Lance Armstrong, formerly cycling's most decorated champion and considered one of America's greatest athletes, confessed to cheating for at least a decade, admitting on Thursday that he owed all seven of his Tour de France titles and the millions of dollars in endorsements that followed to his use of illicit performance-enhancing drugs.
After years of denying that he had taken banned drugs and received oxygen-boosting blood transfusions, and attacking his teammates and competitors who attempted to expose him, Armstrong came clean with Oprah Winfrey in an exclusive interview, admitting to using banned substances for years.
"I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times," he said. "I know the truth. The truth isn't what was out there. The truth isn't what I said.
"I'm a flawed character, as I well know," Armstrong added. "All the fault and all the blame here falls on me."
In October, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a report in which 11 former Armstrong teammates exposed the system with which they and Armstrong received drugs with the knowledge of their coaches and help of team physicians.
George Burns/Courtesy of Harpo Studios, Inc./AP Photo
Lance Armstrong Admits Using Performance-Enhancing Drugs Watch Video
Lance Armstrong's Oprah Confession: The Consequences Watch Video
The U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team "ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," USADA said in its report.
As a result of USADA's findings, Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France titles. Soon, longtime sponsors including Nike began to abandon him, too.
READ MORE: Did Doping Cause Armstrong's Cancer?
Armstrong said he was driven to cheat by a "ruthless desire to win."
He told Winfrey that his competition "cocktail" consisted of EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone, and that he had previously used cortisone. He would not, however, give Winfrey the details of when, where and with whom he doped during seven winning Tours de France between 1999 and 2005.
He said he stopped doping following his 2005 Tour de France victory and did not use banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the tour again in 2010.
"It was a mythic perfect story and it wasn't true," Armstrong said of his fairytale story of overcoming testicular cancer to become the most celebrated cyclist in history.
READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions
PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present
PHOTOS: Tour de France 2012
Armstrong would not name other members of his team who doped, but admitted that as the team's captain he set an example. He admitted he was "a bully" but said there "there was a never a directive" from him that his teammates had to use banned substances.
"At the time it did not feel wrong?" Winfrey asked.
"No," Armstrong said. "Scary."
"Did you feel bad about it?" she asked again.
"No," he said.
Armstrong said he thought taking the drugs was similar to filling his tires with air and bottle with water. He never thought of his actions as cheating, but "leveling the playing field" in a sport rife with doping.
Cristina Traina says in his second term, Obama must address weaknesses in child farm labor standards
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Cristina Traina: Obama should strengthen child farm labor standards
She says Labor Dept. rules allow kids to work long hours for little pay on commercial farms
She says Obama administration scrapped Labor Dept. chief's proposal for tightening rules
She says Labor Dept. must fix lax standards for kid labor on farmers; OSHA must enforce them
Editor's note: Cristina L.H. Traina is a Public Voices Op Ed fellow and professor at Northwestern University, where she is a scholar of social ethics.
(CNN) -- President Barack Obama should use the breathing space provided by the fiscal-cliff compromise to address some of the issues that he shelved during his last term. One of the most urgent is child farm labor. Perhaps the least protected, underpaid work force in American labor, children are often the go-to workers for farms looking to cut costs.
It's easy to see why. The Department of Labor permits farms to pay employees under 20 as little as $4.25 per hour. (By comparison, the federal minimum wage is $7.25.) And unlike their counterparts in retail and service, child farm laborers can legally work unlimited hours at any hour of day or night.
The numbers are hard to estimate, but between direct hiring, hiring through labor contractors, and off-the-books work beside parents or for cash, perhaps 400,000 children, some as young as 6, weed and harvest for commercial farms. A Human Rights Watch 2010 study shows that children laboring for hire on farms routinely work more than 10 hours per day.
As if this were not bad enough, few labor safety regulations apply. Children 14 and older can work long hours at all but the most dangerous farm jobs without their parents' consent, if they do not miss school. Children 12 and older can too, as long as their parents agree. Unlike teen retail and service workers, agricultural laborers 16 and older are permitted to operate hazardous machinery and to work even during school hours.
In addition, Human Rights Watch reports that child farm laborers are exposed to dangerous pesticides; have inadequate access to water and bathrooms; fall ill from heat stroke; suffer sexual harassment; experience repetitive-motion injuries; rarely receive protective equipment like gloves and boots; and usually earn less than the minimum wage. Sometimes they earn nothing.
Little is being done to guarantee their safety. In 2011 Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis proposed more stringent agricultural labor rules for children under 16, but Obama scrapped them just eight months later.
Adoption of the new rules would be no guarantee of enforcement, however. According to the 2010 Human Rights Watch report, the Department of Labor employees were spread so thin that, despite widespread reports of infractions they found only 36 child labor violations and two child hazardous order violations in agriculture nationwide.
This lack of oversight has dire, sometimes fatal, consequences. Last July, for instance, 15-year-old Curvin Kropf, an employee at a small family farm near Deer Grove, Illinois, died when he fell off the piece of heavy farm equipment he was operating, and it crushed him. According to the Bureau County Republican, he was the fifth child in fewer than two years to die at work on Sauk Valley farms.
If this year follows trends, Curvin will be only one of at least 100 children below the age of 18 killed on American farms, not to mention the 23,000 who will be injured badly enough to require hospital admission. According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, agriculture is one of the most dangerous industries. It is the most dangerous for children, accounting for about half of child worker deaths annually.
The United States has a long tradition of training children in the craft of farming on family farms. At least 500,000 children help to work their families' farms today.
Farm parents, their children, and the American Farm Bureau objected strenuously to the proposed new rules. Although children working on their parents' farms would specifically have been exempted from them, it was partly in response to worries about government interference in families and loss of opportunities for children to learn agricultural skills that the Obama administration shelved them.
Whatever you think of family farms, however, many child agricultural workers don't work for their parents or acquaintances. Despite exposure to all the hazards, these children never learn the craft of farming, nor do most of them have the legal right to the minimum wage. And until the economy stabilizes, the savings farms realize by hiring children makes it likely that even more of them will be subject to the dangers of farm work.
We have a responsibility for their safety. As one of the first acts of his new term, Obama should reopen the child agricultural labor proposal he shelved in spring of 2012. Surely, farm labor standards for children can be strengthened without killing off 4-H or Future Farmers of America.
Second, the Department of Labor must institute age, wage, hour and safety regulations that meet the standards set by retail and service industry rules. Children in agriculture should not be exposed to more risks, longer hours, and lower wages at younger ages than children in other jobs.
Finally, the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration must allocate the funds necessary for meaningful enforcement of child labor violations. Unenforced rules won't protect the nearly million other children who work on farms.
Agriculture is a great American tradition. Let's make sure it's not one our children have to die for.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Cristina Traina.
LONDON: Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers on Thursday said that his controversial striker Luis Suarez could face punishment from the club after admitting that he dived to try to win a penalty in a league game with Stoke City.
In an interview with Fox Sports Argentina, Suarez admitted "falling" during October's 0-0 draw between the clubs at Anfield, prompting Rodgers, who had defended him from criticism at the time, to hit out.
"I think it is wrong. It is unacceptable. I have spoken to Luis and it will be dealt with internally," said Rodgers. "(Diving) is not something we advocate. Our ethics are correct."
Rodgers spoke to Suarez on Thursday and said he had been "totally understanding on where I am coming from as manager of the club.
"What was said was wrong. He takes that and we move on," he added.
Suarez hit the headlines for a theatrical fall in the Stoke game after he went to ground under a challenge from Marc Wilson in an unsuccessful attempt to win a second-half penalty.
FIFA vice-president Jim Boyce was moved to describe Suarez's tumble as "cheating", adding that the tendency for players to easily fall to the ground was a "cancer" in the game.
Suarez has been accused of diving at regular intervals during his time in England and he admitted in the interview that he had gone down on purpose.
"I was criticised for trying to win a penalty by falling in a match against Stoke," said the Uruguay international. "It's true I fell because we were drawing against Stoke at home and we needed to do something.
"But afterwards, the coaches of Stoke, Everton, all of them, came forward. I came to realise that the name of Suarez was a (newspaper) seller."
Suarez sparked controversy again earlier this month when he handled the ball prior to scoring Liverpool's winning goal in their 2-1 victory at non-league Mansfield Town in the FA Cup.
"The other day, a ball hit my hand without me meaning it to," he said. "I kissed my wrist (in celebration) and everyone started rounding on me."
Suarez also claimed that foreign players are treated differently to home-grown players in the Premier League.
"It's difficult," he said. "It's what Carlitos (Tevez) said, it's what Kun (Sergio Aguero) said: foreigners, and especially the South Americans, are treated differently to local players."
Suarez added that his run-in with Manchester United defender Patrice Evra, which saw him hit with a 40,000 fine pounds and an eight-match ban for racial abuse, was long forgotten.
"When people come and insult me, saying I'm South American, I don't start crying. It's something that stays on the pitch, part of football. My conscience is clear," he said, before claiming that Manchester United control the British press.
"They've got a lot of power and they'll always help them."
NEW: Lance Armstrong is stripped of his 2000 bronze medal
The International Olympic Committee has called on him to return the medal
Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France titles in October
The first part of his interview with Oprah Winfrey airs Thursday night
Share your thoughts on the downfall of Lance Armstrong at CNN iReport, Facebook, or Twitter.
(CNN) -- Not only is disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong no longer officially a Tour de France winner -- he's no longer an Olympic medalist either.
The International Olympic Committee has stripped Armstrong of the bronze medal he won at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, an IOC spokesman said Thursday. The committee has told Armstrong to return it.
The move came in advance of a televised interview in which Armstrong is believed to acknowledge for the first time that he used prohibited performance-enhancing drugs in his career.
Lance Armstrong over the years
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While talk-show host Oprah Winfrey has not released details of exactly what Armstrong said in the recorded interview, she appeared to confirm media reports Tuesday that the former seven-time Tour de France champion admits doping and lying about it.
The interview will air in two parts on Thursday and Friday nights.
In October, the International Cycling Union stripped Armstrong of his Tour de France titles.
Armstrong responded a few weeks later by tweeting a photo of himself lying on a sofa in his lounge beneath the seven framed yellow jerseys from those victories.
The International Olympic Committee said in October that it was reviewing evidence against him.
12 Lance Armstrong quotes to know
Part of complete coverage on
Lance Armstrong
updated 1:25 PM EST, Wed January 16, 2013
They were the liars. The "trolls." The bitter, vindictive and jealous.
updated 8:46 AM EST, Thu January 17, 2013
Armstrong has not only spent years vehemently denying using banned performance-enhancing drugs; he also has viciously attacked those who told what they knew about doping in the sport and implicated him in the process.
updated 10:49 AM EST, Wed January 16, 2013
It will take more than a television interview to reduce sanctions against Lance Armstrong, the World Anti-Doping Agency said.
updated 4:27 PM EST, Tue January 15, 2013
The court of public opinion weighed in decidedly against Lance Armstrong, even before the broadcast of an interview in which he is said to acknowledge using performance-enhancing drugs after years of denials.
updated 9:26 AM EST, Tue January 15, 2013
Lance Armstrong's feat of winning seven consecutive Tour de France titles was like the demigod Hercules achieving his "Twelve Labors."
updated 3:40 PM EDT, Mon October 22, 2012
The International Cycling Union announces hat Lance Armstrong is being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.
updated 11:45 AM EST, Thu December 6, 2012
Forty days alone in the wilderness was enough for Jesus, but Lance Armstrong is facing an altogether longer period of solitude.
updated 4:43 PM EST, Wed November 7, 2012
Lance Armstrong's fall from grace has left one of the cyclist's former sponsors not only "sad" -- but also without one of its biggest marketing tools.
updated 2:15 PM EDT, Fri October 26, 2012
Lance Armstrong has been asked to return all prize money from his seven annulled Tour de France victories by the sport's governing body.
updated 2:57 PM EDT, Wed October 24, 2012
For years, as Lance Armstrong basked in the glow of an adoring public, his critics frequently were banished to the shadows, dismissed by the cycling legend and his coterie as cranks or worse.
updated 5:44 AM EDT, Mon October 22, 2012
For years, Lance Armstrong carried a growing burden of doping accusations up increasingly steep hills, accumulating fans, wealth and respect along the way.
updated 9:57 PM EDT, Wed October 10, 2012
Cyclist Lance Armstrong was part of "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."
updated 5:53 PM EDT, Sat October 13, 2012
A former teammate of Lance Armstrong says there was no question why U.S. Postal Service team members doped during big races.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. Notre Dame said a story that star Manti Te'o's girlfriend had died of leukemia — a loss he said inspired him all season and helped him lead the Irish to the BCS title game — turned out to be a hoax apparently perpetrated against the linebacker.
13 Photos
Manti Te'o
Notre Dame Fighting Irish Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick held a press conference late Wednesday about the apparent hoax Wednesday after Deadspin.com said it could find no record that Lennay Kekua ever existed.
"This was a very elaborate, very sophisticated hoax perpetrated for reasons we can't fully understand," Swarbrick said.
CBS News and its morning program, "CBS This Morning," were among the many news outlets that reported on the "hoax" girlfriend's death. "CBS This Morning" will have an update on the report Thursday.
The Notre Dame athletic director insisted "several things" led him to believe Te'o did not create the girlfriend himself after the university's investigation into the situation, led by a private investigative firm.
"Manti was the victim of that hoax. He has to carry that with him for a while. In many ways, Manti was the perfect mark because he's the guy who was so willing to believe in others," Swarbrick said. "The pain was real. The grieving was real. The affection was real."
By Te'o's own account, she was an "online" girlfriend.
"This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her," he said in statement.
"To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating."
"In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious. If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was."
The linebacker's father, Brian Te'o, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press in early October that he and his wife had never met Kekua, saying they were hoping to meet her at the Wake Forest game in November. The father said he believed the relationship was just beginning to get serious when she died.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick at a press conference on Jan. 16, 2013.
/ CBS News
Swarbrick likened the situation to the 2010 movie "Catfish," in which "young filmmakers document their colleague's budding online friendship" with an allegedly young woman that turns out also to be a hoax.
The university said its coaches were informed by Te'o and his parents on Dec. 26 that Te'o had been the victim of what appeared to be a hoax.
Someone using a fictitious name "apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia," the school said.
Swarbrick said the investigation revealed "several" perpetrators, although the exact number is unclear. He said the university became convinced of the hoax based on "the joy they were taking...referring to what they accomplished and what they had done."
Te'o talked freely about the relationship after her supposed death and how much she meant to him.
In a story that appeared in the South Bend Tribune on Oct. 12, Manti's father, Brian, recounted a story about how his son and Kekua met after Notre Dame had played at Stanford in 2009. Brian Te'o also told the newspaper that Kekua had visited Hawaii and the met with his son. Brian Te'o told the AP in an interview in October that he and his wife had never met Manti's girlfriend but they had hoped to at the Wake Forest game in November. The father said he believed the relationship was just beginning to get serious when she died.
The Tribune released a statement saying: "At the Tribune, we are as stunned by these revelations as everyone else. Indeed, this season we reported the story of this fake girlfriend and her death as details were given to us by Te'o, members of his family and his coaches at Notre Dame."
The week before Notre Dame played Michigan State on Sept. 15, coach Brian Kelly told reporters when asked that Te'o's grandmother and a friend had died. Te'o didn't miss the game. He said Kekua had told him not to miss a game if she died. Te'o turned in one of his best performances of the season in the 20-3 victory in East Lansing, and his playing through heartache became a prominent theme during the Irish's undefeated regular season.
"My family and my girlfriend's family have received so much love and support from the Notre Dame family," he said after that game. "Michigan State fans showed some love. And it goes to show that people understand that football is just a game, and it's a game that we play, and we have fun doing it. But at the end of the day, what matters is the people who are around you, and family. I appreciate all the love and support that everybody's given my family and my girlfriend's family."
Manti Te'o #5 of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish reacts after beating the Michigan State Spartans 20-3 at Spartan Stadium Stadium on September 15, 2012, in East Lansing, Michigan.
/ Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
20 Photos
2013 BCS National Championship
Te'o went on the become a Heisman Trophy finalist, finishing second in the voting, and leading Notre Dame to its first appearance in the BCS championship.
He was asked again about his girlfriend on Jan. 3 prior to the BCS title game, saying: "This team is very special to me, and the guys on it have always been there for me, through the good times and the bad times. I rarely have a quiet time to myself because I always have somebody calling me, asking, `Do you want to go to the movies?' Coach is always calling me asking me, `Are you OK? Do you need anything?'"
Te'o and the Irish lost the title game to Alabama, 42-14 on Jan. 7. He has graduated and was set to begin preparing for the NFL combine and draft at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., this week.
Four days ago Te'o posted on his Twitter account: "Can't wait to start training with the guys! Workin to be the best! The grind continues! (hash)Future"
Te'o's statement also said: "It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother's death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life.
"I am enormously grateful for the support of my family, friends and Notre Dame fans throughout this year. To think that I shared with them my happiness about my relationship and details that I thought to be true about her just makes me sick. I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been.
"Fortunately, I have many wonderful things in my life, and I'm looking forward to putting this painful experience behind me as I focus on preparing for the NFL Draft."
Notre Dame's athletic director and the star of its near-championship football team said the widely-reported death of the star's girlfriend from leukemia during the 2012 football season was apparently a hoax, and the player said he was duped by it as well.
Manti Te'o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, said in a statement today that he fell in love with a girl online last year who turned out not to be real.
The university's athletic director, Jack Swarbrick, said it has been investigating the "cruel hoax" since Te'o approached officials in late December to say he believed he had been tricked.
Private investigators hired by the university subsequently monitored online chatter by the alleged perpetrators, Swarbrick said, adding that he was shocked by the "casual cruelty" it revealed.
"They enjoyed the joke," Swarbrick said, comparing the ruse to the popular film "Catfish," in which filmmakers revealed a person at the other end of an online relationship was not who they said they were.
"While we still don't know all of the dimensions of this ... there are certain things that I feel confident we do know," Swarbrick said. "The first is that this was a very elaborate, very sophisticated hoax, perpetrated for reasons we don't understand."
Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Notre Dame's Athletic Director Discusses Manti Te'o Girlfriend Hoax Watch Video
Notre Dame Football Star Victim of 'Girlfriend Hoax' Watch Video
Eddie Lacy, Barrett Jones Discuss 'Bama Win Watch Video
Te'o said during the season that his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September on the same day Te'o's grandmother died, triggering an outpouring of support for Te'o at Notre Dame and in the media.
"While my grandma passed away and you take, you know, the love of my life [Kekua]. The last thing she said to me was, 'I love you,'" Te'o said at the time, noting that he had talked to Kekua on the phone and by text message until her death.
Now, responding to a story first reported by the sports website Deadspin, Te'o has acknowledged that Kekua never existed. The website reported today that there were no records of a woman named Lennay Kekua anywhere.
Te'o denied that he was in on the hoax.
"This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online," Te'o said in a statement released this afternoon. "We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her."
Swarbrick said he expected Te'o to give his version of events at a public event soon, perhaps Thursday, and that he believed Te'o's representatives were planning to disclose the truth next week until today's story broke.
Deadspin reported that the image attached to Kekua's social media profiles, through which the pair interacted, was of another woman who has said she did not even know Te'o or know that her picture was being used. The website reported that it traced the profiles to a California man who is an acquaintance of Te'o and of the woman whose photo was stolen.
"To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating," Te'o said.
Human Rights Watch says cluster bombs were used on Syrian town of Latamneh
Cluster bombs release dozens of smaller bombs, which can maim or kill long after impact
Syrian regime has previously denied cluster bombs on civilians
Editor's note: Mary Wareham is the Arms Division's Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch and chief editor of 'Cluster Munition Monitor 2012.'
(CNN) -- It was cloudy the afternoon of January 3 when residents say the cluster bombs fell on the Syrian town of Latamneh.
Three rockets containing the cluster munitions fell in nearby fields, apparently doing no harm, but a fourth landed on the street between residential buildings. Its impact was devastating.
One man was driving down the street when submunitions from the rockets exploded, killing him instantly, residents said. Fifteen civilians walking down the street or in their homes were wounded, including women and children, according to two residents and video evidence. Residents said that an hour after the attack, a submunition that had failed to detonate on impact killed a man who tried to remove it from his yard. It exploded in his hands.
Mary Wareham
Since mid-2012, Human Rights Watch and others have reported several times on civilian casualties caused by Syrian use of air-dropped cluster bombs, but Latamneh and other recent attacks are the first known instances of Syrian use of ground-based cluster munitions. The rockets were apparently launched from the vicinity of nearby Hama airport, which is under government control.
Evidence we have seen suggests that Syrian government forces delivered the 122mm cluster munition rockets containing submunitions using a BM-21 Grad multi-barrel rocket launcher, a truck-mounted system capable of firing 40 rockets nearly simultaneously with a range of 4 to 40 kilometers (2.5 to 25 miles). Grad rocket launchers are notorious for their inability to be accurately targeted due to their lack of a guidance system. This exacerbates the danger from the wide-area effect of the submunitions the rockets contain.
More: Syrian regime denies use of cluster bombs
Many countries, including Lebanon and Cambodia, have experienced civilian casualties from similar types of submunitions, both at the time of attack and from submunitions that didn't explode on initial impact. Each submunition is the size of a D-cell battery with a distinctive white ribbon, and the design of their fuze system makes each one very sensitive and liable to detonate if disturbed.
After years of civilian harm caused by cluster munitions, Israel's massive use of the weapons in southern Lebanon in 2006 helped propel governments into action. Working with civil society groups such as Human Rights Watch and international organizations, a broad-based coalition of like-minded governments sought to do something to reduce the unacceptable harm caused by cluster munitions.
The resulting Convention on Cluster Munitions, adopted May 30, 2008, comprehensively prohibits cluster munitions and requires their clearance and assistance to victims. A total of 111 nations, including many former users, producers, and stockpilers of the weapon, as well as countries contaminated by cluster munition remnants, have embraced the ban convention.
Yet there has been limited interest in the Middle East and North Africa regions, where just three countries—Iraq, Lebanon, and Tunisia—are onboard the treaty banning cluster bombs. Some nations, such as Jordan, say they need more time to study the convention's provisions, while others including Egypt, Iran, and Israel have produced, imported, exported, and stockpiled cluster munitions.
The 122mm cluster munition rockets used by Syria bear the markings of the Egyptian state-owned Arab Organization for Industrialization and an Egyptian company called Sakr Factory for Development Industries. Syria could have bought these cluster munitions from Egypt, received them through military cooperation, or acquired them another way. With no transparency, it is impossible to say how or when they were made or transferred, though it is likely Syria acquired them long ago.
Syria's relentless use of cluster munitions, including in populated areas, is yet another sign of its blatant disregard for international law and the protection of its own civilians. Syria's use of cluster munitions runs counter to the new international standard being created by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, rejecting any use of the weapons.
The preventive impact of the convention and the standard it is establishing can already be seen as countries that have joined the ban rapidly destroy their stockpiles of cluster munitions.
In Syria, every time the government has used cluster munitions and other explosive weapons, a lethal legacy of unexploded ordnance is created. Given the terrible humanitarian impact, all governments, regardless of their position on joining the ban convention, should press Syria to stop using cluster munitions.
LONDON: British pop star Elton John and his partner David Furnish have become parents for a second time, they confirmed on Wednesday.
The couple told Hello! magazine that they were "overwhelmed with happiness" at the birth of their son Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John, who was born in Los Angeles on Friday to a surrogate mother.
"Both of us have longed to have children, but the reality that we now have two sons is almost unbelievable," they said.
The couple's first son Zachary was also born via a surrogacy arrangement in California in 2010.
"The birth of our second son completes our family in a most precious and perfect way," John and Furnish told the magazine.
"It is difficult to fully express how we are feeling at this time; we are just overwhelmed with happiness and excitement."
The "Candle in the Wind" singer, 65, has been in a relationship with 50-year-old film producer Furnish for almost 20 years and they have been in a civil partnership since 2005.
Last week, the couple's spokesman denied reports they had become parents again, but they have often spoken of their desire for Zachary to have a sibling.
The baby shares his middle name, Daniel, with one of John's 1970s hits.
Online courses are proliferating, says Douglas Rushkoff, but will really succeed when they bring humanity to learning process
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Douglas Rushkoff: Education is under threat, but online computer courses are not to blame
He says education's value hard to measure; is it for making money or being engaged?
He says Massive Open Online Courses lack human exchange with teachers
Rushkoff: MOOCs should bring together people to share studies, maintain education's humanity
Editor's note: Douglas Rushkoff writes a regular column for CNN.com. He is a media theorist and the author of "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age" and "Life Inc.: How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back." He is also a digital literacy advocate for Codecademy.com. His forthcoming book is "Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now."
(CNN) -- Education is under threat, but the Internet and the growth of Massive Open Online Courses are not to blame.
Like the arts and journalism, whose value may be difficult to measure in dollars, higher education has long been understood as a rather "soft" pursuit. And this has led people to ask fundamental questions it:
What is learning, really? And why does it matter unless, of course, it provides a workplace skill or a license to practice? Is the whole notion of a liberal arts education obsolete or perhaps an overpriced invitation to unemployment?
Douglas Rushkoff
The inability to answer these questions lies at the heart of universities' failure to compete with new online educational offerings -- the rapidly proliferating MOOCs -- as well as the failure of most Web-based schools to provide a valid alternative to the traditional four-year college.
Education is about more than acquiring skills.
When America and other industrialized nations created public schools, it was not to make better workers but happier ones. The ability to read, write and think was seen as a human right and a perquisite to good citizenship, or at least the surest way to guarantee compliant servitude from the workers of industrial society. If even the coal miner could spend some of his time off reading, he stood a chance of living a meaningful life. Moreover, his ability to read the newspaper allowed him to understand the issues the day and to vote intelligently.
What we consider basic knowledge has grown to include science, history, the humanities and economics. So, too, has grown the time required to learn it all. While the modern college might have begun as a kind of finishing school, a way for the sons of the elite to become cultured and find one another before beginning their own careers, it eventually became an extension of public school's mandate. We go to college to become smarter and more critical thinkers while also gaining skills we might need for the work force.
Accordingly, we all wanted our sons and daughters to go to college until recently. The more of us who could afford it, the better we felt we were doing as a society. But the price of education has skyrocketed, especially in the tiny segment of elite schools. This has led to the widespread misperception that a good college education is available only to those willing to take on six-figure debt.
Worse, in making the calculation about whether college is "worth it," we tend to measure the cost of a Harvard education against the market value of the skills acquired. Did my kid learn how to use Excel? If not, what was the point?
To the rescue come the MOOCs, which offer specific courses, a la carte, to anyone with a credit card; some even offer courses for free.
Following the model of University of Phoenix, which began offering a variety of "distance learning" in 1989, these newer Web sites offer video lectures and forums to learn just about anything, in most cases for a few hundred dollars a class. MOOCs have exploded in the past few years, enrolling millions of students and sometimes partnering with major universities.
For pure knowledge acquisition, it's hard to argue against such developments, especially in an era that doesn't prioritize enrichment for its own sake. But it would be a mistake to conclude that online courses fulfill the same role in a person's life as a college education, just as it would be an error to equate four years of high school with some online study and a GED exam.
Don't get me wrong: I have always been a fan of online education -- but with a few important caveats.
First off, subjects tend to be conveyed best in what might be considered their native environments. Computers might not be the best place to simulate a live philosophy seminar, but they are terrific places to teach people how to use and program computers.
Second, and just as important, computers should not require the humans using them to become more robotic. I recently read an account from an online lecturer about how -- unlike in a real classroom -- he had to deliver his online video lectures according to a rigid script, where every action was choreographed. To communicate effectively online, he needed to stop thinking and living in the moment. That's not teaching; it's animatronics.
Online learning needs to cater to human users. A real instructor should not simply dump data on a person, as in a scripted video, but engage with students, consider their responses and offer individualized challenges.
The good, living teacher probes the way students think and offers counterexamples that open pathways. With the benefit of a perfect memory of student's past responses, a computer lesson should also be able to identify some of these patterns and offer up novel challenges at the right time. "How might Marx have responded to that suggestion, Joe?"
Finally, education does not happen in isolation.
Whether it's philosophy students arguing in a dorm about what Hegel meant, or fledgling Java programmers inspecting one another's code, people learn best as part of a cohort. The course material is almost secondary to the engagement. We go to college for the people.
Likewise, the best of MOOCs should be able bring together ideal, heterogeneous groupings of students based on their profiles and past performance, and also create ample opportunities for them to engage with one another in the spirit of learning.
Perhaps this spirit of mutual aid is what built the Internet in the first place. Now that this massive collaborative learning project has succeeded, it would be a shame if we used it to take the humanity out of learning altogether.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Douglas Rushkoff.
Emergency vehicles at the scene of a helicopter crash in Vauxhall, London, Jan. 16, 2013. /YouTube
LONDON London police say a helicopter has crashed during a rush hour in central London after apparently hitting a construction crane on top of a building.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed that two people were found dead at the scene of the crash.
A photo shown on Sky News showed wreckage burning in a street, and a large plume of black smoke was seen rising in the area.
London Fire Brigade said it was called at 8 a.m. to a report of a crash on Wandsworth Road on the south bank of the Thames.
CBS News partner network Sky News said there was possibly only a pilot on board the helicopter when it crashed into a crane working on a construction site near Vauxhall train station, a major commuter hub on the south side of central London.
Eyewitness Robert Oxley told Sky he could see smoke billowing billowing from the scene of the crash.
