Armstrong May Testify Under Oath on Doping

Facing a federal criminal investigation and a deadline that originally was tonight to tell all under oath to anti-doping authorities or lose his last chance at reducing his lifetime sporting ban, Lance Armstrong now may cooperate.

His apparent 11th-hour about-face, according to the U.S. Anti Doping Agency (USADA), suggests he might testify under oath and give full details to USADA of how he cheated for so long.

"We have been in communication with Mr. Armstrong and his representatives and we understand that he does want to be part of the solution and assist in the effort to clean up the sport of cycling," USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart said in a written statement this evening. "We have agreed to his request for an additional two weeks to work on details to hopefully allow for this to happen."

Neither Armstrong nor his attorney responded to emails seeking comment on the USADA announcement.

The news of Armstrong's possible and unexpected cooperation came a day after ABC News reported he was in the crosshairs of federal criminal investigators. According to a high-level source, "agents are actively investigating Armstrong for obstruction, witness tampering and intimidation" for allegedly threatening people who dared tell the truth about his cheating.

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The case was re-ignited by Armstrong's confession last month to Oprah Winfrey that he doped his way to all seven of his Tour de France titles, telling Winfrey he used performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career and then lied about it. He made the confession after years of vehement denials that he cheated.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

READ MORE: Lance Armstrong May Have Lied to Winfrey: Investigators

WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape

If charges are ultimately filed, the consequences of "serious potential crimes" could be severe, ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams said -- including "possible sentences up to five, 10 years."

Investigators are not concerned with the drug use, but Armstrong's behavior in trying to maintain his secret by allegedly threatening and interfering with potential witnesses.

Armstrong was previously under a separate federal investigation that reportedly looked at drug distribution, conspiracy and fraud allegations -- but that case was dropped without explanation a year ago. Sources at the time said that agents had recommended an indictment and could not understand why the case was suddenly dropped.

"There were plenty of people, even within federal law enforcement, who felt like he was getting preferential treatment," said T.J. Quinn, an investigative reporter with ESPN.

The pressures against Armstrong today are immense and include civil claims that could cost him tens of millions of dollars.

Armstrong is currently serving a lifetime ban in sport handed down by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and today was the deadline he was given to cooperate under oath if he ever wanted the ban lifted.

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present

PHOTOS: Tour de France 2012

ABC News' Michael S. James contributed to this report.

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Obama’s careful claim about entitlement savings

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

“I’ve offered sensible reforms to Medicare and other entitlements, and my health care proposals achieve the same amount of savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms that have been proposed by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission.”

— President Obama, remarks to reporters, Feb. 5, 2013

People in Washington can debate forever who is responsible for the sequester. We previously documented how reporting by Bob Woodward shows this originally was a White House idea, but then lawmakers in both parties embraced it. But when the president met with reporters Tuesday to discuss the looming sequester, it was this line about entitlement savings that jumped out at us.

Regular readers may recall that we took a rather long look at this question in November, back when Democrats tried to suggest that Obama’s health-care proposals yielded more savings than Bowles-Simpson. This sentence appears carefully crafted to avoid such problems. So let’s take a look — is this Fact Checker bait?

The Facts

Bowles-Simpson, or more accurately the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, is considered by many in Washington to be the model for a bipartisan approach for deficit reduction — even though the commission actually failed to endorse the final report. Former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, and former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wy.), were the co-chairs of the 18-member commission. But you need to be wary when politicians make favorite comparisons between their policies and Bowles-Simpson proposals.

For instance, the Bowles-Simpson report, which was released in December 2010, proposed a budget plan for the years 2012 to 2020, which is effectively a 9-year budget. The Obama budget, released last year, proposed a budget for 2013 to 2022 — that’s 10 years, and also a different budget window.

Now, look at Obama’s careful phrasing — “my health care proposals achieve the same amount of savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms that have been proposed by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission.”

When we listened to Obama, we thought “beginning of the next decade” meant 2020. But an administration official said that he meant the next decade’s budget.

In other words, Obama wants us to compare the savings in 2022. Granted, that would be six years after Obama’s second term ends. But administration officials argue that changes in health-care policies take time to achieve budget savings, but that the right mix can produce greater savings in the long run.

Using Congressional Budget Office estimates of the president’s budget, we see that over 10 years, Obama’s proposals would achieve $337 billion from 2013 to 2022, compared to $483 billion for Bowles-Simpson in the same time period.

However, in 2022, both would achieve exactly the same amount of savings — $68 billion.

Administration officials say they believe their proposals would achieve greater savings than Bowles-Simpson after 2022, which would be consistent with the increase in savings toward the end of the first 10-year budget window. When we last looked at this issue, at least one budget expert said that assertion is credible, though of course we have no real way of knowing for sure now.

The Pinocchio Test

The president appears to have carefully tweeked his statement to address the concerns we had raised when we previously examined this question.

We are concerned that an ordinary listener might be confused by Obama’s wording; it would certainly make more sense to emphasize savings over the “long term,” rather than “beginning of the next decade.” And some might question why such careful parsing is necessary.

But at least the president is not claiming, as Democrats had before, that he achieves greater savings than Bowles-Simpson in near term. So, with his very careful wording, he earns the prized Geppetto Checkmark.

Geppetto Checkmark

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Multi-ministerial taskforce set up to tackle dengue

SINGAPORE: A multi-ministerial taskforce has been set up to tackle the dengue scourge in Singapore.

The National Environment Agency said it comprises representatives from the Ministry of National Development, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Defence.

The taskforce will be activated to investigate any outbreak of dengue cases which has seen a spike recently.

The Health Ministry reported six cases of the more serious dengue haemorrhagic fever this year.

For the first time, dengue cases will also be reported more specifically at the street level.

Previously, it was done based on cluster location only.

Ng Say Kiat, president of Singapore Pest Management Association, said: "I think this is a very good initiative in the sense that you will let people be alert to prevent mosquito breeding at home. And if you noticed there are cases around your neighbourhood, you will definitely be more alert."

- CNA/fa

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Protest outside Delhi University's SRCC over Narendra Modi's visit

NEW DELHI: A section of students protested outside Delhi University's Shri Ram College of Commerce ( SRCC) against Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Meanwhile, the Gujarat chief minister has begun his speech at the college.

Some students crossed the barricade and shouted slogans against Modi outside the college.

Modi's talk is on the theme: "Emerging business models in the global scenario".

The Gujarat chief minister who is favoured by some BJP leaders to be the party's PM candidate, is delivering the first 'Shri Ram Memorial Oration', initiated by Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi University's North Campus in memory of its founder. The event will mark the conclusion of the Business Conclave 2013.

The college has invited Modi after a campus survey in which students overwhelmingly indicated their preference to hear him, said a statement issued by Gujarat government.

During his day-long visit to Delhi, Modi met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the first time after becoming chief minister of Gujarat for the fourth time.

Modi will also visit Allahabad to participate in the Maha Kumbh on February 12. In recent weeks, there has been growing chorus in BJP for projecting Modi as party's prime ministerial candidate, arguing it will benefit the party in the next general elections.

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The Real Richard III

It's a question that actors from Laurence Olivier to Kevin Spacey have grappled with: What did Richard III, the villainous protagonist of Shakespeare's famous historical drama, really look and sound like?

In the wake of this week's announcement by the University of Leicester that archaeologists have discovered the 15th-century British king's lost skeleton beneath a parking lot, news continues to unfold that helps flesh out the real Richard III.

The Richard III Society unveiled a 3D reconstruction today of the late king's head and shoulders, based on computer analysis of his skull combined with an artist's interpretation of details from historical portraits. (Related: "Shakespeare's Coined Words Now Common Currency.")

"We received the skull data before DNA analysis confirmed that the remains were Richard III, and we treated it like a forensic case," said Caroline Wilkinson, the University of Dundee facial anthropologist who led the reconstruction project. "We were very pleasantly surprised by the results."

Though Shakespeare describes the king as an "elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog," the reconstructed Richard has a pleasant, almost feminine face, with youthful skin and thoughtful eyes. His right shoulder is slightly higher than the left, a consequence of scoliosis, but the difference is barely visible, said Wilkinson.

"I think the whole Shakespearean view of him as being sort of monster-like was based more on his personality than his physical features," she reflected.

Look back at 125 years of National Geographic history

People are naturally fascinated by faces, especially of historical figures, said Wilkinson, who has also worked on reconstructions of J.S. Bach, the real Saint Nicholas, the poet Robert Burns, and Cleopatra's sister.

"We make judgments about people all the time from looking at their appearance," she said. "In Richard's case, up to now his image has been quite negative. This offers a new context for considering him from the point of view of his anatomical structure rather than his actions. He had quite an interesting face."

A Voice From the Past

Most people's impression of Richard's personality comes from Shakespeare's play, in which the maligned ruler utters such memorable lines as "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York," and "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

But how would the real Richard III have expressed himself? Did he have an accent? Was there any sense of personality or passion in his choice of words?

To find out more about the mysterious monarch, Philip Shaw, a historical linguist at University of Leicester's School of English, analyzed the only two known examples of Richard III's own writing. Both are postscripts on letters otherwise composed by secretaries—one in 1469, before Richard became king, and one from 1483, the first year of his brief reign.

Shaw identified a quirk of spelling that suggests that Richard may have spent time in the West Midlands, or perhaps had a tutor who hailed from there.

"I was looking to compare the way he spells things with the way his secretaries spell things, working on the assumption that he would have been schooled to a fairly high level," Shaw explained.

Read about National Geographic explorers on our Explorers Journal blog

In the 1469 letter, Richard spells the word "will" as "wule," a variation associated with the West Midlands. But Shaw also notes that by 1483, when Richard wrote the second letter's postscript, he had changed his spelling to the more standard "wyll" (the letters 'i' and 'y' were largely interchangeable during that period of Middle English).

"That could suggest something about him brushing up over the years, or moving toward what would have been the educated standard," Shaw said, noting that the handwriting in the second example also appears a bit more polished. "One wonders what sort of practice and teaching he'd had in the interim."

Although it's hard to infer tone of voice from written letters, there is certainly emotion in the words penned by Richard III.

In the 1469 letter, the 17-year-old seeks a loan of 100 pounds from the king's undertreasurer. Although the request is clearly stated in the body of the letter, Richard adds an urgent P.S.: "I pray you that you fail me not now at this time in my great need, as you will that I show you my good lordship in that matter that you labour to me for."

That could either be a veiled threat (If you don't lend me the money, I won't do that thing you asked me to do) or friendly cajoling (Come on, I'm helping you out with something, so help me out with this loan).

"His decision to take the pen himself shows you how important that personal touch must have been in getting people to do something," Shaw said.

The second letter, written to King Richard's chancellor in 1483, also conveys a sense of urgency. He had just learned that the Duke of Buckingham—once a close ally—was leading a rebellion against him.

"He's asking for his Great Seal to be sent to him so that he can use it to give out orders to suppress the rebellion," Shaw said. "He calls the Duke 'the most untrue creature living. You get a sense of how personally let down and betrayed he feels."

Shaw said he hopes his analysis—in combination with the new facial reconstruction—will help humanize Richard III.

"He probably wasn't quite the villain that Shakespeare portrays, though I suspect he was quite ruthless," he said. "But you probably couldn't afford to be a very nice man if you wanted to survive as a king in those days."

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Lance Armstrong Under Criminal Investigation

Federal investigators are in the midst of an active criminal investigation of disgraced former Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, ABC News has learned.

The revelation comes in stark contrast to statements made by the U.S. Attorney for Southern California, Andre Birotte, who addressed his own criminal inquiry of Armstrong for the first time publicly on Tuesday. Birotte's office spent nearly two years investigating Armstrong for crimes reportedly including drug distribution, fraud and conspiracy -- only to suddenly drop the case on the Friday before the Super Bowl last year.

Sources at the time said that agents had recommended an indictment and could not understand why the case was suddenly dropped.

Today, a high level source told ABC News, "Birotte does not speak for the federal government as a whole."

According to the source, who agreed to speak on the condition that his name and position were not used because of the sensitivity of the matter, "Agents are actively investigating Armstrong for obstruction, witness tampering and intimidation."

An email to an attorney for Armstrong was not immediately returned.

READ MORE: Lance Armstrong May Have Lied to Winfrey: Investigators

AP Photo/Bas Czerwinski, File

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Earlier Tuesday, during a Department of Justice news conference on another matter, Birotte was confronted with the Armstrong question unexpectedly. The following is a transcript of that exchange:

Q: Mr. Birotte, given the confession of Lance Armstrong to all the things --

Birotte: (Off mic.)

Q: -- to all thethings that you, in the end, decided you couldn't bring a case about, can you give us your thoughts on that case now and whether you might take another look at it?

Birotte: We made a decision on that case, I believe, a little over a year ago. Obviously we've been well-aware of the statements that have been made by Mr. Armstrong and other media reports. That has not changed my view at this time. Obviously, we'll consider, we'll continue to look at the situation, but that hasn't changed our view as I stand here today.

The source said that Birotte is not in the loop on the current criminal inquiry, which is being run out of another office.

Armstrong confessed to lying and using performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

Investigators are not concerned with the drug use, but Armstrong's behavior in trying to maintain his secret by allegedly threatening and interfering with potential witnesses.

Armstrong is currently serving a lifetime ban in sport handed down by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. He has been given a Feb. 6 deadline to tell all under oath to investigators or lose his last chance at a possible break on the lifetime ban.

PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present

PHOTOS: Tour de France 2012

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Strengthening security at the nation’s airports

Most people think of airport security as their walk through the metal detector and the eyeballing by transportation security officers (TSOs). Dan Liddell, whose job it is to protect the flying public at seven airports in central New York, instead sees 17 zones of worker responsibility and hundreds of different tasks.

In pursuit of safeguarding the public, Liddell, a federal security director based in Syracuse, has written a book that is now used to train TSOs. It’s called the “National Standardization Guide to Improving Security Effectiveness.” Tasks at each duty area have been inventoried and cataloged, and the “knowledge, values and skills” associated with the airport security jobs have been identified under what Liddell describes as a systems approach to training.

As important as it is to use X-ray machines and explosive trace-detection equipment and to have the correct rules and procedures in place, Liddell said transportation security relies on the skills of the people responsible for it.

“People performance is the cornerstone,” he said. “When I set out to improve things, I look at the people. I look at their proficiency, their skill in doing something and how well they’re doing that job.”

Even when people have the skills to do their jobs, they don’t necessarily do them well each time, especially when conditions can vary with each day and every passenger. To keep performance high, TSOs are tested covertly at unexpected times. A banned item will be sent through a checkpoint and the reaction and activities that take place are monitored.

Whether or not TSOs spot contraband, everyone at that checkpoint during the test participates in an “after-action” review. “It’s the learning experience that’s relevant,” Liddell said. “We’re doing a review of actual performance and you can always improve.”

Liddell is sensitive to the pressure that airport security personnel face. TSOs have the tough of performing multiple tasks under constant camera surveillance and public scrutiny, often interacting with tired or irritated travelers. The testing and training helps them continually up their game.

Thirty airports around the country that helped test the training system and now use a version of it. Paul Armes, federal security director at Nashville International Airport, was interested in creating such a system with a colleague when they both worked in Arizona, but it “never got traction.”

When he learned about what Liddell was doing, he was eager to participate. “Typical of Dan, he built it himself and practiced it so he had hard metric results, and then he started reaching out to some of us, working with his counterparts around the country to get a good representative sample,” Armes said. “He sees things others don’t see sometimes and he has the capability to drill down into the details.”

Liddell began the “pretty long process” of analyzing how people were performing at checkpoints in 2009. He sat down with subject-matter experts to produce the task inventory he now uses. In 2010, he improved the review and reporting process that occurs after covert tests events and instituted the security practices he refined at the other New York airports he oversees, including Greater Binghamton, Ithaca and four others. “I love breaking it down,” he said. “I’ve got a quest for improvement.”

In a less sneaky version of the television show, “Undercover Boss,” Liddell went through the new-hire training program for his employees to understand as much as he could about the jobs and the training provided for them, he said.

If pursuing knowledge is in Liddell’s genes, it may be because his parents were both in education. His father was a high school principal and his mother was a fifth-grade teacher. His teaching manifested itself instead in the training realm, where he strives to educate security employees as effectively as possible, inside the classroom and out.

“It’s always a challenge to meet that right balance of really great effectiveness and really great efficiency,” he said. “There are always challenges. It’s what gets me up in the morning, trying to improve.”

This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference.

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UBS suffers US$2.7b 2012 net loss on Libor-fixing fines

ZURICH: Swiss banking giant UBS announced on Tuesday a net loss of 2.5 billion Swiss francs (2 billion euros, $2.7 billion) as fines from the Libor rate-fixing scandal weighed on results.

In the final quarter of last year UBS suffered a net loss of 1.8 billion francs when it booked provisions for the combined fines of 1.4 billion francs from regulators as well as restructuring costs.

The full-year net loss was higher than expectations, with analysts surveyed by the Swiss financial news agency AWP foreseeing on average UBS to turn in a loss of 2.2 million francs.

UBS had earned a net profit of 4.1 billion francs in 2011.

Shares in Switzerland's largest bank tumbled 3.7 percent at the opening bell, but after 30 minutes of trading had climbed back into positive territory.

Despite the 2012 loss UBS said it had made progress in executing its strategy to reduce its higher risk investment banking operations in favour of wealth management, and would recommend increasing its dividend by 50 percent to 0.15 francs per share.

In the fourth quarter of 2012 UBS's investment banking unit suffered a pre-tax net loss of 557 million francs, down from a loss of 2.8 billion francs in the previous quarter.

The wealth management unit posted a pre-tax profit of 398 million francs in the fourth quarter, down from 582 million francs in the third quarter.

UBS also announced it would buy back 5 billion francs worth of its bonds, which it said would lower its future funding costs and further improve its capital ratios.

"While progress was made on many issues during 2012, many of the underlying challenges remain at the start of the new year," UBS said.

"Failure to achieve further sustained and credible improvements to the eurozone sovereign debt situation, European banking system issues, unresolved US fiscal issues, ongoing geopolitical risks and the outlook for growth in the global economy would continue to exert a strong influence on client confidence and, thus, activity levels in the first quarter of 2013," the bank warned.

US, British and Swiss authorities late last year hit Switzerland's largest bank with $1.5 billion in fines -- the second-largest banking penalty ever -- for massive misconduct in the setting of the Libor rate.

That rate is used as a benchmark for global financial contracts worth about $300 trillion and affects financial products worldwide such as student loans and mortgages.

Despite the devastating quarterly and annual results, UBS said its board would propose a 50-percent dividend increase for its shareholders compared to 2011 to 0.15 francs a share.

In a separate announcement, the bank meanwhile said it planned to buy back up to 5.0 billion francs worth of certain outstanding euro, dollar and lira bonds, in a bid to reduce its funding needs going forward.

Sarasin bank analyst Rainer Skierka meanwhile hailed UBS's progress in building up capital ratios and reducing risky assets.

"UBS is on track to achieve its goals, and this has also been underlined with a 50-percent increase in its dividend," he told the Dow Jones Newswires.

"It is also making progress on its efficiency programs and continues to strengthen its risk control framework," he said.

- AFP/xq

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Narendra Modi to visit Kumbh Mela on Feb 12 to take holy dip

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi will attend the Kumbh Mela being held in Allahabad on February 12.

"Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Allahabad on February 12 to take a holy dip in the river Ganga during the Kumbh Mela," sources in the Chief Minister's office said.

There were reports that VHP and some Hindu religious groups close to the Sangh Parivar might discuss Modi's candidature at a conclave during the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad.

Modi's visit comes at a time when the chorus within the BJP for declaring him party's prime ministerial candidate has grown loud, making NDA members like JD(U) nervous and resulting in a gag order on the issue by BJP president Rajnath Singh.

Even VHP leader Ashok Singhal had aired his opinion that Modi should be declared as the prime ministerial candidate.

BJP spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, reacting to the opposition on sadhus discussing the name of prime ministerial candidate, had said, "If saints will not discuss the name of prime ministerial candidates, will Hafeez Saeed (Pakistan based terrorist heading Laskhar-i-Toiba) decide about it.

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Space Pictures This Week: A Space Monkey, Printing a Moon Base

Illustration courtesy Foster and Partners/ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced January 31 that it is looking into building a moon base (pictured in an artist's conception) using a technique called 3-D printing.

It probably won't be as easy as whipping out a printer, hooking it to a computer, and pressing "print," but using lunar soils as the basis for actual building blocks could be a possibility.

"Terrestrial 3-D printing technology has produced entire structures," said Laurent Pambaguian, head of the project for ESA, in a statement.

On Earth, 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, produces a three-dimensional object from a digital file. The computer takes cross-sectional slices of the structure to be printed and sends it to the 3-D printer. The printer bonds liquid or powder materials in the shape of each slice, gradually building up the structure. (Watch how future astronauts could print tools in space.)

The ESA and its industrial partners have already manufactured a 1.7 ton (1.5 tonne) honeycombed building block to demonstrate what future construction materials would look like.

—Jane J. Lee

Published February 4, 2013

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