January 19, 2013 12:29 PM
In a failed assassination attempt on the leader of Bulgaria's ethnic Turkish party, Ahmed Dogan, a man is seen jumping out of the audience and onto the stage where Dogan is speaking. He then points the gun at Dogan's head and the gun reportedly misfires. The attacker is then tackled and beaten by security guards.
After the Algerian military's final assault on terrorists holding hostages at a gas complex, the four-day hostage crisis is over, but apparently with additional loss of life among the foreign hostages.
One American, Fred Buttaccio of Texas, has been confirmed dead by the U.S. State Department. Two more U.S. hostages remain unaccounted for, with growing concern among U.S. officials that they did not survive.
But another American, Mark Cobb of Corpus Christi, Texas is now confirmed as safe. Sources close to his family say Cobb, who is a senior manager of the facility, is safe and reportedly sent a text message " I'm alive."
In a statement, President Obama said, "Today, the thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the families of all those who were killed and injured in the terrorist attack in Algeria. The blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out, and the United States condemns their actions in the strongest possible terms. ... This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups in North Africa."
According to Algerian state media, 32 militants are dead and a total of 23 hostages perished during the four-day siege of the In Amenas facility in the Sahara. The Algerian Interior Ministry also says 107 foreign nationals who worked at the facility for BP and other firms were rescued or escaped from the al Qaeda-linked terrorists who took over the BP joint venture facility on Wednesday.
The Japanese government says it fears "very grave" news, with multiple casualties among the 10 Japanese citizens working at the In Amenas gas plant.
Five British nationals and one U.K. resident are either deceased or unaccounted for in the country, according to British Foreign Minister William Hague. Hague also said that the Algerians have reported that they are still trying to clear boobytraps from the site.
Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter
(Image: NASA/Kepler mission/Wendy Stenzel)
NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope has put its search for alien Earths on hold while it rests a stressed reaction wheel.
The injured wheel normally helps to control the telescope's orientation, keeping it pointed continuously at the same patch of sky. Kepler stares at the thousands of stars in its field of view to watch for the telltale blinks that occur when a planet crosses in front of its star. It has found nearly 3000 potential planets outside our solar system since its launch in 2009, transforming the field of exoplanet research and raising hopes of someday finding alien life.
When it launched, Kepler had four reaction wheels: three to control its motion along each axis, and one spare. But last July, one wheel stopped turning. If the spacecraft loses a second wheel, the mission is over.
So when another wheel started showing signs of elevated friction on 7 January, the team decided to play it safe. After rotating the spacecraft failed to fix the problem, NASA announced yesterday that they're placing Kepler in safe mode for 10 days to give the wheel a chance to recover.
The hope is that the lubricating oil that helps the wheel's ball bearings run smoothly around a track will redistribute itself during the rest period.
The telescope can't take any science data while in safe mode. But if the wheel recovers on its own, Kepler's extended mission will run until 2016, leaving it plenty of time to make up for the lost days.
"Kepler is a statistical mission," says Charlie Sobeck, Kepler's deputy project manager at NASA's Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California. "In the long run, as long as we make the observations, it doesn't matter a lot when we make the observations."
Despite the high stakes, the team doesn't seem too worried.
"Each wheel has its own personality, and this particular wheel has been something of a free spirit," Sobeck says. "It's had elevated torques throughout the mission. This one is typical to what we've seen in the past, and if we had four good wheels we probably wouldn't have taken any action."
"I prefer to picture the spacecraft lounging at the shore of the cosmic ocean sipping a Mai Tai so that she'll be refreshed and rejuvenated for more discoveries," wrote Kepler co-investigator Natalie Batalha in an email.
The team will check up on the wheel on 27 January and return to doing science as soon as possible.
There are two exoplanet missions currently being considered for after Kepler is finished, says Doug Hudgins at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. One, TESS (Terrestrial Exoplanet Survey Satellite), would scan the entire sky for planets transiting the stars nearest to the sun. The other, FINESSE (Fast Infrared Exoplanet Spectroscopy Survey Explorer), would take spectra of planets as they passed in front of their stars as a way to probe their atmospheres.
The missions are being evaluated now, and NASA will probably select one this spring, Hudgins says. The winner will launch in 2017.
If Kepler goes down with its reaction wheel, that won't affect which mission wins, he adds. "That's a straight-up competition based on the merits of the two concept study reports."
UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council on Friday strongly condemned the "heinous" attack and hostage-taking at an Algerian gas complex by Al-Qaeda linked militants.
A statement agreed by the 15-member council stressed the need to bring the Al-Qaeda linked attackers and their backers to justice.
At least 12 hostages and 18 kidnappers were killed in an assault by Algerian security forces on the Sahara desert complex. Between seven and 10 hostages were still being held.
"The Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in In Amenas, Algeria," said the statement.
The council expressed "deep sympathy and sincere condolences to the victims of these heinous acts and their families and to the people and governments of Algeria and those countries whose nationals have been affected."
It "underlined the need to bring perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice."
In addition, it urged all countries "to cooperate actively with the Algerian authorities" in line with international law and Security Council resolutions.
The statement also added a phrase that said countries must ensure that "measures taken to combat terrorism comply with all their obligations under international law, in particular international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law."
Several countries have urged Algeria to do everything to prevent harm to the remaining hostages at In Amenas.
- AFP/ck
By Greg Botelho and Lateef Mungin, CNN
updated 1:52 AM EST, Sat January 19, 2013
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
What are your thoughts? Share with us on iReport.
(CNN) -- Manti Te'o -- one of the best defenders this season in college football -- defended himself in an ESPN interview Friday night, saying there was no way he was part of a hoax involving a deceased girlfriend.
"I wasn't faking it," he told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap in an off -camera interview highlighted on the network. "I wasn't part of this."
Notre Dame star Manti Te'o
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For the past two days, the former Notre Dame linebacker has been the subject of ridicule after reports surfaced that the girlfriend he'd gushed about and said died this fall of leukemia never existed.
Te'o rose to national prominence by leading the Fighting Irish to an undefeated regular season, amassing double-digit tackle games and becoming the face of one of the best defenses in the nation.
As he and his team excelled, Te'o told interviewers in September and October that his grandmother and girlfriend -- whom he described as a 22-year-old Stanford University student -- had died within hours of each other.
The twin losses inspired him to honor them with sterling play on the field, Te'o said. He led his team to a 20-3 routing of Michigan State after he heard the news.
"I miss 'em, but I know that I'll see them again one day," he told ESPN.
He was second in the Heisman race and led his team to the championship game, losing to Alabama.
The fairy tale story ended on Wednesday when sports website Deadspin published a piece dismissing as a hoax the existence of Te'o's girlfriend and suggesting he was complicit.
"When (people) hear the facts, they'll know," Te'o told ESPN. "They'll know that there is no way that I could be part of this."
CNN's Phil Gast and Amanda Watts contributed to this report.
Part of complete coverage on
Manti Te'o hoax
updated 11:28 AM EST, Fri January 18, 2013
This may be the strangest twist in a tale overflowing with strangeness. Manti Te'o's deceased girlfriend tweeted late Wednesday night.
updated 9:46 AM EST, Fri January 18, 2013
Te'o is now a meme -- posting pictures of yourself with your arm around an imaginary girlfriend. They call it "Te'oing."
updated 10:44 AM EST, Fri January 18, 2013
Manti Te'o's Twitter bio reads: "Life is a storm.. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes." The storm has arrived.
updated 11:04 AM EST, Fri January 18, 2013
Oh, the stories we storytellers tell. Like the story of brave Manti Te'o and his doomed girlfriend. We love a good story. We love spinning a good yarn.
updated 9:46 AM EST, Fri January 18, 2013
Was Manti Te'o a hapless victim or a duplicitous co-conspirator?
updated 9:52 AM EST, Fri January 18, 2013
I wouldn't normally pay much attention to a sports star, even a Fighting Irish hero.
updated 7:36 AM EST, Thu January 17, 2013
Here are some of the recent events in the bizarre story of Manti Te'o and a dead girlfriend who apparently never existed:
updated 8:50 AM EST, Thu January 17, 2013
After word broke of a hoax about the death of star Manti Te'o's "girlfriend," it didn't take long for "Te'o" to become the top-trending term on Twitter.
updated 9:37 PM EST, Wed January 16, 2013
Deadspin.com Editor Timothy Burke says the story about Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o's girlfriend is a hoax.
updated 11:13 AM EST, Thu January 17, 2013
Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o says he's the victim of a hoax. Anderson Cooper talks to the reporter who broke the news.
updated 7:52 AM EST, Thu January 17, 2013
As the big game with No. 10 Michigan State approached, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o had a heavy heart after he learned his girlfriend had lost her fight with leukemia.
updated 10:17 AM EST, Thu January 17, 2013
A dog tapping away at a computer keyboard turns to another dog and says, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
updated 4:40 AM EST, Thu January 17, 2013
Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick compared the alleged hoax about a "girlfriend" that ensnared linebacker Manti Te'o with the documentary "Catfish."
updated 11:22 PM EST, Wed January 16, 2013
Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o said he was the victim of a "sick joke" that had him and legions of fans believing in a "girlfriend" who may never have existed.
Updated 12:15 AM ET
SOUTH BEND, Ind. Manti Te'o gave an interview to ESPN in which he denied any involvement in fabricating an online relationship with a woman he considered to be his girlfriend.
"I wasn't faking it," he told ESPN Friday night. "I wasn't part of this."
Te'o also said that he did not make up anything to help his Heisman Trophy candidacy.
"When (people) hear the facts, they'll know," he said. "They'll know that there is no way that I could be part of this."
Te'o spoke at the IMG Training Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where he is preparing for the NFL draft. There were no cameras at the 2?-hour interview, which was recorded.
Earlier, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said during the taping of his weekly radio show that Te'o has to explain exactly how he was duped into an online relationship with a fictitious woman whose "death" was then faked by perpetrators of the scheme.
Skeptics have questioned the versions of events laid out by Te'o and Notre Dame, wondering why Te'o never said his relationship was with someone online and why he waited almost three weeks to tell the school about being duped.
According to Notre Dame, Te'o received a call on Dec. 6 from the girl he had only been in contact with by telephone and online, and who he thought had died in September. After telling his family what happened while he was home in Hawaii for Christmas, he informed Notre Dame coaches on Dec. 26.
Notre Dame said it hired investigators to look into Te'o's claims and their findings showed he was the victim of an elaborate hoax.
Te'o released a statement on Wednesday, soon after Deadspin.com broke news of the scam with a lengthy story, saying he had been humiliated and hurt by the "sick joke." But he has laid low since.
ESPN officials posted a photo on Twitter late Friday night of reporter Jeremy Schapp with Te'o and his attorney. Te'o has been working out at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., as he prepares for the NFL combine and draft.
Swarbrick said earlier in the day that he believed Te'o would ultimately speak publicly.
"We are certainly encouraging it to happen," he said. "We think it's important and we'd like to see it happen sooner rather than later."
He said thatmant before the Deadspin story, Te'o and his family had planned to go public with the story Monday.
"Sometimes the best laid plans don't quite work, and this was an example of that. Because the family lost the opportunity in some ways to control the story," he said. "It is in the Te'o family's court. We are very much encouraging them."
Former NFL coach Tony Dungy, who mentored Michael Vick when he returned to the NFL after doing prison time, had similar advice.
"I don't know the whole case but I always advise people to face up to it and just talk to people and say what happened," Dungy said while attending the NCAA convention in Dallas on Friday. "The truth is the best liberator, so that's what I would do. And he's going to get questioned a lot about it."
Te'o led a lightly regarded Fighting Irish team to a 12-0 regular season and the BCS title game, where they were routed 42-14 by Alabama and Te'o played poorly.
Dungy said Te'o could face the toughest questions from NFL teams.
"If I was still coaching and we're thinking about taking this guy in the first round, you want to know not exactly what happened but what is going on with this young man and is it going to be a deterrent to him surviving in the NFL and is it going to stop him from being a star," Dungy said. "So just tell the truth about what happened and this is why, I think, that's the best thing."
Deadspin reported that friends and relatives of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a 22-year-old who lives in California, believe he created Kekua. The website also reported Te'o and Tuiasosopo knew each other — which has led to questions about Te'o's involvement in the hoax.
Swarbrick understands why there are questions.
"They have every right to say that," Swarbrick said "Now I have some more information than they have. But they have every right to say that. ... I just ask those people to apply the same skepticism to everything about this. I have no doubt the perpetrators have a story they will yet spin about what went on here. I hope skepticism also greets that when they're articulating what that is."
Lance Armstrong, 41, began to cry today as he described finding out his son Luke, 13, was publicly defending him from accusations that he doped during his cycling career.
Armstrong said that he knew, at that moment, that he would have to publicly admit to taking performance-enhancing drugs and having oxygen-boosting blood transfusions when competing in the Tour de France. He made those admissions to Oprah Winfrey in a two-part interview airing Thursday and tonight.
"When this all really started, I saw my son defending me, and saying, 'That's not true. What you're saying about my dad? That's not true,'" Armstrong said, tearing up during the second installment of his interview tonight. "And it almost goes to this question of, 'Why now?'
"That's when I knew I had to talk," Armstrong said. "He never asked me. He never said, 'Dad, is this true?' He trusted me."
He told Winfrey that he sat down with his children over the holidays to come clean about his drug use.
"I said, 'Listen, there's been a lot of questions about your dad, about my career and whether I doped or did not dope,'" he said he told them. "'I always denied that. I've always been ruthless and defiant about that, which is why you defended me, which makes it even sicker' I said, 'I want you to know that it's true.'"
He added that his mother was "a wreck" over the scandal.
Armstrong said that the lowest point in his fall from grace and the top of the cycling world came when his cancer charity, Livestrong, asked him to consider stepping down.
George Burns/Harpo Studios, Inc.
After the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency alleged in October that Armstrong doped throughout his reign as Tour de France champion, Armstrong said, his major sponsors -- including Nike, Anheuser Busch and Trek -- called one by one to end their endorsement contracts with him.
"Everybody out," he said. "Still not the most humbling moment."
Then came the call from Livestrong, the charity he founded at age 25 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
"The story was getting out of control, which was my worst nightmare," he said. "I had this place in my mind that they would all leave. The one I didn't think would leave was the foundation.
"That was most humbling moment," he said.
Armstrong first stepped down as chairman of the board for the charity before being asked to end his association with the charity entirely. Livestrong is now run independently of Armstrong.
"I don't think it was 'We need you to step down,' but, 'We need you to consider stepping down for yourself,'" he said, recounting the call. "I had to think about that a lot. None of my kids, none of my friends have said, 'You're out,' and the foundation was like my sixth child. To make that decision, to step aside, that was big."
In Thursday's interview installment, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France admitted publicly for the first time that he doped throughout his career, confirming after months of angry denials the findings of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which stripped him of his titles in October.
He told Winfrey that he was taking the opportunity to confess to everything he had done wrong, including for years angrily denying claims that he had doped.
READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping
WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape
READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions
Are we being too free with our genetic information? What if you started receiving targeted ads for Prozac for the depression risk revealed by your publicly accessible genome? As increasing amounts of genetic information is placed online, many researchers believe that guaranteeing donors' privacy has become an impossible task.
The first major genetic data collection began in 2002 with the International HapMap Project – a collaborative effort to sequence genomes from families around the world. Its aim was to develop a public resource that will help researchers find genes associated with human disease and drug response.
While its consent form assured participants that their data would remain confidential, it had the foresight to mention that with future scientific advances, a deliberate attempt to match a genome with its donor might succeed. "The risk was felt to be very remote," says Laura Lyman Rodriguez of the US government's National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
Their fears proved to be founded: in a paper published in Science this week, a team led by Yaniv Erlich of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, used publicly available genetic information and an algorithm they developed to identify some of the people who donated their DNA to HapMap's successor, the 1000 Genomes Project.
Erlich says the research was inspired by a New Scientist article in which a 15-year-old boy successfully used unique genetic markers called short tandem repeats (STRs) on his Y chromosome to track down his father, who was an anonymous sperm donor. Erlich and his team used a similar approach.
First they turned to open-access genealogy databases, which attempt to link male relatives using matching surnames and similar STRs. The team chose a few surnames from these sources, such as "Venter",and then searched for the associated STRs in the 1000 Genomes Project's collection of whole genomes. This allowed them to identify which complete genomes were likely to be from people named Venter.
Although the 1000 Genome Project's database, which at last count had 1092 genomes, does not contain surname data, it does contain demographic data such as the ages and locations of its donors. By searching online phonebooks for people named Venter and narrowing those down to the geographic regions and ages represented in the whole genomes, the researchers were able to find the specific person who had donated his data.
In total, the researchers identified 50 individuals who had donated whole genomes. Some of these were female, whose identity was given away because of having the same location and age as a known donor's wife.
Before publishing their findings, the team warned the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other institutions involved in the project about the vulnerability in their data. Rodriguez says that they had been anticipating that someone would identify donors, "although we didn't know how or when".
To prevent Erlich's method from being used successfully again, age data has been removed from the project's website. Erlich says that this makes it difficult, although not impossible, to narrow the surnames down to an individual.
"The genie's out of the bottle," says Jeffrey Kahn of Florida State University in Tallahassee. "It's a harbinger of a changing paradigm of privacy." A cultural zeitgeist led by companies such as Facebook has led to more information sharing than anyone would have thought possible back in 2002 when HapMap first began, he says.
This is not the first time genome confidentiality has been compromised. When James Watson made his genome public in 2007, he blanked out a gene related to Alzheimer's. But a group of researchers successfully inferred whether he carried the risky version of this gene by examining the DNA sequences on either side of the redacted gene.
While someone is bound to find another way to identify genetic donors, says Rodriguez, the NIH believes it would be wrong to remove all of their genome data from the public domain. She says that full accessibility is "very beneficial to science", but acknowledges that the project needs to strike a careful balance between confidentiality and open access.
It is especially pertinent, says Kahn, because genetic data does not just carry information from the person from whom it was taken. It can also reveal the genetic details of family members, some of whom might not want that information to be public. A relative's genome might reveal your own disease risk, for example, which you might not want to know or have an employer learn of. While laws prohibit health insurers and employers from discriminating against people based on their genetic data, it would not be difficult to give another reason for denying you a job.
An individual's relatives could not prevent that individual from learning about themselves, says Rodriguez, but researchers should encourage would-be genome donors to discuss the risks and benefits with their families.
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NEW YORK: Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant led all players in votes in earning a record 15th successive NBA All-Star selection, the NBA said.
The league on Thursday announced the starters for the 2013 mid-season exhibition and said Bryant received 1,591,437 votes to edge Miami's LeBron James (1,583,646) as the top vote-getter.
Bryant had been tied with Jerry West, Karl Malone and Shaquille O'Neal for the most consecutive All-Star nods.
The Los Angeles Clippers' Chris Paul will be Bryant's partner at the guard position in the Western Conference starting line-up. Paul, with 929,155 votes, beat out Houston's Jeremy Lin (883,809) for the spot.
Paul's teammate Blake Griffin, the Lakers' Dwight Howard and Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant -- the reigning All-Star Game Most Valuable Player -- round out the West's frontcourt.
In addition to James, the Eastern Conference's frontcourt features New York's Carmelo Anthony and Boston's Kevin Garnett. The guards are Miami's Dwyane Wade and the Celtics' Rajon Rondo.
The 62nd NBA All-Star Game will be played in Houston on Sunday, February 17.
The starting line-ups were determined by global fan voting. This year in a new twist, fans were able to vote via social networks including Facebook and Twitter, and Sina Weibo and Tencent QQ in China.
The reserves will be selected by polling of the 30 NBA head coaches, who must vote for seven players within their conference and cannot vote for players on their own teams.
The reserves will be announced on January 24.
The East and West All-Star coaches will be determined by the best record in the conferences through February 3.
- AFP/al
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Share your thoughts on the downfall of Lance Armstrong at CNN iReport, Facebook or Twitter.
(CNN) -- Calling himself "deeply flawed," now-disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong says he used an array of performance enhancing drugs to win seven Tour de France titles then followed that by years of often-angry denials.
"This is too late, it's too late for probably most people. And that's my fault," he said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired Thursday night. "(This was) one big lie, that I repeated a lot of times."
Armstrong admitted using testosterone and human growth hormone, as well as EPO -- a hormone naturally produced by human kidneys to stimulate red blood cell production. It increases the amount of oxygen that can be delivered to muscles, improving recovery and endurance.
In addition to using drugs, the 2002 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year admitted to Winfrey that he took blood transfusions to excel in the highly competitive, scandal-ridden world of professional cycling. Doping was as much a part of the sport as pumping up tires or having water in a bottle, Armstrong said, calling it "the scariest" that he didn't consider it cheating at the time.
12 telling quotes over the years from Armstrong
The same man who insisted throughout and after his career that he'd passed each of the "hundreds and hundreds of tests I took" contended in the interview that he wouldn't have won without doing what he did. While Armstrong didn't invent the culture of doping in cycling, he said, he admitted not acting to prevent it either.
"I made my decisions," Armstrong said. "They are my mistakes."
Armstrong: I was "a bully"
The first installment in his interview, which was conducted earlier this week with the talk-show host, aired Thursday on the OWN cable network and on the Internet. The second installment will be broadcast Friday night.
Armstrong admitted he was "a bully ... in the sense that I tried to control the narrative," sometimes by spewing venom at ex-teammates he thought were "disloyal," as well as suing people and publications that accused him of cheating.
He described himself as "a fighter" whose story of a happy marriage, recovery from cancer and international sporting success "was so perfect for so long."
"I lost myself in all of that," he said, describing himself as both a "humanitarian" and a "jerk" who'd been "arrogant" for years. "I was used to controlling everything in my life."
iReport: Tell us your take on the first part of the interview
The scandal has tarred the cancer charity Livestrong that he founded, as well as tarnished his once-glowing reputation as a sports hero.
Those who spoke out against Armstrong at the height of his power and popularity not only felt his wrath but the wrath of an adoring public.
Now, with Armstrong stripped of endorsement deals and his titles, those who did speak out are feeling vindicated.
They include Betsy Andreu, wife of fellow cyclist Frankie Andreu, who said she overheard Armstrong acknowledge to a doctor treating him for cancer in 1996 that he had used performance-enhancing drugs. She later testified about the incident and began cooperating with a reporter working on a book about doping allegations against Armstrong.
Armstrong subsequently ripped her, among others. More recently, he said he'd reached out to her to apologize -- in what Andreu called "a very emotional phone call."
"This was a guy who used to be my friend, who decimated me," Andreu told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday night. "He could have come clean. He owed it to me. He owes it to the sport that he destroyed."
In his interview with Winfrey, Armstrong said he understands why many might be upset that it took him so long to speak out, especially after going on the offensive for so long. He said he's reached out in recent days to several people, such as Andreu, who publicly accused him of doping and then were attacked -- and in some cases sued -- by him.
Bleacher Report: Twitter erupts Thursday night
And the former athletic icon also conceded he'd let down many fans "who believed in me and supported me" by being adamant, sometimes hurtful and consistently wrong in his doping denials.
"They have every right to feel betrayed, and it's my fault," he said. "I will spend the rest of my life ... trying to earn back trust and apologize to people."
Years of success and defiance, then a rapid fall
The Texas-born Armstrong grew up to become an established athlete, including winning several Tour de France stages. But his sporting career ground to a halt in 1996 when he was diagnosed with cancer. He was 25.
He returned to the cycling world, however. His breakthrough came in 1999, and he didn't stop as he reeled off seven straight wins in his sport's most prestigious race. Allegations of doping began during this time, as did Armstrong's defiance, including investigations and a lawsuit against the author of a book accusing him of taking performance enhancing drugs.
He left the sport after his last win, in 2005, only to return to the tour in 2009.
Armstrong insisted he was clean when he finished third that year, but that comeback led to his downfall.
"We wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't come back," he told Winfrey.
In 2011, Armstrong retired once more from cycling. But his fight to maintain his clean reputation wasn't over, including a criminal investigation launched by federal prosecutors.
That case was dropped in February. But in April, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency notified Armstrong of an investigation into new doping charges. In response, the cyclist accused the organization of trying to "dredge up discredited" doping allegations and, a few months later, filed a lawsuit in federal court trying to halt the case.
In retrospect, Armstrong told Winfrey he "would do anything to go back to that day."
"Because I wouldn't fight, I wouldn't sue them, I'd listen," he said, offering to speak out about doping in the future.
The USADA found "overwhelming" evidence that Armstrong was involved in "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program."
In August, Armstrong said he wouldn't fight the charges, though he didn't admit guilt either.
And the hits kept on coming.
In October, the International Cycling Union stripped him of all his Tour de France titles. Even then, he remained publicly defiant, tweeting a photo of himself a few weeks later lying on a sofa in his lounge beneath the seven framed yellow jerseys from those victories.
Then the International Olympic Committee stripped him of the bronze medal he won in the men's individual time trial at the 2000 Olympic Games and asked him to return the award, an IOC spokesman said Thursday.
The USOC was notified Wednesday that the IOC wants the medal back, USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said.
"We will shortly be asking Mr. Armstrong to return his medal to us, so that we can return it to the IOC."
Livestrong: Tell the truth about doping
CNN's Carol Cratty, Joseph Netto and George Howell contributed to this report.
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