No crime" in paying for assistance during campaigning: SDA






SINGAPORE: The Singapore Democratic Alliance has said there is "no crime" in paying for assistance during the hustings.

The party was referring to its use of supporters, many of them youths, who have been helping in the Punggol East by-election.

The party sent out a statement in response to an online report of supporters being paid to assist in campaigning for its candidate, Desmond Lim.

The statement called Mr Lim "resourceful" for using this means, and clarified that "he has not conducted any corrupt services to induce the voters".

It said that engaging paid assistance in doing ground work is common for any party.

The party added that engaging volunteers allows it to stretch its budget further.

It said it will not hesitate to take legal action if further comments affecting the party's credibility are raised regarding this matter.

- CNA/fa



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PM, Sonia inaugurate 2.8km Jaipur tunnel that connects city with Agra in Uttar Pradesh

JAIPUR: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi Saturday inaugurated a 2.8-km tunnel that offers an alternative route to connect the Rajasthan capital with Agra in Uttar Pradesh, an official said.

The prime minister and Gandhi, who are in Jaipur to attend a Congress brainstorming session, inaugurated the Ghat Ki Guni tunnel in the afternoon.

The function was beamed live on 13 large screens put up at various locations in the city, said an official of the urban development and housing department.

Chief minister Ashok Gehlot and other ministers and party leaders participated in the function.

The tunnel connects Jawahar Nagar bypass and Agra Road near Goner junction. A sum of Rs.150 crore was spent on the project, the offcial said.

The tunnel will have controlled traffic movement, sensors for control of air pollution, display boards and cameras for checking vehicles' speed, the official said.

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Attack at Algeria Gas Plant Heralds New Risks for Energy Development



The siege by Islamic militants at a remote Sahara desert natural gas plant in Algeria this week signaled heightened dangers in the region for international oil companies, at a time when they have been expanding operations in Africa as one of the world's last energy frontiers. (See related story: "Pictures: Four New Offshore Drilling Frontiers.")


As BP, Norway's Statoil, Italy's Eni, and other companies evacuated personnel from Algeria, it was not immediately clear how widely the peril would spread in the wake of the hostage-taking at the sprawling In Amenas gas complex near the Libyan border.



A map of disputed islands in the East and South China Seas.

Map by National Geographic



Algeria, the fourth-largest crude oil producer on the continent and a major exporter of natural gas and refined fuels, may not have been viewed as the most hospitable climate for foreign energy companies, but that was due to unfavorable financial terms, bureaucracy, and corruption. The energy facilities themselves appeared to be safe, with multiple layers of security provided both by the companies and by government forces, several experts said. (See related photos: "Oil States: Are They Stable? Why It Matters.")


"It is particularly striking not only because it hasn't happened before, but because it happened in Algeria, one of the stronger states in the region," says Hanan Amin-Salem, a senior manager at the industry consulting firm PFC Energy, who specializes in country risk. She noted that in the long civil war that gripped the country throughout the 1990s, there had never been an attack on Algeria's energy complex. But now, hazard has spread from weak surrounding states, as the assault on In Amenas was carried out in an apparent retaliation for a move by French forces against the Islamists who had taken over Timbuktu and other towns in neighboring Mali. (See related story: "Timbuktu Falls.")


"What you're really seeing is an intensification of the fundamental problem of weak states, and empowerment of heavily armed groups that are really well motivated and want to pursue a set of aims," said Amin-Salem. In PFC Energy's view, she says, risk has increased in Mauritania, Chad, and Niger—indeed, throughout Sahel, the belt that bisects North Africa, separating the Sahara in the north from the tropical forests further south.


On Thursday, the London-based corporate consulting firm Exclusive Analysis, which was recently acquired by the global consultancy IHS, sent an alert to clients warning that oil and gas facilities near the Libyan and Mauritanian borders and in Mauritania's Hodh Ech Chargui province were at "high risk" of attack by jihadis.


"A Hot Place to Drill"


The attack at In Amenas comes at a time of unprecedented growth for the oil industry in Africa. (See related gallery: "Pictures: The Year's Most Overlooked Energy Stories.") Forecasters expect that oil output throughout Africa will double by 2025, says Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of the energy and sustainability program at the University of California, Davis, who has counted 20 rounds of bidding for new exploration at sites in Africa's six largest oil-producing states.


Oil and natural gas are a large part of the Algerian economy, accounting for 60 percent of government budget revenues, more than a third of GDP and more than 97 percent of its export earnings. But the nation's resources are seen as largely undeveloped, and Algeria has tried to attract new investment. Over the past year, the government has sought to reform the law to boost foreign companies' interests in their investments, although those efforts have foundered.


Technology has been one of the factors driving the opening up of Africa to deeper energy exploration. Offshore and deepwater drilling success in the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil led to prospecting now under way offshore in Ghana, Mozambique, and elsewhere. (See related story: "New Oil—And a Huge Challenge—for Ghana.") Jaffe says the Houston-based company Anadarko Petroleum has sought to transfer its success in "subsalt seismic" exploration technology, surveying reserves hidden beneath the hard salt layer at the bottom of the sea, to the equally challenging seismic exploration beneath the sands of the Sahara in Algeria, where it now has three oil and gas operations.


Africa also is seen as one of the few remaining oil-rich regions of the world where foreign oil companies can obtain production-sharing agreements with governments, contracts that allow them a share of the revenue from the barrels they produce, instead of more limited service contracts for work performed.


"You now have the technology to tap the resources more effectively, and the fiscal terms are going to be more attractive than elsewhere—you put these things together and it's been a hot place to drill," says Jaffe, who doesn't see the energy industry's interest in Africa waning, despite the increased terrorism risk. "What I think will happen in some of these countries is that the companies are going to reveal new securities systems and procedures they have to keep workers safe," she says. "I don't think they will abandon these countries."


This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.


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Te'o Denies Involvement in Girlfriend Hoax













Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o told ESPN that he "never, not ever" was involved in creating the hoax that had him touting what turned out to be a fictional girlfriend, "Lennay Kekua."


"When they hear the facts, they'll know," Te'o told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap in his first interview since the story broke. "They'll know that there is no way that I could be a part of this."


"I wasn't faking it," he said during a 2 1/2-hour interview, according to ESPN.com.


Te'o said he only learned for sure this week that he had been duped. On Wednesday, he received a Twitter message, allegedly from a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, apologizing for the hoax, Te'o told Schaap.


The sports website Deadspin, which first revealed the hoax this week, has reported that Tuiasosopo, a 22-year-old of Samoan descent who lives in Antelope Valley, Calif., asked a woman he knew for her photo and that photo became the face of Kekua's Twitter account.


Te'o told Schaap that Tuiasosopo was represented to him as Kekua's cousin.


"I hope he learns," Te'o said of Tuiasosopo, according to coverage of the interview on ESPN.com. "I hope he understands what he's done. I don't wish an ill thing to somebody. I just hope he learns. I think embarrassment is big enough."


Click Here for a Who's Who in the Manti Te'o Case






AP Photo/ESPN Images, Ryan Jones











Manti Te'o Hoax: Was He Duped or Did He Know? Watch Video









Manti Te'o Hoax: Notre Dame Star Allegedly Scammed Watch Video









Tale of Notre Dame Football Star's Girlfriend and Her Death an Alleged Hoax Watch Video





Te'o admitted to a few mistakes in his own conduct, including telling his father he met Kekua in Hawaii even though his attempt to meet her actually failed. Later retellings of that tale led to inconsistencies in media reports, Te'o said, adding that he never actually met Kekua in person.


Te'o added that he feared people would think it was crazy for him to be involved with someone that he never met, so, "I kind of tailored my stories to have people think that, yeah, he met her before she passed away."


The relationship got started on Facebook during his freshman year, Te'o said.


"My relationship with Lennay wasn't a four-year relationship," Te'o said, according to ESPN.com. "There were blocks and times and periods in which we would talk and then it would end."


He showed Schaap Facebook correspondence indicating that other people knew of Kekua -- though Te'o now believes they, too, were tricked.


The relationship became more intense, Te'o said, after he received a call that Kekua was in a coma following a car accident involving a drunk driver on April 28.


Soon, Te'o and Kekua became inseparable over the phone, he said, continuing their phone conversations through her recovery from the accident, and then during her alleged battle against leukemia.


Even so, Te'o never tried to visit Kekua at her hospital in California.


"It never really crossed my mind," he said, according to ESPN.com. "I don't know. I was in school."


But the communication between the two was intense. They even had ritual where they discussed scripture every day, Te'o said. His parents also participated via text message, and Te'o showed Schaap some of the texts.


On Sept. 12, a phone caller claiming to be Kekua's relative told Te'o that Kekua had died of leukemia, Te'o said. However, on Dec. 6, Te'o said he got a call allegedly from Kekua saying she was alive. He said he was utterly confused and did not know what to believe.


ESPN's 2 1/2-hour interview was conducted in Bradenton, Fla., with Te'o's lawyer present but without video cameras. Schaap said Te'o was composed, comfortable and in command, and that he said he didn't want to go on camera to keep the setting intimate and avoid a big production.


According to ABC News interviews and published reports, Te'o received phone calls, text messages and letters before every football game from his "girlfriend." He was in contact with her family, including a twin brother, a second brother, sister and parents. He called often to check in with them, just as he did with his own family. And "Kekua" kept in contact with Te'o's friends and family, and teammates spoke to her on the phone.






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Earl Smith is the man behind a military patch that President Obama prizes


That February morning in 2008 found Barack Obama decidedly out of sorts.


He was locked in one battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination that showed no signs of ending — and another with a vicious cold that felt the same way.


As he rode the service elevator in the backway of a convention hotel here, the snowy-haired African American operating it turned suddenly. He held out a black-and-gold bit of fabric embroidered with a screaming eagle.

“Senator Obama, I have something I want to give you,” the man said. “I’ve carried this military patch with me every day for 40 years, and I want you to carry it, and itwill keep you safe in your journey.” Obama tried to refuse, but the older man persisted.

Big endeavors can find their meaning in small moments.

Later that day, Obama and his aides discussed the encounter. The future president pulled the patch from his pocket, along with about a dozen other items people had pressed upon him.

“This is why I do this,” he said. “Because people have their hopes and dreams about what we can do together.”

Two American stories intersected that morning in that elevator. The more famous, of course, is the one that begins its next chapter on Monday, as the nation’s first black president takes the oath of office for a second term.

But the other story also tells a lot about where this country has been and how far it has come.

No one in Obama’s small party that day noticed the man’s name tag or, if anyone did, the fact that it said Earl Smith was quickly forgotten.

No one knew how much of Smith’s life had been woven into a patch that, over four decades, found its way from the shoulder of an Army private to the pocket of a future commander-in-chief.

It was the only shred of cloth he had saved from the uniform of a nightmarish year in Vietnam. Smith fired artillery with a brigade that suffered 10,041 casualties during the course of the war. The brigade’s soldiers received 13 Congressional Medals of Honor.

The patch was waiting among his possessions when Smith was pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1977 after spending three years in prison for a crime he claimed was self-defense.

Smith kept it close as his lucky charm while he rebuilt his life and his reputation, starting with a job vacuuming hallways and changing sheets in an Atlanta Marriott. He carried it with him as he traveled halfway around the world again, to positions in hotels far from home, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Along the way, as he tended to travelers and made sure VIP gatherings went smoothly, he met three U.S. presidents.

His instincts told him Obama would make it four.

Like just about anyone else who was alive on Nov. 22, 1963, Smith can describe exactly where he was when he heard the horrific news: He was coming off a high school football practice field in his home town of San Benito, Tex.

Though not yet old enough to have voted for the man slain in Dallas, “I was devastated — a lot of us young people were — because John Kennedy was the young president,” recalled Smith, now 68.

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Authorities checking on property agents who evade stamp duty






SINGAPORE: Channel NewsAsia understands authorities are conducting spot checks on at least seven property developers to find out if they have backdated their documents.

It has been about a week since the latest round of property cooling measures kicked in.

Among the changes is an increase in Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty of five to seven percentage points across the board.

In a bid to help buyers avoid paying the additional stamp duty, industry insiders said some agents have resorted to backdating the date of the Option-to-Purchase for sale and purchase of residential properties.

Avoiding stamp duty is as good as tax evasion, which is an offence.

Industry insiders said authorities have stepped up efforts to conduct spot checks on possible offenders.

So far, industry insiders said one property agent has been caught backdating.

Authorities have also issued circulars to remind developers and agents to comply with the new cooling measures.

Industry players said that they had previously heard of agents trying to backdate options two to three days after cooling measures were introduced.

But as the measures introduced this round are more drastic, they said there are more agents taking the risk.

In some cases, the buyers may be considering whether to buy a property, and the cooling measures could have been introduced before they could decide.

Industry insiders say that is when they may request their agent to backdate their options.

Chris Koh, director of Chris International said: "If you backdate the document, it will probably be on a gentleman agreement, whereby all parties agree to it. But then who knows as you move down the line, one may play the other out, or one may just say 'I choose not to buy or sell anymore, and what we did previously was not the right thing to do'. And therefore they use that as a means to get out of the contract."

Any person guilty of such an offence shall be liable on conviction to a fine of up to S$10,000 or imprisonment of up to three years or to both.

Estate agents or salespersons found involved may face disciplinary action by the Council for Estate Agencies, which could include a financial penalty of up to $75,000 and a suspension or revocation of their licence or registration.

- CNA/xq



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Respect alliances, but don't compromise on Congress's revival: Sonia

JAIPUR: With the Lok Sabha polls just a little more than a year away, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday said party's revival in weak states should not be compromised at the altar of alliance politics.

In a candid admission in her opening speech at the 2-day "chintan shivir" (brainstorming conclave) that Congress was facing "increased competition and inroads" into its traditional base, she said "unity and discipline" was the need of the hour in the party.

She formed five separate groups, including one on "emerging political challenges" headed by AK Antony in which P Chidamaram is a participant, for deeper discussion.

Ahead of the start of the start of the conclave, there was a clamour from senior leaders for Rahul Gandhi to play a larger role in the organization.

Seeking "free, fearless and frank views" from the participants, Gandhi surprisingly made a reference to the "growing educated and middle classes", an apparent message to the party to woo them.

Gandhi, who is also the chairperson of UPA, made it clear that Congress has to "strike a balance" between respecting alliances where it has tied up with other parties and "ensuring that the party's rejuvenation is not compromised".

"In states in which we are in alliance we have to strike a balance between respecting these alliances and ensuring that the party's rejuvenation is not not compromised," Gandhi said.

"We must admit that we now face increased competition and inroads have been made into our traditional support bases. There are some states, where we have been out of power for too long and, although I too believe that being in power is not the sole purpose of political activities, this does have an adverse impact on our morale and organization ability," she said.

Gandhi's remarks on rejuvenation of the party has come at a time when nine assembly elections are scheduled during the current year, which will be followed by Lok Sabha polls in the middle of 2014.

The Congress had lost power in major states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu for several years. In West Bengal, it was out of power for more than three decades though it was in the ministry of Mamata Banerjee for a brief while. It is more than four decades since it lost power in Tamil Nadu.

In her speech, the Congress president did not take the name of any political party, including the BJP, or the recent electoral defeat in Gujarat.

Reflecting his growing influence and stature in the party, the conclave saw praise for Rahul Gandhi from senior leaders including Ambika Soni, who said the meet would get a "message" from the young leader.

On Rahul insistence, a lion's share has been given to Youth Congress and NSUI office-bearers at the strategy meet for participation.

Leaders including Digivijaya Singh, Rajiv Shukla and Salman Khurshid, sought a "larger and predominant role" for Rahul. Sachin Pilot, however, felt that the young leader should not be pressurized.

In her five-page speech, Gandhi's stress was on the party to get its act together.

Turning to "pressing organizational matters", she posed the question "Is it not the case that we have squandered many opportunities that people are willing to give us simply because we have been unable to function as a disciplined and united team".

Urging the party workers to recognize the new changing India, the Congress president pointed out the country was increasingly peopled by a "younger, more aspirational, more impatient, more demanding and better educated generation.

"Our youth is is getting more assertive. It wants its voice to be heard. Across the length and breadth of our country, our people are expecting much more from their political parties," she said calling for continued responses from the party and the government to the menace of corruption.

"Our citizens are rightly fed up with the levels of corruption that they see in public life at high levels, but equally with the corruption they have to deal with in their daily lives. This is a phenomenon, a churning that we must understand and continue to respond to."

Her remarks come against the backdrop of the UPA government and Congress repeatedly coming under attack by a section of civil society and others over the issue of black money and corruption.

Gandhi also utilized the occasion to launch a scathing attack on "our life styles".

"And seeing so many of our younger colleagues here, I am tempted to say something on a subject that has always bothered me . And this relates to our lifestyle. Celebrating weddings, festivals and happy events is one thing- but what of lavish and ostentatious displays of wealth, pomp and status?

"Does this not beg the question where is this wealth coming from. I hope that you will take this seriously and come up with suggestions and norms that we may all accept and adhere to," she said.

While noting that inclusiveness is anchored in the conviction of Congress and not a political ploy only to win elections or run governments, Gandhi said, "it is not the outcome of any compulsion as it may be of some of our political opponents".

"We appeal to all sections of society. We articulate and champion the concerns of all but especially of the weaker sections — dalits, adivasis, minorities and women. We have always given the highest priority to the interests and concerns of farmers and agricultural labourers.

Claiming that Congress is the only party, which believes that development and economic growth on one hand, and social harmony and social justice on the other, are two sides of the same coin.

"Economic growth over the past decade has been impressive. This has had a major impact on reducing poverty. But our fight against inequality and poverty is a continuing one. This is why it is important to sustain our poverty alleviation programmes," she said.

This is the first such conclave, which has seen the presence of such a large number of young leaders especially those from the Youth wings of the party.

Flagging this "special dimension" of the conclave, Sonia Gandhi said that the fact that a significant number of participants are from the younger generation "reflects our priorities and resonates with the demographic reality of our country".

Noting that this interaction is different in at least two aspects from the previous sessions in Pachmarhi and Shimla, Gandhi said that it is taking place at a time when the party has been in government at the Centre for almost nine years and also at a time "when we are not governing in a number of states and when we face serious challenges in states long considered our bastions".

At the brainstorming session, a major concern for Congress is the rise of regional parties in various states where the Congress is out of power.

The immediate concern for Congress is the rise of Jagan Mohan Reddy-led YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh, the only major state where Congress is in power on its own. The separate Telangana issue has made the situation more complex for the party in Andhra Pradesh.

The southern state is strategically important for Congress given the fact that spectacular victory in Andhra Pradesh in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha polls had been the gamechanger for UPA.

The Congress president, however, sought to dispel pessimism. She said, "We are the only pan-Indian party, the only political party, with a visible and vibrant position in every village, in every basti, in every mohalla of the country".

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Opinion: Lance One of Many Tour de France Cheaters


Editor's note: England-based writer and photographer Roff Smith rides around 10,000 miles a year through the lanes of Sussex and Kent and writes a cycling blog at: www.my-bicycle-and-I.co.uk

And so, the television correspondent said to the former Tour de France champion, a man who had been lionised for years, feted as the greatest cyclist of his day, did you ever use drugs in the course of your career?

"Yes," came the reply. "Whenever it was necessary."

"And how often was that?" came the follow-up question.

"Almost all the time!"

This is not a leak of a transcript from Oprah Winfrey's much anticipated tell-all with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, but instead was lifted from a decades-old interview with Fausto Coppi, the great Italian road cycling champion of the 1940s and 1950s.

To this day, though, Coppi is lauded as one of the gods of cycling, an icon of a distant and mythical golden age in the sport.

So is five-time Tour winner Jacques Anquetil (1957, 1961-64) who famously remarked that it was impossible "to ride the Tour on mineral water."

"You would have to be an imbecile or a crook to imagine that a professional cyclist who races for 235 days a year can hold the pace without stimulants," Anquetil said.

And then there's British cycling champion Tommy Simpson, who died of heart failure while trying to race up Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour de France, a victim of heat, stress, and a heady cocktail of amphetamines.

All are heroes today. If their performance-enhancing peccadillos are not forgotten, they have at least been glossed over in the popular imagination.

As the latest chapter of the sorry Lance Armstrong saga unfolds, it is worth looking at the history of cheating in the Tour de France to get a sense of perspective. This is not an attempt at rationalisation or justification for what Lance did. Far from it.

But the simple, unpalatable fact is that cheating, drugs, and dirty tricks have been part and parcel of the Tour de France nearly from its inception in 1903.

Cheating was so rife in the 1904 event that Henri Desgrange, the founder and organiser of the Tour, declared he would never run the race again. Not only was the overall winner, Maurice Garin, disqualified for taking the train over significant stretches of the course, but so were next three cyclists who placed, along with the winner of every single stage of the course.

Of the 27 cyclists who actually finished the 1904 race, 12 were disqualified and given bans ranging from one year to life. The race's eventual official winner, 19-year-old Henri Cornet, was not determined until four months after the event.

And so it went. Desgrange relented on his threat to scrub the Tour de France and the great race survived and prospered-as did the antics. Trains were hopped, taxis taken, nails scattered along the roads, partisan supporters enlisted to beat up rivals on late-night lonely stretches of the course, signposts tampered with, bicycles sabotaged, itching powder sprinkled in competitors' jerseys and shorts, food doctored, and inkwells smashed so riders yet to arrive couldn't sign the control documents to prove they'd taken the correct route.

And then of course there were the stimulants-brandy, strychnine, ether, whatever-anything to get a rider through the nightmarishly tough days and nights of racing along stages that were often over 200 miles long. In a way the race was tailor-made to encourage this sort of thing. Desgrange once famously said that his idea of a perfect Tour de France would be one that was so tough that only one rider finished.

Add to this the big prizes at a time when money was hard to come by, a Tour largely comprising young riders from impoverished backgrounds for whom bicycle racing was their one big chance to get ahead, and the passionate following cycling enjoyed, and you had the perfect recipe for a desperate, high stakes, win-at-all-costs mentality, especially given the generally tolerant views on alcohol and drugs in those days.

After World War II came the amphetamines. Devised to keep soldiers awake and aggressive through long hours of battle they were equally handy for bicycle racers competing in the world's longest and toughest race.

So what makes the Lance Armstrong story any different, his road to redemption any rougher? For one thing, none of the aforementioned riders were ever the point man for what the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has described in a thousand-page report as the most sophisticated, cynical, and far-reaching doping program the world of sport has ever seen-one whose secrecy and efficiency was maintained by ruthlessness, bullying, fear, and intimidation.

Somewhere along the line, the casualness of cheating in the past evolved into an almost Frankenstein sort of science in which cyclists, aided by creepy doctors and trainers, were receiving blood transfusions in hotel rooms and tinkering around with their bodies at the molecular level many months before they ever lined up for a race.

To be sure, Armstrong didn't invent all of this, any more than he invented original sin-nor was he acting alone. But with his success, money, intelligence, influence, and cohort of thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers-and the way he used all this to prop up the Lance brand and the Lance machine at any cost-he became the poster boy and lightning rod for all that went wrong with cycling, his high profile eclipsing even the heads of the Union Cycliste Internationale, the global cycling union, who richly deserve their share of the blame.

It is not his PED popping that is the hard-to-forgive part of the Lance story. Armstrong cheated better than his peers, that's all.

What I find troubling is the bullying and calculated destruction of anyone who got in his way, raised a question, or cast a doubt. By all accounts Armstrong was absolutely vicious, vindictive as hell. Former U.S. Postal team masseuse Emma O'Reilly found herself being described publicly as a "prostitute" and an "alcoholic," and had her life put through a legal grinder when she spoke out about Armstrong's use of PEDs.

Journalists were sued, intimidated, and blacklisted from events, press conferences, and interviews if they so much as questioned the Lance miracle or well-greased machine that kept winning Le Tour.

Armstrong left a lot of wreckage behind him.

If he is genuinely sorry, if he truly repents for his past "indiscretions," one would think his first act would be to try to find some way of not only seeking forgiveness from those whom he brutally put down, but to do something meaningful to repair the damage he did to their lives and livelihoods.


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Armstrong Admits to Doping, 'One Big Lie'













Lance Armstrong, formerly cycling's most decorated champion and considered one of America's greatest athletes, confessed to cheating for at least a decade, admitting on Thursday that he owed all seven of his Tour de France titles and the millions of dollars in endorsements that followed to his use of illicit performance-enhancing drugs.


After years of denying that he had taken banned drugs and received oxygen-boosting blood transfusions, and attacking his teammates and competitors who attempted to expose him, Armstrong came clean with Oprah Winfrey in an exclusive interview, admitting to using banned substances for years.


"I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times," he said. "I know the truth. The truth isn't what was out there. The truth isn't what I said.


"I'm a flawed character, as I well know," Armstrong added. "All the fault and all the blame here falls on me."


In October, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a report in which 11 former Armstrong teammates exposed the system with which they and Armstrong received drugs with the knowledge of their coaches and help of team physicians.






George Burns/Courtesy of Harpo Studios, Inc./AP Photo











Lance Armstrong-Winfrey Interview: How Honest Was He? Watch Video









Lance Armstrong Confession: 'I Could Not Believe Lance Apologized' Watch Video









Lance Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape Watch Video





The U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team "ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," USADA said in its report.


As a result of USADA's findings, Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France titles. Soon, longtime sponsors including Nike began to abandon him, too.


READ MORE: Did Doping Cause Armstrong's Cancer?


Armstrong said he was driven to cheat by a "ruthless desire to win."


He told Winfrey that his competition "cocktail" consisted of EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone, and that he had previously used cortisone. He would not, however, give Winfrey the details of when, where and with whom he doped during seven winning Tours de France between 1999 and 2005.


He said he stopped doping following his 2005 Tour de France victory and did not use banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the tour again in 2010.


"It was a mythic perfect story and it wasn't true," Armstrong said of his fairytale story of overcoming testicular cancer to become the most celebrated cyclist in history.


READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions


PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present


PHOTOS: Tour de France 2012


Armstrong would not name other members of his team who doped, but admitted that as the team's captain he set an example. He admitted he was "a bully" but said there "there was a never a directive" from him that his teammates had to use banned substances.


"At the time it did not feel wrong?" Winfrey asked.


"No," Armstrong said. "Scary."


"Did you feel bad about it?" she asked again.


"No," he said.


Armstrong said he thought taking the drugs was similar to filling his tires with air and bottle with water. He never thought of his actions as cheating, but "leveling the playing field" in a sport rife with doping.






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Cycling: IOC asks Armstrong to return Olympic medal






LAUSANNE: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Thursday asked disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong to return the Olympic bronze medal from the time-trial event at the 2000 Games in Sydney.

The IOC had written to Armstrong late Wednesday to ask him hand back the medal, IOC spokesman Mark Adams told AFP.

The IOC had to wait for world cycling's governing body to sanction Armstrong, which it did on December 6, and the following three weeks in which the Texan had recourse to appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

The US Olympic Committee, to which Armstrong must theoretically return the medal, has also been informed, Adams added.

Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life in October after the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) produced evidence of widespread doping by him and his former team-mates.

The time-trial in the 2000 Games was won by Armstrong's ex-US Postal Service teammate Viasheslav Ekimov of Russia, now general manager of the Katusha team whose ambivalent stance on doping cost them a place in the elite ProTeam list for this season.

The silver medal went to one of Armstrong's great rivals, Jan Ullrich of Germany, who was caught up in the Operation Puerto doping probe and eventually served a two-year ban for doping.

Abraham Olano of Spain came home in fourth and may be set to inherit the bronze vacated by Armstrong.

Other notable results in the race held in Sydney were by American Tyler Hamilton, a former teammate of Armstrong at US Postal who finished tenth and went on to win gold at the 2004 Athens Games before testing positive for doping.

British rider David Millar finished 16th and is still currently on the circuit after serving his own two-year ban from 2004.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) late last year effectively erased Armstrong from the cycling history books when it decided not to appeal sanctions imposed on the Texan rider by the USADA.

In his first interview since Armstrong was shorn of his Tour titles, recorded Monday with Oprah Winfrey and due to be broadcast on Thursday and Friday, the chat show host confirmed that the Texan admitted using performance-enhancing drugs.

- AFP/fa



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