Every CAG report has a basis: Vinod Rai

BHUBANESWAR: Brushing aside criticism of the national auditor's method of calculating losses in coalgate and 2G spectrum scams, Comptroller & Auditor General Vinod Rai on Sunday said every CAG report has a certain 'basis'. The country is faced with corruption of unprecedented proportion, Rai said, while defending his reports, saying these were unique and extraordinary.

"Every report is unique and extraordinary. It has some basis. If it had no basis, we won't point out anything," Rai said at a seminar organised by the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), on 'Pursuit of excellence: role of governance'.

The CAG had earlier made a strong pitch for scrapping all controversial allocations of coal mines. Its report on coal block also got slammed by the UPA government, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejecting the findings and suggesting that it had erred in estimating gains for private players.

In its report on 2G spectrum allocation, CAG had estimated a loss of over Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the public exchequer and charged the telecom ministry with undervaluing 2G spectrum causing losses to the government.

"We in the audit and accounts department sincerely believe that our mandate is not to conduct audit, prepare reports and place them in the legislature. It is more than that. It is our responsibility to hold the government financially accountable to our audit especially in the social sectors," said Rai.

Corruption, he said, has two aspects in India. "We commonly use bribery and extortion interchangeably. We need to understand there is a fine distinction. Ordinarily, a person would resort to paying a bribe for expediting his work. It involves an element of willingness to extract favour. But extortion is an entirely different thing. It is forceful extraction," he explained.

Appreciating India's economic growth, Rai said the economy this millennium has recorded growth of around 8%. "It's a matter of pride that when the rest of the world was facing a global meltdown, with negative growth among the developed economies, our growth rate merely reduced to 6%," he argued.

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinesky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinesky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

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Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

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Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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President Obama Sworn In for Second Term

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden today officially embarked on their second term, taking the Constitutionally mandated oath of office in two separate private ceremonies inside their homes.

Shortly before noon in the Blue Room of the White House, Obama raised his right hand, with his left on a family Bible, reciting the oath administrated by Chief Justice John Roberts. He was surrounded by immediate family members, including first lady Michelle Obama and daughters, Malia and Sasha.

As he hugged his wife and daughters, Sasha said, "Good job, Daddy."

"I did it," he said.

"You didn't mess up," she answered.

Biden was sworn in earlier today by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to administer a presidential oath, in a ceremony at his official residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory. He was joined by more than 120 guests, including cabinet members, extended family and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.

Because Jan. 20 -- the official date for a new presidential term -- falls on a Sunday this year, organizers delayed by one day the traditional public inauguration ceremony and parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Vice President Joe Biden Sworn in for 2nd Term Watch Video

President Obama's 2nd Inauguration: Hundreds of Thousands to Attend Watch Video

Obama and Biden will each repeat the oath on Monday on the west front of the Capitol, surrounded by hundreds of dignitaries and members of Congress. An estimated 800,000 people are expected to gather on the National Mall to witness the moment and inaugural parade to follow.

The dual ceremonies in 2013 means Obama will become the second president in U.S. history to take the presidential oath four times. He was sworn in twice in 2008 out of an abundance of caution after Roberts flubbed the oath of office during the public administration. This year Roberts read from a script.

Franklin Roosevelt was also sworn in four times but, unlike Obama, he was elected four times.

This year will mark the seventh time a president has taken the oath on a Sunday and then again on Monday for ceremonial purposes. Reagan last took the oath on a Sunday in 1985.

Both Obama and Biden took the oath using a special family Bible. Obama used a text that belonged to Michelle Obama's grandmother LaVaughn Delores Robinson. Biden placed his hand on a 120-year-old book with a Celtic cross on the cover that has been passed down through Biden clan.

The official inaugural activities today also included moments of prayer and remembrance that marked the solemnity of the day.

Obama and Biden met at Arlington National Cemetery for a brief morning ceremony to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns, honoring military service members who served and sacrificed. The men stood shoulder to shoulder, bowing their heads as a bugler played "Taps."

Biden, who is Catholic, began the day with a private family mass at his residence. The president and first family attended church services at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historically black church and site of two pre-inaugural prayer services for former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and their families.

The Obamas and Bidens plan to participate in a church service on Monday morning at St. John's Episcopal, across Lafayette Park from the White House. They will also attend a National Prayer Service on Tuesday at the National Cathedral.

Later on Sunday evening, the newly-inaugurated leaders will attend a candlelight reception at the National Building Museum. The president and vice president are expected to deliver brief remarks to their supporters.

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Veteran jihadist claims bloody Algeria siege for al Qaeda

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - A veteran Islamist fighter claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda for the Algerian hostage crisis, a regional website reported on Sunday, tying the bloody desert siege to France's intervention across the Sahara in Mali.

Algeria said it expected to raise its preliminary death tolls of 23 hostages and 32 militants killed in the four-day siege at a gas plant deep in the Sahara. It said on Sunday it had captured five militants alive.

Western governments whose citizens died or are missing have held back from criticizing tactics used by their ally in the struggle with Islamists across the vast desert.

"We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation," one-eyed guerrilla Mokhtar Belmokhtar said in a video, according to the Sahara Media website, which quoted from the recording but did not immediately show it.

"We are ready to negotiate with the West and the Algerian government provided they stop their bombing of Mali's Muslims," said Belmokhtar, a veteran of two decades of war in Afghanistan and the Sahara.

Belmokhtar's fighters launched their attack on the In Amenas gas plant before dawn on Wednesday, just five days after French warplanes unexpectedly began strikes to halt advances by Islamists in neighboring northern Mali.

European and U.S. officials say the raid was almost certainly too elaborate to have been planned since the start of the French campaign, although the military action by Paris could have provided a trigger for an assault prepared in advance.

"We had around 40 jihadists, most of them from Muslim countries and some even from the West," Sahara Media quoted Belmokhtar as saying. Algerian officials say Belmokhtar's group was behind the attack but he was not present himself.

Some Western governments have expressed frustration at not being informed in advance of the Algerian authorities' decision to storm the complex on Thursday.

Survivors have said many hostages were killed when Algerian government forces blasted a convoy of trucks on Thursday morning. Algerian officials said they stormed the compound because the militants were trying to escape with their captives.

Britain and France both defended the Algerian action.

"It's easy to say that this or that should have been done. The Algerian authorities took a decision and the toll is very high but I am a bit bothered ... when the impression is given that the Algerians are open to question. They had to deal with terrorists," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a televised statement: "Of course people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack.

"We should recognize all that the Algerians have done to work with us and to help and coordinate with us. I'd like to thank them for that. We should also recognize that the Algerians too have seen lives lost among their soldiers."

With so much still unknown about the fates of foreigners held at the site, some countries that have faced casualties have yet to issue full counts of their dead.

Scores of foreigners lived alongside the hundreds of Algerians at the plant, which was run by Britain's BP and Norway's Statoil and also housed workers from a Japanese engineering firm and a French catering company.

Cameron said three British nationals were confirmed killed and another three plus a British resident were also feared dead. One American has been confirmed killed. Statoil said it was searching for five missing Norwegians. Japanese and French citizens are also among those missing or presumed dead.

Algeria's Interior Ministry, which gave the figure on Saturday of 23 hostages killed, said 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerians had been freed.

"I am afraid unfortunately to say that the death toll will go up," Minister of Communication Mohamed Said was quoted as saying on Sunday by the official APS news agency. Private Algerian television station Ennahar said on Sunday 25 bodies had been discovered. Clearing the base would take 48 hours, it said.

Survivors have given harrowing accounts. Alan Wright, now safe at home in Scotland, told Sky News he had escaped with a group of Algerian and foreign workers who hid for a day and a night and then cut their way through a fence to run to freedom.

While hiding inside the compound the first night, he managed briefly to call his wife who was at home with their two daughters desperately waiting for news.

"She asked if I wanted to speak to Imogen and Esme, and I couldn't because I thought, I don't want my last ever words to be in a crackly satellite phone, telling a lie, saying you're OK when you're far from OK," he recalled.

Algeria's oil minister, Youcef Yousfi, visited the site and said the physical damage was minor, state news service APS reported. The plant, which produces 10 percent of Algeria's natural gas, would start back up in two days, he said.

OIL VULNERABILITIES EXPOSED

The Islamists' assault has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world and exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara.

Algeria, scarred by the civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, has insisted there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism.

France especially needs close cooperation from Algeria to have a chance of crushing Islamist rebels in northern Mali. Algiers has promised to shut its porous 1,000-km border with Mali to prevent al Qaeda-linked insurgents simply melting away into its empty desert expanses and rugged mountains.

Algeria's permission for France to use its airspace, confirmed by Fabius last week, also makes it much easier to establish direct supply lines for its troops which are trying to stop the Islamist rebels from taking the whole of Mali.

French troops in Mali advanced slowly on Sunday towards the town of Diably, a militant stronghold the fighters abandoned on Saturday after punishing French attacks.

According to Communications Minister Said, the militants were of six different nationalities. Believed to be among the dead was their leader, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, a fighter from Niger who is seen as close to Belmokhtar.

The apparent ease with which guerrillas swooped in from the desert to take control of an important energy facility has raised questions over the country's outwardly tough security measures. Yousfi said Algeria would not allow foreign security firms to guard its oil facilities.

Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.

Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.

The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in the civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda has gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.

(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris, Daniel Flynn in Dakar; Writing by David Stamp and Peter Graff; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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Algeria hostage crisis ends in bloodshed

IN AMENAS, Algeria: Algerian troops stormed a remote gas plant on Saturday to end a hostage crisis that killed 23 foreigners and Algerians, seven of them executed by their Islamist captors in a final military assault.

Twenty-one hostages died during the siege that began when the Al-Qaeda-linked gunmen attacked the In Amenas facility deep in the Sahara desert at dawn on Wednesday, the interior ministry said.

Thirty-two kidnappers were also killed, and special forces were able to free "685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners," it said.

Among the dead were an unknown number of foreigners -- including from Britain, France, Romania and the United States -- and many were still unaccounted for, including Japanese.

The kidnappers led by Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former Al-Qaeda commander in North Africa, killed two people on a bus, a Briton and an Algerian, before taking hundreds of workers hostage when they overran the gas plant.

Belmokhtar's "Signatories in Blood" group had been demanding an end to French military intervention against jihadists in neighbouring Mali.

In Saturday's assault, "the Algerian army took out 11 terrorists, and the terrorist group killed seven foreign hostages," state television said, without giving a breakdown of their nationalities.

A security official who spoke to AFP as army helicopters overflew the plant gave the same death tolls, adding it was believed the foreigners were executed "in retaliation".

As experts began to clear the complex of bombs planted by the Islamists, residents of In Amenas breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"We went from a peaceful situation to a terror situation," said one resident who gave his name as Fouad.

"The plant could have exploded and taken out the town," said another.

Brahim Zaghdaoui said he was not surprised by the Algerian army's ruthless final assault.

"It was predictable that it would end like that," he said standing outside the town's hospital, where coffins were seen arriving in the morning.

Most of the hostages had been freed on Thursday when Algerian forces launched a rescue operation, which was widely condemned as hasty.

But French President Francois Hollande and US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta refused to blame Algeria.

The response by Algiers was "the most appropriate" given it was dealing with "coldly determined terrorists ready to kill their hostages," said Hollande.

Panetta added: "They are in the region, they understand the threat from terrorism... I think it's important that we continue to work with (Algiers) to develop a regional approach."

British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the crisis had been "brought to an end by a further assault by Algerian forces, which has resulted in further loss of life".

The deaths were "appalling and unacceptable and we must be clear that it is the terrorists who bear sole responsibility for it," he said.

The hostage-taking was the largest since the 2008 Mumbai attack, and the biggest by jihadists since hundreds were killed in a Moscow theatre in 2002 and at a school in the Russian town of Beslan in 2004, according to monitoring group IntelCenter.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said a total of six British nationals and one resident of the United Kingdom were either dead or unaccounted for.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan said he had received "severe information" about 10 of his country's nationals who were still missing.

The gunmen said on Friday that they were still holding "seven foreign hostages" -- three Belgians, two Americans, one Japanese and a Briton.

However, Brussels said it had no indication any of its nationals were being held.

Algeria was strongly criticised for launching Thursday's assault, which the kidnappers said had left dead 34 of the hostages and 15 of their own fighters.

Belmokhtar also wanted to exchange American hostages for the blind Egyptian sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui, jailed in the United States on charges of terrorist links.

At least one American had already been confirmed dead before Saturday's assault.

But the State Department said "the United States does not negotiate with terrorists".

France, which said on Saturday that 2,000 of the 2,500 troops it had pledged were now on the ground in Mali, said that no more of its citizens were being held.

President Hollande said French troops would stay in Mali as long as is needed "to defeat terrorism" in the West African country and its neighbours.

Algerian news agency APS quoted a government official as saying the kidnappers, who claimed to have come from Niger, were armed with machineguns, assault rifles, rocket launchers and missiles.

This was confirmed by an Algerian driver, Iba El Haza, who said the hostage-takers spoke in different Arabic dialects and perhaps also in English.

"From their accents I understood one was Egyptian, one Tunisian, another Algerian and one was speaking English or (another) foreign language," Haza told AFP after escaping on Thursday.

"The terrorists said: 'You have nothing to do with this, you are Algerians and Muslims. We won't keep you, we only want the foreigners.'"

- AFP/de

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JBT scam: Convicted retired staff & kin in a shock

NEW DELHI: Four days after the CBI court gave its verdict in the junior basic trained (JBT) teachers' recruitment scam, 50 retired Haryana primary education department employees, who were convicted by the court, and their families are in a state of shock.Having lost the legal battle following the CBI court's conviction, the former government employees of the education department on Saturday pleaded before the court for minimum sentence on medical grounds. The special CBI court in Rohini, Delhi, which is now hearing the arguments on quantum of punishment, which will be announced on January 22. Former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala and his son Ajay were convicted by the court in the case on Wednesday.

Family members of the convicted retired staff maintained that the officials would have been subjected to more severe punishments had they refused to carry out the orders issued by Chautala and his associates. The convicted retired officials included former district primary education officers (DPEOs), block education officers (BEO) and senior officials of education department. They were members of the 17 district level selection committees constituted by the education department for recruitment of JBT teachers in 1999-2000.

Majority of those convicted in the case are in their mid 60s and early 70s. Their relatives now insist that compulsion of carrying out the orders issued by superiors became the biggest crime for them. "This is the perfect example as to how a government service can turn out to be a sin. My mother-in-law had served the department for 34 years. Her fault was that she signed the list like others,'' said Krishan Kumar, a resident of Jind whose mother-in-law, Kailash Kaushik, a retired BEO of Jind, has been convicted in the case.

Accompanied by other family members, Krishan had come to see Kailash in the court on Saturday. "Now we expect that the court will give the minimum sentence as members of the committees have been punished for virtually no fault of theirs. Unfortunately, all this has happened despite the fact that none of the members of committees was indicted for monetary or any other gains. Those who gained (the recruited teachers) are still in job,'' said K K Atri, a Panchkula resident and Kailash's brother-in-law.

"What could be worse than this, a person who earned reputation as a teacher is forced to live with hardcore criminals in jail for no fault of theirs,'' another relative of an accused in the case said. Relatives of Ajit Singh Sangwan, a retired DPEO, also echoed the same feeling.

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Lilly drug chosen for Alzheimer's prevention study

Researchers have chosen an experimental drug by Eli Lilly & Co. for a large federally funded study testing whether it's possible to prevent Alzheimer's disease in older people at high risk of developing it.

The drug, called solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab), is designed to bind to and help clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.

Earlier studies found it did not help people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's but it showed some promise against milder disease. Researchers think it might work better if given before symptoms start.

"The hope is we can catch people before they decline," which can come 10 years or more after plaques first show up in the brain, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, director of the Alzheimer's center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

She will help lead the new study, which will involve 1,000 people ages 70 to 85 whose brain scans show plaque buildup but who do not yet have any symptoms of dementia. They will get monthly infusions of solanezumab or a dummy drug for three years. The main goal will be slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study will be done at 50 sites in the U.S. and possibly more in Canada, Australia and Europe, Sperling said.

In October, researchers said combined results from two studies of solanezumab suggested it might modestly slow mental decline, especially in patients with mild disease. Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals of significantly slowing the mind-robbing disease or improving activities of daily living.

Those results were not considered good enough to win the drug approval. So in December, Lilly said it would start another large study of it this year to try to confirm the hopeful results seen patients with mild disease. That is separate from the federal study Sperling will head.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.

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Online:

Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov

Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org

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Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Ex-Teammate: Armstrong Showed 'Genuine Emotion'

While critics railed against Lance Armstrong for coming off as detached in the two-part interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired Thursday and Friday nights, former teammate and friend, Tyler Hamilton, told "Good Morning America" today that he felt Armstrong was displaying "genuine emotion."

"I've never seen Lance shed a tear until last night. Before I even heard one word from him Thursday night, I could tell he was a broken man," Hamilton said.

Armstrong's contrition turned tearful Friday when he revealed to Oprah Winfrey how difficult it was to betray his family -- particularly his 13 year old son -- who stood up for the fallen cycling star as rumors swirled that he was taking banned drugs.

Armstrong, 41, choked up when he recounted what he told his son, Luke, in the wake of the scandal.

"When this all really started, I saw my son defending me and saying that's not true…" Armstrong told Winfrey, "I told Luke. I said, 'Don't defend me anymore.'"

Armstrong's interview with Winfrey drew millions of viewers.

It was the first time Armstrong admitted using performance-enhancing drugs and oxygen-boosting blood transfusions to help him win the Tour de France.

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

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

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

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

Lance Armstrong-Winfrey Interview: Doping Confession Watch Video

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

However, Hamilton said any hope for Armstrong's redemption would come if he came clean about others who were part of the doping scandal.

"The question now is where he goes from this, his actions moving forward. He needs to name names," Hamilton said.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles in October 2012, after a report by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency found that he and 11 of his teammates orchestrated "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."

Despite the admissions of his teammates that they had doped with Armstrong and seen him complete blood transfusions for races, Armstrong condemned the report and denied that he had ever cheated.

As sponsors including Nike began to pull support of Armstrong following the report, Armstrong's carefully-built image began to crumble. He stepped down from Livestrong, the charity he started to help cancer patients after he survived testicular cancer.

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

In the interview, Armstrong explained his competition "cocktail" of EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone that he used throughout his career. He also said he had previously used cortisone.

Armstrong refused to give Winfrey the details of when, where and with whom he doped during seven winning Tours de France between 1999 and 2005, which was the last year he said he doped. Armstrong specifically denied using banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the tour again in 2010.

Investigators familiar with Armstrong's case, however, told ABC News that Armstrong did not come completely clean to Winfrey, and say they believe he doped in 2009.

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Algerian army stages "final assault" on gas plant

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - The Algerian army carried out a dramatic final assault to end a siege by Islamist militants at a desert gas plant on Saturday in which 23 hostages were killed, many of them believed to be foreigners, the interior ministry said.

Thirty-two al Qaeda-linked militants were killed in the army operation to recapture the complex, according to a provisional toll from the ministry. A statement said 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerian hostages had survived.

Militants seized the remote compound in the Sahara desert before dawn on Wednesday, taking a large number of hostages, including foreigner workers, and booby-trapped the compound with explosives.

The crisis marked a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.

The gas plant near the town of In Amenas was home to expatriate workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil, Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others. One American and one British citizen have been confirmed dead.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Saturday he feared for the lives of five British citizens still unaccounted for. Statoil said five of its workers, all Norwegian nationals, were still missing. Japanese and American workers are also unaccounted for.

"We feel a deep and growing unease ... we fear that over the next few days we will receive bad news," Statoil Chief Executive Helge Lund said on Saturday. "People we have spoken to describe unbelievable, horrible experiences."

The Islamists' attack has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara and pushed Islamist radicalism in northern Africa to centre stage.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague confirmed that Algerian military operations at the plant had been concluded.

"We understand that the site is not yet fully safe because of hazards such as booby traps and so they are still working on that," Hague said.

Some Western governments expressed frustration at not being informed of the Algerian authorities' plans to storm the complex. Algeria's response to the raid will have been conditioned by the legacy of a civil war against insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives.

HOSTAGES FREED

As the army closed in, 16 foreign hostages were freed, a source close to the crisis said. They included two Americans and one Portuguese.

BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said on Saturday four of its 18 workers at the site were missing. The remaining 14 were safe.

The captors said their attack on the Algerian gas plant was a response to the French offensive in Mali. However, officials say the elaborate raid would have been planned well before France launched its strikes.

Scores of Westerners and hundreds of Algerian workers were inside the heavily fortified gas compound when it was seized on Wednesday.

Hundreds escaped on Thursday when the army launched a rescue operation, but many hostages were killed.

Before the interior ministry released its provisional death toll, an Algerian security source said eight Algerians and at least seven foreigners were among the victims, including two Japanese, two Britons and a French national. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.

The U.S. State Department said on Friday one American, Frederick Buttaccio, had died but gave no further details.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said nobody was going to attack the United States and get away with it.

"We have made a commitment that we're going to go after al Qaeda wherever they are and wherever they try to hide," he said during a visit to London. "We have done that obviously in Afghanistan, Pakistan, we've done it in Somalia, in Yemen and we will do it in North Africa as well."

BURNED BODIES

Earlier on Saturday, Algerian special forces found 15 unidentified burned bodies at the plant, a source told Reuters.

The field commander of the group that attacked the plant is a fighter from Niger called Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, according to Mauritanian news agencies. His boss, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of fighting in Afghanistan and Algeria's civil war of the 1990s, appears not to have joined the raid.

Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed irritation that the army assault was ordered without consultation and officials grumbled at the lack of information.

But French President Francois Hollande said the Algerian military's response seemed to have been the best option given that negotiation was not possible.

"When you have people taken hostage in such large number by terrorists with such cold determination and ready to kill those hostages - as they did - Algeria has an approach which to me, as I see it, is the most appropriate because there could be no negotiation," Hollande said.

The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the value of outwardly tough Algerian security measures.

Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.

Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.

The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in the civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.

France says the hostage incident proves its decision to fight Islamists in neighboring Mali was necessary. Al Qaeda-linked fighters, many with roots in Algeria and Libya, took control of northern Mali last year.

(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

(This story was refiled to correct Algerian hostages)

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US stocks mostly higher; Intel pulls Nasdaq down

NEW YORK: US stocks ended mostly higher on Friday helped by news that Republicans might give way to a short-term rise of the debt ceiling to avoid a new crisis, but poor earnings from Intel pulled the Nasdaq lower.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 53.68 points (0.39 percent) to 13,649.70.

The broad-based S&P 500 added 5.04 points (0.34 percent) at 1,485.98.

But the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ended down 1.29 points (0.04 percent) at 3,134.71, dragged lower by chipmaker Intel, which sank 6.3 percent after a poor fourth quarter, with a 31 percent drop in profit and a lowered forecast for this year.

- AFP/de

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