Lance Armstrong complains of 'massive personal loss' in doping fall-out

Lance Armstrong said he would testify with '100% transparency and honesty' at any doping inquiry. Photograph: Michael Paulsen/AP

Lance Armstrong has questioned the validity of cycling's inquiry into doping and complained that he had "experienced massive personal loss … while others have truly capitalised on this story".

"Do I think that this process has been good for cycling?" he said in a BBC interview. "No. I don't think our sport has been served well by going back 15 years.

"I don't think that any sport, or any political scenario, is well served going back 15 years. And if you go back 15 years, you might as well go back 30."

However, the disgraced former seven-times Tour de France winner said he would testify with "100% transparency and honesty" at any future inquiry after the new president of the UCI, Brian Cookson, announced an independent commission to get to the bottom of drug use in the sport.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency had accused him of conducting"the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme sport has ever seen" and Armstrong said he would be prepared to take any punishment as long as it was on a level playing field: "If everyone gets the death penalty, then I'll take the death penalty.

"If everyone gets a free pass, I'm happy to take a free pass. If everyone gets six months, then I'll take my six months."

But he bemoaned the cost to himself, both in terms of his reputation and the threat to his own personal fortune, estimated to be around £78m.

"It's been tough," he said. "It's been real tough. I've paid a high price in terms of my standing within the sport, my reputation, certainly financially because the lawsuits have continued to pile up.

"I have experienced massive personal loss, massive loss of wealth while others have truly capitalised on this story."

The head of Usada, Travis Tygart, said on Monday that he hoped Armstrong would cooperate with the investigation but that it was "premature" to talk about a reduction in his life ban from organised sport should he do so.

"I think it's premature until he comes in and is truthful on all fronts," Tygart said. "Technically it's legally possible under the Wada code that currently exists. That said, it all depends on the assistance and the value. Certainly the value of the information is less today than it was 12 months ago or back in June of 2012 when we were bringing the case.

"And clean athletes have suffered, to a certain extent, because of his delay and his refusal to come in. That said, we're overly hopeful and we want it to happen. It ultimately would be good for the sport, which is our goal. It would be good for him. It would help him for the public forgiving if he was finally truthful on all fronts."

Tygart spoke in an interview in Cape Town ahead of this week's World Conference on Doping in Sport, a four-day summit that will deal with issues emanating from the Armstrong scandal.

Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life last year after Usada's investigation.

He has claimed he was "singled out" by Usada and that the agency had a personal "vendetta" against him. Tygart said he had not read Armstrong's comments, but there was nothing personal for Usada.

"Their [Armstrong and his lawyers] goal was to make it personal against us, you know, so that we would get the pressure and I would get the death threats and my family would get the death threats," Tygart said. "Play one out of the defence playbook is to identify a single person and then vilify them.

"And that's how you try to bully them or intimidate them or scare them away from doing the job and exposing the truth that they know our job was to expose. Look, we were very methodical, very judicial. It's a very clinical process. We went through it, treated him the same as everyone else was treated."

Tygart said he felt "compassion" for Armstrong and his family as he was really "no worse" than a lot of other riders. But "he was the one that won, obviously. He was the one that profited the most," Tygart said.

"It can't be a good situation where he's at right now," Tygart said. "That was a large part why we gave [him] the opportunity back in June 2012 to come forward. We were as disappointed as anyone back then when they rejected that and went on the attack. And we still, I think, remain open."

Armstrong has said that a truth and reconciliation commission for international cycling is crucial. It's something that Wada and the UCI's new leadership may make progress on in Johannesburg this week.

"We've been pushing for it from day one," Tygart said. "When we saw the evidence that we saw during the course of this investigation, we knew this was not just about one individual athlete. It was about a system that corrupted a sport.

"To get to the bottom of the dark culture during that time is critically important for the success of the sport going forward

Thor: Dark World thunders in as Book Thief makes a quiet, confident opening

Chris Hemsworth in Thor: The Dark World, directed by Alan Taylor. Photograph: Marvel Studios/Sportsphoto/Allstar

Thor delivers hammer blow

He's landed in North America with a big thump. Chris Hemsworth returns as the caped god of thunder in Thor: The Dark World and the results were impressive as an estimated $86.1m (£54m) delivered the ninth biggest November opening weekend in history. That was considerably bigger than the 2011's original's $65.7m (£41m) bow and propelled Marvel Studios' superhero saga to $327m (£204m) worldwide through distributor Disney, factoring in the $241m (£151m) international running total. A $600m (£375m) worldwide finish is not out of the question.

1. Thor: The Dark World
2. Production year: 2013
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): A
5. Runtime: 112 mins
6. Directors: Alan Taylor
7. Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Chris O'Dowd, Idris Elba, Kat Dennings, Natalie Portman, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston
8. More on this film

The Book Thief: a quiet, but confident opening

Sophie Nelisse as Liesel with Geoffrey Rush as her foster father Hans Hubermann in a scene from The Book Thief. Photograph: Jules Heath/AP

Early reviews for Markus Zusak adaptation The Book Thief have been encouraging and it looks like Fox is taking the softly softly approach on its potential awards contender, which launched well on $108,000 (£67,600) from four theatres. Brian Percival-directed Geoffrey Rush and the movie's lead, 13-year-old Sophie Nelisse, in the tale of a girl in Nazi Germany whose household hides a Jewish refugee. Fox 2000 tend to produce classy productions and earned critical and commercial success last season with Life of Pi, so it will be worth keeping an eye on this one.

12 Years A Slave

Steve McQueen's harrowing slice of history many Americans would rather forget continues its stately march. While it held firm at number seven, Fox Searchlight expanded the theatre count by 734 to 1,144 and used a handy $6.6m (£4.1m) to boost the tally to $17.3m (£10.8m) after four weekends. 12 Years A Slave The policy of ratcheting up the number of sites has kept the movie in the top 10 for the past three weeks and that's crucial to keep it in the minds of not just audiences but awards voters.

The grey dollar shows its muscle

Kevin Kline (left), Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro and Michael Douglas in a scene from Last Vegas. Photograph: Chuck Zlotnick/AP

Remember all the jubilation when The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel grossed $136.8m (£85.6m) worldwide? That told Hollywood executives that there was money in the senior movie-going crowd and since then, well there hasn't been a lot for them to enjoy actually. But now there is Last Vegas, starring Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline and the buddy movie is doing rather well. CBS Films has generated $33.5m (£20.9m) from two sessions and it looks well on its way to cross $50m (£31m). Hollywood needs to make more of this kind of movie because there's a receptive audience out there with lots of spare time on their hands.

Catching Fire on the way

Thor: The Dark World has less than two weeks to cause as much damage as it can because on 22 November Lionsgate unleashesCatching Fire, the second instalment in its Hunger Games franchise. Jennifer Lawrence et al will sweep everything out of their way and it's looking good to smash the all-time November opening weekend record. The current top three all hail from the Twilight series: New Moon on $142.8m (£89.3m) in 2009, Breaking Dawn: Part 2 on $141.1m (£88.2m) in 2012 and Breaking Dawn: Part 1 on $138.1m (£86.4m) in 2011. The Hunger Games opened on $152.5m (£95.4m) in March 2012.

North American top 10, 8-10 November 2013

1. Thor: The Dark World, $86.1m (£54m) 
2. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, $11.3m (£7.1m). Total: $78.7m (£49.2m)
3. Free Birds, $11.2m (£7.1m). Total: $30.2m (£18.9m)
4. Last Vegas, $11.1m (£6.9m). Total: $33.5m (£20.9m)
5. Ender's Game, $10.3m (£6.4m). Total: $44m (£27.5m)
6. Gravity, $8.4m (£5.3m). Total: $231.1m (£144.5m)
7. 12 Years A Slave, $6.6m (£4.1m). Total: $17.3m (£10.8m)
8. Captain Phillips, $5.8m (£3.6m). Total: $90.9m (£56.8m)
9. About Time, $5.2m (£3.3m). Total: $6.7m (£4.2m)
10. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2, $2.8m (£1.8m). Total: $109.9m (£68.7m)

Tom Cruise denies likening making blockbusters to serving in Afghanistan

No picnic ... Tom Cruise. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Tom Cruise has been forced to deny accusations that he likened working on blockbuster movies to serving a tour in Afghanistan.

In publicly-released court papers for a case the actor has brought against Life & Style and In Touch magazines, Cruise's comments about the reasons behind not having contact with Suri for extended periods during the shooting of thriller Edge of Tomorrow aka All You Need Is Kill, has aroused widespread criticism.

Cruise gave a deposition to lawyers as part of his case against the magazines for defamation, after they ran stories in 2012 alleging he had "abandoned" his daughter Suri after divorcing his wife Katie Holmes.

After being questioned about his counsel's public assertion that the long periods Cruise did not see his daughter was analogous to soldiers' separation from their families, Cruise replied: "That's what it feels like, and certainly on this last movie [Edge of Tomorrow], it was brutal. It was brutal."

Cruise's lawyer Bert Fields, who was present at the deposition, responded by releasing a statement saying that Cruise's quotes were taken out of context.

Fields said: "The assertions that Tom Cruise likened making a movie to being at war in Afghanistan is a gross distortion of the record... What Tom said, laughingly, was that sometimes, 'That's what it feels like.'"

The publicly released transcript appears to be incomplete, and breaks just after Cruise's comment. Fields says an unreleased video of the deposition shows that Cruise was not being serious about the comparison. "As the video shows, he and the lawyer were laughing at his answer, and, when asked in the next question if the situations were comparable, Tom said, 'Oh, come on,' meaning of course not."

Elsewhere in the deposition Cruise admits that Scientology "was one of the assertions" in the reasons for his divorce from Holmes, and that Suri is no longer a member of the Church of Scientology.

Chris Christie stays coy over 2016 presidential ambitions

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie avoided speculation about higher office. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

A landslide victory in New Jersey, one of the most liberal states in the country, has propelled Chris Christie to the front ranks of Republican presidential hopefuls for 2016. On Sunday, the governor attempted to dismiss speculation that he was gearing up for the role – for now.

"What I'm interested in doing is being the governor of New Jersey," Christie said on Fox News Sunday, one of four of the main talkshows on which he appeared, excepting only CNN's State of the Union. "The fact is we've got a lot of things to do, a lot of things to focus on, and I know everybody's going to be speculating on what may come on my future and lots of other people's future in our party.

"But the fact is: I'm focused on being the governor of New Jersey and being the chairman of the Republican Governors Association. I think those two jobs will keep me pretty busy over the next year."

However, earlier, on ABC News' This Week, Christie said he didn't know whether he would be completing the full four years of his second term.

"Listen, who knows," Christie said. "I don't know. I'm going to continue to do my job and finish the job. But everybody who is trying to figure out what life is going to bring you a few years from now, I didn't expect to be sitting here four years ago. So, nobody can make those predictions."

Christie, who beat Democratic nominee Barbara Buono with 51% of the Hispanic vote, refused to call on Washington lawmakers to include a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He has previously supported citizenship and in-state tuition for undocumented students, a position that put him at odds with the GOP base.

The governor twice side-stepped the question from host George Stephanopoulos, and would only say that the current immigration system was "broken" and had to be reformed.

"It has to be figured out by those in charge of the national government," he said. "My job is to fix what's going on in New Jersey. I will tell you this, George, we won't be able to fix everything in New Jersey until the national leaders set a national immigration policy."

Asked again about a path to citizenship, he said: "George, I don't get to make those determinations. It's 2013, i just got elected the governor of New Jersey again. I have already said what I believe. It's a broken system and it needs to be fixed. Let's get to work doing it."

On Face the Nation, on CBS, Christie took a similar tack in answer to requests for his opinion, as a potential presidential candidate, on the breakdown of nuclear talks with Iran. "I'm the governor of New Jersey," he said. "When guys like me start to shoot off on stuff like this it's really ill-advised. I'll leave it to secretary [John] Kerry and the folks that are in charge of this to make decisions.

"Folks in my sort of position that spout off opinions on things like this off the top of their head just wind up doing more harm than good."

Christie won in New Jersey with 66% of the independent vote, 32% of Democrats, 51% of Hispanics and 21% of the African-American vote. His re-election has sparked much debate over what it means for Republican strategy, as well as his own prospects in 2016. In interviews on Sunday, he repeatedly stressed his willingness to work with opposing points of view, telling CBS: "Look at New Jersey – we're not using divided government as an excuse not to act. We get together, we argue, we fight, we debate but then we conclude the argument by getting together round a table and getting things done."

However, critics are quick to point out Christie's ideological differences from the conservative Republican base which could prove problematic in any run for the presidency. As well as his previous support of a path to citizenship, he also supports gun control.

Other issues for Christie should he run in 2016 were also touched on in his interviews. He criticised claims about him in a new book, Double Down: Game Change 2012, for being part of a Washington "parlour game". The book, written by Time's Mark Halperin and New York Magazine's John Heilemann, alleges that he was not selected by Mitt Romney as a vice-presidential running mate in 2012 because of concerns that emerged during the vetting process. On Fox News Sunday, Christie said:

"The only person who hasn't said that is Governor Romney, who has completely refuted what they said in the book. He did it immediately after the book came out."

Texas governor Rick Perry. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP

On Sunday, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, took a jab at the Christie, questioning whether his 22-point victory in New Jersey had any wider meaning for the Republican Party.

"Is a conservative in New Jersey a conservative in the rest of the country?" Perry said in an interview with This Week that was aired after Christie's. "We'll have that discussion at the appropriate time."

Perry, whose presidential bid in 2012 ended after a series of gaffes, did not rule out running again in 2016. "Second chances are what America has always been about," he said.

China's air pollution blamed for 8-year-old's lung-cancer

A pedestrian is picked out of gloom in his red jacket on a smoggy day in Jilin in China. Concern is growing over air quality in Chinese cities as the density of airborne particles is several times above World Health Organisation recommended limits. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

From cancer villages to lung-choking pollution, the impacts of China's pollution problems on its citizens are becoming more and more publicised. But nothing is quite so shocking as an 8-year-old girl being diagnosed with lung cancer which her doctor says is a result of air pollution.

The girl from Jiangsu province, who has not been identified, has been described as China's youngest lung cancer patient by state media. According to a report on the People's Daily website, the girl lived beside a busy road and was exposed to PM2.5 pollution, fine particulate matter considered to be dangerous because it lodges deep in the lungs and can enter the blood stream.

The report, which was circulated widely online, quoted Dr Feng Dongjie from Jiangsu Province Tumour Hospital who is treating the girl and said that air pollution was the cause of her illness.

The report also stated that more people die from lung cancer each year in China than from any other type of cancer. In October the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified air pollution as carcinogenic.

It said that there is "sufficient evidence" that expose to air pollution causes lung cancer and that exposure has increased significantly in "rapidly industrial countries with large populations".

Last month, the city of Harbin was effectively shut down as air pollution levels beat the grim records set earlier this year in Beijing. Many cities in China, particularly those in the north of the country, are likely to face more clouds of grey smog over the coming weeks as central heating systems are turned on for winter.

Improving air pollution has become a priority for the Chinese government which announced a number of measures in recent months including cutting coal consumption and closing polluting factories and plants.

This week the Chinese government said that schools should close when the air pollution reached high levels. It said that when the highest warning for air pollution is issued a number of other measures will also come into force including closing factories, restricting car use and a ban on barbecues. According to a circular from the Ministry of Environmental Protection, businesses should also adopt flexible working hours.

Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) told a press conference this week that increased air pollutants caused by fossil fuel use were the main cause of smog which has severely impacted people's health.

He said that smoggy weather affects physical and mental health and has caused concern within China and abroad. Nearby countries such as South Korea and Japan have raised concerns that air pollution from China will reach reach their cities.

Xie, the country's top climate change negotiator, said that the air pollution problem will be alleviated in five to ten years. However, that might not be quick enough for the residents of Chinese cities who monitor the air quality daily to decide whether they need to wear face masks or can let their children play outside.

China's leaders in closed-door meeting to establish direction of economy

Yu Zhengsheng, a senior leader, has pledged that the meeting will set out 'unprecedented' reforms. Photograph: Wang Ye/ Wang Ye/Xinhua Press/Corbis

It has been billed as the great unveiling of unprecedented reforms. But the Chinese public will not know what the future holds until their leaders' closed-door meeting concludes on Tuesday. In truth, they may not really find out for years, say experts.

The conclave which begins in a Beijing hotel on Saturday – the third gathering of the Communist party's top brass since Xi Jinping took power almost a year ago – will establish the direction for the world's second largest economy.

Yu Zhengsheng, a senior leader, has pledged that the meeting of the central committee will set out "unprecedented" reforms. State news agency Xinhua said it would "unleash China's new round of reform, which is expected to steer the country into an historic turning point".

Such talk has encouraged speculation about substantial economic and financial reforms and even comparisons with the third plenum of 1978 – when Deng Xiaoping closed the door on Maoism and set China on its current course. Ever since, third plenums have been regarded as particularly significant. Another of the meetings, in 1993, ushered in major reforms to state owned enterprises (SOEs).

On Tuesday, Xinhua will issue a dispatch as the meeting closes, giving the first indication of the leadership's plans.

"What's going to come out is a political communique that does not have significant details about how they are going to implement it," said Damien Ma, a fellow at the Paulson Institute.

Rather, it is designed to set out a clear direction and create some momentum, wrote Barry Naughton of the University of California, San Diego on the Asia Society's China File website.

Few doubt the need for drastic changes. While China's economic boom has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, few believe the current course of development is sustainable. Growth is slowing, inequality has soared and issues such as pollution and corruption have led to increasing resentment.

Reformers hope that the plenum will signal progress not only on financial liberalisation, but also on land reform, changes to the household registration system that limits the welfare rights of rural migrants living in cities, and possibly the curbing of powerful SOEs.

The problem is that implementation will be challenged by those who have prospered in the current system, noted Feng Chongyi, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Technology, Sydney.

"The Chinese know that the current system is 'power-elite capitalism' or 'party-state capitalism'. They talk about good things, but good reforms will be disturbed to serve the interests of that narrow interest group," he warned.

"Financial reforms are relatively easy ... [issues like curbing SOEs] are very difficult even within the party," said Tao Ran, director of the Centre for Economics and Governance at Renmin University.

But Ma noted: "You have to combine the communique with what is expected [in terms of] a more comprehensive plan on tackling corruption. I think its an open secret that those are intimately linked."

The clean-up campaign "is a way to get rid of what everyone talks about: these vague, abstract 'vested interests'", he said.

He suggested that references to 1978 were germane because it suggested using pilot schemes to incubate reforms, as in the eighties.

The recent low-key launch of the Shanghai free-trade zone makes some sceptical about how much energy the leadership will put behind such initiatives. While it was initially lauded as a major development, details remain unclear and premier Li Keqiang did not attend the opening ceremony.

Kerry Brown, executive director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, noted that while 1978 is now universally recognised as a turning point, many of the early changes were incremental and began at the grassroots.

"The problem with this kind of plenum is that it's not seen as being historically important until years after it has happened," he argued.

Cheng Li and Ryan McElveen of the Brookings Institution wrote this weekthat pessimism was sensible but argued that the leadership had a real sense of urgency and a collective understanding of the need for "big, bold and broad" reforms to gain public support.

"Will President Xi and his team prove the pessimists wrong at the Third Plenum? They must – their political relevance depends on it," they warned.

Can US farm bill satisfy hunger for reform?

US food aid is unloaded by Palestinians in the West Bank village of Anin near Jenin. Photograph: AP

With the US farm bill in the final stages of negotiation, time is running out for aid groups and the Obama administration, who are anxious to see changes to the country's international food aid programme, which they say is overdue for reform.

After 18 months of fitful negotiations, the farm bill – a five-year omnibus piece of legislation that covers a range of domestic and international policies – could become law before the end of December. The bill's provisions on international food aid, which are less controversial than some of its domestic programmes, may be decided early, though not announced before the entire bill is finalised.

The US Food for Peace international aid programme has remained largely unchanged since it was set up in 1954. While most donor countries buy food aid from local markets, the US – by far the world's largest supplier (pdf) – continues to send the vast majority of its support in the form of US-grown crops via American-flagged ships. This approach has been criticised for years in the US and overseas as costly, inefficient, and potentially disastrous for fragile local markets in poor countries.

In an interview, Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator in charge of crisis response at the US Agency for International Development (USAid), said having a more flexible approach to food aid would make the programme far more effective. "We estimate very conservatively that with just modest increases in flexibility we could reach another 4 million children – without an increase in the [food aid] budget," she said.

Lindborg added that the humanitarian crisis in Syria had shown how important it was to have flexible and varied tools for delivering food aid.USAid had been giving Syrian refugee families vouchers to buy food at local markets in Jordan, she said, while the UN's World Food Programme(WPF) had been using credit card-like tools.

Food vouchers, which recipients can redeem at local shops, have given Syrian refugees "far more choice in what they want to feed their families and also support[s] local economies", Lindborg says. The voucher system, which contrasts starkly with the way in which the US has traditionally distributed its food aid, has "also helped mitigate tensions between refugee communities and local communities".

An increase in flexibility could come in the next farm bill if the reform advocates get their way. Changes may also be introduced to the controversial practice of "monetisation", where NGOs are given food aid to sell in local markets to pay salaries and fund their activities. A 2011 report (pdf) from the US government accountability office estimated that monetisation led to a 30% loss of taxpayer money over three years, suggesting it would be cheaper for the government to give NGOs cash instead.

Legislators from the Senate and the House of Representatives have met in recent days to negotiate a merger of the versions of the farm bill that each body passed this year. If a compromise were struck, the revised bill would go to the House and Senate for a final vote before being passed to President Obama.

The Senate bill includes changes to the food aid programme that would at least partly satisfy reformists. These include a small expansion of a pilot programme that allows food aid to be bought locally, as well as restrictions on the use of monetisation. The House version largely maintains the status quo, while eliminating local sourcing and actually encouraging organisations to monetise food aid.

"We're seeing a lot of intransigence on the part of the House in terms of getting anything done," said Eric Munoz, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam America. He admitted he was "not at all confident ... that the [final] bill will include the reforms to food aid that the Senate has proposed".

The Senate provisions marked a step in the right direction, said Munoz, but even if its reforms were adopted, they would amount to "only an incremental step toward where we ultimately need to go".