Friday, October 26, 2012

Why don't these voters decide? Some like to mull

By CONNIE CASS and JENNIFER AGIESTA | Associated Press – 4 hrs ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Who are these people who still can't make up their minds? They're undecided voters like Kelly Cox, who spends his days repairing the big rigs that haul central California's walnuts, grapes, milk and more across America.
He doesn't put much faith in either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. But he figures he's got plenty of time — a little more than a week — to settle on one of them before Nov. 6. And he definitely does plan to vote.
"I'll do some online research," said Cox, co-owner of a Delhi, Calif., truck repair shop. "I don't have time to watch presidential debates because it's a lot of garbage anyway. They're not asking the questions that the people want to hear."
About 5 percent of Americans with solid plans to vote have yet to pick their presidential candidate, according to a new AP-GfK poll. When you add in those who lean only tentatively toward their choice or won't declare a favorite, about 16 percent of likely voters look ripe for persuasion. That's about the same as a month ago.
In a super-tight race, undecided voters have taken on almost mythic stature. Their questions at the town hall-style debate are parsed. Campaign techies wade through data to find them. The president dialed up 9,000 of them for an Air Force One conference call as he flew to Los Angeles this week.
But the undecided also endure Twitter sniping and late-night TV ribbing. They're derided as uninformed nincompoops who don't merit the power they wield. As David Letterman put it: "You're idiots! Make up your mind!"
Do these wafflers, ruminators and procrastinators deserve coddling — or scorn? Are they just misunderstood?
A look at who they are and what they're waiting for:
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THEY'RE NOT BLANK SLATES
Two-thirds of persuadable voters have an established party preference, the AP-GfK poll shows. They're roughly divided between those who call themselves Democrats or lean that way and those who are Republicans or lean to that side.
So why not just plan to vote with their party?
"They are really a little bit torn," said Lynn Vavreck, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. "They may have some issue positions that are counter to their party, or they're not sure how they stand on some things."
Nancy Hoang, a University of Minnesota freshman studying mathematics, considers herself a fiscal conservative and leans Republican. Yet she vacillated because she agrees with the Democrats' support for gay marriage and opposition to voter ID laws.
"I could have gone either way," said Hoang, 18. Not until after the final debate Monday did she decide: Her first-ever presidential vote will go to Romney.
Most of these undecided voters will come home to their favored party by Election Day, predicts Vavreck, who studies an ongoing survey of registered voters as well as trends from past elections.
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STILL, A GOOD CHUNK ARE INDEPENDENTS
About 30 percent of persuadable voters say they're political independents. That's three times the presence of independents — just 8 percent — among likely voters who have decided who they'll vote for, according to the AP-GfK poll.
In an increasingly polarized America, they stand out. Robert Dohrenburg, a small business owner in McAllen, Texas, voted for Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, but not for Bush's son, George W. He backed Obama in 2008, then had second thoughts this year.
Dohrenburg, 56, watched all three presidential debates before making up his mind to stick with Obama, in part because Romney "says one thing today and another thing tomorrow."
He wishes Ron Paul had won the Republican nomination.
"I'm a very strong independent," he said. "I choose the best candidate."
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ARE THEY EVEN PAYING ATTENTION?
Professors have a euphemism: low-information voters. The bulk of registered voters who are still undecided fall into that group, researchers say.
"They're basically not that interested in politics," Vavreck said. "They pay less attention to news in general."
Her image of the typical undecided American, based on her research: "the single mom with a couple of kids who just doesn't have time to be attuned to politics but feels like it's her civic duty to vote, and may or may not show up at the polls."
Yet the still-deciding who are committed to voting don't see themselves as out of touch.
In the AP-GfK poll, 85 percent of the persuadables said they have a "great deal" or "quite a bit" of interest in following the campaign, almost as high as among other likely voters.
Rita Kirk, a communications professor at Southern Methodist University, seeks out these involved-but-undecided voters in swing counties of states with close presidential contests. She gathered the groups that recorded their live reactions on CNN during the debates. They are following the race, she insists.
"They know that they're in a county that's going to make a difference," Kirk said. "They're wanting to make a good choice, and they kind of feel the weight and gravitas of that."
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SO WHAT DO THEY THINK?
They're of two minds.
Persuadable voters are more likely to trust Romney to do a better job handling the economy and the federal budget deficit, the AP-GfK poll shows. And they're about as comfortable with Romney as they are with Obama on foreign policy.
They are more likely to say Obama has a clear vision for the future, however. They tend to say he understands the problems of people like them better than Romney does. They also give Obama a broad advantage on making the right decision on women's issues.
They're worried about the future.
Only 3 in 10 persuadable voters think the economy will improve in the coming year, compared with 6 in 10 decided voters.
"I'm not sure that either candidate is going to be able to correct the issues," said Cox, 43, who watched California's Central Valley suffer through recession and drought. "I'd like to get the jobs back in the United States. I'd like to quit owing China everything. Put the farmers back to work."
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WHAT'S TAKING THEM SO LONG?
Some see virtue in refusing to rush.
Victoria Cook, a 27-year-old psychology student at Arapahoe Community College near Denver, leans toward Obama. But she stood in line to see Romney and Ryan at a rally with rocker Kid Rock this week.
"I don't want it to get to the point where you just write off the other guys right away," Cook said as she waited. "So I'll listen to what they have to say."
Professor Kirk said many undecided voters are so annoyed by months of TV commercials and punditry and news coverage that they just tune it all out until Election Day nears.
"They want to pay attention at the time they're ready to make a choice," she said. "It's like someone buying a car. That's when they start looking at the consumer magazines and all the attributes and how many airbags do the different models have. Not months in advance."
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WILL THEY DECIDE THIS ELECTION?
It's possible.
"That small group of people can make a difference if the vast majority of them swing in one direction," said Rutgers University political science Professor Richard Lau, who studies how voters decide.
But that would be unusual. Late deciders tend to be divided, not vote as a block — unless they are swept up in a bigger wave, Lau said. In 1980, for example, October polls showed President Jimmy Carter in a tight race with Ronald Reagan.
"It was very close up until the last few days and somehow everybody just decided, 'Enough. We're going to change courses here,'" Lau said. "Usually what happens is that the independent voters change in the direction that somehow the nature of the times is already going."
Still, an advantage among procrastinators could swing the race in a hotly contested state.
In the last two presidential elections, about 1 in 10 voters surveyed as they left polling places said they'd settled on their candidate within the previous week. About 5 percent decided on Election Day.
No word on how many made up their minds while standing in the voting booth.
___
Associated Press News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius in Washington and Associated Press writer Philip Elliott in Denver contributed to this report.
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Kids stabbed dead in NYC home; nanny, knife nearby

By COLLEEN LONG and DEEPTI HAJELA | Associated Press – 2 hrs 31 mins ago
NEW YORK (AP) — A mother returned home to her luxury apartment building near Central Park on Thursday to find two of her small children stabbed to death in a bathtub and their nanny, with self-inflicted stab wounds, lying near them, police said.
The nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, was found near a knife. She was hospitalized in critical condition and was in police custody, and authorities said she is suspected of killing the children, who were pronounced dead at a hospital.
The children's father, CNBC digital media executive Kevin Krim, who had been away on a business trip, was met by police at the airport on his return and was given an escort to the hospital where his loved ones had gathered.
The couple's apartment building sits in one of the city's most idyllic neighborhoods, a block from Central Park, near the Museum of Natural History and blocks from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The neighborhood is home to many affluent families, and seeing children accompanied by nannies is an everyday part of life there, making the idea of such violence even more disturbing to residents.
Music therapist Rima Starr, who lives on the same floor as the Krim family, said she heard screams coming from the family's apartment at around 5:30 p.m.
"There was some kind of screaming about, 'You slit her throat!'" she said. "It was horrible."
The children's mother, Marina Krim, had entered the dark apartment with her 3-year-old and initially thought her other two children were out with the 50-year-old nanny, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. She went downstairs and asked the doorman at her building, La Rochelle, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, whether he'd seen them leave. When he said no, she went back upstairs and discovered her 1-year-old son, Leo, and her 6-year-old daughter, Lucia, known as LuLu, in the bathroom, Kelly said. It's unclear how many times the children were stabbed.
The nanny was found on the bathroom floor with stab wounds to her neck, and a kitchen knife was close by, police said. There was no water in the bathtub, they said.
Kelly said it's unclear how long the nanny had worked for the family and the police investigation was ongoing. No charges had been filed.
Starr, the family's neighbor, said she believed the nanny had been hired just recently.
"I met her in the elevator, the day before yesterday, and was making small talk," she said.
After police arrived, she said, the mother remained in the building's lobby, screaming hysterically and clutching her surviving child.
On a webpage devoted to a recent family wedding, the eldest of the children, LuLu, is described as loving "art projects, ballet, and all things princess." The youngest, Leo, was said to be just learning how to walk.
The family had moved to New York from San Francisco within the last few years. The children's father was named general manager of CNBC's digital media division in March, after working previously in digital media at Bloomberg. Their mother had a cooking blog and taught art classes to young children.
The family lived in a stately, late 19th-century apartment building where one three-bedroom unit currently available for rent has an asking price of $10,000 per month. They had a greyhound, retired from racing, named Babar.
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Associated Press writer David B. Caruso contributed to this report.

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Neuroscientist Sees 'Proof of Heaven'

By TERRY MORAN and MARY MARSH | ABC News – Wed, Oct 24, 2012 2:35 PM EDT
It's dinnertime at the Alexander home, in Lynchburg, Va. Holley Alexander is serving chicken curry, 14-year-old Bond is hungry after soccer and the dad, Dr. Eben Alexander, leads the family in prayer.
In this home, saying grace is different these days. This family has been touched by a medical miracle -- and maybe more.
"It was impossible after impossible after impossible that all these things happened," Alexander said in an interview with "Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran.
Watch the full story on "Nightline" tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET
Alexander, a Harvard neurosurgeon, nearly died four years ago when a ferocious E. coli meningitis infection attacked his brain and plunged him deep into a week-long coma. Brain scans showed his entire cortex -- the parts of the brain that give us consciousness, thought, memory and understanding -- was not functioning. Doctors gave him little chance to live and told his family that if he did survive he'd probably be brain-damaged for the rest of his life.
"Nurses would come in, and they would pull his eyelids back, shine in the flashlight, and his eyes were just off and cocked," Holley Andersen said. "It's just like no one was there."
Against all odds, Alexander woke up a week after being stricken. But he believes Holley was right: He wasn't there.
Deep in coma, his brain infected so badly only the most primitive parts were working, Alexander claimed he experienced something extraordinary: a journey to Heaven.
"In every sense, of the word that's what my experience showed me," Alexander said.
"My first memories from when I was deep inside: I had no language, all my earthly memories were gone," he said. "I had no body awareness at all. I was just a speck of awareness in kind of a dark, murky environment, in roots or vessels or something. And I seemed to be there for a very long time -- I would say years.
"I was rescued by this beautiful, spinning, white light that had a melody, an incredibly beautiful melody with it that opened up into a bright valley," he added, "an extremely verdant valley with blossoming flowers and a just incredible, rich, ultra-real world of indescribable complexity."
Alexander said there was a young woman who soared across time and space with him on a butterfly wing and gave him a message to take back from Heaven.
"She looked at me, and this was with no words, but the concepts came straight into mind: You are love; you are cherished; there's nothing you have to fear; there's nothing you can do wrong," he said.
God was there as a vast presence of love, Alexander said, and Alexander understood God through an orb of brilliant light.
"It was all of eternity and all of conscious existence," he said. "But it was this brilliant orb of light that was almost as necessary as a translator to bring in that message from the divine and the incredible."
After he recovered, Alexander, who was adopted, was shown a picture by his biological family of a sister he had never met or seen before. He recognized the sister as the young woman from Heaven.
"I looked up at that picture on my dresser that I had just got and I knew who my guardian angel was on the butterfly wing," he said. "It is the most profound experience I've ever had in this life."
Of course, many would call Alexander's experience a hallucination -- but not him.
"I know this is not a hallucination, not a dream, not what we call a confabulation," Alexander said. "I know that it really occurred, and it occurred outside of my brain."
It was a near-death experience -- like those reported by thousands of others. But Alexander was determined to prove scientifically that it happened.
In his new book, "Proof of Heaven," he raises and then strikes down various hypotheses on how his journey could not happen.
Alexander said he is scientifically certain that his stricken brain could never have produced the images and ideas he experienced -- or remembered them.
"If you would have asked me before my coma, How much will someone who is in coma for a week with a severe bacterial meningitis -- so severe that the sugar level ... around my brain, normally around 60-80 and in a bad meningitis maybe down to 20; in my case it went down to 1 -- to me, that's just one piece of evidence of how severe this was. If you'd ask me how much would that patient remember, I'd say nothing," he said. "They wouldn't remember a single thing. ...The severity of the meningitis would have prevented dreams, hallucinations, confabulations, because those things all require a fairly coordinated amount of cortex."
Alexander isn't fazed at all by the skeptics. He was one, too.
Now he has "proof of Heaven," he said.
"For me, it's become clear that the best way to look at it is to turn it around and realize that consciousness exists in a much richer form, free and independent of the brain, which has everything to do with the eternity of our souls and the fact that our awareness, our consciousness, our soul, our spirit, does not depend on the existence of the brain in the physical universe. In fact, it's freed up to a much richer knowing when we're outside."
Watch the full story on "Nightline" tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET
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Monday, October 22, 2012

National Geographic to auction famous photos, art

By ULA ILNYTZKY | Associated Press – 17 hrs ago
NEW YORK (AP) — National Geographic Society has chronicled scientific expeditions, explorations, archaeology, wildlife and world cultures for more than 100 years, amassing a collection of 11.5 million photos and original illustrations.
A small selection of that massive archive — 240 pieces spanning from the late 1800s to the present — will be sold at Christie's in December at an auction expected to bring about $3 million, the first time any of the institution's collection has been sold.
Among the items are some of National Geographic's most indelible photographs, including that of an Afghan girl during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a portrait of Admiral Robert Peary at his 1908 expedition to the North Pole, a roaring lion in South Africa and the face of a Papua New Guinea aborigine.
Paintings and illustrations include N.C. Wyeth's historical scene of sword-fighting pirates, Charles Bittinger's view of Earth as seen from the moon, and Charles Knight's depictions of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
They are being auctioned "to celebrate our legacy .... and to give people a chance to buy a little part of this great institution's history," said Maura Mulvihill, senior vice president of National Geographic's image and video archives.
"We think of ourselves as the unsung fathers of modern photojournalism," she added. "I don't think people are aware of what a massive instructive archive this is."
Proceeds from the Dec. 6 auction, just weeks before National Geographic's 125th anniversary, will go for the promotion and preservation of the archive and "the nurturing of young photographers, artists and explorers ... who are the future of the organization," Mulvihill said.
National Geographic sponsors and funds scientific research and exploration through its official journal, National Geographic Magazine, which reaches 8.8 million people worldwide in 36 countries and in 27 languages. The society reaches millions more through its National Geographic Channel, books and other sources.
While National Geographic is known today for its photography, early magazines were filled with artwork.
Among the fine art being offered is an oil painting by Tom Lovell of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Civil War surrender at Appomattox. It's expected to fetch $20,000 to $30,000.
"The Duel On The Beach," a painting of two pirates by the American artist N.C. Wyeth, is estimated to sell for $800,000 to $1.2 million. Another Wyeth, "James Wolfe at Quebec," was commissioned to accompany a 1949 article on the general taking Quebec from the French general the Marquis de Montcalm. It has a pre-sale estimate of $30,000 to $50,000.
Steve McCurry's photograph of the Afghan girl carries an $8,000 to $12,000 pre-sale estimate. McCurry has made a special print of the image for the sale, and part of the proceeds from it will be donated to the Afghan Girls' Fund.
There's also Edward Curtis' 40-volume photo portfolio and book, "The North American Indian," believed to have been owned by Alexander Graham Bell. It's estimated at $700,000 to $900,000.
The sale also contains some images that have never been published, including a selection from Herbert Ponting, who produced some of the most enduring images of the Antarctic.
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Obama calls Romney ‘all over the map’ in foreign policy debate

By | The Ticket – 1 hr 52 mins ago
President Barack Obama portrayed rival Gov. Mitt Romney as "all over the map" and inexperienced on key national security issues in the third and final debate of the presidential election Monday night in Boca Raton, Fla. Each candidate attempted to paint the other as an untrustworthy commander in chief, but Romney's performance was less aggressive than Obama's, and the governor was often on defense in the 90-minute exchange.
"I know you haven't been in a position to actually execute foreign policy—but every time you've offered an opinion, you've been wrong," Obama said, referencing Romney's initial support for the Iraq war.
The president in general was harshly critical of Romney, and landed a few well-placed zingers. "The Cold War's been over for 20 years," he said in response to Romney's comment from several months ago that Russia is America's primary geopolitical foe.
He later said, "Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets," in response to Romney's criticism that America has fewer Navy ships than in the past. "We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines," the president added, a touch of mockery entering his voice.
Romney frequently pivoted to domestic issues and the economy, including the high number of Americans in poverty, his education record in Massachusetts, and his plans for reducing the deficit and creating jobs.
On foreign policy, Romney did not criticize how Obama handled the murder of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya, a topic he brought up in last week's town hall-style debate. Instead, Romney said the Middle East is in "tumult" and "chaos," and suggested Obama's strategy of killing Al Qaeda leaders in drone strikes is not enough to bring stability to the region.
"We can't kill our way out of this mess," Romney said. "We're going to have to put in place a very comprehensive and robust strategy to help the ... world of Islam and other parts of the world reject this radical violent extremism, which certainly [is] not on the run."
Romney also slammed Obama for what he called his "apology tour" in the Middle East, which he said projected weakness abroad. "The president began what I've called an apology tour of going to nations in the Middle East and criticizing America. I think they looked at that and saw weakness," Romney said. Obama called this a "whopper" and criticized Romney for fundraising on his trip to Israel. "When I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn't take donors," Obama said. "I didn't attend fundraisers. I went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum there, to remind myself of the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable."
Despite the crossfire, the candidates seemed to agree on many key foreign-policy issues, including the use of drone strikes to kill people believed to be terrorists, harsh sanctions on Iran (though Romney said the sanctions should be even stricter), and a strategy of avoiding military involvement in Syria.
After Romney seemed to avoid specifics on how he would handle Syria's civil war differently from Obama, the president retorted: "What you've just heard Gov. Romney say is that he doesn't have different ideas."
Obama and Romney are statistically tied among voters in the most recent polls, with Romney able to catch up with the president on the strength of his performance in the first debate in Denver. On foreign policy in particular, Obama's lead over Romney, in the double digits only a few months ago, has shrunk to just four points, according to a recent Pew poll.
Americans considered President Obama the loser in the first debate in Denver by historic margins, and Romney's poll numbers soared after his strong performance there. When the candidates met for a rematch at Hofstra University on Long Island last week, a much more assertive Obama showed up, and snap polls showed he was considered a narrow winner of the night.
It remains to be seen if this debate will provide a "bounce" for either candidate in the last few weeks of the campaign. Voters overwhelmingly say the economy and jobs are the most important issues for them in this election.
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Saturday, October 20, 2012

China flexes muscles with drills amid island row

By by Neil Connor | AFP News – Sat, Oct 20, 2012
China dispatched naval vessels, aircraft and helicopters to the East China Sea on Friday, flexing its muscles in exercises likely to further stoke a bristling territorial dispute with Japan.
A fleet of 11 vessels, including some warships, along with eight aircraft were sent to waters off its east coast, China said, in Beijing's most confrontational act yet in a row that has chilled ties between the regional heavyweights.
State-run China Central Television showed images of several warships and helicopters carrying out manoeuvres.
It was unclear where in the East China Sea the one-day exercises were taking place. The sea is home to tiny islets known as the Diaoyus in China and the Senkakus in Japan, which are administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.
Tensions in the long-running territorial dispute have soared since the Japanese government's move last month to formally nationalise the islands, which triggered anti-Japan protests across China and hit the sales of Japanese-manufactured products.
China has since then taken a number of steps seen as snubbing Tokyo, including refusing to send top officials to a global economic conference in Japan this month.
A foreign ministry official in Beijing blamed Tokyo for ratcheting up tension in the region when asked about the exercises at a regular press briefing on Friday.
"The heating up of the dispute over the Diaoyu Islands between China and Japan is entirely caused by Japan's illegal act of purchasing the islands," spokesman Hong Lei said.
"The Chinese government's resolve and determination to safeguard national territorial sovereignty is unswerving."
Speaking during a visit to Germany, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said his country was seeking a peaceful resolution to the territorial row.
"What I can say here is that ultimately we are aiming for a peaceful solution based on international law," he said through an interpreter.
"We must expand the dialogue in Japan-China relations," he added.
China has previously sent maritime surveillance ships and fisheries patrol vessels to waters near the islands as the row has escalated.
On Tuesday, a Chinese naval flotilla passed near separate islands that are internationally recognised as Japanese.
On Sunday, Japan's navy marked its 60th anniversary with a major exercise involving about 40 ships in waters south of Tokyo.
The navy's most modern vessels -- including destroyers and conventionally-powered submarines -- along with 30 naval aircraft, participated in the event.
China's exercise on Friday included vessels from the marine surveillance agency and fishery administration, according to the Chinese reports, which did not give a detailed breakdown on the vessels.
"The primary aim (of the exercises) is to strengthen the capacity to safeguard territorial sovereignty and maritime interests," Shen Hao, a rear admiral in China's navy said, according to the website of state-run China Radio International.
Microblog users in China broadly welcomed the naval exercises.
"I suggest going to the Diaoyu Islands for some heavily armed exercises -- it is our own territory," said one netizen on Weibo, China's version of Twitter.
"How exciting," said another. "This is the emergence of Chinese military power."
Reports this week said Japan and the United States were considering holding a joint military drill to simulate retaking a remote island from foreign forces.
The exercise, part of broader joint exercises to start in early November, would use an uninhabited island in Okinawa, Japanese media reports said, quoting unidentified sources.

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Embattled Lance Armstrong vows to move forward

By By Charles Boisseau | AFP News – 12 hours ago

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Lance Armstrong has admitted to "difficult" times since the release of a report which accused the shamed cyclist of being at the heart of the most sophisticated doping programme ever seen in sport.
Making his first public remarks since the release of US Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) damning report, Armstrong did not refer directly to the scandal, saying: "It's been a difficult couple of weeks for me and my family, my friends and this foundation.
"We will not be deterred. We will move forward."
The 41-year-old American made his comments to 1,500 guests at a gala fundraiser for cancer charity Livestrong, which he founded 15 years ago after fighting testicular cancer.
But on Wednesday he stepped down as chairman of Livestrong in an effort to protect the foundation from the scandal swirling around him.
That was the same day that corporate sponsors, including sportswear giant Nike, dropped him in the uproar over the USADA report, which cites more than two dozen witnesses including some former team-mates and accuses Armstrong of being at the heart of sport's "most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme".
World cycling's governing body the International Cycling Union (UCI) will respond to the report on Monday, and whether it backs USADA's demand that Armstrong be banned for life and stripped of the seven Tour de France titles that made him a sports icon.
UCI president Pat McQuaid will also come under scrutiny for his handling of doping issues in cycling.
Anne Gripper, who ran UCI's anti-doping arm from 2006 to early 2010, told The Age newspaper in Australia that the UCI should have handled things better.
The USADA report, Gripper said, showed "not so much that he (Armstrong) was a doping cheat - I think everybody accepts that just about all cyclists were doing it - but the way he orchestrated that programme and, more importantly, the bullying (and) the tactics used to influence the behaviour and choices of young impressionable riders".
Gripper also accused Armstong of telling "the sport how to administer its rules", in reference to the UCI waiving a 13-day window to allow the Texan to race the 2009 Tour Down Under.
"I have always said that Armstrong's influence was a danger in the sport," Gripper told The Age. "He was allowed to ride in the 2009 Tour Down Under. He shouldn't have been. Once again, for Lance, special consideration was provided."
Gripper added: "The UCI may have failed to take some actions that we should have taken at the time but since 2006 we have been really committed to this issue."
Asked if she felt McQuaid faced a limited future at the UCI, Gripper said: "I don't know -- I know his commitment to this was very strong while I was there. It may have wavered a bit.
"I heard Pat say the other night, 'We test and test and test as much as we can and send all the samples to the labs and that's all we can do'.
"Well, it's not, Pat, there's lots more that can be done.
"It's not just about testing because we know in many ways testing is the most ineffective way of eliminating doping ... There are so many more things the UCI can do.
"The issue for the UCI is communication. It is time to stand up and acknowledge some of the past."
Armstrong's ex-wife Kristin -- accused in the USADA report of being complicit in her former husband's doping, implied in her latest blog for runnersworld.com that she had kept her silence for the sake of her family that includes three children by Lance.
"I know what truth is. I know my past. Not telling or selling my tales to the press is my choice - one that I made primarily for my children," she said.
"And there are many things that I am not free to discuss because I am constrained by legal principles like marital privilege, confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements.
"To the world, Lance may be a source of admiration or suspicion, but to me he is simply my wasband (former husband) and the father of my children. His choices were, and are, his. And mine are mine. And they haven't always been pretty."
Back in Texas, Lance Armstrong, now an outcast in cycling, said it was imperative that the Livestrong foundation continue to fulfill its aims.
"The mission absolutely must go on," he said, as Livestrong confirmed that donations continued to flow in, with Friday's event -- attended by Hollywood heavyweights Robin Williams and Sean Penn -- raising $2.5 million.
Early Sunday morning, Armstrong is expected to address nearly 4,000 cyclists before the start of the Livestrong Challenge, an annual fundraising race that starts in the heart of Austin.

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2 comments

  • frank
    frank  •  7 hours ago
    THE UBER-CHEAT SPEAKS TO ITS MINIONS
  • Lawrence
    Lawrence  •  1 hour 24 minutes ago
    GO LANCE GO
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