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(Continued from page 24)
ister Benjamin Netanyahu is only growing more complex.
• "It's troubled. It's the greatest dysfunction between leaders that I've seen in my 40 years in watching and participating," said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center who served under six secretaries of state in both Republican and Democratic administrations. He was deeply involved in negotiations involving Israel, Jordan, Syria and the Palestinians.
• "I don't think we are headed for a showdown," he said, "but the relationship will continue to be dysfunctional."
• Even so, the United States routinely backs Israel when much of the world is deeply critical of the Jewish state. For example the U.S. was among the few nations opposing the Palestinians' successful bid for upgraded status at the United Nations and did not criticize Israel's bombardment of Gaza late last year in retaliation for rocket attacks from the tiny Palestinian enclave.
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Lance Armstrong's final preparations for Oprah interview include a few miles of roadwork
• AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- As days of preparations dwindled to hours before his blockbuster interview with Oprah Winfrey, Lance Armstrong went out for a training run and then retreated behind the stone walls of his Austin compound to huddle with a handful of close advisers.
• After more than a decade of denying that he doped to win the Tour de France seven times, Armstrong was scheduled to sit down Monday for what has been trumpeted as a "no-holds barred," 90-minute, question-and-answer session with Winfrey. He is expected to reverse course and apologize, as well as offer a limited confession about his role as the head of a long-running scheme to dominate the prestigious bike race with the aid of performance-enhancing drugs. Winfrey and her crew will film the interview at Armstrong's home and broadcast it Thursday on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
• If he was feeling any pressure, Armstrong hardly showed it during a jog under bright skies Sunday, even as members of his legal team began arriving one-by-one at his home nearby.
• "I'm calm, I'm at ease and ready to speak candidly," he told The Associated Press, but declined to reveal how he would answer questions about the scandal that has shadowed his career like an angry storm cloud.
• Armstrong was stripped of all seven Tour titles last year in the wake of a voluminous U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report that portrayed him as a ruthless competitor, (Continued on page 26)
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