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Fallen biotech star Elizabeth Holmes fought back tears while testifying at her fraud trial Monday as she recounted alleged abuse by a controlling boyfriend running operations at her failed blood testing startup.
Holmes choked up as she told jurors that ex-boyfriend Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, whom she'd brought in to help run her company Theranos, denigrated her and forced himself on her sexually when angry about how she was running the company.
"He would get very angry with me and then he would sometimes come upstairs to our bedroom and force me to have sex with him when I didn't want to," Holmes said of Balwani.
Balwani, who served as Theranos' chief operating officer, bullied Holmes to succeed in the business world, she said during her fourth day of testimony in her fraud trial, which began in early September.
Holmes could face decades in prison if convicted on allegations she defrauded investors in her once-hyped Silicon Valley company, which collapsed after its diagnostic machines did not perform as promised.
Balwani, almost two decades Holmes' senior, would criticize her for acting "giddy" or not behaving in ways he considered serious, the now-37-year-old said, as she went through notes and text messages from that time.
"Sunny was saying he was astonished by my mediocrity and he was exhausted with me, that I was a monkey that was trying to fly a spaceship," she told jurors.
Balwani, who is facing trial separately, has denied the abuse allegations, with his lawyer describing them as "salacious and inflammatory" in court filings.
"Ms Holmes' allegations are deeply offensive to Mr. Balwani, devastating personally to him," lawyer Jeffrey Coopersmith wrote.
Holmes was 19 when she launched Theranos in 2003, eventually promising self-service testing machines that could run an analytical gamut cheaply and on just a few drops of blood.
She dropped out of Stanford University in 2004, testifying on Monday that she was raped while a student there, and that she left school to focus on starting Theranos.
Holmes said she believed in the company's technology and did not challenge Balwani's running of the lab, adding she was shocked when the lab failed a regulator inspection in 2016.
She said the relationship ended that year and she replaced the company's leadership, with her brother helping her move out of the home the couple shared while Balwani was traveling in Thailand.
"He wasn't who I thought he was, I thought if I was going to allow the company to see through its potential, I had to do that without him at the company."
Holmes rose to renown while convincing high-profile backers, journalists and business partners that her idea could be translated into reality and could change health care.
Prosecutors contend Holmes and Balwani conspired to defraud investors, doctors, and patients.
Her defense said in opening arguments that she is guilty of nothing more than trying and failing to realize a visionary idea.
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Prosecutors ask US Supreme Court to rule on Bill Cosby release
November 30, 2021
Prosecutors have asked the US Supreme Court to review comedian Bill Cosby's overturned conviction for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman 15 years ago, they announced Monday.
"The US Supreme Court can right what we believe is a grievous wrong," Kevin Steele, district attorney for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania said in a statement announcing that the appeal had been filed last Wednesday.
Cosby was freed from prison on June 30 following a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that he had been denied a fair trial, in a move seen as a blow to the #MeToo movement.
At the time of his release, the comedian had been jailed since 2018 for assaulting Andrea Constand at his Philadelphia mansion in 2004 when she was an employee at Temple University.
In its decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court focused on a non-prosecution agreement between a former district attorney and Cosby over evidence he gave in a civil case.
Cosby had admitted giving Quaaludes, a now banned party drug, to women with a view to having sex with them in deposition testimony in that case.
However the testimony was then used against him in a criminal trial years later brought forward by Steele.
Cosby's lawyers argued he believed that testimony was immune from prosecution in criminal court when he gave it.
They argued that the non-prosecution agreement meant he should not have been charged, which the Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices agreed with.
However Steele said Monday that "petitioning to ask the High Court for review was the right thing to do," and denounced the "far-reaching negative consequences" of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision.
In his appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Cosby presented a 2005 press release as evidence of the first prosecutor's statement not to prosecute him.
Steele said Monday that the decision merited appeal because it set a precedent "that prosecutors' statements in press releases now seemingly create immunity."
A spokesman for the 84-year-old actor criticized the latest appeal as "a pathetic last-ditch effort," in a statement quoted by multiple US news outlets.
Cosby served more than two years of a three-to-ten-year sentence for aggravated indecent assault and has always maintained his innocence.
Although more than 60 women charged that they had been victims of sexual assault by Cosby, he was tried criminally only for Constand's assault, since the statute of limitations had expired in the other cases.
Cosby shattered racial barriers with his Emmy-winning role on "I Spy" in the 1960s and also starred as a dad and doctor on the hit TV series "The Cosby Show" in the 1980s.
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Existing Covid-19 jabs will struggle against the Omicron variant and it will take months to develop a new shot that works, the head of US vaccine manufacturer Moderna has told the Financial Times.
Stephane Bancel told the newspaper in an interview published Tuesday that data would be available on the effectiveness of current vaccines in the next two weeks but scientists were not optimistic.
"All the scientists I've talked to ... are like 'this is not going to be good'," he told the newspaper.
Bancel's warning came as G7 health ministers held emergency talks on the new variant, which is spreading around the world and prompting nations to close their borders once again or impose fresh travel restrictions.
The World Health Organization has called the risk from Omicron "very high".
Bancel said researchers were concerned because 32 of 50 mutations found in the Omicron variant were on the spike protein, a part of the virus that vaccines use to bolster the immune system against Covid.
He told the FT there would be a "material drop" in the effectiveness of current jabs against Omicron.
Moderna has already said it is working on an Omicron-specific vaccine, as is US drugmaker Pfizer.
Chief executive Bancel said his company could deliver between two billion and three billion doses in 2022 but it would be dangerous to shift all production to an Omicron-specific shot with other strains of the virus still in circulation.
His more alarming tone contrasts with efforts by politicians to project calm regarding Omicron.
US President Joe Biden said Monday the strain was "not a cause for panic".
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