AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Lance Armstrong has finally come clean.
After years of bitter and forceful denials, he offered a simple "I'm sorry" to friends and colleagues and then admitted he used performance-enhancing drugs during an extraordinary cycling career that included seven Tour de France victories.
Armstrong confessed to doping during an interview with Oprah Winfrey taped Monday, just a couple of hours after an emotional apology to the staff at the Livestrong charity he founded and was later forced to surrender, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the interview is to be broadcast Thursday on Winfrey's network.
The confession was a stunning reversal for the proud athlete and celebrity who sought lavish praise in the court of public opinion and used courtrooms to punish his critics.
For more than a decade, Armstrong dared anybody who challenged his version of events to prove it. Finally, he told the tale himself after promising over the weekend to answer Winfrey's questions "directly, honestly and candidly."
Winfrey was scheduled to appear on "CBS This Morning" on Tuesday morning to discuss the interview. She tweeted shortly after the interview: "Just wrapped with (at)lancearmstrong More than 2 1/2 hours. He came READY!"
The cyclist was stripped of his Tour de France titles, lost most of his endorsements and was forced to leave Livestrong last year after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a damning, 1,000-page report that accused him of masterminding a long-running doping scheme.
Armstrong started the day with a visit to the headquarters of the Livestrong charity he founded in 1997 and turned into a global force on the strength of his athletic dominance and personal story of surviving testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain.
About 100 Livestrong staff members gathered in a conference room as Armstrong told them "I'm sorry." He choked up during a 20-minute talk, expressing regret for the long-running controversy tied to performance-enhancers had caused, but stopped short of admitting he used them.
Before he was done, several members were in tears when he urged them to continue the charity's mission, helping cancer patients and their families.
"Heartfelt and sincere," is how Livestrong spokeswoman Katherine McLane described his speech.
Armstrong later huddled with almost a dozen people before stepping into a room set up at a downtown Austin hotel for the interview with Winfrey. The group included close friends and lawyers. They exchanged handshakes and smiles, but declined comment and no further details about the interview were released because of confidentiality agreements signed by both camps.
Winfrey has promoted her interview, one of the biggest for OWN since she launched the network in 2011, as a "no-holds barred" session, and after the voluminous USADA report — which included testimony from 11 former teammates — she had plenty of material for questions. USADA chief executive Travis Tygart, a longtime critic of Armstrong's, called the drug regimen practiced while Armstrong led the U.S. Postal Service team "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."
USADA did not respond to requests for comment about Armstrong's confession.
For years, Armstrong went after his critics ruthlessly during his reign as cycling champion. He scolded some in public and didn't hesitate to punish outspoken riders during the race itself. He waged legal battles against still others in court.
At least one of his opponents, the London-based Sunday Times, has already filed a lawsuit to recover about $500,000 it paid him to settle a libel case, and Dallas-based SCA Promotions, which tried to deny Armstrong a promised bonus for a Tour de France win, has threatened to bring another lawsuit seeking to recover more than $7.5 million awarded by an arbitration panel.
Betsy Andreu, the wife of former Armstrong teammate Frankie Andreu, was one of the first to publicly accuse Armstrong of using performance-enhancing drugs. She called news of Armstrong's confession "very emotional and very sad," and choked up when asked to comment.
"He used to be one of my husband's best friends and because he wouldn't go along with the doping, he got kicked to the side," she said. "Lance could have a positive impact if he tells the truth on everything. He's got to be completely honest."
Betsy Andreu testified in SCA's arbitration case challenging the bonus in 2005, saying Armstrong admitted in an Indiana hospital room in 1996 that he had taken many performance-enhancing drugs, a claim Armstrong vehemently denied.
"It would be nice if he would come out and say the hospital room happened," Andreu said. "That's where it all started."
Former teammate Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for doping, has filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit that accused Armstrong of defrauding the U.S. Postal Service. An attorney familiar with Armstrong's legal problems told the AP that the Justice Department is highly likely to join the lawsuit. The False Claims Act lawsuit could result in Armstrong paying a substantial amount of money to the U.S. government. The deadline for the department to join the case is Thursday, though the department could seek an extension if necessary.
According to the attorney, who works outside the government, the lawsuit alleges that Armstrong defrauded the U.S. government based on his years of denying use of performance-enhancing drugs. The attorney spoke on condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak on the record about the matter.
The lawsuit most likely to be influenced by a confession might be the Sunday Times case. Potential perjury charges stemming from Armstrong's sworn testimony in the 2005 arbitration fight would not apply because of the statute of limitations. Armstrong was not deposed during the federal investigation that was closed last year.
Armstrong is said to be worth around $100 million. But most sponsors dropped him after USADA's scathing report — at the cost of tens of millions of dollars — and soon after, he left the board of Livestrong.
After the USADA findings, he was also barred from competing in the elite triathlon or running events he participated in after his cycling career. World Anti-Doping Code rules state his lifetime ban cannot be reduced to less than eight years. WADA and U.S. Anti-Doping officials could agree to reduce the ban further depending on what information Armstrong provides and his level of cooperation.
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Litke reported from Chicago. Pete Yost in Washington also contributed to this report.
Thirty-five percent of American adults said they have used the Internet to diagnose a medical condition for themselves or someone else, according to a new Pew Research Center study. Women are more likely than men to turn to the Internet for diagnoses. Other groups more likely to do so are younger people, white adults, people with college degrees and those who live in households with income above $75,000.
The study, released by Pew’s Internet and American Life Project on Tuesday, points out that Americans have always tried to answer their health questions at home, but that the Internet has expanded the options for research. Previous surveys have asked questions about online diagnoses, but the Pew study was the first to focus on the topic with a nationally representative sample, said Susannah Fox, an associate director at Pew Internet. Surveyors interviewed 3,014 American adults by telephone, from August to September 2012.
Of the one in three Americans who used the Internet for a diagnosis, about a third said they did not go to a doctor to get a professional medical opinion, while 41 percent said a doctor confirmed their diagnosis. Eighteen percent said a doctor did not agree with their diagnosis. As far as where people start when researching health conditions online, 77 percent said they started at a search engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo, while 13 percent said they began at a site that specializes in health information.
A plan to offer an array of online college classes at a California state university could, if the students are successful, open the door to teaching hundreds of thousands of California students at a lower cost via the Internet.
Udacity, a Silicon Valley start-up that creates online college classes, will announce a deal on Tuesday with San Jose State University for a series of remedial and introductory courses.
Because the courses are intended to involve the classroom instructor, it could also help to blunt professors’ unease with the online classes.
The state university’s deal with Udacity is also the first time that professors at a university have collaborated with a provider of a MOOC — massive open online course — to create for-credit courses with students watching videos and taking interactive quizzes, and receiving support from online mentors.
Eventually, such courses could be offered to hundreds of thousands of students in the state.
California Gov. Jerry Brown, who has been pushing state universities to move more aggressively into online education, approached the company to come up with a technological solution for what has become a vexing challenge for the state.
Ellen N. Junn, provost and vice president for academic affairs at the university in San Jose, said the California State University System faces a crisis because more than 50 percent of entering students cannot meet basic requirements.
“They graduate from high school, but they cannot pass our elementary math and English placement tests,” she said.
The Udacity pilot program will include a remedial algebra course, a college-level algebra course and introductory statistics.
For the pilot project starting this month, however, the courses will be limited to 300 students — half from San Jose State University, and half from local community colleges and high schools — who will pay lower than usual tuition. The cost of each three-unit course will be $150, significantly less than regular San Jose State tuition. Sebastian Thrun, one of the founders of Udacity, would not disclose how much the company would be paid for its participation.
San Jose State will receive funds from the National Science Foundation to study the effectiveness of the new online classroom design.
Open online courses exploded in American higher education in 2011 after Mr. Thrun, a nationally known artificial-intelligence researcher at Stanford, and Peter Norvig, Google’s director of research, offered to teach an introductory artificial-intelligence course online. More than 160,000 students initially registered for the class.
After two other Stanford courses each attracted more than 100,000 students, Dr. Thrun started his venture. Two other Stanford computer scientists, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, also established a competing private company, Coursera, to develop technologies necessary to change the reach and effectiveness of online education.
The courses have rapidly moved from the periphery to the center of higher education policy as a growing number of schools have begun experimenting with ways to offer the courses for credit toward a degree.
EdX, a university collaboration initiated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard last year, this month will begin offering some of its courses at two Massachusetts community colleges, in a blended format.
Recently edX completed a pilot offering of its difficult circuits and electronics course at San Jose State to stunning results: while 40 percent of the students in the traditional version of the class got a grade of C or lower, only 9 percent in the blended edX class got such a low grade.
Last fall, for the first time, Udacity’s courses were tried on a small group of struggling high school students, at the Winfree Academy Charter School system, a cluster of schools near Dallas-Fort Worth created to help struggling students and reclaim dropouts.
“I was a little scared to put our kids, who are struggling and at risk of dropping out, into a class written by a Stanford professor,” said Melody Chalkley, Winfree’s founder. “But of the 23 students who used Udacity, one withdrew from the school, and the other 22 all finished successfully. And two young women got through the whole physics course in just two weeks.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 15, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a California university faculty group. It is the California Faculty Association, not the California Teachers Association. The article also misstated the nature of the courses that San Jose State University will offer with Udacity. The courses will involve students watching videos and taking interactive quizzes; they will not be blended courses with students first watching videos on their own, and then coming to class to work on assignments with a professor.
KOLKATA —Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has often called the conflict against the Communist Party of India (Maoist) the greatest internal security threat that India faces. With some 6,000 dead in India’s heartland since 2005 alone, it has certainly been one of the most violent.
Mr. Singh’s lingering inability to quell the bloodshed through a “two-pronged strategy” of economic development and armed counterinsurgency has led to repeated howls of protest; from the left for human rights abuses committed by ill-trained troops, and from the right for not employing a heavier hand to crush the rebellion. Traditionally protected by tribal populations, which have struggled to take part in India’s booming economic growth, the mobile Maoists evaded disjointed state-by-state responses while traversing India’s heavily forested central states. Recently the conflict took a particularly gruesome turn, when the body of a constable was discovered in Jharkhand, with a bomb sewn into the abdomen.
But a surprising thing happened at the start of this decade. After years of feeling one step behind the insurgents, the conflict’s momentum has suddenly shifted to the government’s favor. This was nowhere more evident than in the state of West Bengal. In 2010, more than 400 people died here as the state became the epicenter of the long-running insurgency. However, according to newly released figures collected by the Institute for Conflict Management, a research organization based in New Delhi, there were a mere four Maoist-related deaths in West Bengal in 2012 – a 99 percent drop in two years. While Maoist violence across India has fallen by more than 65 percent during the period, in West Bengal it has been all but eliminated.
How did the state turn things around so dramatically – and so quickly? Inspector General Vivek Sahay, who leads the Central Reserve Police Force in West Bengal, is in charge of the state’s anti-Maoist operations. Mr. Sahay believes that a greater number of officers available to combat the insurgency was essential to the turnaround. However, he said renewed attention to developing the building blocks of governance was just as important in causing the turning point as any military or strategic gains.
By weakening the insurgency in West Bengal, the government has been able to re-establish a constructive presence in rural areas, something Mr. Sahay sees as crucial. “Our success can’t be judged merely by kills or arrests,” he said. “It should be judged by the ability of other (government) departments to spend, to ensure that there is no fresh escalation of violence.”
Mr. Sahay is speaking about the second leg of the government’s strategy, highlighting the Central Reserve Police Force’s mandate to create an environment secure enough for rural development programs like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and other service-minded efforts to operate. By directly engaging with citizens, the government hopes that programs like these are the key weapon in the battle to win rural hearts and minds. Meanwhile, members of Mr. Singh’s government are daring to project confidence for the first time, lauding the “two-pronged strategy” as central to its success.
Still, backroom dealings may have also played a role. The Trinamool Congress, West Bengal’s current ruling party, has been repeatedly accused of aligning with the Maoists to gain rural support before the 2011 elections that brought it to power. The Trinamool Congress’s electoral rival, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), alleged that the chief minster of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, orchestrated a cease-fire deal with the Maoists before elections in exchange for rural support. Ms.Banerjee denies the deal, but her colleague, Kabir Suman , recently gave the claims renewed validity, claiming that they would have lost several key rural constituencies (and perhaps even the election) without the Maoists’ help.
Yet this alleged alliance may actually have served as the inadvertent breaking point of the insurgency. After the Maoists broke a cease-fire by assassinating several Trinamool Congress politicians, members of the Central Reserve Police Force used information gathered from pre-election mingling to kill the then-operational head of the Maoists, Kishenji.
A combination of secret surrender packages and promises to other former Maoist leaders of government jobs – mainly spying on their former comrades – have decimated Maoist ranks, leaving few capable enough to lead guerilla battles. Ms.Banerjee has cashed in on these victories, and in presiding over a populist government that has actively tried to extend development to its rural base, has made more concrete attempts to weaken the appeal of the Maoists than any West Bengal chief minister in a generation.
Will this combination of military successes and new promises of rural development finally mark the end of the 45-year old Maoist movement? Strategic successes by state and federal forces and a supportive political climate in West Bengal have quelled much of the worst violence, but few see permanent victory as being just around the corner. Even so, most recognize the once-in-a-generation opportunity to win back rural populations who feel that their government has repeatedly failed them. As Mr. Sahay warns, “it would be a colossal blunder if we let it slip.”
Jason Miklian and Kristian Hoelscher are researchers at the Peace Research Institute Oslo in Norway working primarily on Maoist conflict in India.
You can use the rear of the YotaPhone as a clock, or to display wallpapers.
Click here to view this gallery.
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LAS VEGAS — What if your phone had two displays? Announced in mid-December, YotaPhone aims to change how people use their smartphones by bringing together a full-color LCD display on one side of the phone and an e-ink display on the other.
I caught up with Yota Device’s Vladislav Martynov at CES to give the phone a closer look.
[More from Mashable: 5 Chinese Tech Brands You’ll Be Hearing From in 2013]
In essence, the two displays on the handset each have their own unique purpose. The front display is used just as you might your traditional smartphone screen to run apps, browse the web or watch videos.
The rear display on the YotaPhone is what makes it stand out. An electronic paper display, it shows content you push to it from the front of the device. Less for interacting with and more for reference information, you can use the display for a map to your next destination, a clock, or a place to keep the boarding pass for your flight handy.
Martynov showed me a few applications designed specifically to use with the screen as well, including an app that shows low long you’ve kept a particular goal, such as not smoking. The company plans to release an API for other developers to make applications that take advantage of the dual-screen functionality as well.
Running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Martynov says that he plans to keep Android as vanilla as possible, something he feels is very important. He also wants to make sure that the phone is on-par with high-end Android smartphones, spec-wise. The current iteration uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM 8960 platform, and Corning’s 3D Gorilla Glass. It’s also a multi-band LTE handset that can run on LTE networks anywhere in the world.
YotaPhone is expected to go one sale during the second half of 2013.
What uses do you see for an e-ink second screen? Let us know your thoughts in the comment.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
One game is a rematch. The other might feel like one — at least to one of the teams.
For the second straight year in the AFC, the New England Patriots will host the Baltimore Ravens with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line.
In the NFC, it will be San Francisco traveling to Atlanta, with the Falcons defense trying to stop a versatile, running quarterback for the second straight week.
"Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick are mobile quarterbacks who throw the ball at extremely accurate levels," Falcons safety Thomas DeCoud said. "We can use this game as a cheat sheet to prepare for next week."
On Sunday, the Falcons barely got past Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks, who overcame a 20-point deficit to take a one-point lead, but gave it up after Matt Ryan drove Atlanta into field goal range and Matt Bryant made a 49-yard kick with 8 seconds left.
Atlanta is the only team not making a repeat appearance in the NFL's final four. Last year, it was the Giants playing, and beating, the 49ers for the NFC title.
On Saturday, Kaepernick passed for 263 yards and rushed for 181 — a playoff record for a quarterback — to defeat Green Bay 45-31.
"We're one step closer to where we want to be," said Kaepernick. San Francisco hasn't been to the Super Bowl since 1995, when Steve Young led the 49ers to their fifth Lombardi Trophy.
Though the Niners must travel cross country for the game, they opened as 3-point favorites in a meeting of teams that played twice a year until 2003, when Atlanta was moved from the NFC West to the NFC South. Their only previous playoff meeting was a 20-18 win for the Falcons in the 1998 divisional playoffs. Atlanta won at Minnesota the next week to make its only Super Bowl.
San Francisco's 20-17 overtime loss last year to the Giants was part of a tense day of football that began with New England's 23-20 victory over the Ravens in the AFC title game.
In that game, Billy Cundiff missed a 32-yard field goal that would have tied the game with 11 seconds left.
This season, Justin Tucker beat out Cundiff for the kicker's job. Tucker hit a 47-yarder against Denver on Saturday to lift the Ravens to a 38-35 win in double overtime, extending Ray Lewis' career for at least one more week and putting the 17-year veteran one win away from his second Super Bowl.
"We fought hard to get back to this point and we're definitely proud of being here," Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco said. "We feel like it's going to take a lot for somebody to come and kick us off that field come the AFC championship game."
Lewis and the Ravens will have to stop the NFL's most potent offense. The Patriots put up 457 yards in a 41-28 victory over Houston, which left them one win away from their sixth Super Bowl in the 2000s.
"I think the two best teams are in the final," Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said. "Baltimore certainly deserve to be here and so do we."
The Patriots were made early 9½-point favorites against the Ravens.
These teams met in the regular season and that game was also decided by a kick — Tucker's 27-yard field goal that sneaked through the right upright for a 31-30 victory. Or did it?
While the Ravens were celebrating, Pats coach Bill Belichick ran to midfield and grabbed a replacement official's arm as he tried to exit the field. The NFL fined Belichick $50,000 for the gesture.
New England is the even-money favorite in Vegas to win the Super Bowl. San Francisco is next at 2-1, followed by Atlanta (5-1) and Baltimore (8-1).
Among the possible Super Bowl story lines:
—The Harbaugh Bowl. Jim Harbaugh coaches the 49ers and John Harbaugh coaches the Ravens.
—A rematch of San Francisco's 41-34 win at New England on Dec. 16 — one of the most entertaining games of the regular season.
___
Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a psychologist and writer whose work helped explain why women are twice as prone to depression as men and why such low moods can be so hard to shake, died on Jan. 2 in New Haven. She was 53.
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema at the University of Michigan in 2003. Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema's research showed that women were more prone to ruminate, or dwell on the sources of problems rather than solutions, more than men.
Her death followed heart surgery to correct a congenitally weak valve, said her husband, Richard Nolen-Hoeksema.
Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema, a professor at Yale University, began studying depression in the 1980s, a time of great excitement in psychiatry and psychology. New drugs like Prozac were entering the market; novel talking therapies were proving effective, too, particularly cognitive behavior therapy, in which people learn to defuse upsetting thoughts by questioning their basis.
Her studies, first in children and later in adults, exposed one of the most deceptively upsetting of these patterns: rumination, the natural instinct to dwell on the sources of problems rather than their possible solutions. Women were more prone to ruminate than men, the studies found, and in a landmark 1987 paper she argued that this difference accounted for the two-to-one ratio of depressed women to depressed men.
She later linked rumination to a variety of mood and behavior problems, including anxiety, eating disorders and substance abuse.
“The way I think she’d put it is that, when bad things happen, women brood — they’re cerebral, which can feed into the depression,” said Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who oversaw her doctoral work. “Men are more inclined to act, to do something, plan, beat someone up, play basketball.”
Dr. Seligman added, “She was the leading figure in sex differences in depression of her generation.”
Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema wrote several books about her research for general readers, including “Women Who Think Too Much: How to Break Free of Overthinking and Reclaim Your Life.” These books described why rumination could be so corrosive — it is deeply distracting; it tends to highlight negative memories — and how such thoughts could be alleviated.
Susan Kay Nolen was born on May 22, 1959, in Springfield, Ill., to John and Catherine Nolen. Her father ran a construction business, where her mother was the office manager; Susan was the eldest of three children.
She entered Illinois State University before transferring to Yale. She graduated summa cum laude in 1982 with a degree in psychology.
After earning a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, she joined the faculty at Stanford. She later moved to the University of Michigan, before returning to Yale in 2004.
Along the way she published scores of studies and a popular textbook. In 2003 she became the editor of the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, an influential journal.
Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema moved smoothly between academic work and articles and books for the general reader.
“I think part of what allowed her to move so easily between those two worlds was that she was an extremely clear thinker, and an extremely clear writer,” said Marcia K. Johnson, a psychology professor and colleague at Yale.
Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema lived in Bethany, Conn. In addition to her husband, a science writer, she is survived by a son, Michael; her brothers, Jeff and Steve; and her father, John.
“Over the past four decades women have experienced unprecedented growth in independence and opportunities,” Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema wrote in 2003, adding, “We have many reasons to be happy and confident.”
“Yet when there is any pause in our daily activities,” she continued, “many of us are flooded with worries, thoughts and emotions that swirl out of control, sucking our emotions and energy down, down, down. We are suffering from an epidemic of overthinking.”
DETROIT — The Stingray is back, in name and in spirit.
At an invitation-only gathering hours before the North American International Auto Show was scheduled to open for press previews, General Motors introduced the 2014 Corvette, the seventh generation of Chevrolet’s hallmark sports car.
According to G.M.’s president for North America, Mark Reuss, the latest Stingray is a potential worldbeater.
“Like the ’63 Sting Ray, the best Corvettes embodied performance leadership, delivering cutting-edge technologies, breathtaking design and awe-inspiring driving experiences,” Mr. Reuss said. “The all-new Corvette goes farther than ever, thanks to today’s advancements in design technology and engineering.”
The release of a new Corvette is always highly anticipated by auto enthusiasts; speculation about “C7″ — shorthand for the seventh generation — has run high. Would it get a twin-cam turbocharged powertrain? Would Chevy switch to an exotic midengine chassis?
In actuality, the 2014 model will again have a pushrod V-8 engine in its nose, driving the rear wheels. That conservative approach might be seen as a timid compromise from a company that has just begun to get back on solid financial footing. But the front-engine, rear-drive layout has long defined the Corvette, and this car, like its C6 predecessor, may well show its taillights to cars with specs that more closely conform to what is considered state of the art.
While automakers are quick to toss around the words “all new” to describe their latest offerings, however warmed over they might be, in this case the term is justified — the 2014 Corvette shares only two parts with its predecessor.
The C7 Corvette’s styling is in keeping with the brand’s persona, yet it projects a more aggressive image than previous generations. The clean front fascia is devoid of parking lights, and is energized by a sharp edge where it meets the hood, which is itself defined by a prominent bulge and more hard edges. The curve of the front fenders peaks at yet another edge that blends seamlessly into the body side at the A-pillar. The body’s flanks are defined by character lines that race back from vents behind the front wheel, not unlike those of previous Corvettes, but here those lines are more sharply drawn, with the upper line sweeping up and back to define the shape of the rear quarter panel. The lower character line projects from the body, forming a wing of sorts that flows out of the front fender and terminates at the rear of the door. The coupe’s roofline arcs smoothly to meet the rear spoiler, rather than terminating at the rear window, as in the C6. The individual rear taillights that have long been a part of Corvette design are now paired in a deep recess on each side. Four large exhaust pipes exit center-stage, rear.
The sheet-molded fiberglass body, with carbon-fiber hood and roof panels and carbon-nano composite underbody panels, is 37 pounds lighter than the C6’s body. It rides on a new aluminum frame that is 57 percent stiffer and 99 pounds lighter than the current model’s. The wheelbase is about one inch longer than that of the C6, and the track is almost an inch wider — changes said to provide a more stable feel at high speed.
Inside the cockpit, considerable effort was lavished on upgrading what has generally been considered a blighted zone. Optional carbon fiber trim and real aluminum combine with plastic in a wraparound configuration. The steering wheel, with a 14.1 inch diameter, is smaller than that of the previous model, and two seat choices are offered, with the competition sport version providing more side bolstering to hold occupants in place in spirited maneuvers. Indicative of the car’s purpose is the inclusion of a console-mounted steel grab bar for the passenger.
Under the hood, Chevrolet’s 6.2-liter small block V-8 — now in its fifth-generation design — produces an estimated 450 horsepower and 450 pound-feet of torque. At low speed, torque output exceeds that of the previous 6.2-liter engine by 50 pound-feet. The engine shares few parts with prior Corvette V-8s and is fitted with direct fuel injection that, in combination with other refinements, enables a high compression ratio of 11.5:1. Active Fuel Management, G.M.’s system for deactivating cylinders when they are not needed, lets the car cruise on four cylinders in some driving modes. Final fuel-economy numbers are not yet available.
Two transaxles will be offered: a 6-speed automatic with paddle-shift mode or a 7-speed manual with rev-matching capability — an electronic version of the heel-and-toe shifting techniques that competition drivers employ to enable smooth gear changes when negotiating twisty bits.
The Corvette driver will be able to select from among five driving modes: weather, Eco, Tour, Sport and Track; the default setting will be Tour. Changing modes alters 12 vehicle attributes, including throttle response, shift points, engagement of the limited-slip differential engagement, shock damping and more. Four-piston Brembo brakes provide stopping power, and electric power steering sets the course.
An optional Z51 performance package adds an electronic limited-slip differential that can continuously vary torque split between the rear wheels, dry-sump oiling, upgraded shock absorbers, a revised version of the automaker’s Magnetic Ride Control suspension-regulating system, close-ratio gears for the manual transmission, larger brake rotors and aerodynamic refinements that incorporate air-flow management for cooling of heat-stressed components.
Like its predecessor, the 2014 Corvette Stingray will be built at a G.M. plant in Bowling Green, Ky. The car is expected to arrive at dealerships in the third quarter of this year.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Campaign season has begun in Pakistan, with elections widely expected by mid-May that, if they proceed peacefully, would represent a democratic milestone in a country plagued by intermittent military rule.
But the starting whistle has been sounded by an unlikely figure: a tough-talking preacher who is calling for a democratic “revolution,” even if he is not eligible for election himself.
Little known in Pakistan just one month ago, the preacher, Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri, a white-bearded Sufi scholar with a taste for hard politics, has taken the country by storm in recent weeks in a campaign that has gripped the news media and jolted the traditional political mainstream.
After returning from Canada, where he has lived for seven years, Mr. Qadri made his first mark with a large rally in Lahore on Dec. 23 in which he demanded that President Asif Ali Zardari’s government resign to make way for a caretaker administration led by technocrats.
Now he is mobilizing a “million man” march that he says will reach the capital, Islamabad, on Monday, where he promises to lead a lengthy sit-in that will kick off a “moral revolution” similar to the one in Tahrir Square in Cairo that overthrew the Egyptian ruling order. “There will be no defeat,” Mr. Qadri, 61, said in a phone interview on Saturday. “This is for a spiritual and moral revolution. We will not surrender before corruption.”
That message resonates with ordinary Pakistanis weary of poor governance, dire energy shortages and sickening violence. On Saturday, ethnic Hazara Shiites in the city of Quetta blocked a road with the coffins of victims of a sectarian attack in the city on Thursday night. The death toll from the attack — the worst ever against the Hazara — has since risen to 96, according to Reuters, and the protesters said they would remove the coffins only when the army took over security in Quetta.
But Mr. Qadri’s sudden arrival on the political scene has also brought worries that he represents the interests of forces bent on derailing Pakistan’s fragile democratic order.
Questions have been raised about Mr. Qadri’s source of money — one opposition senator estimates that he has already spent $4 million on relentless television advertising — and, inevitably in a country where conspiracy theories run rife, media reports have buzzed with allegations of outside support.
Some theories focus on Western governments, particularly the United States, but most analysts point to the convergence between Mr. Qadri’s agenda and that of the powerful military, which has done little to disguise its disdain for Mr. Zardari — and even the opposition leaders who threaten to replace him.
Richard E. Hoagland, the American deputy ambassador, told reporters in Islamabad on Jan. 5 that the United States did not support any Pakistani party and denied any link to Mr. Qadri.
The planned march on Islamabad “reflects the military’s desire for regime change” and “signals that military interest in political engineering is alive and well,” said Shamila N. Chaudhary, an analyst at the Eurasia Group who formerly served as the director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on President Obama’s National Security Council.
But, Ms. Chaudhary added, the days when Pakistan’s military could seize power on a whim have passed, thanks to an aggressive news media and fiercely independent courts. “Real regime change led by Qadri is most unlikely,” she said.
Nonetheless, the government is taking him seriously. The interior minister, Rehman Malik, citing security concerns, has vowed to prevent the march from reaching the gates of Parliament in Islamabad. Security officials say a large crowd in Islamabad would provide an easy target for a suicide bombing by Islamist extremists that, in turn, could set off widespread unrest and open the door to a military intervention.
Both the military and Mr. Qadri have publicly denied working together. Others say such comments are scaremongering meant to quell a movement that taps into popular discontent.
At the very least, the situation betrays government jitters about whether it can survive until its term ends on March 17. It is expected to set elections for some time in April or May and appoint a government to take over until the vote. If a peaceful election follows, the transfer of power would represent a first in a country that has suffered three military coups over nearly six decades.
But Mr. Qadri will not be running for office — as a dual citizen of Pakistan and Canada, he is ineligible under Pakistani law.
He has been in office before, however. Before he became a citizen of Canada, he was elected to Parliament under the military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 2002, only to resign two years later, disillusioned. Mr. Qadri, a lawyer and scholar, moved to the Toronto area, where he concentrated on his religious work, promoting inter-faith harmony and hosting deradicalization seminars for young Muslims in the United States, Canada and Denmark, he said. According to his Web site, his organization, Minhaj ul-Quran, is active in 90 countries. Inside Pakistan, the group runs a university in Lahore and over 600 schools and colleges, he said.
Supporters are drawn by his mix of modernism and religious conservatism. Corruption is a focus of his politics, and he insists that all election candidates should be vetted by the country’s tax authorities. He is less clear, though, about his own finances. Street traders, small businesses and ordinary Pakistanis are financing his impressive drive, Mr. Qadri said. So has his family: his wife and daughters pawned their jewelry to help out, he added.
But the preacher could not name one major campaign donor, or say how much his team had spent on television advertisements. “I don’t get involved in these things,” he said.
Heated talk of democratic upsets has come and gone before in Pakistan, and the potency of Mr. Qadri’s challenge should become apparent on Monday. Ms. Chaudhary, the analyst, predicted that he was “ultimately unlikely to shape the election results.”
For his part, Mr. Qadri has moderated his demands, stressing that his goal is simply to nudge Pakistan toward more open leadership. “I can’t say that Pakistan will become America or Canada in a couple of years,” he said. “But we want a reflection of America, to put the process on track.”
Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Waqar Gilani from Lahore, Pakistan.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 13, 2013
An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the change in Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri’s religiosity when he moved to the Toronto area. He concentrated on his religious work there; he did not “embrace Islam.”
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