Local volunteers answer call for National Day of Service

Lillie Council and Leah Gipson sat at a small table at Navy Pier's USO office Saturday with stacks of blank postcards and stationery piled between them.

They put pen to paper and wrote notes, one by one, to American troops serving overseas, doing their part to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. by participating in the National Day of Service that precedes the federal holiday recognizing him Monday.

"Sometimes when you're away from home, you just need that little bit of comfort from home, even if it's from a stranger," said Council, who said she served in the Army for six years in the 1980s.

"I think it just makes someone's day to know they're appreciated and they're thought of," she said.

Council and Gipson joined volunteers across the country Saturday — including President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama — who donated their time and effort to more than 2,000 public service projects as part of the National Day of Service.

The King holiday has long included a call for Americans to volunteer. But Obama gave the movement new life before his first inauguration four years ago, when he encouraged Americans to honor King's legacy through service.

He and his wife renewed that call this year as they prepared for Obama's public inauguration ceremony Monday.

More than 60 volunteer events were scheduled in the Chicago area Saturday, from the USO letter-writing campaign to a blood drive in Bolingbrook and a project in Grayslake to gather laundry detergent and bagged lunches for people staying at a Lake County homeless shelter.

At the USO event, donated candy, granola bars and trail mix filled a table. More than 100 people were expected to donate goods or write letters to troops by the end of the day, said Chris Miller, director of center operations and volunteer services for the USO of Illinois.

Gipson said she decided to write letters to troops after reflecting on the sacrifices her relatives made. Her father served in the Army in Vietnam, and her brother served in the Marine Corps in Iraq, she said.

"When I'm writing these letters, I picture my dad, I picture my brother, and I think about what they would have needed to hear while they were away from their families and away from home," Gipson said.

In the South Loop neighborhood, about two dozen volunteers scrubbed doors, door frames and window sills at The Studios, a 170-unit affordable housing building at East 18th Street and South Wabash Avenue.

The volunteers cleaned every door in the building so quickly that they soon began spreading out in search of other areas that needed sprucing up.

"I love it," said Maggie McGuire, a member of Chicago's Fourth Presbyterian Church who helped organize the project. "I'm doing it because I believe that decent, affordable housing is a basic right."

Laura Shiplet, another church member, said that volunteering at The Studios made her feel like she's keeping King's legacy alive.

"I want to be part of his dream, especially this weekend," Shiplet said, a bucket of soapy water at her feet. "It's like a big celebration of Martin Luther King's life."

rhaggerty@tribune.com

Twitter @RyanTHaggerty

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Dotcom says new site legal, no revenge for Megaupload saga

AUCKLAND (Reuters) - Kim Dotcom, founder of outlawed file-sharing website Megaupload, said his new "cyberlocker" was not revenge on U.S. authorities who planned a raid on his home, closed Megaupload and charged him with online piracy for which he faces jail if found guilty.

Dotcom said his new offering, Mega.co.nz, which will launch on Sunday even as he and three colleagues await extradition from New Zealand to the United States, complied with the law and warned that attempts to take it down would be futile.

"This is not some kind of finger to the U.S. government or to Hollywood," Dotcom told Reuters at his sprawling estate in the bucolic hills of Coatesville, just outside Auckland, New Zealand, a country known more for sheep, rugby and the Hobbit than flamboyant tech tycoons.

"Legally, there's just nothing there that could be used to shut us down. This site is just as legitimate and has the right to exist as Dropbox, Boxnet and other competitors," he said, referring to other popular cloud storage services.

His lawyer, Ira Rothken, added that launching the site was compliant with the terms of Dotcom's bail conditions. U.S. prosecutors argue that Dotcom in a statement said he had no intention of starting a new internet business until his extradition was resolved.

CODES AND KEYS

Dotcom said Mega was a different beast to Megaupload, as the new site enables users to control exactly which users can access uploaded files, in contrast to its predecessor, which allowed users to search files, some of which contained copyrighted content allegedly without permission.

A sophisticated encryption system will allow users to encode their files before they upload them on to the site's servers, which Dotcom said were located in New Zealand and overseas.

Each file will then be issued a unique, sophisticated decryption key which only the file holder will control, allowing them to share the file as they choose.

As a result, the site's operators would have no access to the files, which they say would strip them from any possible liability for knowingly enabling users to distribute copyright-infringing content, which Washington says is illegal.

"Even if we wanted to, we can't go into your file and snoop and see what you have in there," the burly Dotcom said.

Dotcom said Mega would comply with orders from copyright holders to remove infringing material, which will afford it the "safe harbor" legal provision, which minimizes liability on the condition that a party acted in good faith to comply.

But some legal experts say it may be difficult to claim the protection if they do not know what users have stored.

The Motion Pictures Association of America said encrypting files alone would not protect Dotcom from liability.

"We'll reserve final judgment until we have a chance to analyze the new project," a spokesman told Reuters. "But given Kim Dotcom's history, count us as skeptical."

The German national, who also goes by Kim Schmitz, expects huge interest in its first month of operation, which would be a far cry from when Megaupload went live in 2005.

"I would be surprised if we had less than one million users," Dotcom said.

A YEAR ON

Mega's launch starts the next chapter of the Dotcom narrative, dotted with previous cyber crime-related arrests and whose twists and turns have been scrutinized by all facets of the entertainment industry, from film studios and record labels to internet service companies and teenage gamers.

The copyright infringement case, billed as the largest to date given that Megaupload in its heyday commanded around four percent of global online traffic, could set a precedent for internet liability laws and depending on its outcome, may force entertainment companies to rethink their distribution methods.

A year on, the extradition hearing has been delayed until August, complicated by illegal arrest warrants and the New Zealand government's admission that it had illegally spied on Dotcom, who has residency status in the country.

Last January, New Zealand's elite special tactics forces landed by helicopter at dawn in the grounds of Dotcom's mansion, worth roughly NZ$30 million ($25.05 million) and featuring a servants' wing, hedge maze and life-size statues of giraffes and a rhinoceros, to arrest him and his colleagues at the request of the FBI.

Police armed with semi-automatic weapons found Dotcom cowering alone in a panic room in the attic, while outside, a convoy of police cars and vans pulled up in the driveway. Around 70 officers took part in the raid.

They left with computers, files and some of Dotcom's fleet of Rolls-Royces, Mercedes and a vintage pink Cadillac tricked with personalized license plates screaming "HACKER", "EVIL", and "MAFIA".

"Every time you hear a helicopter, you automatically think, 'Oh, another raid', so it's something that stays with you for a long time," said Dotcom, who says he and his wife still panic when they hear sudden, loud noises in the house.

Dotcom was coy about the details of the launch party as builders put the finishing touches to a festival-sized concert stage in the mansion's grounds, while two helicopters circled overhead.

But if the impromptu, Willy Wonka-styled ice cream social he threw in Auckland earlier in the week is any indication, the party could be a more wholesome affair compared with the well-documented soirees of Dotcom's past, where nightclubs, hot tubs and scantily clad women were a common fixture.

"I had to grow up, you know, I was a big baby," he said. "Big baby with too much money usually leads to baby craziness.

"I am going to be more of a person that wants to help to make things better and help internet innovation to take off without all these restrictions by governments. That is going to be my primary goal if this business is successful."

($1 = NZ$1.2)

(Editing by Daniel Magnowski and Nick Macfie)

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Baseball reflects on HOF pair Weaver, Musial

One was born in St. Louis, the other became a star there.

Aside from that, Earl Weaver and Stan Musial were about as different as two Hall of Famers could be.

"Talk about your odd couple," said George Vecsey, the longtime sports columnist for The New York Times who wrote a recent biography of Musial.

Weaver was a 5-foot-6 rabble rouser whose penchant for quarreling with umpires belied a cerebral approach to managing that has stood the test of time. Musial was a humble slugger with a funky batting stance who was beloved by Cardinals fans and respected by pretty much everyone else.

Saturday began with news of Weaver's death at age 82, and by the end of the night Musial had died, too, leaving baseball to reflect on two distinguished careers rich in contrasts.

"Earl was well known for being one of the game's most colorful characters with a memorable wit, but he was also amongst its most loyal," Commissioner Bud Selig said.

Selig later released a statement after Musial's death at age 92.

"Stan's life embodies baseball's unparalleled history and why this game is the national pastime. As remarkable as 'Stan the Man' was on the field, he was a true gentleman in life," Selig said.

A three-time MVP and seven-time National League batting champion, Musial helped the Cardinals win three World Series championships in the 1940s. His popularity in St. Louis can be measured by the not one, but two statues that stand in his honor outside Busch Stadium. After his death Saturday, Cardinals of more recent vintage began offering condolences almost immediately.

"Sad to hear about Stan the Man, it's an honor to wear the same uniform," said a message posted on the Twitter account of Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday.

Albert Pujols, who led St. Louis to World Series titles in 2006 and 2011 before leaving as a free agent before last season, offered prayers for Musial's family via Twitter.

"I will cherish my friendship with Stan for as long as I live," said a message posted on Pujols' site. "Rest in Peace."

Weaver was born in St. Louis, but his greatest success came as a manager in Baltimore. He took the Orioles to the World Series four times, winning one title in 1970.

Never a fan of small-ball strategies like bunting and stealing bases, Weaver preferred to wait for a three-run homer, always hoping for a big inning that could break the game open.

"No one managed a ballclub or pitching staff better than Earl," said Davey Johnson, who played under Weaver with the Orioles.

Johnson now manages the Washington Nationals and ran the Orioles from 1996-97.

"He was decades ahead of his time," Johnson said. "Not a game goes by that I don't draw on something Earl did or said. I will miss him every day."

While Musial could let his bat do the talking, Weaver was more than willing to shout to be heard. His salty-tongued arguing with umpires will live on through YouTube, and Orioles programs sold at the old Memorial Stadium frequently featured photos of Weaver squabbling.

Former umpire Don Denkinger remembered a game in which the manager disputed a call with Larry McCoy at the plate.

"Earl tells us, 'Now I'm gonna show you how stupid you all are.' Earl goes down to first base and ejects the first base umpire. Then he goes to second base and ejects the second base umpire. I'm working third base and now he comes down and ejects me," Denkinger said.

Musial was a quieter type who spent his career far removed from the bright lights of places like New York and Boston. But his hitting exploits were certainly on par with contemporaries Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams.

"I knew Stan very well. He used to take care of me at All-Star games, 24 of them," Hall of Famer Willie Mays said. "He was a true gentleman who understood the race thing and did all he could. Again, a true gentleman on and off the field — I never heard anybody say a bad word about him, ever."

Dave Anderson of The New York Times recalled growing up in Brooklyn, rooting for Musial. Those Dodgers crowds helped give Musial his nickname, Stan the Man.

"I thought he was going to knock the fence down in Brooklyn, he'd hit it so often," Anderson said.

Musial did it despite an odd left-handed stance — with his legs and knees close together, he would cock the bat near his ear and twist his body away from the pitcher before uncoiling when the ball came.

If that was a lasting snapshot of Musial, the images of Weaver will stay just as fresh — the feisty manager, perhaps with his hat turned backward, looking up at an umpire and screaming at him before kicking dirt somewhere and finally leaving the field.

None of those histrionics should obscure the fact that in the end, Weaver often had the last laugh — to the tune of a .583 career winning percentage.

"When you discuss our game's motivational masters, Earl is a part of that conversation," Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson said. "He was a proven leader in the dugout and loved being a Hall of Famer. Though small in stature, he was a giant as a manager."

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“Beasts of Southern Wild,” “Les Miz” among Costume Designer Award nominees

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Films as diverse as “Beast of the Southern Wild” and “Les Miserables” were among the nominees for the 15th annual Costume Designers Guild Awards announced Thursday by the organization.

Stephani Lewis was nominated for “Beasts” in the contemporary film category, along with Louise Stjernsward for “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” Mark Bridges for “Silver Linings Playbook,” Jany Temime for “Skyfall” and George L. Little for “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Paco Delgado was nominated in the period film group, along with Jacqueline West for “Argo,” Jacqueline Durran for “Anna Karenina,” Joanna Johnston for “Lincoln” and Kasia Walicka-Maimone for “Moonrise Kingdom.”

The winners of the seven competitive awards will be announced at a gala on Tuesday, February 19, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

A special Lacoste Spotlight Award will be presented to Anne Hathaway. Producer, writer, comedian and creator of “Saturday Night Live” Lorne Michaels will receive the Distinguished Collaborator Award. Honorary Career Achievement Awards will be presented to costume designers Judianna Makovsky and Eduardo Castro for their outstanding work in film and television.

The other nominees:

Fantasy Film

“Cloud Atlas,” Kym Barret, Pierre-Yves Gayraud;

“The Hunger Games,” Judianna Makovsky;

“Mirror Mirror,” Eiko Ishioka;

“Snow White and the Huntsman,” Colleen Atwood

Contemporary TV Series

“Girls,” Jennifer Rogien;

“Nashville,” Susie DeSanto;

“Revenge,” Jill Ohanneson;

“Smash,” Molly Maginnis;

“Treme,” Alonzo Wilson, Ann Walters

Period/fantasy TV Series

“Boardwalk Empire,” John Dunn, Lisa Padovani;

“Downton Abbey,” Caroline McCall;

“Game of Thrones,” Michele Clapton;

Made for TV Movie or Mini Series

“American Horror Story: Asylum, Season 2,” Lou Eyrich;

“Hatfields & McCoys,” Karri Hutchinson;

“Hemingway & Gellhorn,” Ruth Myers

Commercials

Capital One: Couture, Roseanne Fiedler;

Captain Morgan Black, Judianna Makovsky;

Dos Equis: Most Interesting Man in the World, Julie Vogel

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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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.

___

Online:

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

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

___

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

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Original Batmobile from TV series sells for $4.2M

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The original Batmobile from the 1960s television series has sold at auction for $4.2 million.

A spokeswoman for the Barrett-Jackson Auction Co. in Scottsdale, Ariz., says the winning bidder has not been disclosed following Saturday's auction.

The 19-foot-long black, bubble-topped car was used in the "Batman" TV show that starred Adam West as the Caped Crusader.

The car's owner — famed auto customizer George Barris, of Los Angeles — transformed a one-of-a-kind 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car into the sleek crime-fighting machine. On the show, it boasted lasers and a "Batphone" and could lay down smoke screens and oil slicks.

Barris' publicist says his client is pleased with the auction result.

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Media savvy public makes spinning the message harder

We have become a nation of theater critics, judging everything before us not solely in terms of what is said or done but the quality of the performance.

This is the legacy of the public relations business, which lost one of its leaders last week with the death of Chicago's Dan Edelman at age 92.

Over the course of Edelman's career in strategic communication — which began as part of a World War II Army unit that combated the Nazis' psychological warfare and ended atop the world's largest independent PR agency — the work of shaping an image, conveying a message, and effectively interacting with the media and general public moved out from the wings to center stage.

Spin and branding have gone from jargon to common usage, terms your mother might not only use but use correctly. An increasingly media savvy and wary public is looking beyond the news to the forces, counsel and ultimate goals that shaped it. And there's nothing wrong with that until it obscures what, if anything, is truly important about the story being told.

Look at the headlines of recent days, and think of just how much discussion has been focused on the PR machinery at work.

Some of the stories are trivial yet elevated to the level of something we're supposed to care about, such as cyclist and lab rat Lance Armstrong seeking to undo years of lying and cheating in a sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, or Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o's star-crossed romance being exposed as fiction. Other stories have more weight.

Nearly all of them, however, have been scrutinized, at least in part, on the stagecraft and strategic communications involved.

There is nearly always a discussion of the effectiveness of the strategy behind the message being advanced and how it was conveyed — what's being sold, how it's being sold, whether we're buying it and why. Then there's the analysis of how it's covered, whether the media got it right, asked too many or too few questions, missed what should have been the point — either through negligence or bias or both.

"The way it's evolved over the years is the public has become very cynical of news media," said Vince Wladika, an East Coast-based consultant who's among the most hard-core PR spinners I know. "That also makes (the PR person's) job hard because you get a good story and it's a true story and the public, a lot of times, dismisses it as too good to be true. So it's certainly not easy.

"We've definitely become a much more cynical society than when Edelman started his business. You can also make the case that the reporting or the reporters have become more cynical. But you can also say they're smarter and do their research more. … The consumer is smarter, too, and the flip side of that is you've got to be buttoned-up more when you present stuff."

Even the Chicago Bears' hire of a head football coach was analyzed on the basis of the figure cut by Canadian Football League import Marc Trestman and how he conducted himself in his introductory news conference — both in the mainstream media and in the social media Greek chorus of Twitter. At least to the extent that it wasn't completely overshadowed by the Te'o story.

"The people I follow on Twitter, the Bears hire normally would be big news," said Peter Marino, vice president of communications at MillerCoors. "Then they have this press conference, and I've seen very little about what Marc Trestman is going to bring the Bears because this Te'o story is the dominant story. It's taking up all the air."

The Te'o story looms large in part because it is a rat's nest of all the things people look for when sizing up strategic communications at work: There's media mythmaking, crisis management, the dangers and benefits of the speed with which news and views travel in the wired world.

Deadspin.com broke the news Wednesday that Te'o's dead girlfriend was a hoax. The story racked up hundreds of thousands of views in minutes, and Notre Dame held a hastily arranged news conference at which the football star was deemed a victim. The media, which had accepted the girlfriend tale as fact, was immediately chastised for failing to adequately vet Te'o's too-perfect story of tragedy dovetailing into inspiration.

There was talk of deadline pressures that hampered fact-checking efforts. Some still suspected Te'o as complicit in a ploy to gain sympathy support among Heisman Trophy voters. And though parts of what happened remain fuzzy, a PR debate raged about whether Te'o needed to do an interview to get in front of the story.

Myths and mistakes have always found their way into the news ecosystem. What's changed is their life cycle, like the news cycle, has sped up considerably the increased scrutiny, awareness and exposure.

"You used to only have so many outlets to deal with, but now you have thousands more," said Wladika, who's worked in-house and out in advancing the viewpoints of NBC Sports, Major League Baseball, Fox Sports, Comcast, Sirius XM and others. "For the general public, you can argue that's fantastic. But from a crisis communications or strategic communications standpoint, it makes it infinitely harder because you have so many more folks you have to deal with and your news cycle is reduced."

Edelman's son and successor, Richard, eulogized his father at a memorial service Friday at Chicago Sinai Congregation by recalling the personal relationships at play in his father's public relations efforts.

The public has a different relationship with the media and the messages than they did when the elder Edelman was starting out. Nothing is accepted at face value. The danger is that when the theatrics draw too much attention, everyone loses sight of the story.

"It's a lot more complicated," Wladika said. "That's for sure."

philrosenthal@tribune.com

Twitter @phil_rosenthal

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Notre Dame's Te'o: 'There is no way that I could be part of this'

Manti Te'o broke his silence late Friday and denied any involvement in the dead girlfriend hoax that has consumed the former Notre Dame All-American for days, while saying the man behind the ruse called two days ago to apologize for it.

"I wasn't faking it," Te'o told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap in an off-camera interview. "I wasn't part of this."

A 22-year-old named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo allegedly preyed upon Te'o in creating a bogus woman named Lennay Kekua who began an online- and telephone-only relationship with Te'o, Notre Dame's bellwether linebacker, only to die in September of leukemia and create a personal back story that propelled Te'o to national renown but ultimately crumbled this week.

Schaap reported after a two and a half hour interview with Te'o that the player wasn't completely sure Kekua did not exist until two days ago -- when Tuiasosopo called Te'o to admit he was behind the hoax and apologize for it.

As for at least one glaring inconsistency -- the story of how Te'o and Kekua met -- the former Irish star admitted to a lie. The relationship, such as it was, began during Te'o's sophomore year at Notre Dame via Facebook, he told ESPN. He attempted to contact Kekua via Skype and Facetime but never saw a face on the other end, Te'o said.

And as for the story of meeting Kekua on the field at Stanford in 2009, a tale retold by his father in October, Te'o said: "I kind of tailored my stories to have people think that, yeah, he met her before she passed away."

ESPN reported Friday that Tuiasosopo called a friend from church in early December and admitted he duped Te'o, without the Notre Dame linebacker playing a part in the deception. Deadspin.com, which broke the girlfriend hoax story Wednesday, reported that Te'o might have played a role in the fraud.

Te'o denied that he used the situation to enhance his Heisman Trophy candidacy. He finished second in the voting to Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel.

"When (people) hear the facts, they'll know," Te'o told ESPN. "They'll know that there is no way that I could be part of this."

Te'o did say the ordeal weighed on him during Notre Dame's 42-14 loss to Alabama in the BCS title game, in which he played arguably one of the worst games of his career.

"It affected me," Te'o said. "When you're stuck in big game like that... people depend on you. You need to perform."

bchamilton@tribune.com

Twitter @ChiTribHamilton

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Armstrong turns emotional in 2nd part of interview

CHICAGO (AP) — Lance Armstrong finally cracked.

Not while expressing deep remorse or regrets, though there was plenty of that in Friday night's second part of Armstrong's interview with Oprah Winfrey.

It wasn't over the $75 million in sponsorship deals that evaporated over the course of two days, or having to walk away from the Livestrong cancer charity he founded and called his "sixth child." It wasn't even about his lifetime ban from competition, though he said that was more than he deserved.

It was another bit of collateral damage that Armstrong said he wasn't prepared to deal with.

"I saw my son defending me and saying, 'That's not true. What you're saying about my dad is not true,'" Armstrong recalled.

"That's when I knew I had to tell him."

Armstrong was near tears at that point, referring to 13-year-old Luke, the oldest of his five children. He blinked, looked away from Winfrey, and with his lip trembling, struggled to compose himself.

It came just past the midpoint of the hourlong program on Winfrey's OWN network. In the first part, broadcast Thursday, the disgraced cycling champion admitted using performance-enhancing drugs when he won seven straight Tour de France titles.

Critics said he hadn't been contrite enough in the first half of the interview, which was taped Monday in Austin, but Armstrong seemed to lose his composure when Winfrey zeroed in on the emotional drama involving his personal life.

"What did you say?" Winfrey asked.

"I said, 'Listen, there's been a lot of questions about your dad. My career. Whether I doped or did not dope. I've always denied that and I've always been ruthless and defiant about that. You guys have seen that. That's probably why you trusted me on it.' Which makes it even sicker," Armstrong said.

"And uh, I told Luke, I said," and here Armstrong paused for a long time to collect himself, "I said, 'Don't defend me anymore. Don't.'

"He said OK. He just said, 'Look, I love you. You're my dad. This won't change that."

Winfrey also drew Armstrong out on his ex-wife, Kristin, whom he claimed knew just enough about both the doping and lying to ask him to stop. He credited her with making him promise that his comeback in 2009 would be drug-free.

"She said to me, 'You can do it under one condition: That you never cross that line again,'" Armstrong recalled.

"The line of drugs?" Winfrey asked.

"Yes. And I said, 'You've got a deal,'" he replied. "And I never would have betrayed that with her."

A U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report that exposed Armstrong as the leader of an elaborate doping scheme on his U.S. Postal Service cycling team included witness statements from at least three former teammates who said Kristin Armstrong participated in or at least knew about doping on the teams and knew team code names for EPO kept in her refrigerator. Postal rider Jonathan Vaughters testified that she handed riders cortisone pills wrapped in foil.

Armstrong said in the first part of the interview that he had stayed clean in the comeback, a claim that runs counter to the USADA report.

And that wasn't the only portion of the interview likely to rile anti-doping officials.

Winfrey asked Armstrong about a "60 Minutes Sports" interview in which USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said a representative of the cyclist had offered a donation that the agency turned down.

"Were you trying to pay off USADA?" she asked.

"No, that's not true," he replied, repeating, "That is not true."

Winfrey asks the question three more times, in different forms.

"That is not true," he insisted.

USADA spokeswoman Annie Skinner replied in a statement: "We stand by the facts both in the reasoned decision and in the '60 Minutes' interview."

Armstrong has talked with USADA officials, and a meeting with Tygart near the Denver airport reportedly ended in an argument over the possibility of modifying the lifetime ban. A person familiar with those conversations said Armstrong could provide information that might get his ban reduced to eight years. By then, he would be 49. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a confidential matter.

After retiring from cycling in 2011, Armstrong returned to triathlons, where he began his professional career as a teenager, and he has told people he's desperate to get back.

Winfrey asked if that was why he agreed to the interview.

"If you're asking me, do I want to compete again ... the answer is hell, yes," Armstrong said. "I'm a competitor. It's what I've done my whole life. I love to train. I love to race. I love to toe the line — and I don't expect it to happen."

Yet just three questions later, a flash of the old Armstrong emerged.

"Frankly," he said, "this may not be the most popular answer, but I think I deserve it. Maybe not right now ... (but) if I could go back to that time and say, 'OK, you're trading my story for a six-month suspension?' Because that's what people got."

"What other people got?" Winfrey asked.

"What everybody got," he replied.

Eleven former Armstrong teammates, including several who previously tested positive for PEDs, testified about the USPS team's doping scheme in exchange for more lenient punishments. Armstrong said in the first part of the interview that he knew his "fate was sealed" when his most trusted lieutenant, George Hincapie, who was alongside him for all seven Tour wins between 1999-2005, was forced to give Armstrong up to anti-doping authorities,

"So I got a death penalty and they got ... six months," Armstrong resumed. "I'm not saying that that's unfair, necessarily, but I'm saying it's different."

Armstrong said the most "humbling" moment in the aftermath of the USADA report was leaving Livestrong lest his association damage the foundation's ability to raise money and continue its advocacy programs on behalf of cancer victims.

Originally called the Lance Armstrong Foundation, the cyclist created it the year after he was diagnosed with a form of testicular cancer that had spread to his brain and lungs. Doctors gave him 50-50 odds of surviving.

"I wouldn't at all say forced out, told to leave," he said of Livestrong. "I was aware of the pressure. But it hurt like hell. ...

"That was the lowest," Armstrong said. "The lowest."

Armstrong's personal fortune had sustained a big hit days earlier. One by one, his sponsors called to end their associations with him: Nike; Trek Bicycles; Giro, which manufactures cycling helmets and other accessories; Anheuser-Busch.

"That was a $75 million day," Armstrong said.

"That just went out of your life," Winfrey said.

"Gone."

"Gone?" Winfrey repeated.

"Gone," he replied, "and probably never coming back."

So was there a moral to his story?

"I can look at what I did," he said. "Cheating to win bike races, lying about it, bullying people. Of course, you're not supposed to do those things. That's what we teach our children."

Armstrong paused to compose himself before a final mea culpa.

"I just think it was about the ride and losing myself, getting caught up in that, and doing all those things along the way that enabled that," he said. "The ultimate crime is, uh, is the betrayal of those people that supported me and believed in me.

"They got lied to."

___

AP Sports Writer Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, and National Writer Eddie Pells in Denver contributed to this report.

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J.J. Abrams to produce Lance Armstrong biopic

LOS ANGELES (AP) — He’s already gotten the Oprah treatment. Now Lance Armstrong is headed for the silver screen.

Paramount Pictures and J.J. Abrams‘ production company, Bad Robot, are planning a biopic about the disgraced cyclist, a studio spokeswoman said Friday.

They’ve secured the rights to New York Times reporter Juliet Macur‘s upcoming book “Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong,” due out in June. Macur covered the seven-time Tour de France winner for over a decade.

No director, writer, star or start date have been set.

Armstrong is in the midst of a two-part interview with Oprah Winfrey in which he admits to using performance-enhancing drugs to reach his historic victories, something he’d defiantly denied for years. The International Olympic Committee stripped him of his 2000 bronze medal this week.

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