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."
SINGAPORE: The National Trades Union Congress and the Law Society of Singapore have launched a new initiative to educate working people on their legal rights.
The initiative called 'Law Works' will include a series of programmes that will be implemented to reach out to PMEs, working women and freelance professionals.
The year-long campaign will see the publication of a 10-part quick guide and on-site legal clinics.
At the clinics, workers will be able to consult with practising lawyers on specific legal issues.
Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said this collaboration is very timely with the recent legislative changes.
These include the Retirement and Re-employment Act which was recently passed and the Employment Act which is currently being reviewed.
Chief Justice Menon said: "Amidst these changes to the labour laws, it is critical that workers be made aware of not only the existing legal position, and equally that they are apprised of such changes.
"The focus of the labour laws is firstly to safeguard the interests of workers by conferring rights upon them, and secondly to enable them to understand their obligations and responsibilities in the workplace."
- CNA/fa
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 few 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.
Te'o released a statement on Wednesday saying he was a victim of a hoax but Friday night was the first time he publicly addressed the issue.
"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."
After a two-and-a-half hour interview, veteran sports reporter Schaap said Te'o's story sounded convincing.
"He made a very convincing witness to his defense," Schapp said on ESPN. "He answered all my questions pretty convincingly. If he is making up his side of the story, he is a very convincing actor."
The twisted tale of the Heisman Trophy runner-up and the mystery woman named Lennay Kekua has left many with questions.
Te'o sought to answer many of them Friday night.
Who created the hoax?
Te'o told Schaap that the hoax was created by a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo and that Te'o had no role in creating the hoax.
He said Tuiasosopo contacted him Wednesday via Twitter and explained that he created the hoax and he apologized, Schaap said. Tuiasosopo told Te'o he created the hoax along with another man and a woman, ESPN reported. CNN has not seen the tweets Te'o allegedly got from Tuiasosopo.
"Two guys and a girl are responsible for the whole thing," Te'o said, according to ESPN.
CNN has been to the California home of Tuiasosopo, but could not get a response to the accusations.
Tuiasosopo was also named in Wednesday's Deadspin article. That article implied that both Te'o and Tuiasosopo perpetuated the hoax.
Why did relatives say they had met her?
In September and October, when the story of Te'o and his girlfriend was getting a lot of press, there were several vivid stories about how they met. There was one written by South Bend Tribune in Indiana, the newspaper of Notre Dame's hometown, that said the couple met at a football game in Palo Alto, California, in 2009.
Te'o's father is quoted in the article that gushed about them shaking hands, exchanging phone numbers and sparking a love affair.
On Friday,Te'o said he lied to his father about meeting Kekua because he was embarrassed to tell his family that he was in love with a woman he never met.
"I knew that -- I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn't meet," he told ESPN. "And that alone, people find out that this girl who died I was so invested in, and I didn't meet her as well."
The lie he told his father led his family to tell reporters that Te'o had met his girlfriend, he told ESPN.
Why continue to talk about her after December 6 phone call?
Te'o received a call from a woman claiming to be his girlfriend on December 6, telling him she was not dead, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said at a news conference this week. Those calls continued, but Te'o did not answer, Swarbrick said.
The Heisman Trophy was awarded two days later, and Te'o continued to make comments about losing his girlfriend.
In the ESPN interview Te'o said he wasn't fully convinced that it was a hoax until Wednesday, Schaap said. That is why he continued to speak about and answer media questions about Kekua.
CNN's Phil Gast and Amanda Watts contributed to this report.
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
The wild weather that greeted the new year is a taste of things to come
ALL eyes have been on Australia in recent weeks as a blistering heatwave triggered huge wildfires. The result has been a slew of amazing stories, including a family escaping by jumping into the sea and meteorologists adding new colours to heat maps.
But Australia's fires are just the most dramatic of a cluster of ongoing extreme weather events, including droughts in the US and Brazil and a lethal cold snap in Asia (see "Drought, fire, ice: world is gripped by extreme weather").
Lumping extreme weather events under a single umbrella can be misleading. Al Gore got into trouble when his film An Inconvenient Truth stitched together footage of numerous hurricanes and presented them as "evidence" of climate change.
But in this case it seems there really is a bigger picture. Scientists have warned for years that extreme weather would become more common, and now it is. What's more, although single events can rarely be confidently attributed to climate change, clusters probably can.
Many expected that such weather disasters would be what finally spurs governments into action. Perhaps surprisingly, there are signs that this is happening. A report by GLOBE International - a collective of environmentally concerned parliamentarians, of which Gore was a founder - says that politicians are doing more to combat climate change than they are given credit for (see "Progress on climate change action at national level"). It is a reminder that the impotent United Nations negotiations are not the only game in town.
But don't expect too much. Even if we began seriously cutting emissions, it would make little difference in the short term. A new study on stopping the impacts of climate change shows that rapid emissions cuts now would have only a small effect by 2050. The big dividends only emerge around 2100 (Nature Climate Change, doi.org/j7g).
This effectively means that emissions cuts cannot help us or our children. That is not an argument for giving up, but it doesn't inspire confidence that emissions reductions will ever be made a priority.
The spate of extreme weather, then, is a snapshot of the not-too-distant future. Soon, this will be the new normal. We call events like the Australian heatwave "extreme weather", but within the next few decades they will simply be "weather".
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RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: The Palestinians are bracing for a new right-wing government that Israel's election is expected to produce, hoping that international and domestic moves will strengthen their position.
"There is complete ignorance and denial of the peace process and the two-state solution," warned Palestinian analyst Mahdi Abdul Hadi, director of the Passia think tank.
"Nobody is talking about the Palestinians."
Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), said: "The absence of peace and the Palestinian question in the Israeli electoral discourse points to an inability to confront reality."
Israelis go to the polls on Tuesday, when they are expected to vote in a government which polls indicate could be even more right-wing than the outgoing administration.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud, which is running on a joint list with the hardline nationalist Yisrael Beitenu of Avigdor Lieberman, a settler and former foreign minister, is projected to win most seats.
And polls show the third biggest party -- and probably Netanyahu's biggest coalition partner -- will be the hardline religious nationalist Jewish Home, whose leader has pledged to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.
"We're expecting a change for the worse and an increase in Israeli extremism, especially as Netanyahu is now allied with the extremists, and that doesn't bode well," Ashrawi told AFP.
The view from the Gaza Strip was equally gloomy.
"This Israeli election is a race to shed Palestinian blood, increase settlement activity and expel Palestinians," said Fawzi Barhum, a spokesman for Gaza's ruling Islamist Hamas movement.
Israel and Hamas engaged in eight days of bloody fighting in November over rocket fire on the Jewish state, which ended with the deaths of 177 Gazans and six Israelis.
Although an Egypt-brokered truce deal has largely been respected, it is only a matter of time before Israel's new government is drawn into a new confrontation with Hamas, experts say.
With the general election just days away, many believe the only answer is to strengthen the Palestinians' standing internationally and work towards overcoming the bitter rivalry between Hamas and Fatah, which dominates the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
"There must be a new, strong and unified Palestinian position in the framework of a national unity programme to confront this Israeli challenge and to protect our people, our land and our holy places," Barhum said.
Implementation of a stalled reconciliation deal between Fatah and Hamas showed encouraging signs last month.
Passia's Abdul Hadi warned said that any progress would be in "slow motion" although integrating Hamas into the Palestinian political system "would be a clear message to Israelis: 'You cannot have your cake and eat it'."
The Palestinians hope the international community will pressure Israel to resume peace talks which have been on hold for more than two years over the issue of settlement construction.
"Palestinians... are hoping that something might come from Brussels or Washington," Abdul Hadi said.
In the meantime, with their new upgraded UN ranking as a non-member state, the Palestinians have a menu of more than 60 international organisations they could seek to join.
Speculation has centred on the possibility of them looking to join the International Criminal Court where they could challenge Israel on settlement building.
So far, the Palestinians have said they would only exercise that option as a last resort, in extreme cases such as settlement construction in the E1 area near Jerusalem which could potentially cut the West Bank in half.
A more immediate concern is a financial crisis faced by the Palestinian Authority, which has been unable to pay its employees after Israel withheld tax and tariff revenues as a punishment for the UN move.
"Maintenance -- survival of the PA, financially and politically -- both in house and in the region" will be high on the Palestinian agenda whoever comes to power in Israel on January 22, Abdul Hadi said.
- AFP/xq
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Share your thoughts on the downfall of Lance Armstrong at CNN iReport, Facebook or Twitter.
(CNN) -- After years of tenacious spin that he was innocent, Lance Armstrong has gone in reverse in a confessional interview with Oprah Winfrey.
But his critics say he is still spinning the story.
Armstrong has, in the past, persistently and angrily denied -- even under oath -- having used performance enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France seven times.
He has persecuted former close associates who went public with doping allegations against him. "We sued so many people," Armstrong told Winfrey -- people who were telling the truth.
In the interview, he confessed to the drug use unequivocally.
12 telling quotes over the years from Armstrong
Did he use the blood enhancing hormone EPO? Testosterone? Cortisone? Human growth hormone? Illegal blood transfusions and other blood doping?
Armstrong answered "yes" on all counts in the first installment of a two-part interview that aired Thursday night. Part two airs Friday on Winfrey's OWN channel and online.
The disgraced cyclist, who has been stripped of his Tour de France titles and an Olympic bronze medal, blamed no one but himself for his doping decisions, careful not to implicate others.
Armstrong: I was "a bully"
Armstrong described himself as "deeply flawed" and "arrogant," and spoke often of how so much was his "fault."
"I was a bully," he told Winfrey of how he treated others who might expose him.
But Armstrong was not telling the whole story, author David Coyle, who wrote a book about doping and the Tour de France, told CNN's Anderson Cooper Thursday night.
"A partial confession is sort of the pattern here," he said. "Maybe this is Armstrong's partial, and more will come out later."
iReport: Tell us your take on the first part of the interview
The cyclist denied pushing teammates to dope, an assertion Coyle countered.
"Tyler Hamilton gets a phone call: be on a plane tomorrow. We're flying to Valencia to do a blood transfusion. That's what happens," Coyle said.
But Bill Strickland, an editor for Bicycling Magazine, praised Armstrong for the confessions he did make.
"I think it's clear what we're seeing here is someone learning to tell the truth," he said.
Both men described the interview as a "therapy session."
Appearing tense but sometimes relieved, Armstrong told Winfrey it was a happy day for him to be there with her.
He described his years of denial as "one big lie that I repeated a lot of times." He had races to win and a fairy tale image to keep up.
Armstrong reminisced on his storied past of being a hero who overcame cancer winning the Tour repeatedly, having a happy marriage, children. "It's just this mythic, perfect story, and it isn't true," he said.
It was impossible to live up to it, he said, and it fell apart.
Bleacher Report: Twitter erupts Thursday night
The lies and aggressive pursuit of those debunking them was about controlling the narrative. "If I didn't like what somebody said...I tried to control that and said that's a lie; they're liars," Armstrong said. It's a tactic he has followed his entire life, he said.
"Now the story is so bad and so toxic, and a lot of it is true," Armstrong said.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which tests Olympic athletes for performing enhancing drugs, praised the interview as a "small step in the right direction."
But it seemed to share Coyle's skepticism that Armstrong was exposing the whole truth.
"If he is sincere in his desire to correct his past mistakes, he will testify under oath about the full extent of his doping activities," said USADA CEO Travis Tygart.
Years of success and defiance, then a rapid fall
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.
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."
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."
Armstrong objected to the claim to Winfrey, saying that although it was "professional," it did not compare to doping programs in former communist East Germany.
In August, Armstrong said he wouldn't fight the charges, though he didn't admit guilt either.
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."
Armstrong told Winfrey that the unraveling of his career is the second time in his life that he could not control his life's narrative -- the last time was when he had cancer.
Livestrong: Tell the truth about doping
CNN's Carol Cratty, Joseph Netto and George Howell contributed to this report.
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