January 19, 2013 12:29 PM
In a failed assassination attempt on the leader of Bulgaria's ethnic Turkish party, Ahmed Dogan, a man is seen jumping out of the audience and onto the stage where Dogan is speaking. He then points the gun at Dogan's head and the gun reportedly misfires. The attacker is then tackled and beaten by security guards.
After the Algerian military's final assault on terrorists holding hostages at a gas complex, the four-day hostage crisis is over, but apparently with additional loss of life among the foreign hostages.
One American, Fred Buttaccio of Texas, has been confirmed dead by the U.S. State Department. Two more U.S. hostages remain unaccounted for, with growing concern among U.S. officials that they did not survive.
But another American, Mark Cobb of Corpus Christi, Texas is now confirmed as safe. Sources close to his family say Cobb, who is a senior manager of the facility, is safe and reportedly sent a text message " I'm alive."
In a statement, President Obama said, "Today, the thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the families of all those who were killed and injured in the terrorist attack in Algeria. The blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out, and the United States condemns their actions in the strongest possible terms. ... This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups in North Africa."
According to Algerian state media, 32 militants are dead and a total of 23 hostages perished during the four-day siege of the In Amenas facility in the Sahara. The Algerian Interior Ministry also says 107 foreign nationals who worked at the facility for BP and other firms were rescued or escaped from the al Qaeda-linked terrorists who took over the BP joint venture facility on Wednesday.
The Japanese government says it fears "very grave" news, with multiple casualties among the 10 Japanese citizens working at the In Amenas gas plant.
Five British nationals and one U.K. resident are either deceased or unaccounted for in the country, according to British Foreign Minister William Hague. Hague also said that the Algerians have reported that they are still trying to clear boobytraps from the site.
WORRIED that the sun in your eyes will impair your driving? For the first time, a vibrating steering wheel will tell drivers where to steer when undipped headlights or other visual impediments leave them temporarily blinded.
Eelke Folmer and Burkay Sucu at the University of Reno in Nevada, designed the steering wheel to help cut the accident toll caused by glare, especially in winter, when motorists are most likely to be dazzled by low sun and reflections from snow and ice.
Cars with vibrating seats can already warn drivers when another vehicle is approaching in their blind spot. But the team's design is the only one to help drivers steer using tactile cues. The system relies on car sensors like GPS and lane-keeping cameras to map the road ahead and work out where the vehicle is. When sensors detect the driver may be dazzled and drifting from their lane, the vibro-tactile system buzzes into action.
The vibrations are tuned to 275 hertz, the frequency that our skin is most sensitive to. And the cues are directional, so if a driver drifts left, the left side of the wheel will vibrate - a signal to steer right until it stops vibrating, just like a rumble strip. "It's fairly easy for the system to anticipate or sense glare conditions and activate itself," says Folmer. The system worked well in tests with 12 volunteers in a simulator, but the drivers' hands strayed from the left and right vibrators - so the devices may need to be more widely distributed around the wheel.
It's promising work, says Paul Newman, who is developing a driverless car at the University of Oxford. "Touch is an extraordinarily rich sensory pathway and is an ideal way to provide safety-improving hints. In this case, the hints are felt at the very place action is required - on the steering wheel itself," he says.
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SINGAPORE: The Migrant Workers' Centre has urged the government to be more flexible in allowing foreign workers to change employers.
The centre's Chairman Yeo Guat Kwang told Channel NewsAsia that he is working with the Manpower Ministry to try and amend the policy.
The Migrant Workers' Centre said last year it received about 1,500 complaints from foreign workers, mostly for salary arrears cases.
Workers helping the Manpower Ministry with investigations are given a special pass to stay in Singapore under the Temporary Job Scheme.
Under the scheme, workers serving as prosecution witnesses may be allowed to find temporary employment while their cases are being investigated.
Migrant workers groups want the Temporary Job Scheme to be expanded to allow workers to remain in Singapore beyond the completion of their cases.
Mr Yeo said workers who are waiting for their workplace injury compensation should also be allowed to stay.
This, he said, could lead the way for a new transitional employment system for foreign workers.
Mr Yeo said: "If you say the only way for the workers is to go back, for some cases, it's not fair because they've only been here for a few months. I think we should amend this to make it easier for workers who unfortunately fall victim to one of these disputes, will be able to find employment with another employer.
"To me, I think it's good for the employer to employ these workers who are already here, rather than to go to the source country, and do a fresh recruitment, and these are workers who have already been here, we know how good their skills are."
Mr Yeo explained that making the Change of Employers policy more flexible is also in line with the MWC's call to improve the quality of foreign workers.
"At the end of the day, for us to be able to enable them to change employer and get re-employed, definitely this is a person that must have the right skill to work here," said Mr Yeo.
In addition, the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics believes the restrictions of the Change of Employer policy do not favour these workers.
The organisation's president Bridget Tan explained: "This is called the sponsorship system. A work permit holder is tied to the employer. The work permit holder if once he or she leaves the employer unless with the approval of the employer this work permit holder will have to go home, repatriated.
"They find it difficult to enforce their rights under work permit conditions because they are so afraid and often threatened. Going home for many migrant workers whether domestic workers or foreign workers is not a choice for them because most of them are in debt to agents back home, money lenders back home.
"And going back with nothing, with no hope and promise of another job and the chance to change employers, sometimes they allow themselves to be exploited."
Ms Tan added workers are not allowed to change the industry they work in.
She said: "For example, if you come in as a construction worker, you can only find a job as a construction worker even though you have qualification that can allow you to work for example, as a waiter but you cannot because you come in as a construction worker, you have to be a construction worker. There are restrictions."
President of the Association of Employment Agencies, K Jayaprema said employers have concerns with a more flexible policy.
Mr Jayaprema said: "When such transfers kick in, if the employees are not very responsible, the employer might be stranded without a workforce because employees do have a tendency to be working in one company, train themselves up there and when there's opportunities in another company with a little bit of better salary, they move."
Employers have to send their foreign workers back within seven days of the cancellation of their work permits or they could lose the S$5,000 security bond with the Manpower Ministry.
Advocacy groups for migrant workers argue a more flexible change of employer policy would create greater mobility for workers.
With this mobility, migrant workers will no longer be at the mercy of employers.
There will be more incentive for employers to retain these workers, and treat them fairly.
MPs are expected to raise questions on how the government can address the grievances of foreign workers at the next sitting of Parliament.
- CNA/fa
President Obama announces his administration's new gun law proposals Wednesday.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Editor's note: David Gergen is a senior political analyst for CNN and has been an adviser to four presidents. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service and director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Follow him on Twitter. Watch CNN's comprehensive coverage of President Barack Obama's second inauguration this weekend on CNN TV and follow online at CNN.com or via CNN's apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.
(CNN) -- On the eve of his second inaugural, President Obama appears smarter, tougher and bolder than ever before. But whether he is also wiser remains a key question for his new term.
It is clear that he is consciously changing his leadership style heading into the next four years. Weeks before the November elections, his top advisers were signaling that he intended to be a different kind of president in his second term.
David Gergen
"Just watch," they said to me, in effect, "he will win re-election decisively and then he will throw down the gauntlet to the Republicans, insisting they raise taxes on the wealthy. Right on the edge of the fiscal cliff, he thinks Republicans will cave."
What's your Plan B, I asked. "We don't need a Plan B," they answered. "After the president hangs tough -- no more Mr. Nice Guy -- the other side will buckle." Sure enough, Republicans caved on taxes. Encouraged, Obama has since made clear he won't compromise with Republicans on the debt ceiling, either.
Obama 2.0 stepped up this past week on yet another issue: gun control. No president in two decades has been as forceful or sweeping in challenging the nation's gun culture. Once again, he portrayed the right as the enemy of progress and showed no interest in negotiating a package up front.
In his coming State of the Union address, and perhaps in his inaugural, the president will begin a hard push for a comprehensive reform of our tattered immigration system. Leading GOP leaders on the issue -- Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, for example -- would prefer a piecemeal approach that is bipartisan. Obama wants to go for broke in a single package, and on a central issue -- providing a clear path to citizenship for undocumented residents -- he is uncompromising.
After losing out on getting Susan Rice as his next secretary of state, Obama has also shown a tougher side on personnel appointments. Rice went down after Democratic as well as Republican senators indicated a preference for Sen. John Kerry. But when Republicans also tried to kill the nomination of Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense, Obama was unyielding -- an "in-your-face appointment," Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-South Carolina, called it, echoing sentiments held by some of his colleagues.
Will Obama's second inauguration let America turn the page?
Republicans would have preferred someone other than Jack Lew at Treasury, but Obama brushed them off. Hagel and Lew -- both substantial men -- will be confirmed, absent an unexpected bombshell, and Obama will rack up two more victories over Republicans.
His new style is paying off politically. But in the long run, will it also pay off in better governance?
David Gergen
Strikingly, Obama has also been deft in the ways he has drawn upon Vice President Joe Biden. During much of the campaign, Biden appeared to be kept under wraps. But in the transition, he has been invaluable to Obama in negotiating a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the fiscal cliff and in pulling together the gun package. Biden was also at his most eloquent at the ceremony announcing the gun measures.
All of this has added up for Obama to one of the most effective transitions in modern times. And it is paying rich dividends: A CNN poll this past week pegged his approval rating at 55%, far above the doldrums he was in for much of the past two years. Many of his long-time supporters are rallying behind him. As the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to score back-to-back election victories with more than 50% of the vote, Obama is in the strongest position since early in his first year.
Smarter, tougher, bolder -- his new style is paying off politically. But in the long run, will it also pay off in better governance? Perhaps -- and for the country's sake, let's hope so. Yet, there are ample reasons to wonder, and worry.
Avlon: GOP's surprising edge on diversity
Ultimately, to resolve major issues like deficits, immigration, guns and energy, the president and Congress need to find ways to work together much better than they did in the first term. Over the past two years, Republicans were clearly more recalcitrant than Democrats, practically declaring war on Obama, and the White House has been right to adopt a tougher approach after the elections.
But a growing number of Republicans concluded after they had their heads handed to them in November that they had to move away from extremism toward a more center-right position, more open to working out compromises with Obama. It's not that they suddenly wanted Obama to succeed; they didn't want their party to fail.
House Speaker John Boehner led the way, offering the day after the election to raise taxes on the wealthy and giving up two decades of GOP orthodoxy. In a similar spirit, Rubio has been developing a mainstream plan on immigration, moving away from a ruinous GOP stance.
One senses that the hope, small as it was, to take a brief timeout on hyperpartisanship in order to tackle the big issues is now slipping away.
Zelizer: Second-term Obama will play defense
While a majority of Americans now approve of Obama's job performance, conservatives increasingly believe that in his new toughness, he is going overboard, trying to run over them. They don't see a president who wants to roll up his sleeves and negotiate; they see a president who wants to barnstorm the country to beat them up. News that Obama is converting his campaign apparatus into a nonprofit to support his second term will only deepen that sense. And it frustrates them that he is winning: At their retreat, House Republicans learned that their disapproval has risen to 64%.
Conceivably, Obama's tactics could pressure Republicans into capitulation on several fronts. More likely, they will be spoiling for more fights. Chances for a "grand bargain" appear to be hanging by a thread.
Two suspicions are starting to float among those with distaste for the president. The first is that he isn't really all that committed to bringing deficits under control. If he were, he would be pushing a master plan by now. Instead, it is argued, he will tinker with the deficits but cares much more about leaving a progressive legacy -- health care reform, a stronger safety net, green energy, and the like.
Second, the suspicion is taking hold that he is approaching the second term with a clear eye on elections ahead. What if he can drive Republicans out of control of the House in 2014? Then he could get his real agenda done. What if he could set the stage for another Democrat to win the presidency in 2016? Then he could leave behind a majority coalition that could run the country for years, just as FDR did. Democrats, of course, think the real point is that Obama is finally showing the toughness that is needed.
We are surely seeing a new Obama emerge on the eve of his second term. Where he will now lead the country is the central question that his inaugural address and the weeks ahead will begin to answer.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Gergen.
Updated 12:15 AM ET
SOUTH BEND, Ind. Manti Te'o gave an interview to ESPN in which he denied any involvement in fabricating an online relationship with a woman he considered to be his girlfriend.
"I wasn't faking it," he told ESPN Friday night. "I wasn't part of this."
Te'o also said that he did not make up anything to help his Heisman Trophy candidacy.
"When (people) hear the facts, they'll know," he said. "They'll know that there is no way that I could be part of this."
Te'o spoke at the IMG Training Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where he is preparing for the NFL draft. There were no cameras at the 2?-hour interview, which was recorded.
Earlier, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said during the taping of his weekly radio show that Te'o has to explain exactly how he was duped into an online relationship with a fictitious woman whose "death" was then faked by perpetrators of the scheme.
Skeptics have questioned the versions of events laid out by Te'o and Notre Dame, wondering why Te'o never said his relationship was with someone online and why he waited almost three weeks to tell the school about being duped.
According to Notre Dame, Te'o received a call on Dec. 6 from the girl he had only been in contact with by telephone and online, and who he thought had died in September. After telling his family what happened while he was home in Hawaii for Christmas, he informed Notre Dame coaches on Dec. 26.
Notre Dame said it hired investigators to look into Te'o's claims and their findings showed he was the victim of an elaborate hoax.
Te'o released a statement on Wednesday, soon after Deadspin.com broke news of the scam with a lengthy story, saying he had been humiliated and hurt by the "sick joke." But he has laid low since.
ESPN officials posted a photo on Twitter late Friday night of reporter Jeremy Schapp with Te'o and his attorney. Te'o has been working out at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., as he prepares for the NFL combine and draft.
Swarbrick said earlier in the day that he believed Te'o would ultimately speak publicly.
"We are certainly encouraging it to happen," he said. "We think it's important and we'd like to see it happen sooner rather than later."
He said thatmant before the Deadspin story, Te'o and his family had planned to go public with the story Monday.
"Sometimes the best laid plans don't quite work, and this was an example of that. Because the family lost the opportunity in some ways to control the story," he said. "It is in the Te'o family's court. We are very much encouraging them."
Former NFL coach Tony Dungy, who mentored Michael Vick when he returned to the NFL after doing prison time, had similar advice.
"I don't know the whole case but I always advise people to face up to it and just talk to people and say what happened," Dungy said while attending the NCAA convention in Dallas on Friday. "The truth is the best liberator, so that's what I would do. And he's going to get questioned a lot about it."
Te'o led a lightly regarded Fighting Irish team to a 12-0 regular season and the BCS title game, where they were routed 42-14 by Alabama and Te'o played poorly.
Dungy said Te'o could face the toughest questions from NFL teams.
"If I was still coaching and we're thinking about taking this guy in the first round, you want to know not exactly what happened but what is going on with this young man and is it going to be a deterrent to him surviving in the NFL and is it going to stop him from being a star," Dungy said. "So just tell the truth about what happened and this is why, I think, that's the best thing."
Deadspin reported that friends and relatives of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a 22-year-old who lives in California, believe he created Kekua. The website also reported Te'o and Tuiasosopo knew each other — which has led to questions about Te'o's involvement in the hoax.
Swarbrick understands why there are questions.
"They have every right to say that," Swarbrick said "Now I have some more information than they have. But they have every right to say that. ... I just ask those people to apply the same skepticism to everything about this. I have no doubt the perpetrators have a story they will yet spin about what went on here. I hope skepticism also greets that when they're articulating what that is."
Lance Armstrong, 41, began to cry today as he described finding out his son Luke, 13, was publicly defending him from accusations that he doped during his cycling career.
Armstrong said that he knew, at that moment, that he would have to publicly admit to taking performance-enhancing drugs and having oxygen-boosting blood transfusions when competing in the Tour de France. He made those admissions to Oprah Winfrey in a two-part interview airing Thursday and tonight.
"When this all really started, I saw my son defending me, and saying, 'That's not true. What you're saying about my dad? That's not true,'" Armstrong said, tearing up during the second installment of his interview tonight. "And it almost goes to this question of, 'Why now?'
"That's when I knew I had to talk," Armstrong said. "He never asked me. He never said, 'Dad, is this true?' He trusted me."
He told Winfrey that he sat down with his children over the holidays to come clean about his drug use.
"I said, 'Listen, there's been a lot of questions about your dad, about my career and whether I doped or did not dope,'" he said he told them. "'I always denied that. I've always been ruthless and defiant about that, which is why you defended me, which makes it even sicker' I said, 'I want you to know that it's true.'"
He added that his mother was "a wreck" over the scandal.
Armstrong said that the lowest point in his fall from grace and the top of the cycling world came when his cancer charity, Livestrong, asked him to consider stepping down.
George Burns/Harpo Studios, Inc.
After the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency alleged in October that Armstrong doped throughout his reign as Tour de France champion, Armstrong said, his major sponsors -- including Nike, Anheuser Busch and Trek -- called one by one to end their endorsement contracts with him.
"Everybody out," he said. "Still not the most humbling moment."
Then came the call from Livestrong, the charity he founded at age 25 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
"The story was getting out of control, which was my worst nightmare," he said. "I had this place in my mind that they would all leave. The one I didn't think would leave was the foundation.
"That was most humbling moment," he said.
Armstrong first stepped down as chairman of the board for the charity before being asked to end his association with the charity entirely. Livestrong is now run independently of Armstrong.
"I don't think it was 'We need you to step down,' but, 'We need you to consider stepping down for yourself,'" he said, recounting the call. "I had to think about that a lot. None of my kids, none of my friends have said, 'You're out,' and the foundation was like my sixth child. To make that decision, to step aside, that was big."
In Thursday's interview installment, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France admitted publicly for the first time that he doped throughout his career, confirming after months of angry denials the findings of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which stripped him of his titles in October.
He told Winfrey that he was taking the opportunity to confess to everything he had done wrong, including for years angrily denying claims that he had doped.
READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping
WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape
READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions
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BEIJING: China's working-age population declined for the first time in recent decades in 2012, the government said on Friday, detailing the extent of a demographic time bomb experts say is one of Beijing's biggest challenges.
China introduced its controversial one-child policy in the late 1970s to control population growth, but its people are now ageing, moving to the cities, and increasingly male, government statistics showed.
The world's biggest national population rose by 6.7 million in 2012 to 1.354 billion people, excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
Almost 118 boys were born for every 100 girls.
The working-age population -- defined as those from 15 to 59 -- fell by 3.45 million to 937 million, adding to concerns about how the country will provide for the elderly, with 194 million people now 60 or over.
It was the first absolute drop in the working-age segment in "a considerable period of time", said National Bureau of Statistics director Ma Jiantang, adding that he expected it to "fall steadily at least through 2030".
China's wealth gap and population imbalances are major concerns for the ruling Communist Party, which places huge importance on preserving social stability to avoid any potential challenge to its grip on power.
An estimated 180,000 protests break out across China every year, many of them sparked by a wide range of social issues, including wage disputes and rural workers being denied residents' rights in cities.
But the government faces a "major dilemma" over how it confronts the problem of a rapidly ageing population, said analysts.
"For older generations, life is going to be very painful," Sun Wenguang, a retired academic from Shandong University in Jinan, told AFP.
"The cost of 24-hour care in Beijing is probably 7,000 RMB a month, and how will this be funded? The average manual worker in China earns about 2,000 RMB a month (US$300), of course they don't want to share their money out."
Liang Zhongtang, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the government was reluctant to confront the population imbalance because of the sensitivity of the family planning policy.
"Actually the structural decline of the country's labour resources started long ago," he told AFP.
Most of the labour force was aged between 20 and 45, he said, with the proportion of older workers within that range increasing rapidly. "This means it is very hard for them to change their jobs or find a new employer", decreasing labour flexibility.
The problems of ageing and labour shortages were "severe" in the countryside, he said, but added: "Even though rural areas' social and economic problems are serious, they do not make onto the radar of mainstream (policy makers).
"They just ignore the problems plaguing this social stratum."
As late as 1982, the proportion of the population aged 60 or over in China was just five per cent, but it now stands at 14.3 per cent.
China's urban population rose to 712 million in 2012, up 21 million and adding to the strains on public services, while the rural population fell 14 million to 642 million.
Average per capita income was 26,959 yuan (US$4,296) in the cities, compared to 7,917 yuan in the countryside, the statistics said.
- AFP/xq
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Share your thoughts on the downfall of Lance Armstrong at CNN iReport, Facebook or Twitter.
(CNN) -- After years of tenacious spin that he was innocent, Lance Armstrong has backpedaled in a confessional interview with Oprah Winfrey.
He admitted unequivocally to using performance enhancing drugs in his seven Tour de France wins.
But his critics say he is still spinning the story.
Armstrong has, in the past, persistently and angrily denied the allegations -- even under oath.
And he has persecuted former close associates who went public against him. "We sued so many people," Armstrong told Winfrey -- people who were telling the truth.
12 telling quotes over the years from Armstrong
Did he use the blood enhancing hormone EPO? Testosterone? Cortisone? Human growth hormone? Illegal blood transfusions and other blood doping?
Armstrong answered "yes" on all counts in the first installment of a two-part interview that aired Thursday night. Part two airs Friday on Winfrey's OWN channel and online.
The disgraced cyclist, who has been stripped of his Tour de France titles and an Olympic bronze medal, blamed no one but himself for his doping decisions, careful not to implicate others.
Armstrong: I was "a bully"
Armstrong described himself as "deeply flawed" and "arrogant," and spoke often of how so much was his "fault."
"I was a bully," he told Winfrey of how he treated others who might expose him.
But Armstrong was not telling the whole story, author David Coyle, who wrote a book about doping and the Tour de France, told CNN's Anderson Cooper Thursday night.
"A partial confession is sort of the pattern here," he said. "Maybe this is Armstrong's partial, and more will come out later."
iReport: Tell us your take on the first part of the interview
The cyclist denied pushing teammates to dope, an assertion Coyle countered.
"Tyler Hamilton gets a phone call: be on a plane tomorrow. We're flying to Valencia to do a blood transfusion. That's what happens," Coyle said.
Armstrong told Winfrey that doping was widespread at the time and just as much "part of the job" as water bottles and tire pumps. This attitude prompted Winfrey to ask again if he really didn't coerce other teammates to dope.
Bill Strickland, an editor for Bicycling Magazine, praised Armstrong for the confessions he did make.
"I think it's clear what we're seeing here is someone learning to tell the truth," he said.
Both men described the interview as a "therapy session."
Appearing tense but sometimes cathartic, Armstrong told Winfrey it was a happy day for him to be there with her.
He described his years of denial as "one big lie that I repeated a lot of times." He had races to win and a fairy tale image to keep up.
Armstrong reminisced on his storied past of being a hero who overcame cancer winning the Tour repeatedly, having a happy marriage, children. "It's just this mythic, perfect story, and it isn't true," he said.
It was impossible to live up to it, he said, and it fell apart.
Bleacher Report: Twitter erupts Thursday night
The lies and aggressive pursuit of those debunking them was about controlling the narrative. "If I didn't like what somebody said...I tried to control that and said that's a lie; they're liars," Armstrong said. It's a tactic he has followed his entire life, he said.
"Now the story is so bad and so toxic, and a lot of it is true," Armstrong said.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which tests Olympic athletes for performance enhancing drugs, praised the interview as a "small step in the right direction."
But it seemed to share Coyle's skepticism about whether Armstrong was exposing the whole truth.
"If he is sincere in his desire to correct his past mistakes, he will testify under oath about the full extent of his doping activities," said USADA CEO Travis Tygart.
Years of success and defiance, then a rapid fall
The scandal has tarred the cancer charity Livestrong that he founded and blown his endorsement deals.
Those who suffered for speaking out now feel vindicated.
They include Betsy Andreu, wife of fellow cyclist Frankie Andreu, who said she overheard Armstrong acknowledge to a doctor treating him for cancer in 1996 that he had used performance-enhancing drugs.
"This was a guy who used to be my friend, who decimated me," Andreu told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday night. "He could have come clean. He owed it to me. He owes it to the sport that he destroyed."
The former athletic icon conceded he'd let down many fans "who believed in me and supported me."
"I will spend the rest of my life ... trying to earn back trust and apologize to people."
After winning various legs of the Tour de France, Armstrong's sporting career ground to a halt in 1996, when he was diagnosed with cancer. He was 25.
He told Winfrey that he then developed a "ruthless and relentless" attitude that helped him survive. But he carried it with him into his sports career, "and that's bad," he said.
He returned to the cycling world, however. His breakthrough came in 1999, and he didn't stop as he reeled off seven straight wins in his sport's most prestigious race. Allegations of doping began during this time, as did Armstrong's vehement defiance.
He left the sport after his last win, in 2005, only to return to the tour in 2009.
Armstrong still insists he was clean when he finished third that year, but that comeback led to his downfall.
"We wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't come back," he told Winfrey.
In 2011, Armstrong retired once more from cycling. But his fight to maintain his clean reputation continued. Federal prosecutors launched a criminal investigation, but it was dropped in February.
In April, the USADA notified Armstrong of an investigation into new doping charges. In response, the cyclist accused the organization of trying to "dredge up discredited" allegations and filed a lawsuit in federal court trying to halt the case.
The USADA found "overwhelming" evidence that Armstrong was involved in "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program."
Armstrong objected to the claim to Winfrey, saying that although it was "professional," it did not compare to doping programs in former communist East Germany.
Armstrong told Winfrey that the unraveling of his career is the second time in his life that he could not control his life's narrative -- the last time was when he had cancer.
Livestrong: Tell the truth about doping
CNN's Carol Cratty, Joseph Netto and George Howell contributed to this report.
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