Tag: John

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Health

John Carreyrou predicts Elizabeth Holmes trial final result

John Carreyrou predicts Elizabeth Holmes trial outcome

The writer of “Bad Blood” has not finished telling the Theranos story.

Three years after his bestseller was published, John Carreyrou is releasing a new podcast to uncover the final chapter of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes. “Bad Blood: The Final Chapter” follows the upcoming trial against Holmes.

In an interview with CNBC, Carreyrou shared his bold predictions about her criminal fraud trial due to begin in August after several delays due to the coronavirus pandemic and her unexpected pregnancy. Despite the postponements, Carreyrou predicts Holmes will be convicted of wire fraud and said a guilty verdict in her trial will be a “big shot across the bow for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs”.

“The message will be that you can’t really do what you want, you can’t completely ignore rules and regulations. You can’t shake your nose at regulators and authorities,” Carreyrou said.

He warns that a not guilty verdict will set a dangerous precedent among startup CEOs. “Young entrepreneurs will say, ‘Look what Elizabeth Holmes got away with and she didn’t go to jail for it.'” Carreyrou adds, “In this case, it takes a guilty verdict to correct course.”

Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani ran the now defunct start-up Theranos together as CEO and President – and at times also as girlfriend and boyfriend.

The two are facing separate criminal jury trials over allegations they lied to patients and doctors while pushing investors for hundreds of millions of dollars. Holmes and Balwani have both pleaded not guilty.

Carreyrou tells CNBC that a large part of Holmes’ defense strategy could be blaming Balwani. He predicts that Holmes will take a stand and tell the jury that Balwani “kept her in his psychological grip, that he was an abusive friend”.

CNBC reached out to Holmes and Balwani attorneys. They did not respond to calls for comment.

Holmes plans to call a psychologist who specializes in relationship trauma as a witness. Carreyrou, who has spent years reporting on Holmes and the events in Theranos, says he is not buying the defense.

“Based on all of the interviews I did for my book and other interviews I did for the podcast, it’s clear that they ran this company and allegedly committed this fraud together as a couple,” he said.

“If they couldn’t agree, she had the last word,” said Carreyrou. “That’s why I find it hard to believe that she was under his psychological grip and had no will of her own.”

Watch the video to learn more from Carreyrou about his trial predictions, new evidence he’s received, and his upcoming podcast.

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World News

John Bercow, Central Determine in Brexit Drama as U.Okay. Speaker, Switches to Labour

John Bercow, Central Figure in Brexit Drama as U.K. Speaker, Switches to Labour

Mr. Bercow also was accused during his career of bullying members of his staff, claims that he denied. He stepped down in 2019.

Mr. Bercow is a strong critic of Mr. Johnson, a champion of Brexit whose rise has coincided with an exodus of pro-European Union politicians from the Conservative Party. Mr. Bercow told The Observer newspaper that the Conservatives under Mr. Johnson had become “reactionary, populist, nationalistic and sometimes even xenophobic.”

“The conclusion I have reached is that this government needs to be replaced,” he said. “The reality is that the Labour Party is the only vehicle that can achieve that objective.”

Justice Secretary Robert Buckland rejected the characterization of the party as xenophobic and said that Mr. Bercow’s decision to forgo political neutrality “actually has the effect of diminishing the force of his voice in politics.”

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Politics

DOJ drops lawsuit over John Bolton guide on Trump

DOJ drops lawsuit over John Bolton book on Trump

U.S. National Security Advisor, John Bolton, meets with journalists during a visit to London, August 12, 2019.

Peter Nicholls | Reuters

The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday dropped a lawsuit that sought to seize profits from a best-selling book written by John Bolton about his tenure as national security advisor to former President Donald Trump, a court filing shows.

At the same time, the Justice Department informed Bolton that it is closing an investigation into whether he committed a crime by possibly disclosing classified information in that book, “The Room Where it Happened,” according to a statement by Bolton’s office.

That book, published last year by Simon & Schuster, was harshly critical of Trump.

“These actions represent a complete vindication for Ambassador Bolton, and a repudiation of former President Trump’s attempt, under the pretext of protecting classified information, first to suppress the book’s publication and when that failed in court, to penalize the Ambassador,” Bolton’s office said.

“Trump openly admitted his desire to block publication of the book before the 2020 election for political reasons,” the statement noted.

“He said, for example, ‘We’re going to try and block the publication of the book. After I leave office, he can do this. But not in the White House.’ “

The statement also pointed out that before the Justice Department agreed to dismiss the lawsuit, the judge in the case, Royce Lamberth, had granted a request by Bolton’s lawyer to obtain evidence that could back up “allegations that President Trump or senior White House officials acted in bad faith by intentionally delaying prepublication review and by attempting to unduly influence classification decisions” about the book.

A Justice Department spokesman and a spokeswoman for Trump did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

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The Justice Department sued Bolton in 2020, claiming he failed to abide by a requirement that he receive written permission before publishing his book in order to make sure that no classified information was disclosed in it.

The department failed to convince a judge to prevent the book from being released, but was continuing to seek profits from it with the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

In its statement Wednesday, Bolton’s office attached a letter from lawyers for Ellen Knight, a former National Security Council official who reviewed the manuscript of the book for classified material.

The letter details how the Trump White House tried to keep the book from being published even after the manuscript was revised and found to contain no classified material.

Bolton’s lawyer Charles Cooper said in a statement, “We are very pleased that the Department of Justice has dismissed with prejudice its civil lawsuit against Ambassador Bolton and has terminated grand jury proceedings.”

“We argued from the outset that neither action was justifiable, because they were initiated only as a result of President Trump’s politically motivated order to prevent publication of the Ambassador’s book before the 2020 election,” Cooper said.

“By ending these proceedings without in any way penalizing Ambassador Bolton or limiting his proceeds from the book, the Department of Justice has tacitly acknowledged that President Trump and his White House officials acted illegitimately.”

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Politics

Justice Dept. Ends Prison Inquiry Into John Bolton’s E book

Justice Dept. Ends Criminal Inquiry Into John Bolton’s Book

The Justice Department has stopped its criminal investigation into whether a derogatory memoir by President Donald J. Trump’s National Security Advisor John R. Bolton has illegally disclosed classified information and is closing a deal to resolve its lawsuit aimed at recovering profits from the To recover the book, to two people who have been briefed on the matter.

The deal would end an attempt that began under the Trump administration to silence Mr Bolton and sue him over the book’s profits. Closing both the investigation and the lawsuit is a clear reprimand from Attorney General Merrick B. Garland over the Trump Justice Department’s tactics on the matter.

The details of the agreement were unclear. A Justice Department deal is likely to prevent Trump administration officials from being forced to take oath to answer questions about their tenure. A federal judge had given Mr. Bolton’s attorney Charles J. Cooper permission to begin dismissing these officers, but a settlement would end that lawsuit.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Legal action against Mr Bolton began last year after Mr Trump publicly and privately pressured White House staff and Justice Department officials to use their powers to prevent Mr Bolton from reading his book about his time at the White House by Mr. Trump. “The Room It Happened In.” In June 2020, the Justice Department sued Mr. Bolton for an attempt to stop the publication of the memoirs and recover the profits made from them; a judge ruled that the department could continue to pursue profits but could not stop their publication.

Last September, it was revealed that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation to investigate whether Mr Bolton had unlawfully disclosed secret information in the book – an investigation that began after the Trump administration did not stop publication. As part of the investigation, the department issued a grand jury subpoena to the book’s editor, Simon & Schuster, for communications records of the memoir.

Drawing on detailed accounts of Mr. Bolton’s tenure as national security advisor, the book portrayed Mr. Trump as a corrupt leader who puts his personal and financial interests over the country’s national security.

Released in June, it became an instant best-seller and fed an increasingly damaging narrative about Mr Trump during his re-election campaign. The Justice Department continued its lawsuit to seize Mr. Bolton’s profits and the criminal investigation, including the unusual move of Simon & Schuster’s subpoena.

The Biden Justice Department inherited the matter and had spent the past few weeks negotiating the terms of the settlement with Mr Bolton’s legal team, according to one person who was briefed on the matter.

During the transition to president, Biden advisors investigated a number of difficult questions related to Mr. Trump and the way the Justice Department under Attorney General William P. Barr worked that they would likely face after taking office.

From an examination of the publicly available materials on Mr Bolton’s case, the Biden transition advisors concluded that the department had acted in a highly political manner. The ministry, the advisors argued, could allow the book-win lawsuit, but it has the potential to expose unsavory behavior by Trump’s White House and Justice Department. The transition advisors found it inappropriate to simply embarrass an unsubstantiated case in order to embarrass the Trump administration, and officials recommended that the department drop it.

The White House’s efforts to meddle in Mr Bolton’s book came to light in September when a career administration official accused Trump advisers of improperly intervening to prevent Mr Bolton’s account of his time as national security advisor by Mr. Trump becomes public.

The officer, a classified book screening specialist named Ellen Knight, said the aides made false claims that Mr. Bolton had leaked classified information and suggested that if she refused, they would take revenge on her. to participate.

She also said an adviser to Mr. Trump “instructed her to withhold any response temporarily” to a request from Mr. Bolton to review a chapter on the president’s dealings with Ukraine to prevent it from being opposed during the first impeachment trial Mr Trump will be released The focus was on allegations that he had abused his powers in foreign policy with the Kiev government.

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Politics

John Warner, Genteel Senator From Virginia, Dies at 94

John Warner, Genteel Senator From Virginia, Dies at 94

WASHINGTON — Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the genteel former Navy secretary who shed the image of a dilettante to become a leading Republican voice on military policy during 30 years in the Senate, died on Tuesday night. He was 94.

He died at his home of heart failure, according to a former staff member.

Mr. Warner may have for a time been best known nationally as the dashing sixth husband of the actress Elizabeth Taylor. Her celebrity was a draw on the campaign trail during his difficult first race for the Senate in 1978, an election he won narrowly to start his political career. The couple divorced in 1982.

In the latter stages of his congressional service, Mr. Warner was also recognized as a protector of the Senate’s traditions and was credited with trying to forge bipartisan consensus on knotty issues such as the Iraq war, judicial nominations and treatment of terror detainees.

A full obituary will be published soon.

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Business

John Malone sees WarnerMedia-Discovery as No. three streamer behind Netflix, Disney+

John Malone sees WarnerMedia-Discovery as No. 3 streamer behind Netflix, Disney+

The blockbuster deal with WarnerMedia-Discovery is particularly good news for HBO Max, billionaire media mogul John Malone told CNBC’s David Faber.

In an interview that aired Monday, Malone said his previous reservations about HBO Max’s ability to be a dominant player in the crowded digital streaming landscape will be addressed once AT&T becomes its own service is under the same roof as Discovery.

“I thought they would have a hard time getting the growth in subscribers they were hoping for in the US, and I think they are,” said Malone, a Discovery board member who has more than 25% of the voting rights in the company.

Malone believes the new company could join Netflix and Disney + as a true global powerhouse.

“I think we will not only be the third platform of its kind, but I think we will be very competitive with the other two when it comes to meeting the world’s entertainment, curiosity and information needs, basically worldwide Platform, “said Malone.

John Malone

Matthew Staver | Bloomberg | Getty Images

According to the company, Disney + ended the second quarter of the fiscal year with 103.6 million subscribers. Netflix announced last month that it had nearly 208 million subscribers worldwide.

AT&T announced in April that HBO and HBO Max combined had 44.2 million subscribers in the US and nearly 64 million worldwide.

WarnerMedia’s flagship streaming flagship HBO Max debuted in the US last May and plans to expand internationally. Malone believes that Discovery’s global expertise will support this advance.

“For me, the problem with HBO Max is that at that point it wasn’t possible to go international. Combining it with Discovery, given Discovery’s existing presence, was a huge presence in 200 countries around the world with a great brand,. .. for me, that’s the big plus, “said the cable television pioneer and longtime chairman of Liberty Media.

Malone opened up in a comprehensive interview with CNBC about AT & T’s deal announced last week with Discovery and WarnerMedia, which the telecommunications giant acquired less than three years ago.

If the transaction receives regulatory approval, WarnerMedia’s various media and entertainment properties, including CNN, HBO and the Warner Bros. studio, will be spun off from AT&T and combined with Discovery’s brands such as HGTV, Food Network and Discovery Channel .

It would position the new company – which hasn’t been renamed yet – as a stronger competitor in the highly competitive streaming video wars. In addition to WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, the Discovery Signature direct-to-consumer platform Discovery + was launched in January.

Malone trusted in David Zaslav’s leadership

David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery, told CNBC last week that the combined company could ultimately attract 400 million subscribers to streaming video worldwide – significantly more than any other competitor.

“Netflix is ​​a great company, Disney is a great company, but we have a portfolio of content that is very diverse and generally engaging,” said Zaslav, who will lead the new company.

Malone said he has confidence in Zaslav’s management skills and generally believes the connection between Discovery and WarnerMedia is beneficial. He also said he had no qualms about giving up his Discovery shares with super-voting as part of the deal.

David Zaslav, President and CEO of Discovery Inc.

Anjali Sundaram | CNBC

According to FactSet, Malone owns more than 93% of the Class B shares of Discovery, which equates to 10 votes per share compared to one vote per share for Class A. His ownership of these shares enables his significant voting rights in the company. Discovery also has a third class of stocks known as Series C.

The combined WarnerMedia Discovery will only have one type of warehouse.

“My reaction was okay that I thought the alphabet soup we had served its purpose had protected the company and given it a long term for several years. It was time when its usefulness ran out, I agreed “said Malone, whose Liberty Media spun off its stake in Discovery Communications in 2005 into a separate entity.

Malone on the “brave decision” made by John Stankey, CEO of AT&T

AT & T’s decision to outsource WarnerMedia marked the end of any attempt to link a content producing asset to a wireless company.

Malone praised John Stankey, CEO of AT&T, for pulling the plug on this built-in experiment, which some observers questioned from the time the deal was first announced in 2016. AT&T completed the acquisition of Time Warner in 2018 following a regulatory and judicial dispute.

“John Stankey showed a hell of a lot of courage in making this decision at this point because he was really chasing two capital-intensive, very competitive rabbits,” said Malone.

Stankey replaced Randall Stephenson as AT&T CEO in July 2020. He was President and Chief Operating Officer.

“”[Stankey’s] The idea of ​​focusing AT&T on its primary, traditional business and allowing other managers to pursue direct consumer opportunity with a different balance sheet was a bold move, “said Malone.

Categories
Entertainment

Watch John Legend’s Full Duke College Graduation Speech

Watch John Legend's Full Duke University Commencement Speech

John Legend prepares our graduates for success for 2021. On May 2, the “Wild” singer delivered a powerful speech to Duke University graduates. This is John’s first return to a large audience since February 2020 and he prepared some precious words of wisdom especially for the occasion. Everyone should take his advice to heart.

John admitted the 2021 class didn’t have the typical college experience. “I feel your pain: you lost something that you won’t get back. I’m not going to gloss over it – it sucks,” he said. “Last year you had to pause to see yourself not only in competition with one another, but also in community with one another.”

He continued, “We all had to slow down, social distance, cover our faces, stop filling our days with maximum productivity, and just protect each other, keep each other alive, take care of each other.” John encouraged graduates to remember that “Love should be your North Star. Let it guide you.” See his full remarks above.

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Politics

GOP Rep. John Katko, who voted to question Trump, being recruited to run for NY governor

GOP Rep. John Katko, who voted to impeach Trump, being recruited to run for NY governor

Rep. John Katko, RN.Y., speaks during a press conference following a House Republican meeting in Washington on Wednesday, April 14, 2021.

Caroline Brehman | CQ Appeal, Inc. | Getty Images

A Republican Congressman who voted for the charges against former President Donald Trump is being recruited to run for New York governor next year.

Lawmaker Rep. John Katko has not ruled out running, said these individuals, who refused to be named due to the private nature of the conversations.

The development comes when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, comes under fire over several scandals. Several women have accused him of sexual harassment, which he denies while his government is under investigation for handling Covid-19 death dates. Cuomo has turned down calls for resignation and was on track to run for a fourth term.

Katko, who has called for Cuomo’s resignation, is a prominent member of the House Republican Caucus. He is the senior member of the House Committee on Homeland Security and may be named chair if the GOP Republicans retake the house during the 2022 midterm elections.

But Katko could again run into stumbling blocks running for Congress: there is a potential for backlash within his own party for his impeachment decision, and he represents a swing district. Katko’s campaign raised nearly $ 340,000 in the first quarter and has more than $ 580,000 available through April, according to new records from the Bundestag Electoral Commission.

The race in his district, the 24th in New York, is slated to be a litter next year, according to analysts at Cook Political Report. The district, which includes Syracuse, is one of at least 17 House Republican races that are considered competitive. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, won Katko’s district against former President Donald Trump by almost nine points.

Republicans won last year’s House of Representatives elections and are just a handful of seats away from becoming a majority.

Media representatives for both the Katko Convention Bureau and the 2022 re-election campaign did not return repeated requests for comments.

The recruitment surge for Katko shows that members of the GOP are looking for a more moderate candidate for the highest office in a traditionally democratic state. New York GOP MP Lee Zeldin has already announced his candidacy for governor. Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has said he could run on the Republican ticket.

Zeldin, Giuliani and others are due to speak for nationwide contenders at the New York Republican meeting in Albany on Monday, according to a person briefed on the matter. MEP Elise Stefanik, RN.Y., who has not publicly ruled out running for governor in 2022, is also on the list of speakers. Katko is not expected to attend, this person added.

Katko is the chairman of the moderate republican government group. His vote shows that he’s not necessarily a hardliner either. While Katko pushed back certain parts of the Affordable Care Act, in 2015 he didn’t vote to repeal it entirely. Katko later voted against the Affordable Health Care Act, the Republican’s replacement for the ACA, which passed the House but not received it by the Senate.

Cuomo has since said that he wanted to run for a fourth term despite the exam.

The poll is mixed for Cuomo. A March poll by Morning Consult shows that 53% of New York voters approve of Cuomo. However, a Quinnipiac poll conducted last month found that over 60% of registered registered New York voters would prefer Cuomo to stop running in 2022.

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Business

John Naisbitt, Enterprise Guru and Writer of ‘Megatrends,’ Dies at 92

John Naisbitt, Business Guru and Author of ‘Megatrends,’ Dies at 92

His marriage to Mrs. Senior ended in divorce, as did his second to Patricia Aburdene. He and his daughter are survived by his third wife, Doris (Dinklage) Naisbitt; his sons James, David and John; another daughter, Nana Naisbitt; a stepdaughter, Nora Rosenblatt; 11 grandchildren and two stepchildren.

Running out of money after just two semesters, Mr Naisbitt dropped out of college with his first child en route to write executive speeches at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY

He and his family moved to Chicago in 1957, where he worked in public relations. He worked in Washington between 1963 and 1966, first as assistant to the director of the National Education Commission, then as assistant to the secretary for health, education and social affairs.

He first developed his method for trend analysis while on a contract to evaluate the effects of various Great Society programs under President Lyndon B. Johnson. A fan of American history, he had read Civil War books by Bruce Catton, who relied heavily on contemporary newspapers to get a feel for the mood of the country during the war.

“I went to a newsstand and bought about 50 newspapers out of town,” he told The Christian Science Monitor in 1982. “And I was absolutely stunned by what I learned in three hours about what was going on in America.”

He called it “content analysis” and after returning to Chicago he put it into practice with his first company, Urban Research Corporation. Long before computers did this job almost instantly, Mr. Naisbitt employed a small army of analysts to read dozens of newspapers daily and cut stories of urban protests, crime, and campus rioting, which he relied on to produce reports for nonprofits and writing to corporate clients.

After the end of his first marriage and the loss of his company, he moved back to Washington in the mid-1970s and opened another similar company. It also failed and resulted in bankruptcy filing in 1977.

Categories
Business

Waymo CEO John Krafcik steps apart as co-CEO’s take over

Waymo CEO John Krafcik steps aside as co-CEO’s take over

After five and a half years running Waymo, Alphabet’s subsidiary developing autonomous drive technology, John Krafcik decided it was time for someone else to run the company. In fact, two top Waymo executives, Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, will become co-CEOs of the company.

In a blog post explaining his decision to step down as CEO but continue to act as a consultant to Waymo, Krafcik wrote, “Now with the fully autonomous Waymo One hail service, open to everyone in our Metro Phoenix launch area , and with the fifth generation Waymo driver prepared for use in hailstorm and goods delivery, it is a wonderful opportunity for me to pass the baton as Co-CEOs to Tekedra and Dmitri. “

Tekedra Mawakana is moving to the top position four years after joining Waymo and was most recently Chief Operating Officer. Dmitri Dolgov started his career at Waymo in 2009 when the company was founded and known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project. He becomes Co-CEO after most recently as Waymo’s Chief Technology Officer.

In a joint statement to Waymo employees, Mawakana and Dolgov wrote, “We are determined to work with you to develop, deploy and commercialize the Waymo Driver and drive the success of our incredible team and this road and opportunity ahead of us.”

While Waymo has established itself as a leading developer of autonomous vehicle technology with more than 32 million kilometers driven on public roads and more than 32 billion kilometers driven in simulation, the company’s conservative approach to expanding operations has frustrated those who rely on Self-drivers hope vehicles across the country. This deliberate approach was central to Krafcik’s tenure as CEO.

In meeting with reporters, Krafcik regularly stressed the importance of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles being as safe as possible. In March 2018 after a pedestrian was hit and killed by an autonomous Uber vehicle that was tested on a public road in Arizona, Krafcik told CNBC, “Part of our responsibility at Waymo is to help the world and cities in that we act to secure and the regulators that regulate these cities understand our technology. “

Waymo One autonomous hail service has been offering rides in the Phoenix region since 2017. It has evolved from a pilot program with a limited number of pre-selected customers to a publicly accessible hail service that uses a fleet of vehicles that drive without a driver. While Waymo has discussed expanding the Waymo One Autonomous Public Use Program to other cities for public use, the company has not come up with a final plan for it.

In the meantime, Waymo Via, which is designed for the autonomous transport of goods, is being tested with truck hubs in Arizona and Texas. At the end of last year, Waymo and Daimler’s Freightliner signed a contract to develop fully autonomous trucks.

– CNBC’s Meghan Reeder contributed to this article.