Syria Urges Rebels to Lay Down Arms and Join Transition

Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

Free Syrian Army fighters fired on government forces on Sunday at a checkpoint in Damascus. The foreign minister called on rebels to reject foreign intervention.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — As Syrian opposition leaders met in Turkey over the weekend to try to iron out their differences, Syria’s foreign minister invited rebels to join a national dialogue, promising that all those who lay down their arms and forswear foreign intervention will be part of a transitional government.

“I tell the young men who carried arms to change and reform — take part in the dialogue for a new Syria and you will be a partner in building it,” the foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, said in an interview broadcast on Syrian state television on Saturday. “Why carry arms?”

The minister’s offer went a significant step beyond what President Bashar al-Assad proposed in a speech on Jan. 6, when he called for a national dialogue but intimated that those who had taken up arms would be excluded.

To many of those fighting Mr. Assad, any suggestion of talks with a government they hold responsible for the civil war that has killed more than 60,000 people is absurd, even offensive. Even those in the opposition who reject the use of weapons refused to engage with Mr. Assad in the talks he proposed.

Yet at least some in the Syrian government appear to be aiming to wrest the political initiative from Mr. Assad’s opponents, who remain divided — between exile leaders abroad and fighters on the ground, between secularists and Islamists, and between the armed and unarmed opposition. Meanwhile, those Syrians who are still on the fence increasingly worry about violence with no end in sight, and the world faces the specter of a failed state in a strategic area of the Middle East.

Still, in a government that was never transparent and has become even murkier during the conflict of nearly two years, it was unclear whether Mr. Moallem spoke with full authority. Broadcasting the speech on state television appeared to give it more weight than other calls for dialogue offered by government figures like Vice President Farouk al-Shara, who proposed an inclusive dialogue in an interview with a Lebanese newspaper in December.

Most rebels would probably be reluctant to trust any assurances that they could safely lay down arms from a government whose harsh crackdown on peaceful protesters set off the conflict in March 2011.

The National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the opposition exile group formed in November at the behest of Western and some Persian Gulf nations, has said that Mr. Assad’s ouster or resignation is a precondition for talks.

The coalition met for a second day in Istanbul, but by Sunday evening there was no word of a consensus on the selection of a prime minister in waiting, with some members backing former Prime Minister Riad Hijab, the highest-ranking defector, and others arguing that he was too close to the government.

The group was also expected to discuss what it considers to be the broken promises of the United States, the gulf countries and others, which had urged it to reorganize and expand its membership in return for the prospect of increased aid.

A senior official from Iran, Mr. Assad’s only Middle Eastern ally, on Sunday offered one of the strongest recent defenses of the Syrian president, saying that there should be changes but that Mr. Assad should not be forced out.

“We believe that there should be reforms emanating from the will of the Syrian people, but without resorting to violence” and American aid, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior aide to Iran’s supreme leader, said in an interview with the Lebanese satellite television channel Al Mayadeen.

In response to a question about whether the ouster of Mr. Assad was a “red line,” Mr. Velayati said: “Yes, it is so. But this does not mean that we ignore the Syrian people’s right” to choose their own rulers.

France’s foreign minister announced that the Syrian opposition and its foreign allies would meet in Paris on Jan. 28 and reiterated calls for Mr. Assad to step down.

“The situation is horrific, and Bashar must go as fast as possible,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a radio interview, Reuters reported.

Agence France-Presse reported that Mr. Assad’s mother, Anisa Makhlouf, was living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, quoting Syrians living in the Emirates in a report that confirmed earlier rumors that she had left Syria with her daughter Bushra, whose husband, Assef Shawkat, was one of four senior security officials killed in a bombing in Damascus in July.

Ayman Abdel Nour, a longtime critic of the Syrian government and the leader of a new group called Syrian Christians for Democracy, called Ms. Makhlouf’s departure an indication of “Assad losing support even from within his family,” the French news agency reported.

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BlackBerry 10 camera software revealed, including built-in Instagram-like photo filters [video]

Just when we start to think we know everything there is to know about BlackBerry 10, new details leak. Mobile blog The Gadget Masters on Friday published a video revealing the new BlackBerry 10 camera software included on a pre-release version of the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. While the software on this prototype phone likely isn’t final, several new features that will be included in RIM’s (RIMM) new BlackBerry 10 camera software are displayed in the video. Among the highlights is a built-in photo editor that includes cropping, rotation and Instagram-like photo filters. The full video follows below.

[More from BGR: RIM heats up as BlackBerry 10 launch nears]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Djokovic plays another Australian Open marathon

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The opponent was different, the match three rounds earlier. Still, the result gave Novak Djokovic a familiar feeling, and another chance to rip off his shirt in celebration.

Djokovic needed just over 5 hours to beat Stanislas Wawrinka 1-6, 7-5, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 12-10 in a fourth-round match Sunday night at the Australian Open, on the same court where he needed 5:53 to beat Rafael Nadal in last year's final.

"I just had flashback of 2012," Djokovic said. "It was maybe 45 minutes less this match than the one 12 months ago, but still it was still as exciting. I tried to enjoy the moment and couldn't ask for more. What a match point ... unbelievable."

He wasn't exaggerating about the match point. On his third attempt to end it, his backhand cross-court shot zipped past the valiant Wawrinka, who, Djokovic conceded, had outplayed him for most of the night.

"He came up with great tactics today," Djokovic said. "He didn't give me a lot of the same rhythm that I could get into the match. He was the one being in charge. I was passive. "

The win was Djokovic's 18th in a row at Melbourne Park after winning the last two Australian titles and advanced the Serbian star to the quarterfinals of his 15th consecutive major tournament.

Wawrinka, who had been receiving treatment to his upper leg muscles from late in the fourth set, said he would take more positives than negatives out of the match. He led 5-2 in the second set after outplaying Djokovic in the first.

"For sure, I think the best match I have ever played," Wawrinka said. "I fought like a dog like always. At 4-4 in the final set, I thought I might have won the match, but he was just better."

Djokovic will next play No. 5 Tomas Berdych, who needed five match points in the tiebreaker before beating South Africa's Kevin Anderson 6-3, 6-2, 7-6 (13).

Fourth-seeded David Ferrer won 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 over No. 16 Kei Nishikori of Japan to set up a quarterfinal against fellow Spaniard Nicolas Almagro, who was leading 6-2, 5-1 when No. 8 Janko Tipsaveric retired from their fourth-round match.

The Djokovic-Wawrinka match overshadowed Maria Sharapova's accomplishment earlier in the day.

Sharapova advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-1, 6-0 win over Kirsten Flipkens in another impressive display — last year's French Open champion has lost just five games through four rounds, breaking the Australian Open mark of eight held previously by eventual champions Steffi Graf and Monica Seles.

"A couple that I've won, I felt like I was playing great from the beginning and I was able to carry that through the whole tournament," said Sharapova, who won titles in 2004 at Wimbledon, 2006 at the U.S. Open and 2008 in Australia before completing her career Grand Slam with a victory at last year's French Open.

She can't remember ever winning so few games through four rounds of a tournament, but realizes this means nothing if she doesn't make it to the latter stages.

"Well, I'm certainly happy to be playing this well but ... it only gets tougher from here," said Sharapova, who is playing her first tournament of 2013 after withdrawing from a warm-up event at Brisbane because of an injured right collarbone.

She next plays fellow Russian Ekaterina Makarova, who beat fifth-seeded Angelique Kerber 7-5, 6-4. Sharapova defeated Makarova in the quarterfinals here last year on her way to the final, which she lost in straight sets to Victoria Azarenka.

Li Na, who reached the final here in 2011 and won the French Open later that year, saved a set point in the tiebreaker before beating Julia Goerges 7-6 (6), 6-1. She'll play No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska, who beat No. 13 Ana Ivanovic 6-2, 6-4 for her 13th consecutive win. Radwanska won the Auckland and Sydney titles before coming to Melbourne.

On Monday, Roger Federer plays Milos Raonic, and U.S. Open champion Andy Murray faces Gilles Simon. Azarenka, Serena Williams and fellow American Sloane Stephens also have their fourth-round matches.

Thy will have a tough time matching the spectacle of Sunday's late-night encounter.

Djokovic had beaten Wawrinka — the perennial No. 2 among Swiss tennis players to 17-time major winner Roger Federer — in their 10 previous matches. He hadn't lost a head-to-head since 2006 and had won 11 straight sets between them.

Wawrinka stunned the top-ranked Djokovic with three service breaks in the first set and had that 5-2 lead in the second before the 25-year-old Serb rallied by winning six consecutive games. But just as Djokovic seemed to be taking control, Wawrinka launched his own comeback to win a long tiebreaker and force a fifth set.

Djokovic got to serve first in the fifth, giving him a psychological edge as long as he held his serve.

Wawrinka had game point in the 22nd game but let Djokovic get on a roll. He saved his first match point with a service winner, then saved another two minutes later.

At 1:40 a.m. local time, Wawrinka was whacking his head with the racket and biting the ball after giving Djokovic another match point.

Moments later, he was slumped on the court, exhausted. Djokovic raised both arms, walked to the net and embraced his beaten rival, then pulled of his shirt and flexed.

"Give him credit, he made me run all over the court," Djokovic said. "He never gave me the same ball. He was aggressive from both sides. I didn't know what was coming next."

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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Myspace Is Accused of Using Music Without Permission

Last week, Justin Timberlake’s new song, “Suit & Tie,” did double promotional duty. Not only was it a teaser for Mr. Timberlake’s latest album, but it also served as an introduction for a revamped version of Myspace, the once-mighty social network and music site.

Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Justin Timberlake is one of the investors in Myspace.

Mr. Timberlake is a minority partner in the investor group that bought Myspace for $35 million in 2011, six years after News Corporation paid $580 million for it with hopes of dominating the social Web. Before long it was eclipsed by Facebook and fell into the dustbin of the Internet.

The new Myspace, which like the old MySpace lets people listen to huge numbers of songs free, has won early praise for its sleek design. But while it has said its intention is to help artists, it may already have a problem with some of the independent record labels that supply much of its content.

Although Myspace boasts the biggest library in digital music — more than 50 million songs, it says — a group representing thousands of small labels says the service is using its members’ music without permission.

The group, Merlin, negotiates digital deals on behalf of labels around the world. Charles Caldas, chief executive of Merlin, said in an interview on Friday that its deal with Myspace expired over a year ago, yet songs from more than 100 of its labels are still available on Myspace, including Beggars Group, Domino and Merge, three of the biggest independents.

“While it’s nice that Mr. Timberlake is launching his service on this platform, and acting as an advocate for the platform,” Mr. Caldas said, “on the other hand his peers as artists are being exploited without permission and not getting remuneration for it.”

Neda Azarfar, a spokeswoman for Myspace, said the company had decided not to renew its contract with Merlin, and that if songs from its member labels were still on the site, “they were likely uploaded by users” and would be removed if requested by the label.

In December, Myspace.com had 27.4 million unique visitors in the United States, according to comScore. That is far from its peak of 76 million in 2008, but for a music industry still struggling for all the business it can get, it is an audience that cannot be ignored.

The industry as a whole is largely supportive of Myspace, which is now seen as an underdog facing long odds. For small labels, though, the licensing situation has brought back memories of the introduction of MySpace’s first music service, MySpace Music, in 2008, when deals were cut with the major labels but most independents were left out for more than a year.

“The feeling is not good,” said William Crowley, the vice president for digital and mobile at eOne Distribution, an independent music distributor that is associated with Merlin.

“Unlicensed services are a source of grave concern,” he added, “especially high-profile ones.”

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A Rare Scotch, Back on the Rocks

SCOTT BASE, Antarctica (AP) — Three bottles of rare, 19th-century Scotch found beneath the floorboards of Ernest Shackleton’s abandoned expedition base were returned to Antarctica on Saturday after a distiller flew them to Scotland to recreate the long-lost recipe.

But not even Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand, who personally returned the stash, got a taste of the contents of the bottles of Mackinlay’s whiskey, which were rediscovered 102 years after Shackleton was forced to leave them behind.

“I think we’re all tempted to crack it open and have a little drink ourselves now,” Mr. Key said at a ceremony where he handed over the bottles to officials of the Antarctic Heritage Trust at Scott Base, New Zealand’s Antarctic outpost on Ross Island.

The whisky will be transferred by March from Ross Island to Shackleton’s desolate hut at Cape Royds and replaced beneath the restored hut as part of a program to protect the legacy of the so-called heroic era of Antarctic exploration from 1898 to 1915.

Bottled in 1898 after the blend was aged for 15 years, the Mackinlay’s whiskey was among three crates of Scotch and two of brandy buried beneath a basic hut that Shackleton had used during his adventurous 1907 Nimrod excursion to the Antarctic.

The expedition failed to reach the South Pole but set a record at the time for reaching the farthest southern latitude. Shackleton’s stash was discovered frozen in ice by conservationists in 2010. The crates were frozen solid after more than a century beneath the Antarctic surface.

But the bottles were found intact, and researchers could hear the whiskey sloshing inside. Antarctica’s minus 22 temperature was not enough to freeze the liquor.

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Google CEO Page on Apple’s ‘thermonuclear’ Android war: ‘How well is that working?’

Google (GOOG) CEO Larry Page seems unimpressed by Apple’s (AAPL) “thermonuclear war” against his company’s operating system. In an interview with Wired posted Thursday, Page was asked to respond to reports about the late Steve Jobs being “competitive enough to claim that he was willing to ‘go to thermonuclear war’ on Android.” Page responded with one sentence: “How well is that working?” Wired followed up by asking Page whether he though that “Android’s huge lead in market share is decisive” in the battle between the companies and Page only responded that “Android has been very successful, and we’re very excited about it.”

[More from BGR: Cable companies called ‘monopolies that stifle competition and innovation’]

While Apple’s strategy of suing Android vendors has had some notable successes for the company — particularly this past summer when it won a $ 1 billion patent verdict against rival Samsung (005930) — it still hasn’t stopped Android’s rise in both the smartphone and tablet markets, and devices such as the Galaxy S III and the Nexus 7 have proven to be among the most popular released over the past year. So when Page dismisses the significance of Apple’s legal war against Android, he’s got a good point: Some high-profile Apple victories have done very little to hurt consumer interest in Google’s open-source mobile OS so far.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Armstrong's enemies find vindication, sadness

First shunned, then vilified by Lance Armstrong, Mike Anderson had to move to the other side of the world to get his life back.

Now running a bike shop outside of Wellington, New Zealand, Armstrong's former assistant watched news reports about his former boss confessing to performance-enhancing drug use with only mild interest. If Anderson never hears Armstrong's voice again, it would be too soon.

"He gave me the firm, hard push and a shove," Anderson said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "Made my life very, very unpleasant. It was an embarrassment for me and my family to be portrayed as liars, to be called a disgruntled employee, implying there was some impropriety on my part. It just hurt. It was completely uncalled for."

Anderson is among the dozens, maybe hundreds, of former teammates, opponents and associates to receive the Armstrong treatment, presumably for not going along with the party line — that the now-disgraced, seven-time Tour de France cyclist didn't need to cheat to win.

The penalties for failing to play along were punitive, often humiliating, and now that Armstrong has admitted in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that he's a doper, a liar and a bully, many of those who saw their lives changed, sometime ruined, are going through a gamut of emotions.

Some feel vindicated, others remain vengeful. Some are sad, while many others are simply wrung out.

"He's damaged a lot of people's lives," said Betsy Andreu, whose husband, Frankie, was culled from Armstrong's team for not agreeing to dope. "He has damaged the sport of cycling. Frankie was fired for not getting on the program. I never thought this day would come but it's so incredibly sad."

Before his interview with Winfrey aired, Armstrong reached out to the Andreus to apologize but the planned reconciliation did not work. In fact, Armstrong's interview only made things worse, when he refused to confirm what the Andreus testified to under oath — that they had heard the cyclist admit to doping while meeting with doctors treating him for cancer at an Indiana hospital in 1996.

Regardless of whether Armstrong says more about that, there's no denying that life for the Andreus changed when they refused to go along.

"Frankie's career was definitely cut short. His career was ruined early," Betsy Andreu said. "You have riders out there whose careers never happened" because of Armstrong.

And some whose careers were cut short.

Filippo Simeoni was a talented, young rider who dared admit to doping and told authorities he received his instructions from physician Michele Ferrari, who also advised Armstrong during his career. After that 2002 testimony, Armstrong branded Simeoni a liar. He went so far as to humiliate Simeoni at the 2004 Tour de France, when he chased down the Italian rider during a breakaway and more or less ordered him to fall back in line. Later in the race, and with a TV camera in his face, Armstrong put his finger to his lips in a "silence" gesture. After the stage, he said he was simply protecting the interests of the peloton.

Simeoni received a different message.

"When a rider like me brushed up against a cyclist of his caliber, his fame and his worth — when I clashed with the boss — all doors were closed to me," Simeoni said. "I was humiliated, offended, and marginalized for the rest of my career. Only I know what that feels like. It's difficult to explain."

Anderson certainly can.

In a story he wrote for Outside Magazine last August, Anderson detailed a business relationship with Armstrong that began in 2002 with an email from Armstrong promising he would finance Anderson's bike shop when their work together was done. Anderson, a bike mechanic working in Armstrong's hometown of Austin, Texas, essentially became the cyclist's personal assistant, his responsibilities growing as the years passed. One of his tasks was making advance trips to Armstrong's apartment in Spain to prepare it for his arrival.

Anderson says the relationship began to sour after he came upon a box in Armstrong's bathroom labeled "Androstenedione," the banned substance most famously linked to Mark McGwire. The box, Anderson wrote, was mysteriously gone the next time he entered the apartment.

Time passed. Anderson bore witness to more and more things that didn't feel right. Armstrong, sensing his employee's discomfort, became more and more distant. Finally, Anderson wrote, Armstrong severed ties, asking Anderson to sign a nondisclosure agreement "that would have made me liable for a large sum of money if I even mentioned ever having worked for Armstrong."

Anderson's refusal to do that led to lawyers and lawsuits — with Armstrong accusing Anderson of extortion and Anderson accusing Armstrong of wrongful dismissal, breach of contract, and defamation. The cases were eventually settled for undisclosed terms.

But Anderson took his share of hits along the way.

"Austin was not a comfortable place for me after that," he said. "It had been my home for some years. I had enjoyed a very good reputation. I couldn't get a job in the bicycle business, certainly not one that was a fair placement for my skill and experience."

He ended up in New Zealand, where his wife's brother has roots, and is doing fine, now.

"I got a fair shake from some local investors who believe in me and we've been at it for four years," Anderson said. "The kids are clothed and fed and I don't really have any complaints."

Stories such as these — about the havoc Armstrong unleashed on people's lives — come from seemingly every corner: bike mechanics, multimillionaire businessmen, trainers, masseuses, wives, cyclists both at the front and back of the peloton.

Tyler Hamilton was among Armstrong's key teammates during his first three Tour de France victories. His tell-all interview on "60 Minutes" in 2011, combined with his testimony and a book he wrote last year, played a key part in the unraveling of the Armstrong myth.

Hamilton watched Armstrong's confession with little emotion but with a modicum of hope.

"It's been a sad story for a lot of people," Hamilton said. "But I think we'll look back on this period and, hopefully not too far down the road, we can say it was, in the end, a good thing for the sport of cycling."

___

AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire contributed to this report.

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Op-Ed Contributor: Eat Like a Mennonite

ON the second day of my chemical-detox diet, I was very hungry. I’d been eating like a rabbit, all carrots and greens that I’d gathered, barehanded, from the baskets of the farmer’s market, no gloves or plastic bags allowed. I cooked up some quinoa that I bought packaged in paper from the supermarket sometimes known as Whole Paycheck. I was effectively a vegan because I couldn’t find meat or cheese that wasn’t wrapped in plastic, and I didn’t have access to accommodating livestock.

My 7-year-old daughter and I were participating in a pilot study conducted in 2011 by the Silent Spring Institute and the Breast Cancer Fund (a follow-up study was published later that year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives). We had urinated into some glass containers a few weeks earlier, back when we were “normal” Americans, and now we were spending three days trying to reduce our exposure to plastics before supplying our urine again.

We wanted to see what it would take to nudge down our bodies’ levels of a handful of common chemicals with the potential to mimic or disrupt hormones, including phthalates (found in some plastics and added to products like lotions to bind fragrances), triclosan (an antibacterial ingredient in many soaps, toothpastes and cutting boards) and bisphenol A (or BPA, a plastic-hardener and epoxy additive that may affect children’s brain development and that some believe may be linked to breast and prostate cancers).

Manufacturers have phased BPA out of some products, and last year, the Food and Drug Administration outlawed its use in baby bottles and sippy cups. This month Suffolk County, N.Y., banned certain cash register receipts that carry it.

Risks aside, the normal phase was a lot more fun. My daughter and I painted our toenails, took floral-scented bubble baths, ate refried beans out of a can and drank a couple of sodas. Go America! For detox, I became an isolated Anxiety Mom. We scrubbed off the nail polish. I didn’t venture far from home because I couldn’t ride in a car (phthalates waft out of plastic interiors) or shop (because of those store receipts). That turned out to be something of a relief, since I couldn’t wear makeup or deodorant. I lost three pounds. It was practically like living in the 19th century, except for my trusty bicycle helmet, which I wore despite the fact that it is a terrific example of the technology BPA makes possible.

A study published in 2010 found a very effective way to reduce urinary phthalate levels was to live meatless in a Buddhist temple for five days. A study recently published in the journal NeuroToxicology found that pregnant women in Old Order Mennonite communities, which eschew many modern conveniences, had urinary BPA levels one-fourth the national median. Those Mennonites eat more fresh food than the rest of us and make their own dairy products, but they also buy fewer consumer goods, which can be additional sources of BPA. The chemical is found in dental fillings, eyeglass lenses and CDs, among other products.

In lab-animal studies, BPA has been linked to mammary gland tumors, prostate and urethra problems and cardiac irregularities. The Food and Drug Administration maintains that BPA is safe in low levels, although in 2010 it expressed “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland in fetuses, infants and young children.” And yet, last year’s bottle announcement seemed to be less about protecting infants than about putting confused parents at ease.

If anything, it has had the opposite effect. Parents who were worried about exposing their babies to a hormone-mimicking substance are just as worried about exposing their unborn children to it in the womb, or passing it along to newborns through breast milk. New sippy cups won’t change that.

One thing that could is adopting my extreme detox regime. My original BPA level was 5.1 nanograms per milliliter of urine, putting me in the upper quartile of Americans. (Levels here are, incidentally, twice those of Canada, which began restricting some uses of BPA in 2008.) After my three days of detox, my level dropped to 0.8, for an 84 percent reduction (I was not quite able to out-Mennonite the Mennonites — their everyday level was 0.71). My daughter’s level dropped even lower, to 0.65. That’s my little cave girl. The researchers speculated that perhaps my polycarbonate eyeglasses kept me from shedding more BPA.

In fact it’s surprisingly easy to change our bodies’ BPA chemistry; it just requires a big shift in eating habits and behavior for most of us. The substance passes in and out of the body quickly, but we are fed it in a daily drip.

So is it time to crank up my crank meter and demand that my children step away from the rubber duckie and join a religious sect? No. I like modern life, and I really like those canned refrieds.

Parents have enough to worry about without scrutinizing labels of baby bottles and wearing hazmat gloves to the grocery store. That’s why we should be relieved when the F.D.A. and local governments like Suffolk County help take over this doleful parenting task for us. It’s why we need the government to require testing of commercial chemicals for hormonal effects, and to regulate them in a meaningful way. And it’s why we need manufacturers to design products with safer substances in the first place.

As far as my family is concerned, we can eat only so much quinoa out of a paper bag.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

 An earlier version of this article misstated the level of bisphenol A, a chemical compound used in consumer products, in the writer’s urine before she went on a detoxification diet. It was 5.1 nanograms per milliliter — not millimeter.

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The Boss: New Leaders Inc. C.E.O. on Giving Children a Chance

I AM the youngest of 10 children in my family, and the only one born in the United States. My father was a municipal judge who fled Haiti during the Duvalier regime. He and my mother settled in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, but could not initially afford to bring over my four brothers and five sisters, who stayed in Haiti with relatives.

Jean S. Desravines is the chief executive of New Leaders Inc. in New York.

AGE 41

FAVORITE PASTIMES Karate and taekwondo

MEMORABLE BOOK "How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character," by Paul Tough

Since he did not speak English fluently, my father worked as a janitor and had a second job as a hospital security guard. He later took a third job driving a taxi at night to pay for my tuition at Nazareth Regional High School, a Roman Catholic school in Brooklyn. My parents were determined that I was going to get a good education, and wanted to keep me away from local troubles, which did claim two of my childhood friends.

Working so many jobs overwhelmed my father. He had a heart attack and died at age 59 behind the wheel of his taxi. My mother found it difficult to cope without my father and moved back to Haiti in 1989 with two of my siblings. I thought I would have to leave school because I had no money for tuition, but Nazareth agreed to pay my way.

I wound up sleeping in my car for almost three months, showering at school after my track team’s practice. I also held down two jobs, both in retailing, and one of my sisters and I rented a basement apartment in East Flatbush.

After graduating from high school in 1990, I attended St. Francis College in Brooklyn, on athletic and academic scholarships. I worked first at the New York City Board of Education, where H. Carl McCall was president, then in his office after he became New York State comptroller. I later worked in the office of Ruth Messinger, then the Manhattan borough president.

I broadened my nonprofit organization experience at the Faith Center for Community Development while earning my master’s of public administration at New York University. I married my high school sweetheart, Melissa, and we now have two children.

In 2001, I began to work toward my original goal — improving educational opportunities for children — and joined the city’s Department of Education. I was later recruited under the new administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to help start a program as part of his Children First reforms.

In 2003, I became the Department of Education’s executive director for parent and community engagement, and, two years later, senior counselor to Joel I. Klein, then the school chancellor. He taught me a great deal about leadership and how to change the education system. But I began to realize public education could not be transformed without great principals who function like C.E.O.’s of their schools.

So in 2006 I returned to the nonprofit world, to New Leaders, a national organization founded in 2000 to recruit and develop leaders to turn around low-performing public schools. Initially, I managed city partnerships and expanded our program in areas like New Orleans and Charlotte, N.C.

In 2011, I became C.E.O., and revamped our program to produce even stronger student achievement results, streamlined our costs, diversified funding sources and forged new partnerships. We have an annual budget of $31.5 million, which comes from foundations, businesses, individuals and government grants, and a staff of about 200 people at a dozen locations.

We have a new partnership with Pearson Education to provide greater learning opportunities to public school principals. The goal of these efforts is to have a great principal in each of our nation’s public schools — to make sure that, just as I did, all kids get a chance at success.

As told to Elizabeth Olson.

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