Obama Unveils Sweeping Plan to Curb Gun Violence

Flanked by four children from across the country, President Obama today unveiled a sweeping plan to curb gun violence in America through an extensive package of legislation and executive actions not seen since the 1960s.

Obama is asking Congress to implement mandatory background checks for all gun purchases, including private sales; reinstate a ban on some assault-style weapons; ban high-capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds; and crackdown on illicit weapons trafficking.

The president's proposal also includes new initiatives for school safety, including a call for more federal aid to states for hiring so-called school resource officers (police), counselors and psychologists, and improved access to mental health care.

Obama also initiated 23 executive actions on gun violence, policy directives not needing congressional approval. Among them is a directive to federal agencies to beef up the national criminal background-check system and a memorandum lifting a freeze on gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"I intend to use whatever weight this office holds to make them a reality," Obama said at a midday news conference. "If there's even one thing that we can do to reduce this violence, if there's even one life that can be saved, then we have an obligation to try.

"And I'm going to do my part."

The announcement comes one month after a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., left 26 dead, including 20 children. Obama called it the worst moment of his presidency and promised "meaningful action" in response.

Maqndel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Andrew Cuomo Signs New York Gun Control Law, Obama Readies Federal Plan Watch Video

'The View' on NRA Shooting App: Think It Out Watch Video

The proposals were the work of an Obama-appointed task force, led by Vice President Joe Biden, that held 22 meetings on gun violence in the past three weeks. The group received input from more than 220 organizations and dozens of elected officials, a senior administration official said.

As part of the push, Obama nominated a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which leads enforcement of federal gun laws and has been without a confirmed director for six years. The president appointed acting director Todd Jones, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, to the post, if the Senate confirms him.

The administration's plan calls for aid to states for the hiring of more school resource officers, counselors and psychologists. Obama also directed the Department of Education to ensure all schools have improved emergency-response plans.

He also called on Congress to make it illegal to possess or transfer armor-piercing bullets; it's now only illegal to produce them.

"To make a real and lasting difference, Congress must act," Obama said. "And Congress must act soon."

Officials said some of the legislative measures Obama outlined could be introduced on Capitol Hill next week. The pricetag for Obama's entire package is $500 million, the White House said.

"House committees of jurisdiction will review these recommendations," a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said in response to Obama's announcement. "And if the Senate passes a bill, we will also take a look at that."

The proposals are already being met with stiff opposition from gun rights advocates, led by the National Rifle Association, which overnight released a scathing ad attacking the president as an "elitist hypocrite."

"Are the president's kids more important than yours?" the narrator of the NRA ad says. "Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools, when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?"

Obama has questioned the value of placing more armed guards at schools around the country, although his proposal does call for placement of more police officers at public schools. The NRA opposes most of the other gun restrictions Obama has proposed.

"Keeping our children and society safe remains our top priority," the NRA said in a statement after Obama's announcement.

"Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation," the group said. "Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected and our children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy."

Read More..

Dozens held after Islamists attack Algerian gas field

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Islamist militants attacked a gas field in Algeria on Wednesday, claiming to have kidnapped up to 41 foreigners including seven Americans in a dawn raid in retaliation for France's intervention in Mali, according to regional media reports.

The raiders were also reported to have killed three people, including a Briton and a French national.

An al Qaeda affiliated group said the raid had been carried out because of Algeria's decision to allow France to use its air space for attacks against Islamists in Mali, where French forces have been in action against al Qaeda-linked militants since last week.

The attack in southern Algeria also raised fears that the French action in Mali could prompt further Islamist revenge attacks on Western targets in Africa, where al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) operates across borders in the Sahara desert, and in Europe.

AQIM said it had carried out Wednesday's raid on the In Amenas gas facility in OPEC member Algeria, Mauritania's ANI news agency reported.

The Algerian interior ministry said: "A terrorist group, heavily armed and using three vehicles, launched an attack this Wednesday at 5 a.m. against a Sonatrach base in Tigantourine, near In Amenas, about 100 km (60 miles) from the Algerian and Libyan border."

"The Algerian authorities will not respond to the demands of the terrorists and will not negotiate," Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia was quoted as saying by official news agency APS.

The gas field is operated by a joint venture including BP, Norwegian oil firm Statoil and Algerian state company Sonatrach.

ARMED MEN

BP said armed men were still occupying facilities at the gas field, which produces 9 billion cubic meters of gas a year(160,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day), more than a tenth of the country's overall gas output, and 60,000 barrels a day of condensate.

"The site was attacked and occupied by a group of unidentified armed people at about 0500 UK time. Contact with the site is extremely difficult, but we understand that armed individuals are still occupying the In Amenas operations site," it said.

A spokesman for BP said it usually had fewer than 20 people working at the site but would not be drawn on whether there were any talks with the hostage takers. He said: "Obviously we are doing everything we can to make sure our people are okay."

APS said a Briton and an Algerian security guard had been killed and seven people were injured. A French national was also killed in the attack, a local source said.

Also among those reported kidnapped by various sources were five Japanese nationals working for the Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp, a French national, an Austrian, an Irishman, and a number of Britons.

The U.S. State Department said it believed some U.S. citizens were also among the hostages, while Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said 13 employees of Statoil, a minority shareholder in the gas venture, were being held.

A member of an Islamist group styling itself the "Blood Battalion" was quoted by Mauritanian media as saying that five of the hostages were being held at the gas facility and 36 were in a housing area. APS said the Islamist raiders had freed Algerians working at the gas facility, though Regis Arnoux, head of French company CIS Catering, told JDD weekly newspaper that 150 Algerian employees of his company were being held at the site.

"The operation was in response to the blatant interference by Algeria and the opening of its air space to French aircraft to bomb northern Mali," the Islamist spokesman told Mauritania's ANI news agency.

ANI, which has regular direct contact with Islamists, said that fighters under the command of Mokhtar Belmokhtar were holding the foreigners.

Interior Minister Kablia also told APS that Belmokhtar was leading the group of about 20 individuals, whom he said were not from Mali, Libya or "any other neighboring state".

Belmokhtar, dubbed by French intelligence as "the uncatchable", for years commanded al Qaeda fighters in the Sahara before setting up his own armed Islamist group late last year after an apparent fallout with other militant leaders.

The Algerian army was in the area of the gas facility, according to French and Algerian sources.

ANI reported that the Islamists said they were surrounded by Algerian forces and warned that any attempt to free the hostages would lead to a "tragic end". One of the hostage takers told ANI that the perimeter of the site had been mined.

SECURITY IMPLICATIONS

The attack was the first time in years that Islamist militants are known to have launched an attack on an Algerian energy facility.

The attack could have implications for security across the whole of Algeria's energy sector, which supplies about a quarter of Europe's natural gas imports and exports millions of barrels of crude oil each year.

Such an attack would require a large and heavily armed insurgent force with a degree of freedom to move around, all elements that al Qaeda has not previously had.

However, the conflict in neighboring Libya in 2011 changed the balance of force. Security experts say al Qaeda was able to obtain arms, including heavy weapons, from the looted arsenals of former leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The five Japanese work for the engineering firm JGC Corporation, Jiji news agency reported, quoting company officials. JGC has a deal with Sonatrach-BP-Statoil Association for work in gas production at In Amenas.

A reporter for Japan's NHK television managed to call a JGC worker in Algeria.

The worker said he got a phone call from a colleague at the gas field. "It was around 6 a.m. this morning. He said that he had been hearing gunshots for about 20 minutes. I wasn't able to get through to him since."

French troops launched their first ground operation against Islamist rebels in Mali on Wednesday in an action to dislodge from a strategic town al Qaeda-linked fighters who have resisted six days of air strikes.

(Additional reporting by Catherine Bremer and John Irish in Paris, Laurent Prieur in Nouakchott, Andrew Osborn in London, Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Antoni Slodkowski in Tokyo, Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi and Christian Lowe in Warsaw; Editing by Giles Elgood and Will Waterman)

Read More..

Oil prices fall on weak German, US data

NEW YORK: Oil prices retreated Tuesday after unimpressive economic data out of Germany and the US raised questions about the strength of petroleum demand.

Prices of US benchmark West Texas Intermediate futures settled at US$93.28 a barrel, down 86 cents. European benchmark Brent crude futures settled at US$110.30 a barrel, down US$1.58.

German gross domestic product shrank by about 0.5 pe rcent in the fourth quarter of last year, bringing full-year GDP growth to just 0.7 per cent, the federal statistics office Destatis calculated in preliminary data.

In 2010 and 2011, the German economy had expanded by 4.2 per cent and 3.0 per cent, respectively.

The results are a troubling indicator for Europe because "Germany is really the strong man of Europe in terms of economy," said James Williams of WTRG Economics.

Meanwhile, economic indicators out of the US were also middling.

On the more positive side, US retail sales grew in the month of December by 0.5 per cent from November, above the analyst projection of 0.2 per cent.

However, IHS Global Insight economist Chris Christopher noted that the data showed that holiday retail sales increased by 2.7 per cent in 2012, well below the 5.5 per cent notched in 2011 and the 5.6 per cent in 2010.

In addition, the New York Empire State Manufacturing Survey said the business-conditions index fell to -7.78, well below the average estimate of -2.0. A reading below zero suggests contraction.

"The data was mostly poor this morning," said John Kilduff, an oil trader with Again Capital.

Concerns about the US also centre on the fact that talks between the White House and congressional Republicans remained tense on raising the debt ceiling. President Barack Obama Monday warned Republicans against using the debt ceiling as a "bargaining chip" in budget negotiations.

Republicans reacted swiftly, essentially ignoring Obama's demand to decouple the spending debate from the debt ceiling and giving every indication that the face-off will continue.

- AFP/jc

Read More..

Speaker should have expunged abusive proceedings right away: Somnath

CHANDIGARH: Former LokSabha Speaker SomnathChatterjee, who set an example by refusing to follow the party line to vote against the Congress-led government in a crucial July 2008 confidence vote, on Tuesday strongly differed with the handling of the abusive CD row involving Punjab minister BikramMajithia, saying that the expunging of assembly proceedings should not have come as an "afterthought".

The outspoken former CPM MP from West Bengal was replying to a query on the allegation of bias by the state Congress against Punjab speaker Charanjit Atwal, who was Chatterjee's deputy during the UPA government for a period of four years between 2004 and 2009.

"If I were the Speaker, I would have expunged the proceedings with such unruly people and unparliamentary language being used there and then. I wouldn't have waited for 24 hours, thinking that it would embarrass someone later," Chatterjee told TOI over phone from West Bengal.

Atwal had ordered expunging of the abusive words from the assembly records on December 21 last year, 24 hours after they were telecast live on two TV channels, including the one owned by the ruling SAD family and social media like YouTube.

The opposition Congress had last Sunday thrice screened the 60-second TV grab on two separate 42-inch screens at a rally in Muktsar, forcing Atwal to rush to Delhi and mull legal action against those showing the expunged proceedings.

Chatterjee, however, did not agree with the Congress protesting against the Speaker for taking assistance from legal experts in Delhi or elsewhere.

"Irrespective of the charges of bias, the Speaker is well within his rights to issue gag orders against public screening of the CD. If the entire proceedings or a part of it is expunged, it cannot be disseminated in the media," he said.

He said the supreme authority lies with the speaker on what action to be taken in case his orders are defied. He refused to comment on Atwal's personal conduct.

"I have mentioned about his (Atwal's) impartial behaviour in my book. It's not fair to comment on his credentials now that he's not working with me anymore," he said.

Read More..

Risk to all ages: 100 kids die of flu each year

NEW YORK (AP) — Twenty flu-related deaths have been reported in children so far this winter — one of the worst tolls this early in the year since health officials began keeping track.

Still, experts say that doesn't mean this year will turn out to be unusually deadly. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, and it's not clear that will happen this year.

The deaths have included a 6-year-old girl in Maine, a 15-year-old Michigan boy who loved robotics and a tall high school senior from Texas who got sick in Wisconsin while visiting his grandparents for the holidays.

On average, an estimated 24,000 Americans die each flu season. Elderly people with chronic health conditions are at greatest risk.

Read More..

Arias Called Boyfriend 4 Times After Killing Him

Jodi Arias tried to cover her tracks after killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, by making a flurry of phone calls to his cell phone and hacking into his voice mailbox, prosecutors alleged today.

Phone records presented in court today showed Arias persistently calling Alexander in the days before the killing. Ten calls were made from Arias' cell phone to Alexander's cell phone in the days leading up to his death, Verizon Wireless records expert Jody Citizen testified. Many of the calls were forwarded by Alexander straight to voice mail, Citizen said.

After Arias killed Alexander around 5:30 p.m. on June 4, 2008. , Arias called his phone four more times. The first call was made just hours after the killing at 11:37 p.m., the records showed. At least one of the calls was made as late as June 15, nearly a week after Alexander's body was found by friends.

At one point, Arias dialed into his voice mail system for 16 minutes, which indicated she was accessing his voice mail messages, Citizen said.

"If a person is in his phone for 16 minutes and they're not leaving a message what is going on?" prosecutor Juan Martinez asked.

Jodi Arias Trial: Jurors See Photos of Bloody Handprint Watch Video

"Somebody is listening to messages," Citizen answered.

See Full Coverage of Jodi Arias Trial

Watch the Jodi Arias Trial Live

See Jodi Arias Trial Videos

Arias' attorneys, who argue that she killed her ex-boyfriend out of self-defense, said that she could have been recording a message, and then listening to it and deleting it before recording again, accounting for the 16 minutes spent on the voice mail system.

"On Verizon, is it possible to change your voice mail, to erase it and do it over again?" defense attorney Kirk Nurmi asked Citizen. "Could someone have been doing that for a 16 minute phone call?"

"Yes," Citizen said.

Nurmi pointed out that phone records showed that two days before his death Alexander also called Arias, initiating two phone calls that lasted nearly 20 minutes and more than 40 minutes in the middle of the night.

The defense has said that Alexander was controlling and abusive toward Arias and was a "sexual deviant" whom she had to kill in self defense.

The prosecution, however, alleges that Arias was obsessed with Alexander, stalked him, and killed him out of jealousy after spending the afternoon having sex with him and taking naked photos of one another. She is accused of stabbing Alexander 27 times, slashing his throat, and shooting him in the head.

Arias could face the death penalty if convicted.

The jury returned to court today for the seventh day of testimony in the murder trial, after watching a series of graphic sexual photos of Arias and Alexander displayed on Monday, including the last photos of Alexander alive. The photos show both individuals lying naked on Alexander's bed, separately, and then Alexander naked in the shower.

The final photo shows a body part covered in blood around 5:30 p.m., which the prosecution alleges is when the attack on Alexander began and the camera fell to the floor.

Read More..

France to stay in Mali until stability restored

BAMAKO/DUBAI (Reuters) - France pledged on Tuesday to keep troops in Mali until stability returned to the West African country, raising the specter of a long campaign against al Qaeda-linked rebels who held their ground despite a fifth day of air strikes.

Paris has poured hundreds of soldiers into Mali and carried out 50 bombing raids since Friday in the Islamist-controlled northern half of the country, which Western and regional states fear could become a base for terrorist attacks in Africa and Europe.

Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that, despite French air support, Malian forces had not been able to dislodge Islamist fighters from the central Malian town of Konna or Diabaly, just 350 km (220 miles) northeast of Bamako.

A column of French armored vehicles rolled northward from the dusty riverside capital of Bamako towards rebel lines on Tuesday, the first major northward deployment of ground troops. A military official declined to comment on their objective.

Thousands of African soldiers are due to take over the offensive, but regional armies are scrambling to accelerate the operation, which was initially not expected for months and has been brought forward by France's surprise bombing campaign aimed at stopping a rebel advance on a strategic town last week.

President Francois Hollande, on a visit to the United Arab Emirates during which he sought Gulf states' financial backing for the African-led mission, suggested France would retain a major role in its former colony for months to come.

"We have one goal. To ensure that when we leave, when we end our intervention, Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory," Hollande told a news conference.

Paris has said it plans to deploy 2,500 soldiers to bolster the Malian army and work with the intervention force provided by West African states.

West African defense chiefs met in Bamako on Tuesday to approve plans for speeding up the deployment of 3,300 regional troops, foreseen in a United Nations-backed intervention plan.

Nigeria pledged to deploy soldiers within 24 hours, and Belgium said it was sending transport planes and helicopters to help, but West Africa's armies need time to become operational.

Mali's north, a vast and inhospitable area of desert and rugged mountains the size of Texas, was seized last year by an Islamist alliance combining al Qaeda's north African wing AQIM with splinter group MUJWA and the home-grown Ansar Dine rebels.

Any delay in following up on the French air bombardments of Islamist bases and fuel depots with a ground offensive could allow the insurgents to slip away into the desert and mountains, regroup and counter-attack.

The rebels, who French officials say are mobile and well armed, have shown they can hit back, dislodging government forces from Diabaly on Monday.

Residents said the town was still under Islamist control on Tuesday despite a number of air strikes that shook houses.

An eye witness near Segou, to the south, told Reuters he had seen 20 French Special Forces soldiers driving toward Diabaly.

In Konna, whose seizure on Thursday sparked French involvement, residents said Islamist fighters were camped just outside town. Army troops had also withdrawn after entering the town on Saturday.

Malians have largely welcomed the French intervention, having seen their army suffer a series of defeats by the rebels.

"With the arrival of the French, we have started to see the situation on the front evolve in our favor," said Aba Sanare, a resident of Bamako.

QUESTIONS OVER READINESS

Aboudou Toure Cheaka, a senior regional official in Bamako, said the West African troops would be on the ground in a week.

The original timetable for the 3,300-strong U.N.-sanctioned African force - to be backed by western logistics, money and intelligence services - did not initially foresee full deployment before September due to logistical constraints.

Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Guinea have all offered troops. Col. Mohammed Yerima, spokesman for Nigeria's defense ministry, said the first 190 soldiers would be dispatched within 24 hours.

But Nigeria, which is due to lead the mission, has already cautioned that even if some troops arrive in Mali soon, their training and equipping will take more time.

Sub-Saharan Africa's top oil producer, which already has peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur and is fighting a bloody and difficult insurgency at home against Islamist sect Boko Haram, could struggle to deliver on its troop commitment of 900 men.

One senior government adviser in Nigeria said the Mali deployment was stretching the country's military.

"The whole thing's a mess. We don't have any troops with experience of those extreme conditions, even of how to keep all that sand from ruining your equipment. And we're facing battle-hardened guys who live in those dunes," said the adviser, who asked not to be named.

FRENCH LINING UP SUPPORT

France, which has repeatedly said it has abandoned its role as policeman of its former African colonies, said on Monday that the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Germany had also offered logistical support.

Fabius has said Gulf Arab states would help the Mali campaign, while Belgium said on Tuesday it would send two C130 transport planes and two medical helicopters following a request from Paris.

A meeting of donors for the operation was expected to be held in Addis Ababa at the end of January.

Security experts have warned that the multinational intervention in Mali, couched in terms of a campaign by governments against "terrorism", could provoke a jihadist backlash against France and the West, and African allies.

U.S. officials have warned of links between AQIM, Boko Haram in Nigeria and al Shabaab Islamic militants fighting in Somalia.

Al Shabaab, which foiled a French effort at the weekend to rescue a French secret agent it was holding hostage, urged Muslims around the world to rise up against what it called "Christian" attacks against Islam.

"Our brothers in Mali, show patience and tolerance and you will win. War planes never liberate a land," Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, al Shabaab's spokesman, said on a rebel-run website.

U.S. officials said Washington was sharing information with French forces in Mali and considering providing logistics, surveillance and airlift capability.

"We have made a commitment that al Qaeda is not going to find any place to hide," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters as he began a visit to Europe. Panetta later said the U.S. had no plans to send troops to Mali.

One U.S. military source said the haphazard nature of French involvement reminded him of the U.S. entry into Afghanistan.

"I don't know what the French endgame is for this," the source said. "Air strikes are fine, but pretty soon you run out of easy targets. Then what do you do? What do you do when they head up into the mountains?"

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi; Felix Onuah in Abuja and Tim Cocks in Lagos; Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu; Michelle Nichols Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Richard Valdmanis in Dakar; Joe Bavier in Abidjan; Jan Vermeylen in Brussels; Writing by Pascal Fletcher, Daniel Flynn and David Lewis; editing by Richard Valdmanis, Giles Elgood and Will Waterman)

Read More..

US student could "doodle" way to college money

SAN FRANCISCO: Google on Monday launched a competition that will let a US student "doodle" his or her way to cash for college along with landing grant money to fund technology education at their grade school.

The California-based Internet titan announced its sixth annual "Doodle 4 Google" contest in which students from kindergarten to 12th grade vie to create a winning "doodle," a creative design playing off the search page logo.

The doodle contest theme is "My best day ever".

"Each year we have a broad theme to provide some inspiration while letting young artists' imagination roam free," Google said in a blog post.

"We hope to give kids a chance to explore themes that could be imaginary, exploratory or even sentimental, past, present or future."

The winning artwork will be displayed for the Internet world to see at Google.com and its creator will get US$30,000 in scholarship money to help pay for college. Their school will get a US$50,000 technology grant.

Doodles can be submitted between Tuesday and March 22, with judges selecting a top contender from each US state and public voting online to help determine national finalists.

The panel of judges includes puppeteer and Jim Henson company chairman Brian Henson; journalist and author Katie Couric, and graphic novel author and illustrator Kabu Kibuishi.

The winning doodle will be appear on the Google search page a day after an awards ceremony in New York City on May 22 and an exhibit of top entries will go on temporary display at the American Museum of Natural History there.

More than 114,000 doodles were submitted in last year's contest, which was won by a seven-year-old boy's pirate-themed artwork.

- AFP/jc

Read More..

Cold wave persists in Himachal

SHIMLA: Cold wave persisted in most parts of Himachal Pradesh even as mercury rose marginally across the state and stayed close to normal level.

The high-altitude tribal areas and other higher hills had mild snowfall while some places in mid and lower hills had light rains with Nadaun in Hamirpur district recording 3 mm of rainfall.

While tourist spot Manali recorded minimum temperature of minus 0.4 deg C, Mandi and Bhuntar recorded a low of 1.6 deg C and 2.6 deg C, followed by Shimla and Solan at 3.5 deg C each, Sundernagar 4.6 deg C, Una 6.2 deg C and Nahan 7.4 deg C respectively.

Keylong and Kalpa in tribal districts of Lahaul and Spiti and Kinnaur recorded a low of minus 8.6 deg C and minus 3.2 deg C. The high altitude areas reeled under bone chilling cold wave with mercury staying between minus 15 deg C and minus 23 deg C.

The maximum temperature at Una was 22.8 deg C while Sundernagar and Solan recorded a high of 19.8 deg C and 19.5 deg C followed by Bhunter 19 deg C, Nahan 18 deg C, Dharamshala 17.2 deg C, Shimla 15 deg C and Kalpa 9.5 deg C.

The MeT office has predicted dry weather in the region tomorrow but said a fresh western disturbance as an upper air system will affect the western Himalayan region from January 16 onwards. PTI

Read More..

Lance Armstrong Apologizes to Livestrong Staff

Lance Armstrong apologized today to the Livestrong staff ahead of his interview with Oprah Winfrey, a foundation official said.

The disgraced cyclist gathered with about 100 Livestrong Foundation staffers at their Austin, Texas, headquarters for a meeting that included social workers who deal directly with patients as part of the group's mission to support cancer victims.

Armstrong's "sincere and heartfelt apology" generated lots of tears, spokeswoman Katherine McLane said, adding that he "took responsibility" for the trouble he has caused the foundation.

McLane declined to say whether Armstrong's comments included an admission of doping, just that the cyclist wanted the staff to hear from him in person rather than rely on second-hand accounts.

Armstrong then took questions from the staff.

Armstrong's story has never changed. In front of cameras, microphones, fans, sponsors, cancer survivors -- even under oath -- Lance Armstrong hasn't just denied ever using performance enhancing drugs, he has done so in an indignant, even threatening way.

Riccardo S. Savi/Getty Images|Ray Tamarra/Getty Images

Lance Armstrong Doping Charges: Secret Tapes Watch Video

Lance Armstrong's Winfrey Interview: Expected to Admit to Doping Watch Video

Today, sources tell ABC News, will be different. Today Armstrong is expected to rewrite his own, now infamous story, to Winfrey. So what should she ask? There are enough questions to fill a book, but here's our shot at five, for starters, all based on the belief that his first words will be an admission. Feel free to comment and add your own.

1) Witnesses have told the U.S. Anti Doping Agency that after recovering from cancer, you increased your use of performance enhancing drugs, but swore off one of them—Human Growth Hormone—specifically noting your cancer as a reason to avoid it. Do you believe your cancer may have been caused by performance enhancing drug use?

2) Some people seem able to forgive or rationalize the use of performance enhancing drugs, but what troubles them is the vicious cover-up. Why did you feel it necessary to go beyond denials, to attack and even threaten and file legal claims against those who accused you of drug use, even to the point of causing serious harm to people's lives and reputations?

3) In 1996, while recovering from cancer, your former close friend Frankie Andreu and his wife Betsy say they were in the hospital room when you told doctors you'd used several different performance enhancing drugs during your career. They testified under oath about this, but you always denied it and vilified them. This caused the Andreus great harm. Did it happen?

4) What do you tell your kids?

5) Up until today, everything you've said and done—even that picture on twitter of you and your yellow jerseys—has said to the world that you're not sorry, and that you're the real winner of seven Tours. Aren't you just coming forward now to help yourself, rather than to come clean or set the record straight?

Whatever the answers, a small army of lawyers and even criminal investigators will be listening closely. Will Armstrong's interview be the start of his redemption or the beginning of even bigger problems?

Read More..