newsmakers

newsmakers

Armstrong interview seen by 3.2 million

NEW YORK

Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Lance Armstrong is more than an illustration of a hero athlete tumbling from the heights. It’s also a pivotal moment for a famous media figure trying to climb the ladder back up.

Winfrey’s OWN network is showing signs of life after a rocky start, and the Armstrong interview offered a chance for many more viewers to check it out. The former Tour de France cyclist admitted cheating with performance- enhancing drugs throughout his career during the first half of the interview Thursday night.

That program was seen by a total of 4.3 million viewers in Thursday’s back-to-back airings, OWN said Friday. But it drew only 3.2 million viewers in its first airing, an audience that fell short of OWN’s most-viewed telecast: an interview Winfrey conducted with the Whitney Houston family last March after the singer’s death the previous month.

The second half of the Armstrong interview was to air Friday night.

Bolshoi’s director attacked with acid

MOSCOW

The artistic director of the Bolshoi Theater’s ballet troupe was splashed with acid and may lose his eyesight in an attack that the Bolshoi said appeared to be linked to struggles for influence at one of the world’s most-famous ballet companies.

Sergei Filin, a 42-year-old former ballet star, was approached Thursday night by an unidentified man who threw the acid at his face as he got out of his car outside his home in central Moscow, city police spokesman Arkady Bashirov said. Theater officials said the man was masked.

The theater’s general director, Anatoly Iksanov, said he believed the attack was linked to Filin’s work.

Vindicator wire services