabin idea but was shut down after a day due to the pandemic. He pivoted to virtual Santa and this year will offer both.
“We think that it would be very irresponsible of us to just ignore it and pretend like everything’s back to normal,” he said of the pandemic. “We’ve hidden some microphones so Santa can hear just fine. I know from our Santa community and knowing so many other Santas that the majority of them are reluctant, highly reluctant, to go back to the way it was before the pandemic. But we also have some who are just like, you know what, I don’t care. Having both of those groups is what’s happening in the country, too.”
Russell Hurd in Royse City, Texas, has been playing Santa since 2017, after he retired from the Army. He’ll be in his red suit to go with his long – and very real – white beard at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center near Dallas. His visits with the throngs are distanced and masks are required. He longs for that to end.
“The way it used to be, it’s meaningful for us Santas, too. I mean, we’re human beings. We crave that interaction, but for now we do what we can,” Hurd said.
Hurd is unvaccinated and tests regularly for COVID.
“I know a lot of unvaxxed Santas across the country. I mean, it’s not just Texas.” he said.
Count American Dream, a mega mall of 3 million square feet in East Rutherford, New Jersey, among retailers offering distanced Santa. He’ll be on ice, skating the indoor rink with visitors, and also tooling around with guests in hot pink golf carts.
At Macy’s stores, Santa will be making his list and checking it twice from behind a desk, with guests seated on the other side.
“We’re encouraging everyone to maintain masking throughout their visits,” said Kathleen Wright, senior manager at Macy’s Branded Entertainment. “Santa has been a part of the Macy’s tradition since 1862 so we’re overjoyed that we can safely continue the tradition this year.”
At Oakbrook Center, a mall in suburban Chicago owned by Brookfield Properties, Santa’s spot is a tricked-out motorhome with his fans allowed inside. Santa will be happening at 117 of 132 malls Brookfield owns in 43 states. The company is following local mandates on safety protocols but will distance anyone who asks. The same goes for CBL Properties, which owns 63 malls in 24 states and offered Santa visits from a safe distance last year.
“We’re bringing back a more traditional Santa experience this year,” said CBL spokeswoman Stacey Keating. “Visitors who wish to do so will be able to sit on Santa’s lap or on Santa’s bench. Masks will not be required at the set or during photos unless there’s a local mandate in place.”
And, bonus: “We’re also bringing back pet photo nights with Santa,” she said, “as well as Santa Cares, a reservation-only event that caters to those with sensory sensitivities and for whom the traditional experience may be too overwhelming.”
The pandemic has taken its toll on Santa in other ways.
Stephen Arnold, the 71-year-old head of IBRBS (formerly the International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas) said his organization of about 2,000 Santas and Mrs. Clauses has lost 57 Santas to COVID.
“Most of us are overweight, diabetic, with heart conditions,” said Arnold, a long-time Santa working this year both virtually and in person in Memphis, Tennessee. “I mean, we’re prime targets for a disease like COVID.”
NEW YORK (AP) – Matt Damon has some big-name endorsers for a book he has out March 1 about access to safe water.
Former President Bill Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus are among those providing blurbs for “The Worth of Water,” which the Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker worked on with civil and environmental engineer Gary White. Damon has been a prominent spokesman for water sanitation since visiting Zambia in 2006, and with White founded the nonprofits Water.org and WaterEquity.
Damon and White met at a Clinton Global Initiative gathering in 2008.
“We’re excited to have written this book together, and we can’t wait to share the story of what happens when a movie actor and a civil engineer team up to try and take on the global water crisis – the stumbles and obstacles, the breakthroughs and big gains, and the incredible people we met along the way,” Damon and White said in a statement Tuesday.
“Our journey has proved two things: one, solving the water crisis is possible – within our lifetimes. And two, the key is unleashing the incredible determination and resourcefulness of the people who are fighting every day for essentials like safe water and sanitation.”
According to the book’s publisher, the Penguin Random House imprint Portfolio, “The Worth of Water” will illuminate “the challenges of building and scaling market-based financial solutions to make clean water and sanitation more accessible. And ultimately, it’s the story of how communities and individuals can be empowered to make long-lasting investments in their own well-being.”
PARIS (AP) – The prime minister of France, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, is being singled out on social media and beyond as an example of what not to do in the pandemic.
Multiple videos are being circulated of a maskless Prime Minister Jean Castex vigorously shaking hands with elected officials in an enclosed space at a Paris mayoral congress on Nov. 16. Many people are pointing out that goes against France‘s official stance that everyone should keep taking preventive measures against the spread of COVID-19.
They also noted that Castex had called the French Caribbean territory of Guadeloupe “irresponsible” in the enforcement of COVID-19 measures when he did not abide by the rules himself.
Gabriel Attal, the French government’s spokesman, had leaped to Castex’s defense when the video first began circulating. “We are all only human,” he said.
But Castex‘s positive test is a potential embarrassment for the French government and for President Emmanuel Macron ahead of April’s presidential election.
Castex’s office says the 56-year-old was infected by his 11-year-old daughter and is self-isolating for 10 days.
It’s unclear if Castex, who was vaccinated in the spring, has symptoms. His office was not immediately available to comment Tuesday.
Experts are saying that Castex‘s behavior is indicative of a wider drop in vigilance now that most of France‘s population has received vaccine shots. A prominent government figure, Labor Minister Elisabeth Borne, warned against complacency this month, acknowledging that “maybe we have lapsed a bit, barrier measures are being less respected.”
Mask sales have fallen in France by three quarters in the year up to August 2021.
But for the moment French media are concentrating their ire on Castex, pointing out this is the fourth time that Castex has been a “contact case” for the virus, though he has never previously tested positive.
As a result of his positive test, several other French ministers are self-isolating awaiting test results, including Europe Minister Clement Beaune, who deleted a photo on Instagram of him laughing and leaning into Castex without wearing a mask.
There’s enough animosity, jealousy, score-settling and killing gossip in “Tinderbox,” James Andrew Miller’s mountainous new oral history of HBO, to fill an Elizabethan drama. Yet the book’s tone is largely fond.
The people who created HBO made something they’re proud of. They’re glad to have been there, to have had a piece of it, in the early, freewheeling decades. Most know they’ll never have it so good again.
HBO went live on Nov. 8, 1972, broadcasting to a few hundred houses in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. The first thing you saw on the screen (cue screaming from future Time Warner shareholders) was Jerry Levin, sitting on a sofa. He welcomed viewers, then kicked it over to a hockey game from Madison Square Garden, which was followed by Paul Newman in “Sometimes a Great Notion.”
Levin was an ambitious young lawyer who had been brought in by a cable company, Sterling Communications, to run HBO’s start-up programming. “Tinderbox” explains how Sterling eventually ran wires to all those buildings in Manhattan and elsewhere, sometimes via sublegal methods.
Levin, of course, would become the architect of the most ill-judged merger in media history. At the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000, he tried to combine Time Warner, of which HBO was a subsidiary, with Steve Case’s already sinking AOL. In the ruinous wake, Levin resembled the proverbial hedgehog, the one who climbs off the hairbrush while sheepishly muttering, “We all make mistakes.”
If you’re going to read “Tinderbox,” prepare for a landslide of corporate history. Students of power will find much to interest them. HBO had many stepparents over the years. Following these deals is complicated, like following the lyrics to “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.”
In reverse order, Miller describes how HBO — the fly, more or less, in this scenario — has been sequentially consumed from 1972 through today: “Warner Bros. Discovery rescued it from AT&T, which had gobbled it up from Time Warner, which had saved it from Time Warner AOL, which had somehow abducted it from Time Warner, which had shrewdly outplayed Time Inc. for it, after Time had outflanked Sterling Communications long ago.”
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These guys (they were mostly guys) all seemed to want to flex-cuff one another and throw enemies into the back of a van. Miller gets good quotes: “The only way I was going to sit across a table from Jerry was if I could jump across it and grab him by the throat”; “He’s a dog, he’ll follow whoever feeds him.”
HBO’s famous bumper — the static, the celestial choir — didn’t debut until 1993. But the channel had an aura long before that. It began to make its mark on popular culture in the late 1970s and early ’80s, around the time I was in my teens.
My family didn’t have HBO, but a friend’s did. It was where you clicked to see George Carlin say the seven words you couldn’t say on television, to watch movies with naked people in them and to laugh your ribs loose seeing comedians (Robert Klein, Bette Midler, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams) do material they’d never get away with on Carson.
HBO was so sexy people went to hotels to watch it. The channel had no advertisers, and thus no one to complain about brash or steamy content.
Before HBO, television in the hands of the big three networks was a wasteland — “a vast exercise in condescension,” as Robert Hughes put it, “by quite smart people to millions of others whom they assume to be much dumber than they actually are.”
James Andrew Miller, whose latest oral history is “Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers.”Credit…Robert Bomgardner
An important early hire was Sheila Nevins, stolen from CBS to run HBO’s now-storied documentary unit. A Barbra Streisand concert was an early hit. Boxing was vital to the early growth of HBO, as were midweek broadcasts of Wimbledon. The channel launched a million comedy clubs. If you were a comic without an HBO special, you weren’t on the map.
HBO branched out into original movies, some of which I was happy to see recalled: “Gia,” with Angelina Jolie; “Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story,” with Ben Kingsley and “Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned,” based on the Walter Mosley novel, with Laurence Fishburne, among others.
“Tinderbox” slows down and lingers purposefully on the turn of the century, when the so-called golden age of television began to come into view. With shows like “Sex and the City,” “Six Feet Under,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and especially “The Sopranos,” HBO changed notions of what television could be, and pickpocketed the cultural conversation from film.
“The Sopranos” was not an immediate hit, but it was beloved internally. “We were putting a husky guy with a hairy back wearing a wife-beater in the lead role,” says Jeff Bewkes, a former Time Warner C.E.O. “Nobody else would do that.”
HBO had good luck with its early executives. These were the kind of guys who knew what a debenture was yet had a feel for programming and knew enough to hire good people and leave them alone. HBO gave people room to run.
Often the only direction given to directors and producers was: Don’t make anything you’d see anywhere else. Winning awards was more important than ratings. Before HBO, elite actors wouldn’t go near a television show.
Staffers at HBO sometimes found it hard to define what HBO was, but they knew what it wasn’t. A planned Howie Mandel special was killed.
HBO’s luck held for a while after “The Sopranos” signed off. Lena Dunham’s “Girls” and “Game of Thrones” were in the wings. But the souk that is the modern television world was growing crowded.
HBO was no longer the brash insurgent. It passed on shows — “Mad Men,” “House of Cards,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “Breaking Bad,” “The Crown” — that went on to become crucial hits for Netflix and other cable and streaming services.
Oral history is a strange form. It gives you a staccato series of micro-impressions, as if you were looking through a fly’s compound eyes. George Plimpton, who helped edit the best-selling oral biography “Edie,” was a fan. He liked it that “the reader, rather than editor, is jury.”
Elizabeth Hardwick loathed the form. She thought oral histories were full of irresponsible drive-by shootings. The result, she wrote, was that “you are what people have to say about you.”
Increasingly I’m a fan of the genre. I have a special fondness for Lizzy Goodman’s “Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011,” and I await the oral histories of Chez Panisse, Balthazar, Death and Company (the bar), n+1, Anna Wintour’s tenure at Vogue, Monster Energy drinks, the making of “Dusty in Memphis” and this newspaper’s Styles section.
Miller is a good interviewer, but a corny writer. His interstitial material is mugged by phrases like “oodles of ambition” and words like “ginormous.” These really bugged me at the start. But this book is so vast that, by the weary end, these pats of cold margarine slapping me in the face were the only things keeping me awake.
There are a lot of winning moments in “Tinderbox.” But wading through its nearly thousand pages I often felt spacey and exhausted, as if it were 4 a.m. on the third night of one of those endurance contests and I had to keep my hand on the pickup truck.
HBO has retained much of its magic. “Succession”: what a treat. The sound of that bumper — the static, the choir — remains Pavlovian in its promise. But our over-entertained eyeballs have more options, and the channel’s competitors, Miller makes clear, have the long knives sharpened.
Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder, leaving the federal courthouse in San Jose, Calif., on Monday.Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times
SAN JOSE, Calif. — After weathering months of accusations that she lied to get money for her blood testing start-up, Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, the embattled Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is on trial for fraud, sharpened her defense on Monday.
In just under two hours of testimony, Ms. Holmes pushed back against accusations that she had lied about Theranos’s work with drug companies. She also pointed the blame at the scientists and doctors who had worked at her start-up, saying she believed what they had told her about Theranos’s technology.
And throughout it all, Ms. Holmes’s defense bolstered the idea it has been pushing since the start of the trial: She may have made mistakes, but failure is not a crime.
“We thought this was a really big idea,” Ms. Holmes said about Theranos’s machines, which she once promised could run a long list of medical tests from just a few drops of their blood.
It was her second day of testimony in a trial that has gripped Silicon Valley and become a referendum on start-up culture and just how far entrepreneurs will take their hubristic claims of changing the world. For her lawyers, the idea on Monday was to show the kernel of truth that may have existed in some of the most blatant misrepresentations that prosecutors attributed to her.
Ms. Holmes, 37, has been charged with 11 counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. She has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison.
Her testimony has been the star attraction at a trial where more than 30 witnesses have been called over the past three months into a San Jose, Calif., courtroom to testify. Ms. Holmes had watched the proceedings quietly, her expression obscured behind a medical mask. On Friday, the prosecution had rested its case.
Ms. Holmes is the rare Silicon Valley executive to be tried on fraud charges. While the world of tech start-ups is known for its culture of hustle and hype, few have risen as high or fallen as dramatically as Theranos — and even fewer of their leaders have been indicted on accusations that they lied to investors. Over 13 years, Theranos raised nearly $1 billion in funding, valuing it at $9 billion. After The Wall Street Journal revealed in 2015 that Theranos’s technology did not work as advertised, the company unraveled. It shut down in 2018.
Ms. Holmes’s decision to testify is a risky one that shocked the courtroom out of its Friday afternoon lull last week. She has opened herself up to cross-examination by prosecutors and also risks perjury.
But experts have argued that she had no choice but to defend herself, given the evidence presented by prosecutors. That has included text messages that showed Ms. Holmes was aware of Theranos’s technology problems and testimony about faked demonstrations of its abilities. Prosecutors also revealed that after an employee, Erika Cheung, spoke to regulators about problems in the Theranos lab, the start-up hired a private detective to follow her.
“They think they are behind, and they have a smart, likable, young, attractive witness,” Neama Rahmani, the president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, said of Ms. Holmes. “And she thinks she’s going to talk her way out of it.”
One key point made by prosecutors was that Theranos could never conduct more than 12 different blood tests on its own machines. It secretly used blood analysis machines from companies like Siemens to run most of its tests, but proclaimed it could do hundreds or thousands at various times.
Ms. Holmes’s lawyers have for weeks tried complicating the prosecution’s narrative. They have pointed to patents created by Theranos. They have hammered investors for not doing enough diligence on the start-up before eagerly writing checks to fund it. And they painted Ms. Holmes as inexperienced and unqualified to run a lab, directing blame for Theranos’s failure at those who were experienced and qualified.
But on the stand, Ms. Holmes presented herself as an impressive and ambitious chief executive when describing the early days of Theranos. She detailed a patent that bore her name for an early concept of the company, as well as the help she got from Channing Robertson, a respected scientist and Stanford University professor who joined Theranos’s board. She was relaxed and confident, smiling widely and nodding before answering questions.
On Monday, her direct examination continued in chronological order. Her lawyers walked through the details of preliminary studies that Theranos had done with a number of drug companies in 2008, 2009 and 2010. They also noted that Theranos’s technology had performed well in those early studies with Merck, AstraZeneca, Centocor, Bristol Myers Squibb and others.
Representatives from Pfizer and Schering-Plough testified earlier that they had evaluated Theranos’s technology and had come away unimpressed.
But the point of Monday’s testimony was to show that Theranos did work with drug companies rather than not at all. Ms. Holmes testified not only about the clinical studies but also about a study published in a peer-reviewed journal.
That strategy allowed her to focus on Theranos’s early successes and the conversations she had with each potential partner, while glossing over the outcomes of those conversations.
Ms. Holmes also tried to shift the blame, noting that she learned about Theranos’s technology from the scientists and doctors who worked in the company’s lab. She testified that she believed them when they said the technology worked. The implication: Ms. Holmes could not have intended to deceive investors if she believed the technology was real.
Prosecutors face a challenge in proving that Ms. Holmes intended to defraud investors. The push-pull between showing that she was aware of Theranos’s problems and that she simply relied on what others told her has been a recurring theme in testimony.
Emails between Ms. Holmes and Ian Gibbons, a former chief scientist at Theranos, also painted a rosy picture of Theranos’s technology.
“I understood that the four series could do any blood test,” Ms. Holmes said, referring to a version of Theranos’s machines, described by Mr. Gibbons.
Judge Edward J. Davila of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California instructed jurors that many exhibits, including the emails between Ms. Holmes and her lab workers, should be taken as an indication of her “state of mind” rather than the truth of the situation.
Monday’s court session ended with Judge Davila again rebuking spectators over the volume of their typing, reminders of the many interruptions and delays that have plagued the trial since it began in August.
Direct testimony of Ms. Holmes is expected to last through Tuesday. She will then face cross-examination from prosecutors.
Nov. 22, 2021, 4:09 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
The jury filed out, but the lawyers continued to argue about what exhibits can be admitted. Robert Leach, a lawyer for the prosecution, said they were not given enough time to review the exhibits from the defense. Kevin Downey, Ms. Holmes’s lawyer, countered that this was more time than the defense was given.
Nov. 22, 2021, 4:02 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
Testimony will begin at 9 a.m. tomorrow and stretch until 4 p.m.
Nov. 22, 2021, 4:01 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
As the jurors filed out, Ms. Holmes attempted to make eye contact with each of them. Few looked up.
Nov. 22, 2021, 4:01 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
Ms. Holmes’s legal team showed another email of Theranos’s scientists and lab workers telling Ms. Holmes about what Theranos’s technology could do. She testified that her understanding of the company’s technology was based on what those experts told her — a key part of the defense argument that Ms. Holmes could not have intended to deceive investors because she believed the tech worked.
Nov. 22, 2021, 4:01 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
That’s it for today. The nearly two-hour delay has not been explained! Back in court tomorrow morning
Nov. 22, 2021, 3:54 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
Ms. Holmes testified about her interactions with Shane Weber, a Pfizer director who evaluated Theranos’s technology and testified earlier in the trial. He concluded that the company’s answers to his technical due diligence questions were “non-informative, tangential, deflective or evasive” and that Pfizer should not work with the company.
Despite Mr. Weber’s conclusion, Theranos used reports with Pfizer’s logo on them to solicit investment.
Ms. Holmes testified that Theranos continued to “talk” and also “interact” with Pfizer after Ms. Weber’s conclusions, including discussions about potential partnerships. She did not say whether any of those talks or interactions led to business deals.
Nov. 22, 2021, 3:34 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
Ms. Holmes testified about a “great call” a Theranos employee had with Constance Cullen, an immunology expert from the pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough.
“All in all, it was awesome, I think,” a Theranos employee wrote to Ms. Holmes in a 2010 email that was displayed in the courtroom. “Calling her every single morning for the last 3 weeks finally paid off…”
Ms. Cullen testified earlier in the trial. Her characterization of her conversations with Ms. Holmes: “There were what I’d describe as cagey responses or attempts to redirect to other topics of discussion.” Ms. Holmes had pitched Ms. Cullen on Theranos’s technology, but Ms. Cullen said in her testimony that she was dissatisfied with Ms. Holmes’s responses. “There was insufficient technical detail for us to be able to evaluate the technology,” Ms. Cullen said.
Nov. 22, 2021, 3:21 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
Mr. Downey asked Ms. Holmes about the results of Theranos’s work with GlaxoSmithKline. “I remember they thought our system eliminated the need for a lab,” Ms. Holmes said. The company continued to use Theranos machines in connection with clinical studies going forward, she testified.
Nov. 22, 2021, 3:20 p.m. ET
The trial of Elizabeth Holmes continues at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building in San Jose, Calif., on Monday.Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times
For most of the first two months of Elizabeth Holmes’s trial, the mood inside the courtroom has been calm and quiet. Edward Davila, the mild-mannered judge overseeing the trial, has kept proceedings orderly throughout many hours of detailed testimony about Theranos’s inner workings and business dealings.
Each day, a small group of reporters and curious spectators wait in line to have their bags scanned by security before entering the beige, windowless courtroom. Inside, Ms. Holmes sits upright in a leather chair at a table with her lawyers, staring straight ahead.
Behind her in the gallery, her mother, Noel, typically sits in a reserved row with a rotating group of family and friends who have come in a show of support. Ms. Holmes’s partner, Billy Evans, is sometimes among them.
Attendees are assigned tickets for a limited number of seats, spaced out as a pandemic precaution. Everyone in the courtroom wears a mask except those testifying.
Reporters type carefully on laptops, wary of warnings from the judge that they must have a “silent keyboard.” One juror has complained that clacking noise from keyboards was distracting.
Regular attendees bring seat cushions for the hard wood benches — and to save their seats during breaks. When exhibits are displayed on two large monitors on the sides of the room, those paying attention squint and lean in to read. One reporter uses binoculars.
Ms. Holmes’s testimony on Friday afternoon sent a jolt of adrenaline through the sleepy room. Jurors listened intently. Reporters sent panicked messages to their editors. And the more dedicated spectators who hadn’t yet trickled out for the weekend sat up straight, craning to see Ms. Holmes plead her case.
On Monday, the courtroom was packed as Ms. Holmes testified for a second day and her defense began taking shape.
Nov. 22, 2021, 3:16 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
The break is over and court is in session. Ms. Holmes is back on the stand.
Nov. 22, 2021, 3:03 p.m. ET
Elizabeth Holmes, with her partner, Billy Evans, left, and mother, Noel Holmes, entering the courthouse on Monday.Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times
On Monday, Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood testing start-up Theranos, aimed to rebut a key argument made by prosecutors in her fraud case: that she lied about her company’s work with pharmaceutical companies.
One of the most damning pieces of evidence prosecutors have presented against Ms. Holmes is that Theranos sent falsified pharmaceutical company validation reports to investors. Those reports displayed the logos of drug makers, which acted as proof that Theranos’s technology had been validated by them. During the trial, investors have testified that those reports helped persuade them to pour money into Ms. Holmes’s start-up.
A Theranos report implied endorsements from pharmaceutical companies including Schering-Plough and Pfizer.
But representatives from Pfizer and Schering-Plough testified that their companies had never validated Theranos’s technology. (Pfizer’s representative said the company had come to the opposite conclusion.) Nor had they approved of having their logos added to the reports.
On the stand on Monday, Ms. Holmes testified about studies that Theranos did with Merck, AstraZeneca, Centocor, Bristol Myers Squibb and others in 2008 and 2009. One exhibit displayed internal documentation about the success of some of this early work and showed a map of around a dozen cities around the world where Theranos’s machines were used for studies.
Kevin Downey, Ms. Holmes’s lawyer, also showed what he called a peer-reviewed journal that published the results of a study that Theranos did with Stanford University around this time. He did not mention the name of the journal.
In each example, Ms. Holmes’s understanding of Theranos’s technology was that “it performed well,” she testified. In some of the examples, Theranos was paid for its work in the studies.
Throughout her trial, Ms. Holmes’s defense team has tried making the case that there was some truth to what Ms. Holmes told investors.
“The reality of what happened at Theranos is far, far more complicated than what you have heard about Elizabeth Holmes so far,” Lance Wade, another of Ms. Holmes’s lawyers, said in his opening statement at the trial’s start in September.
Nov. 22, 2021, 2:56 p.m. ET
The trial of Elizabeth Holmes has everything: a charismatic, attractive and youthful female defendant; celebrities; sex; vast sums of money; the long shadow of Steve Jobs; lives of real people at risk.
If it’s one of the most famous criminal cases ever to come out of Silicon Valley, it also sometimes seems like the only one. Prosecutors in Northern California brought 57 white-collar crime cases in fiscal year 2020. Even after accounting for the effect of Covid, cases have plunged from the peak of 350 in 1995.
Not every white-collar case is a tech case or related to start-ups, which means there are only a handful of times each year when someone in Silicon Valley is accused of a crime.
There are a lot of complicated reasons for this shortage of courtroom action.
A frequent explanation is that it is the fault of a lackluster U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco. Few prosecutors come to the Bay Area to make their reputations, and those that do — like Robert Mueller 20 years ago — soon move on to better jobs. Mr. Mueller took over the F.B.I.
It’s not just a local issue. Fighting white-collar crime has been less of a priority for the Department of Justice since the Sept. 11 attacks brought fears of widespread terrorism.
And for all the growing awareness of the power of tech companies, there is little public demand to hold them accountable. When David Anderson stepped down as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California early this year, he did an interview with a radio station. None of the questions from the host or from callers dealt with Silicon Valley.
Mr. Anderson, a Trump appointee, had talked about making Silicon Valley a priority for his prosecutors. His first public appearance was on a panel titled “White Collar Crime in a High-Tech World.” But he was in office for two years, too few to really make an impact. The district has had an acting U.S. attorney, Stephanie Hinds, since March.
Yet another reason is that Silicon Valley is a very rich place. That does not make government prosecutions impossible. But it ensures that top-flight defense attorneys can be brought in, making cases like Ms. Holmes’s neither short nor simple.
Finally, there is a sense in Silicon Valley that failure — whether a company that went under or an investment that was lost — is best kept in the family, far away from prosecutors, regulators and the media. Investors are supposed to be sophisticated, and a case like Ms. Holmes’s can reveal just how foolish and naïve they were. The same is true of employees.
Better to just forget about anything suspicious than allege fraudulent activity. After all, you wouldn’t want to miss out on the next opportunity.
Nov. 22, 2021, 2:53 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
The court is taking a break until around 12:10 p.m. Pacific time. Court is only scheduled to go until early afternoon today.
Nov. 22, 2021, 2:46 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
Mr. Downey walked Ms. Holmes through Theranos’s relationships with various pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, Merck, Bristol Myers and Centocor. Ms. Holmes testified that Theranos technology performed well in evaluations by those companies.
Nov. 22, 2021, 2:29 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
The defense is going chronologically through Ms. Holmes’s time at Theranos. Ms. Holmes is now testifying about pharmaceutical studies done during 2008-2009.
Nov. 22, 2021, 2:25 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
Mr. Downey showed a slide of “completed successes” on various pharmaceutical studies. Successes meant that “we had successfully achieved the objectives of the program,” Ms. Holmes said.
Theranos’s relationship with pharmaceutical companies has come up frequently in the trial so far. Scientists from Celgene, Pfizer and Schering-Plough testified about how they ultimately did not recommend Theranos’s technology. But Theranos still created a report displaying logos from Pfizer, Schering-Plough and GlaxoSmithKline, implying that those companies approved the report when they did not.
Nov. 22, 2021, 2:17 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
In an exhibit showing results of a study on sepsis that Theranos did with Stanford, the company’s scientists concluded that “Assay results have been precise.”
Ms. Holmes testified, “It meant our system was working well.”
Mr. Downey then pulled up a section of a peer-reviewed journal which published the results of the study (without saying its name).
This is likely meant to rebut the prosecutor’s accusations that Theranos’s technology did not work and that Ms. Holmes was aware of the problems.
Nov. 22, 2021, 2:09 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
Mr. Downey asked Ms. Holmes about the areas in which Theranos attempted to partner with the Defense Department, emphasizing the word “attempt.” Theranos’s relationship with the military is a key part of the prosecution’s case — the prosecution highlighted that Ms. Holmes said Theranos signed contracts with the military, when it had not.
Nov. 22, 2021, 2:06 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
Mr. Downey showed us a 2008 internal report listing features and technical specifications for Theranos’s devices, including “multiplexed measurement of biomarkers” and “factory calibration.” Ms. Holmes explained several of them and why they would be superior to normal testing methods.
The report also noted that Theranos systems had been in clinical evaluation. Ms. Holmes testified that she was told that the clinical results were “excellent.”
Nov. 22, 2021, 1:58 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
Automating the blood testing process was a major part of Theranos’s argument for why their devices were more accurate. Mr. Downey showed the jurors a paper saying that 93 percent of the errors in the diagnostic process were human errors that Theranos’s system would theoretically have helped automate.
Nov. 22, 2021, 1:55 p.m. ET
White-collar defendants rarely take the stand because it opens them up to a potentially damaging cross-examination. Yet Elizabeth Holmes is testifying in her own defense.
Why take that chance?
Lawyers for Ms. Holmes, 37, may be betting that their client — who charmed investors and partners as she built Theranos to a $9 billion valuation before it collapsed — will be persuasive and charismatic enough to get 12 jurors on her side.
“They think they are behind, and they have a smart, likable, young, attractive witness,” said Neama Rahmani, who is the president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor. “And she thinks she’s going to talk her way out of it.”
Ms. Holmes’s testimony may also be the only way to show that she did not intend to deceive anyone, Mr. Rahmani said. She can speak about her relationship with Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, 55, Theranos’s former chief operating officer and her former boyfriend. In court filings, she has said he was emotionally abusive and controlling. He has denied the allegations.
Ms. Holmes, who smiled and appeared relaxed when she took the stand on Friday, may also be hoping to present herself to the jury as a sympathetic figure. She had a baby in July and has showed up to the courtroom carrying a diaper bag and holding hands with her mother.
But by speaking in court, Ms. Holmes is taking a risk. That’s because she has previously made many statements about Theranos — both under oath and in media interviews — which prosecutors can grill her on.
“She’s going to be the best witness for herself, or the worst,” Mr. Rahmani said. “She may just kind of hang herself, so we’ll see.”
Nov. 22, 2021, 1:55 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
Those benefits included miniaturization and increased automation of the device. “We thought this was a really big idea,” she said.
Nov. 22, 2021, 1:55 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
Ms. Holmes testified that by 2007, she believed Theranos’s technology had benefits over traditional blood testing methods.
Nov. 22, 2021, 1:51 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
As Ms. Holmes testifies, she is speaking slowly and clearly, looking directly at her attorney, Kevin Downey.
Credit…Kimberly White/Getty Images
Nov. 22, 2021, 1:47 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
Ms. Holmes has taken the stand and resumed discussing the Novartis demo she discussed on Friday. She explained that the problems in that demo — which have been reported on — were a result of a problem with the glue used to hold the device together, not the technology itself, and the company fixed the problem.
Nov. 22, 2021, 1:44 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
The judge and jury have entered.
Nov. 22, 2021, 1:35 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
The lead lawyers from both sides of the case emerged from the judge’s chambers and Ms. Holmes has taken her seat at the lawyer’s table in the courtroom. We are still waiting and have no word on what’s happening.
Nov. 22, 2021, 1:03 p.m. ET
Ms. Holmes with her boyfriend, Billy Evans.Credit…Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times
Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood testing start-up Theranos, arrived in court on Monday for her second day of testimony. She came with her mother, Noel Holmes, and another person who has been a consistent presence alongside her at the trial: Billy Evans, her partner.
Mr. Evans’s family founded the Evans Hotel Group, a hotel chain in Southern California. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015 and worked at a tech start-up until early 2019, according to his public LinkedIn page.
Not much is publicly known about Ms. Holmes’s relationship with Mr. Evans. The two were first seen together at the Burning Man festival in 2018, the year that Theranos shut down. Mr. Evans and Ms. Holmes, 37, had a child together in July; she often totes a diaper bag in court.
Mr. Evans often sits with the rest of Ms. Holmes’s family in their reserved row in the courtroom in San Jose, Calif., occasionally leaning over to confer with Noel Holmes during testimony. He and the other members of Ms. Holmes’s entourage keep to themselves and do not interact with the press or the public. He has declined to comment on the trial.
Nov. 22, 2021, 12:51 p.m. ET
Erin Griffith
San Jose, Calif.
After being ushered into the courtroom expecting a 9 a.m. start, we’ve now been waiting for nearly an hour. Kevin Downey and Jeffrey Schenk, the lead lawyers for Ms. Holmes and the prosecution, respectively, are not here. Nor are Ms. Holmes, Judge Edward Davila and the jury.
Nov. 22, 2021, 12:09 p.m. ET
Ms. Holmes heading into court on Monday.Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Since the trial’s opening statements, the legal team for Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos, has made it clear how they plan to defend their client from charges of fraud.
First, they have said: Ms. Holmes was a hardworking entrepreneur who believed her claims that Theranos’s technology was revolutionary and whose failure was not a crime. Second: Other Theranos employees, executives and investors should have known better. And third: Ms. Holmes was manipulated by Ramesh Balwani, who is known as Sunny and who was formerly Theranos’s chief operating officer and Ms. Holmes’s boyfriend.
“She did her level best, day in, day out, to make Theranos successful, and she genuinely, deeply believed it would be successful,” Lance Wade, one of Ms. Holmes’s lawyers, said during opening statements.
Theranos, which had been hailed as a successful Silicon Valley start-up, collapsed in scandal and shut down in 2018 after the company’s technology was shown to not work.
Over the first 11 weeks of the trial, Ms. Holmes’s lawyers have repeatedly pushed the first two points of their defense. They have sought to undercut testimony from lab employees by pointing to their advanced degrees and comparing that to Ms. Holmes, who dropped out of Stanford University. They have also attacked investors’ credibility by detailing their lack of due diligence.
As Ms. Holmes, 37, takes the stand for a second day, she may point the finger at Mr. Balwani. In court filings, she has said that Mr. Balwani, 55, was emotionally abusive and controlling during their relationship. Mr. Balwani, who will stand trial next year, has denied the allegations. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Because Ms. Holmes and Mr. Balwani kept their relationship secret while they worked at Theranos, jurors have heard very little about their interactions. Ms. Holmes’s testimony will likely be jurors’ first real insight into the inner workings of the relationship.
Nov. 22, 2021, 12:05 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
Ms. Holmes arrived hand-in-hand with her mother, Noel Holmes. She was also accompanied by her partner, Billy Evans, and various other members of her entourage, including two who arrived before 4 a.m. to wait in line with the rest of the public.
Nov. 22, 2021, 12:01 p.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
Both the courtroom and an overflow room are packed with spectators who arrived well before dawn. The courtroom is quiet as reporters pull out their laptops and everyone waits for testimony to start.
Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Nov. 22, 2021, 11:59 a.m. ET
Erin Woo
San Jose, Calif.
After waiting outside for hours, spectators have now filed into the courtroom for the second day of Elizabeth Holmes testifying in self-defense. (Because the proceedings are not live-streamed, standing in line is the only way to secure a spot inside.) Ms. Holmes, wearing a royal blue dress, has arrived at the courthouse, but is not yet in the courtroom. Neither are the judge nor jury.
Nov. 19, 2021, 9:02 p.m. ET
At the end of a grueling five days of testimony this week, the defense in the case of United States v. Elizabeth Holmes on Friday called Ms. Holmes, the founder of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos, to the stand.
A flutter of typing and murmuring washed over the gallery, which had been packed with spectators early in the day, before the audience dwindled as the weekend crept closer. Ms. Holmes has been charged with 11 counts of defrauding investors about what Theranos’s technology could do and about its business.
Ms. Holmes, 37, spent only an hour on the stand before the court closed for the day, so her testimony was truncated. What she discussed were the early days of Theranos and why she had set the company up — and she used the opportunity to present herself in her own terms after her emails, texts and other communications were dissected over the trial’s nearly three months of testimony.
Ms. Holmes’s lawyers have argued that she was merely a young, naïve, ambitious founder who relied too much on others who gave her bad advice. Her lawyers have also hammered on her lack of experience and expertise. But on Friday, she presented herself as an expert on her company’s technology.
She testified about the early days of Theranos, which started out as Realtime Cures in 2003. She testified about a patent she had created while a student at Stanford, which led her to drop out and work on the company full time. She also briefly discussed demonstrations of Theranos’s early technology and the early rounds of investment she raised to develop it.
Ms. Holmes’s lawyers indicated that her initial testimony is likely to take up Monday and Tuesday next week. That means that the prosecution’s cross-examination, which is expected to be lengthy, won’t begin until after Thanksgiving.
Ms. Holmes was the third witness to be called by her defense team.
WASHINGTON — Terry Rozier scored a season-high 32 points and hit his eighth three-pointer of the game with 12.9 seconds left as the Charlotte Hornets beat the Washington Wizards 109-103 on Monday night.
LaMelo Ball had 28 points and 13 rebounds to help Charlotte win its last six of seven – including two over Washington in the last week.
Montrezl Harrell scored 24 points and had a season-high 18 rebounds for the Cavaliers, while Kentavious Caldwell-Pope had 17 points, Bradley Beal scored 18 and Kyle Kuzma had 11 points and 13 rebounds.
The Wizards had trailed by as many as 17 in the second half, but used a late 7-0 rally to cut the deficit to 105-103 after a 3 by Caldwell-Pope with 51.6 seconds left.
Miles Bridges then missed a dunk but after a turnover by Harrell, the ball ended up back in Rozier’s hands. Rozier, who made his first six 3s of the night, made his last to finish 8 for 11 from beyond the arc.
Charlotte made 15 of 31 three-pointers while Washington, who had a four-game home winning streak snapped, was just 9 of 36.
TIP-INS
Hornets: Improved to 9-1 when leading after three quarters. … Charlotte shot 9 of 15 from 3 in the first half. … Seven different players had at least one steal. … P.J. Washington (left elbow hyperextension) was out.
Wizards: Beal swatted a Ball runner out of bounds in the third. The star guards fist-bumped after the play. … Harrell picked up a technical in the fourth.
TIME TO GO-GO
Washington Fs Rui Hachimura (personal) and Davis Bertans (left ankle sprain) were assigned to the G-league affiliate Capital City Go-Go on Monday. Coach Wes Unseld Jr. said Bertans, who is averaging 6.1 points and shooting 33 % from 3 in seven games, would travel on the team’s upcoming four-game trip. He last played in a 118-111 loss at Atlanta on Nov. 1. Hachimura has yet to play this season after averaging 13.8 points and 5.5 rebounds in 57 games in 2020-21.
Rep. Louie Gohmert will retire from Congress to run for Texas attorney general, he announced Monday night.
The Texas Republican officially said he would run for the office on Newsmax TV’s “Stinchfield” show. A video announcing his campaign to oust Republican incumbent Ken Paxton was released later in the evening.
In the campaign launch video, Mr. Gohmert explained he reached his initial goal of raising $1 million for the race.
“So I will be filing to run for Texas attorney general, a priority will be election integrity so that every legal vote counts. Though our current AG has had two terms, it seems he really started working harder after so many of his most honorable and very top people in the AG’s office left complaining of criminal conduct,” Mr. Gohmert said.
He added, “If you allow me, I will not wait to be my busiest until after there’s some bad press about legal improprieties. I’ll start boldly protecting your rights on day one. Unconstitutional mandates will not be tolerated from anyone.”
Mr. Gohmert had said last week that he was pondering a late entry into the packed primary race to oust Mr. Paxton. He warned then Mr. Paxton’s legal issues could hurt him and the Republican Party in November.
Mr. Paxton was indicted in 2015, not long after he took office, on securities-fraud charges that are still outstanding.
More recently, the FBI began investigating him over claims by former deputies that he took advantage of his office to help a wealthy donor.
He has denied wrongdoing in both cases, while painting his primary foes as ambitious politicians who are doing the bidding of Democrats and making it harder for the GOP to hold the key office next year.
Mr. Gohmert, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, first came to Congress in 2005. A member of the House Freedom Caucus, he holds assignments on the House Judiciary and Natural Resources committees.
