Manti Te'o's Fake Girlfriend May Have Duped Others

Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend "Lennay Kekua" may have hoaxed other unsuspecting suitors.

"Catfish" movie director and actor Ariel Schulman told "Good Morning America" today that he believes there may have been "a few other people duped by the fake Lennay character."

Schulman and his brother Nev Schulman have been looking into the elaborate scam and claim to be corresponding with various players involved. They have come to believe that there were "a lot of other people that she was corresponding with before and maybe even during her relationship [with Te'o]."

Nev Schulman was the subject of the 2010 movie "Catfish," which spawned the TV series, because he himself was sucked in by an Internet pretender -- or a "catfish" -- who built an elaborate fake life.

As questions mount about Te'o's possible role in the complex scam, the number one question is whether Te'o was unknowingly ensnared, as he says, or whether he was complicit in the scam.

"I stand by the guy. My heart goes out to him," Ariel Schulman said. His brother has reached out to Te'o, but has not heard back.

"He had his heart broken," Schulman said. "He was grieving for someone, whether she existed or not. Those were real feelings."

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

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Click here for a who's who in the Manti Te'o case

Te'o has kept a low-profile since the news of the scandal broke. He released a statement calling the situation "incredibly embarrassing" and maintaining that he was a victim of the hoax.

He was captured briefly by news cameras on Thursday at a Florida training facility, but has not spoken publicly.

As for the woman whose photo was used as the face of Lennay Kekua, "Inside Edition" has identified her as Diane O'Meara who is very much alive. The show caught up with her on Thursday, but she declined to comment.

ABC News' legal analyst Dan Abrams said that O'Meara may be the one person in the scandal with the power to sue since her likeness was taken and used without her permission.

As for Te'o, even if he knew about the deception, it appears that he did not do anything illegal.

"He's allowed to lie to the public. He's allowed to lie to the media. He's not allowed to lie to the authorities," Abrams said on "Good Morning America."

Questions also remain about the timeline of events and when Te'o discovered that the "love of his life," as he called her, was nothing more than a fake Internet persona.

According to Notre Dame's timeline of events, Te'o learned his girlfriend didn't exist on Dec. 6.

But in a Dec. 8 interview with South Bend, Ind., TV station WSBT, Te'o said, "I really got hit with cancer. I lost both my grandparents an my girlfriend to cancer." And on Dec. 11, he talked about his girlfriend in a newspaper interview.

Te'o alerted Notre Dame on Dec. 26 about the scam, the university said.

Click here for more scandalous public confessions.

Skeptics have also cited comments by Te'o's father Brian Te'o who told a newspaper how Kekua used to visit his son in Hawaii.

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the university launched their own investigation.

"Our investigators, through their work, were able to discover online chatter between the perpetrators," Swarbrick said at a Wednesday news conference. "That was sort of the ultimate proof."

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Sixty foreigners still caught in Sahara hostage crisis

ALGIERS (Reuters) - About 60 foreigners were still being held hostage or missing inside a gas plant on Friday after Algerian forces stormed the desert complex to free hundreds of captives taken by Islamist militants, who threatened to attack other energy installations.

The attack, which plunged capitals around the world into crisis mode, is a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.

"We are still dealing with a fluid and dangerous situation where a part of the terrorist threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, but there still remains a threat in another part," British Prime Minister David Cameron told his parliament.

A local Algerian source said 60 foreigners were still in the facility and some were being held hostage, but it was unclear how many and how many might be in hiding elsewhere in the sprawling compound. It was also not known whether some might have been killed and the bodies not found.

Those still unaccounted for included 10 from Japan, eight Norwegians and a number of Britons put by Cameron at "less than 30". Washington has said a number of Americans were among the hostages, without giving details, and the local source said a U.S. aircraft landed nearby on Friday.

As Western leaders clamored for news of their nationals, several expressed anger they had not been consulted by the Algerian government about its decision to storm the facility.

Algeria's state news agency said earlier more than half of 132 foreign hostages were freed and that the army had rescued 650 hostages, 573 of whom were Algerians.

"(The army) is still trying to achieve a ‘peaceful outcome' before neutralizing the terrorist group that is holed up in the (facility) and freeing a group of hostages that is still being held," it said, quoting a security source.

Thirty hostages, including several Westerners, were killed during Thursday's assault, the source said, along with at least 18 of their captors, who said they had taken the site as retaliation for French intervention against Islamists in neighboring Mali.

(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Eamonn Mallie in Belfast, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London and Padraic Halpin and Conor Humprhies in Dublin; Writing by Philippa Fletcher; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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Japan's Abe condemns civilians' deaths in Algerian crisis

JAKARTA: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has condemned the deaths of civilians in the Algerian hostage crisis.

He has also called on the Algerian government to prioritize the safety of hostages.

Mr Abe was speaking at a joint news conference in Jakarta after his meeting with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

During their talks, both leaders agreed to strengthen their strategic partnership in political, security and economic relations.

Japan is involved in a maritime dispute with China over a group of islands in the East China Sea - a dispute that Mr Abe said should be resolved legally.

Mr Yudhoyono added that an open-sea policy should be enforced by law, and not by might.

He said: "All of us in Asia want to see a region that is stable, safe and peaceful. Therefore if there is a problem in the South China Sea or East Asia or anywhere in Asia, the solution should be peaceful, refrain from applying immediate military force and it must refer to international law. That is Indonesia's stance."

Prime Minister Abe's visit to Jakarta comes a day after the city was inundated with floodwaters. He expressed his sympathy towards the suffering of the flood victims in Greater Jakarta and vowed to help to restore and reconstruct damaged infrastructure.

Mr Abe also reaffirmed Japan's support for the development of Indonesia's railways, ports and sewage system, including the construction of the Cilamaya seaport and Jakarta's MRT.

- CNA/xq

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Lalu Prasad reveals Delhi gang-rape victim's name, demands death for rapists

KOLKATA: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad while demanding death punishment for the perpetrators of the Delhi gang-rape and murder, mentioned the name of the victim on Friday.

"I went to meet the family of the victim in Ballia (Uttar Pradesh) and the father related how the young girl was subjected to barbarism. He revealed his daughter's name to me," said Lalu before mentioning the name of the victim to the audience.

"So long as a rape victim is alive you cannot mention her name, but in this case she is no more," added Prasad while addressing an interactive programme on women's empowerment organized by the FICCI Ladies Organization here.

Union law minister Ashwani Kumar this month had opined that the law was not in favour of revealing the identity of the victim.

Citing examples of Arab countries where criminals are stoned to death, Lalu Prasad demanded the culprits should be hanged and called for stronger laws and stringent punishment for rape and other crimes against women.

"Our party has always been advocating for punishment for rapists and in the next session of parliament we will put pressure on the government to amend the respective laws and provide death for rape," he said.

"If Raavan can be killed for abducting Sita, then why can't these inhumans be hanged. Unless there are stringent punishments we cannot prevent crime against women," Lalu Prasad said.

He also called for stirring up a nationwide mass movement to make the people aware about women rights.

A 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist was brutally raped by six men in a moving bus in south Delhi on December 16. She died on December 29 in a Singapore hospital where she was airlifted for specialized treatment.

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Large study confirms flu vaccine safe in pregnancy

NEW YORK (AP) — A large study offers reassuring news for pregnant women: It's safe to get a flu shot.

The research found no evidence that the vaccine increases the risk of losing a fetus, and may prevent some deaths. Getting the flu while pregnant makes fetal death more likely, the Norwegian research showed.

The flu vaccine has long been considered safe for pregnant women and their fetus. U.S. health officials began recommending flu shots for them more than five decades ago, following a higher death rate in pregnant women during a flu pandemic in the late 1950s.

But the study is perhaps the largest look at the safety and value of flu vaccination during pregnancy, experts say.

"This is the kind of information we need to provide our patients when discussing that flu vaccine is important for everyone, particularly for pregnant women," said Dr. Geeta Swamy, a researcher who studies vaccines and pregnant women at Duke University Medical Center.

The study was released by the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday as the United States and Europe suffer through an early and intense flu season. A U.S. obstetricians group this week reminded members that it's not too late for their pregnant patients to get vaccinated.

The new study was led by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. It tracked pregnancies in Norway in 2009 and 2010 during an international epidemic of a new swine flu strain.

Before 2009, pregnant women in Norway were not routinely advised to get flu shots. But during the pandemic, vaccinations against the new strain were recommended for those in their second or third trimester.

The study focused on more than 113,000 pregnancies. Of those, 492 ended in the death of the fetus. The researchers calculated that the risk of fetal death was nearly twice as high for women who weren't vaccinated as it was in vaccinated mothers.

U.S. flu vaccination rates for pregnant women grew in the wake of the 2009 swine flu pandemic, from less than 15 percent to about 50 percent. But health officials say those rates need to be higher to protect newborns as well. Infants can't be vaccinated until 6 months, but studies have shown they pick up some protection if their mothers got the annual shot, experts say.

Because some drugs and vaccines can be harmful to a fetus, there is a long-standing concern about giving any medicine to a pregnant woman, experts acknowledged. But this study should ease any worries about the flu shot, said Dr. Denise Jamieson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The vaccine is safe," she said.

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Online:

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

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Notre Dame: Football Star Was 'Catfished' in Hoax

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

Tale of Notre Dame Football Star's Girlfriend and Her Death an Alleged Hoax Watch Video

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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.

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Four foreign hostages freed by Algerian army: APS

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Four foreign hostages were freed on Thursday by Algeria's armed forces, the official APS news agency said, giving no further details.

A local source has told Reuters six hostages were killed when a vehicle was fired upon by the military. A separate source, in the security services, said earlier that 25 foreigners had escaped. Gunmen said they were initially holding 41 foreign hostages after they stormed a gas plant in the remote Algerian desert on Wednesday morning. (Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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Airbus lost top spot to Boeing in 2012

TOULOUSE, France - European group Airbus lost its top spot as the world's biggest maker of airliners to the US giant Boeing last year, but did better than expected and sees big sales this year, it said on Thursday.

Publishing results just as Boeing is hit by a crisis of confidence in its Dreamliner plane after a series of incidents, Airbus said that last year it delivered 588 aircraft to 89 customers, a record after 534 deliveries in 2011.

But sales of the flagship superjumbo A380, the biggest airliner in the world, disappointed, coming in at about one third of the target figure after a problem was discovered with the wings which the company says is now behind it.

Airbus sold a total of 833 aircraft last year, far more than the initial target figure of 650, chief executive Fabrice Bregier told a press conference near where Airbus is based at Toulouse, southern France.

However, the sales figure was far lower than the record of 1,419 sales in 2011.

Boeing delivered 601 airliners last year and took 1,203 orders.

For this year, Airbus expects to take 700 orders, excluding any cancellations, and to deliver more than 600 planes.

The order book now total 4,682 planes representing about eight years of production work.

Airbus said that it hoped that its new long-range A350 aircraft would make its maiden flight at the end of June or beginning of July.

Referring to the A350, Bregier said: "We have made reasonable good progress but I will keep cautious until the end.

"For the first flight, we expect it by mid of this year which is a big milestone, mid means end of June or early July...We are not optimistic nor pessimistic but realistic."

He added: "I'm very humble. Lots of risks are behind us but I'm interested in what is in front (of us)."

Of the 833 net orders last year, allowing for 81 cancellations, 739 were for medium-range A320-type airliners, popular with low-cost airlines, and of those 478 were for the "neo" version with new more fuel-efficient engines. The orders also comprised 58 long-haul A330 aircraft and 27 of the future A350.

Airbus booked orders for nine of its A380 superjumbo jetliners.

Bregier said that Airbus, the main part of the giant European EADS aerospace group, had exceeded its targets in terms of new orders booked and of completed aircraft delivered, even though sales of the superjumbo had underperformed.

Airbus had counted on selling 30 of the superjumbos but this target was knocked off course by the discovery of micro-cracks in the wings which cooled some customer interest.

Bregier said that this problem had been "resolved" and said he expected that this year the company would take 25 orders and would also deliver 25 of the enormous aircraft.

Referring to the position of Airbus in the global market and to the "neo" version, Bregier observed: "When we do better than expected we can be satisfied. When we see we are still in the leading position on neo market, we can be satisfied."

He said: "We started earlier with a good product. If we do the right job and I plan to do the right job, it's a huge advantage."

In view of the rapid growth, the airline has recruited a net number of 7,000 people in the last two years, hiring 10,000 while 3,000 have left for normal reasons.

The company cut 10,000 jobs between 2007 and 2009 as it restructured after a severe crisis over delays to the superjumbo programme which revealed weaknesses in the industrial workflow system.

The company now employs 59,000 people and expects to recruit 3,000 this year.

This is in contrast to many substantial employers in France which are restructuring with big job cuts, and the economy as a whole is struggling to boost its export performance and raise the niche speciality of its industrial products.

The Airbus aircraft are built mainly in Germany, Britain and Spain, and in France where they are assembled in Toulouse.

- AFP/ir

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PHRO and Verka residents demands shifting of inquiry

AMRITSAR: Punjab Human Rights Organization (PHRO) and residents of Verka have demanded CBI probe into the kidnapping and killing of a 9-year- old boy Gurkeerat Singh.

Principal Investigator of PHRO, Sarabjit Singh Verka informed on Thursday that they had submitted a application with Amritsar police commissioner Ram Singh demanding that the investigation of the case should be transferred to CBI. The application is signed by as many as 500 residents of Verka. Notably Gurkeerat Singh had gone missing on November 7, 2012 but on November 16 his body was found from near his house.

Verka alleged that police had not been able to arrest the culprits as yet which have caused unrest among the residents of Verka and have put a question mark on the functioning of police.

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ER visits tied to energy drinks double since 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A new government survey suggests the number of people seeking emergency treatment after consuming energy drinks has doubled nationwide during the past four years, the same period in which the supercharged drink industry has surged in popularity in convenience stores, bars and on college campuses.

From 2007 to 2011, the government estimates the number of emergency room visits involving the neon-labeled beverages shot up from about 10,000 to more than 20,000. Most of those cases involved teens or young adults, according to a survey of the nation's hospitals released late last week by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The report doesn't specify which symptoms brought people to the emergency room but calls energy drink consumption a "rising public health problem" that can cause insomnia, nervousness, headache, fast heartbeat and seizures that are severe enough to require emergency care.

Several emergency physicians said they had seen a clear uptick in the number of patients suffering from irregular heartbeats, anxiety and heart attacks who said they had recently downed an energy drink.

More than half of the patients considered in the survey who wound up in the emergency room told doctors they had downed only energy drinks. In 2011, about 42 percent of the cases involved energy drinks in combination with alcohol or drugs, such as the stimulants Adderall or Ritalin.

"A lot of people don't realize the strength of these things. I had someone come in recently who had drunk three energy drinks in an hour, which is the equivalent of 15 cups of coffee," said Howard Mell, an emergency physician in the suburbs of Cleveland, who serves as a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. "Essentially he gave himself a stress test and thankfully he passed. But if he had a weak heart or suffered from coronary disease and didn't know it, this could have precipitated very bad things."

The findings came as concerns over energy drinks have intensified following reports last fall of 18 deaths possibly tied to the drinks — including a 14-year-old Maryland girl who died after drinking two large cans of Monster Energy drinks. Monster does not believe its products were responsible for the death.

Two senators are calling for the Food and Drug Administration to investigate safety concerns about energy drinks and their ingredients.

The energy drink industry says its drinks are safe and there is no proof linking its products to the adverse reactions.

Late last year, the FDA asked the U.S. Health and Human Services to update the figures its substance abuse research arm compiles about emergency room visits tied to energy drinks.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's survey was based on responses it receives from about 230 hospitals each year, a representative sample of about 5 percent of emergency departments nationwide. The agency then uses those responses to estimate the number of energy drink-related emergency department visits nationwide.

The more than 20,000 cases estimated for 2011 represent a small portion of the annual 136 million emergency room visits tracked by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA said it was considering the findings and pressing for more details as it undertakes a broad review of the safety of energy drinks and related ingredients this spring.

"We will examine this additional information ... as a part of our ongoing investigation into potential safety issues surrounding the use of energy-drink products," FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said in a statement.

Beverage manufacturers fired back at the survey, saying the statistics were misleading and taken out of context.

"This report does not share information about the overall health of those who may have consumed energy drinks, or what symptoms brought them to the ER in the first place," the American Beverage Association said in a statement. "There is no basis by which to understand the overall caffeine intake of any of these individuals — from all sources."

Energy drinks remain a small part of the carbonated soft drinks market, representing only 3.3 percent of sales volume, according to the industry tracker Beverage Digest. Even as soda consumption has flagged in recent years, energy drinks sales are growing rapidly.

In 2011, sales volume for energy drinks rose by almost 17 percent, with the top three companies — Monster, Red Bull and Rockstar — each logging double-digit gains, Beverage Digest found. The drinks are often marketed at sporting events that are popular among younger people such as surfing and skateboarding.

From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which data was available, people from 18 to 25 were the most common age group seeking emergency treatment for energy drink-related reactions, the report found.

"We were really concerned to find that in four years the number of emergency department visits almost doubled, and these drinks are largely marketed to younger people," said Al Woodward, a senior statistical analyst with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration who worked on the report.

Emergency physician Steve Sun said he had seen an increase in such cases at the Catholic hospital where he works on the edge of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

"I saw one young man who had mixed energy drinks with alcohol and we had to admit him to the hospital because he was so dehydrated he had renal failure," Sun said. "Because he was young he did well in the hospital, but if another patient had had underlying coronary artery disease, it could have led to a heart attack."

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