Danny Puff

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) Hundreds of people are gathering in state capitals nationwide to rally against stricter gun control measures.

An estimated 600 people turned out so far for Saturday speeches in Austin, Texas. Many are carrying signs with messages such as "An Armed Society is a Polite Society" and "The Second Amendment Comes from God."

Meanwhile, police say hundreds more joined rallies in New England while organizers also have plans to gather in capital cites to the west.

Activists have promoted the "Guns Across America" rallies primarily via social media. They're being held days after President Barack Obama unveiled a sweeping package of gun-control proposals.

First-term Texas state Rep. Steve Toth is among attendees in Austin. He's one of several state officials nationwide who've proposed trying to curb federal gun restrictions in states.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) He's already gotten the Oprah treatment. Now Lance Armstrong is headed for the silver screen.

Paramount Pictures and J.J. Abrams' production company, Bad Robot, are planning a biopic about the disgraced cyclist, a studio spokeswoman said Friday.

They've secured the rights to New York Times reporter Juliet Macur's upcoming book "Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong," due out in June. Macur covered the seven-time Tour de France winner for over a decade.

No director, writer, star or start date have been set.

Armstrong is in the midst of a two-part interview with Oprah Winfrey in which he admits to using performance-enhancing drugs to reach his historic victories, something he'd defiantly denied for years. The International Olympic Committee stripped him of his 2000 bronze medal this week.

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WASHINGTON (AP) Three days of inaugural celebrations kicked off in Washington Saturday, with President Barack Obama heading up a National Day of Service ahead of his swearing-in for a second term.

The president and first lady, Michelle Obama, planned to volunteer in the Washington area Saturday. Vice President Joe Biden, his wife, Jill, and others members of his family spent the morning filling care packages for U.S. troops serving overseas, veterans and first responders.

Obama added the day of service projects in 2009 and hopes it will become a tradition for future presidents.

Volunteers also gathered on the National Mall on a crisp, sunny morning in Washington for a service summit. In a videotaped message played at the event, Mrs. Obama said the volunteers were "showing once again that by giving back, we can lift up our fellow citizens and build stronger, healthier communities."

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton, the honorary chairwoman of the volunteer effort, kicked off the summit by praising her family's "chain of service."

The president will be officially sworn in for his second term on Sunday in a small ceremony at the White House. He'll take the oath of office again on Monday before hundreds of thousands of people on the National Mall, followed by the traditional parade and formal balls.

Thousands of workers and volunteers were making final preparations for the celebration. Hotels and government buildings along the parade route were adorned with red, white and blue bunting. White tents, trailers and generators lined the Mall.

Yet there is decidedly less energy surrounding Obama's second inauguration than there was in 2009. That history-making event drew 1.8 million people for the swearing-in of the nation's first black president.

This time, Obama takes the oath of office following a bruising presidential campaign and four years of partisan fighting. He's more experienced in the ways of Washington. He has the gray hair and lower approval ratings to show for it.

For at least the inauguration weekend, the fiscal fights and legislative wrangling will be put aside in favor of pomp and circumstance.

The White House did not say in advance what Obama's service project would be. In 2009, he helped spruce up a shelter for homeless teens in one of Washington's poorer neighborhoods then visited wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The White House sees the call to service as a way for Americans across the country to honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. The day Obama publicly takes the oath of office marks King's birthday, and 2013 is the 50th anniversary of the civil rights leader's March on Washington.

Also Saturday, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden were hosting the Kids' Inaugural Concert, an evening event paying special tribute to military spouses and children.

The crowds pouring into Washington were expected to be far smaller than they were four years ago, and there will be fewer inaugural balls for the president and first lady to attend. Still, Obama's swearing-in at the Capitol is expected to draw up to 800,000 people, which would make it the largest second.

The president was still working on his inaugural address heading into the weekend. He isn't expected to delve deeply into the policy objectives he'll tackle in a second term, but the tone and theme of the speech will set the stage for the policy fights to come.

Aides said he will make the point that while the nation's political system doesn't require politicians to resolve all of their differences, it does require Washington to act on issues where there is common ground. He will speak about how the nation's core principles can still guide a country that has changed immensely since its founding.

Temperatures were forecast to fall throughout the weekend and be in the 30s on Monday when the crowds gather along the parade route that will take Obama from Capitol Hill to the White House.

Despite scaling back on some of the revelry, the inauguration will be a star-studded affair. Top acts including Beyonce, Katy Perry and Brad Paisley have signed on to perform at the weekend's events.

The inauguration also is bringing thousands of Obama campaign staffers and donors to Washington, with many getting invitations for tours and other events at the White House. On Friday, the president and first lady held two private events for donors who helped finance his 2012 campaign.

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Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.

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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

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(Reuters) - Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o has denied ever being in on an elaborate hoax, telling ESPN he had believed his relationship with a woman who turned out to be an online fabrication was real.

The tragic story of his girlfriend and her injuries from a car accident and death from leukaemia was one of the most widely recounted U.S. sports stories last year as Notre Dame made a drive toward the national championship game.

"I wasn't faking it," Te'o told ESPN in an off-camera interview on Friday, excerpts of which were posted on ESPN.com. "I wasn't part of this."

When asked whether he had made up the tale to support his chances of winning the Heisman Trophy, the highest individual honour for a college football player, Te'o replied: "Well, when they hear the facts they'll know. They'll know that there is no way that I could be part of this."

The interview was Te'o's first since the sports blog Deadspin.com on Wednesday exposed the heart-wrenching tale of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, and her death as a hoax and that a friend of Te'o's named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was behind it.

Te'o told ESPN that Tuiasosopo called him on Wednesday and admitted he was behind the hoax and it was then Te'o was sure the woman had never existed.

"I don't wish an ill thing to somebody," Te'o said of Tuiasosopo, according to ESPN. "I just hope he learns. I think embarrassment is big enough."

Outside Tuiasosopo's home in Palmdale, California, on Thursday, a member of his family who did not identify himself told reporters they had no comment.

Te'o acknowledged in a statement on Wednesday that he had never met the woman in person, though he considered her his girlfriend and said he had been duped.

In the ESPN interview, Te'o said he tried to video chat with her several times, but she could never be seen on the other end. He also said he intentionally told people stories about her in a way that would make people believe they had met in person.

"I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn't meet," Te'o said.

NATIONAL PROMINENCE

ESPN said the interview was held at a training facility in Florida where Te'o has been preparing for the National Football League draft. The star linebacker was expected to be a high draft pick before the hoax was revealed.

Te'o sprang to national prominence last fall when he led Notre Dame to a victory over Michigan State within days of learning his grandmother and girlfriend had both died. The grandmother's death was real.

The story grew to become a big feature in coverage of the team, which went undefeated in the regular season and reached the national championship game. Alabama defeated Notre Dame in the title game on January 7.

Notre Dame, one of the most powerful institutions in U.S. collegiate athletics, held a news conference within hours of the Deadspin.com article to say that Te'o had been duped.

Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said on Friday the Indiana university was comfortable, based on a private investigation it launched and on four years experience with Te'o, that he was the victim and encouraged Te'o to speak publicly.

(Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Eric Beech)

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What s the big idea?

That s what Yahoo News asked its readers this month: Which one big idea could help the country address our most pressing national problem? Which solution even if it's "out there" or controversial could go far in tackling an issue that affects millions of Americans?

After Barack Obama delivers his second inaugural address on Monday, the country will again face another four years of the same hurdles, including a still-smarting economy, gun violence, foreign entanglements and health care battles.

How do we hammer away at those problems in his next term and beyond? We requested creative and outside-the-box ideas that may not have been tried before. (Yet they still had to be credible, grounded in reality and reasonably doable. As we admonished previously: Sorry, no superintelligent monkey doctors.)

You offered a swarm of interesting brainstorms for instance: mandatory gun ownership, drug legalization, congressional penalties, hemp farming, Social Security for everyone, and mandatory recycling and we found experts in various fields to comment on the feasibility of your proposals.

Here are excerpts from several ideas, followed by reaction from experts we asked to comment.

We received hundreds of suggestions, so we ve created a Tumblr that displays many more.

John Jackson, co-owner of Capitol City Arms Supply, holds an AR-15 rifle for sale at his business in Springfield, Ill. (Seth Perlman/AP)

GUN VIOLENCE

For better gun control, we need public gun education By Phil Dotree

To effectively combat gun violence, we need a complete shift in the tone of our conversation. Here's a radical suggestion that will never gain traction: required gun education in public schools. Not a trip to the firing range, not sharpshooting lessons, but a brief addition to every health class that includes basic gun safety.

A basic education would help to dispel some of the myths that lead to impractical gun legislation. For instance, many gun-control advocates don't know that "silencers" don't actually silence guns, (they just suppress the noise) or that automatic weapons are already highly regulated. Education might compel a more civil discourse, which would allow for better laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.

More of Dotree s proposal.

Experts responses:

Children understand guns, but it's adults who refuse action by Tom Mauser

After my son Daniel was shot and killed at Columbine, I found myself receiving suggestions for how to stem gun violence. One was this simplistic notion that if we just better educated our children about the danger of guns, they would not abuse them. As I responded back then, I think the two Columbine killers would have laughed at the irony of being given a gun education class.

In a proposal, Yahoo News reader Phil Dotree makes a reasonable call for gun education as a "brief addition to every health class," but then also says he wishes to dispel myths that lead to bad gun legislation. Sorry, but it s adults who write gun legislation, not kids, and we haven t done a very good job.

More of Mauser s response.

A public school gun education would have merit, pitfalls By Dr. Harry L. Wilson

Phil Dotree s call for education on firearms has serious merit. Education on any topic is inherently useful, and the debate over guns would benefit tremendously with more knowledge and less heat. That said, there would likely be a long and protracted battle over what would be included in the curriculum. Survey data suggest that those who are more familiar with firearms are less fearful of guns, and they are less likely to favor gun control measures.

The unfortunate reality in the current gun control debate is that while there may be some common ground between the two sides, there is so much mutual distrust that any consensus is difficult to reach. One person s "common-sense gun regulation" is another person s "infringement on Second Amendment rights."

More of Wilson s response.

High school graduation. (bredgur/Flickr)

EDUCATION

Add a 13th school year for job and college preparation By Sylvia Cochran

Many of today's high school graduates are woefully unprepared for entering a competitive job market or succeeding in college. The National Review Online notes that nationwide approximately 40 percent of college students drop out, which gives the United States the dubious distinction of having "the highest college dropout rate in the industrialized world."

Education reform must therefore target all of America's high schoolers. The best way to prepare them for real-life job market conditions is the addition of a 13th school year. This would apply to up-and-coming grads intending to go to college as well as those planning on joining the work force immediately after graduation.

More of Cochran s proposal.

Expert s response:

A 15th year, but who s counting? By Dr. Robert Maranto

On reading Sylvia Cochran s cogent, but ultimately misguided, proposal for a required "13th year" after high school but before college or work, I could not help but recall the old Woody Allen quip about a restaurant with awful food "and such small portions." Presumably, what some schools fail to do in 12 counting kindergarten and preschool really 14 years the addition of another year will fix.

That works in models but not in the real world, where real people have other ideas.

Given such goals, lacking rigor for 14 years does not make success more likely in a 15th; on the contrary, it lets kids and teachers relax since nothing really counts until extra innings. And anyway, kids vary. An extra year would be a boon to some and hell for others. Why force everyone into the same timeframe?

More of Maranto s response.

Jonathon Quatela of the Salvation Army helps unload meals to Hurricane Sandy victims in New York on Nov. 1, 2012. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

VOLUNTEERING

Uncle Sam should want us to serve By Thomas Daniels

In 1963, "serving your country" for approximately half of the citizenry of the United States meant being shipped to a foreign land and putting their lives and health in constant danger. Fifty years later, "serving your country" for most of the citizenry of the United States is a platitude we offer to veterans in a paltry thanks for their real sacrifice.

Americans have become entitled, less intelligent and less healthy. And in another 50 years, the America we know may be non-existent because of it. Americans need to get over themselves and realize that just because you are born in this country does not make you special, that there is a price to pay for the life we enjoy. Requiring everyone in the country serve the country for two years would make us all more intelligent, healthier, more patriotic and more grateful for the life that we do have.

More of Daniels proposal.

Expert s response:

Required national service would serve needy, give meaningful work By Dr. Nina Eliasoph

It might seem outrageous to suggest that such service be mandatory. But it's no more outlandish to suggest that people should be forced to serve their nations by helping people survive and thrive than it is to suggest that people be forced to serve their nations by killing people, is it? All nations need people to take care of what's shared roads, schools, parks, beaches and all nations need people to take care of their old people, young people, sick and disabled people.

As it stands now, people get care only if their families are able to give it or can afford to pay for it. But with this program, if a government-sponsored volunteer helped a disabled toddler, for example, the parents' wealth wouldn't matter. The kid would get the care.

More of Eliasoph s response.

Early voters in Salisbury, Md., line up to cast their ballots in the presidential election on Oct. 31, 2012. (Alex Brandon/AP)

VOTING AND THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Make online voting mandatory; abolish the electoral college By Laurie Jo Miller Farr

Approximately half the Americans eligible to vote in the 2012 presidential election didn't. And many of those who did vote were subjected to waiting hours at polls on Election Day. Despite the typically unimpressive turnout, this presidential campaign was the most expensive ever waged. The Associated Press pegs that figure at an astonishing $2 billion, including $900 million spent on television ads. Two-thirds was dumped in just four states: Florida, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina. Another five swing states that tally up hefty electoral votes defined the race.

Something is wrong. Here's how we could fix it.

More of Farr s proposal.

Voting shouldn't be mandatory, but it should be easier By Dr. Peter Hanson

The case for making voting as easy as possible is strong. The United States requires its citizens to jump through more hoops to vote than other countries and this depresses turnout. For example, our population is mobile but Americans must re-register to vote each time they move. Inevitably, some people who want to vote fail to re-register in time and are unable to cast a ballot. Simple reforms such as allowing people to register on Election Day would help more citizens to participate in our democracy.

Mandatory voting is less appealing. On the pro side, it might make our pool of voters a better reflection of our actual population. People who are poor, young or minority face barriers that make them less likely to vote. Requiring everyone to vote might reduce this disparity and ensure that all parts of society are heard more equally.

More of Hanson s response.

Check out additional ideas from readers and add your own at our "What's the Big Idea?" Tumblr site.

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PASADENA, Calif. (AP) Matthew Macfadyen is perfectly presentable in jeans and a crewneck sweater that coordinates nicely with the blue of his eyes.

But the look is far from the elegant attire he wore as Mr. Darcy opposite Keira Knightley's Elizabeth in the 2005 film "Pride & Prejudice." And his posture is just as casual, which he acknowledges might offend the aristocratic character's diehard fans.

"You're slouching! What are you doing? Stand up straight, man!" Macfadyen says, teasing himself.

He looks back fondly on what he calls the "iconic" role drawn from Jane Austen's novel. But the British actor who's also known to audiences for his part as an intelligence officer in the series "MI-5" ("Spooks" in the U.K.) welcomes the chance to switch gears.

"I, as most actors, want to mix it up and do different things. Otherwise it gets boring and tiresome, not only for yourself but for everyone else seeing you do the same kind of thing," he said. "The joy of being an actor is to play different parts, do something different."

Macfadyen's latest chance for diversity comes in "Ripper Street," an 1880s police drama set on the gritty and untamed streets of London's East End around the period that serial killer Jack the Ripper terrorized the area.

The series, starring Macfadyen as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, debuts Saturday (9 p.m. EST) on BBC America after starting its British run this month. BBC America is home to another rough-and-tumble, 18th-century police drama, "Copper," set in 1860s New York City and the channel's first original scripted series.

The mysterious and brutal Jack the Ripper has been recycled throughout pop culture in films including 1979's "Time After Time" and 2001's "From Hell" with Johnny Depp. But series creator Richard Warlow said the killer is a backdrop and invisible character for "Ripper Street."

"What we wanted to do really was to tell stories about the streets down which he walked and committed his crimes in the wake of those terrible murders," Warlow said, "and how it affected the community and, most importantly, the police that tried and failed to catch him."

Each episode will include what he called a "stand-alone crime" as well as pull at the thread of Reid's life, including those surrounding him at work and at home.

Macfadyen said he was reluctant to take on another series after two plus-seasons on "MI-5" because of TV's demanding production schedules. Then the "Ripper Street" pilot script came his way last year.

"I thought the Jack the Ripper thing had been done before ... but I loved it. The thing that was most attractive was the language and the way he (Warlow) constructs the sentences ... they feel very muscular without feeling sort of wanky and silly. ... They feel very muscular."

There is an antiquated eloquence to the dialogue that contrasts with the drama's mean streets and violent sexuality of the first case tackled by Reid and his cohorts, police Sgt. Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn, "Game of Thrones") and American forensics whiz Capt. Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg, "The Ex List").

Macfadyen said he was drawn to his character's modern sensibility.

Reid isn't "a sort of stock detective character. He's a very free thinking, forward-looking kind of man, not a sort of jaded 'seen it all' copper. So I was intrigued by that," he said.

The detective's viewpoint is so expansive that he can't resist admiring the potential of an early version of a motion picture camera even when he's just thwarted its use in making a 19th-century snuff film.

The scene had slipped Macfadyen's mind when he watched the episode at home in London and his wife, actress Keeley Hawes ("Upstairs Downstairs"), suddenly took alarmed note of what was unfolding on the screen.

"My 12-year-old stepson was watching and we said, 'OK, bedtime!" said Macfadyen, who has two children with Hawes.

But he considers the show "punchy and brave" for a mature audience and would like to see it go at least another season, in part for selfish reasons.

"Jerome, Adam and I get on so well, very happily. I know actors always say they love each other," he said, then smiled. "That's not always the case."

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Online:

http://www.bbcamerica.com

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STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The crash of a train into a low-rise apartment building in Sweden this week was an accident and not the fault of a cleaner who was the only person hurt, state prosecutors said on Friday.

Swedish police and prosecutors began an investigation into the accident on Tuesday in which a train ploughed past the end of the line at a depot, vaulted a narrow sidestreet and crashed into an apartment block in the upscale Stockholm suburb of Saltsjobaden.

"Several circumstances point now to the fact that the train began moving due to an accident," the state prosecution service said in a statement. "There is no longer anything which indicates that the woman drove the train away on purpose."

The service said it had found serious breaches of security on the train. The woman, who is still in hospital and with whom prosecutors have not been able to speak, was no longer suspected of committing a crime and an order for her detention has been lifted.

Prosecutors began investigating the case as one of endangering the public, but that might now be changed to one of a breach of laws on working conditions, the prosecution service said.

(Reporting by Patrick Lannin, editing by Paul Casciato)

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IN THE FLORIDA EVERGLADES (AP) The man known as "Alligator Ron" has a lifetime of experience in the Florida Everglades, a fleet of airboats at his disposal and knows the habitats of furry prey for large reptiles. He still couldn't lead a pack of hunters to a single Burmese python.

That's the catch in Florida's "Python Challenge": Even experienced hunters with special permits to regularly stalk the exotic snake through Florida's swamplands are having trouble finding them for a state-sponsored competition.

"When these snakes are in the water, in the vegetation, they blend in naturally to where you can't hardly see them," said state wildlife commissioner Ron Bergeron, whose nickname is emblazoned on the rudder of his black airboat, over the image of him riding an alligator.

The vast majority of roughly 1,000 people who signed up to hunt Burmese pythons on public lands from Jan. 12 through Feb. 10 are amateurs when it comes to pythons. Only about 30 hold permits for harvesting pythons throughout the year.

The permit holders might have a slight edge when it comes to handling snakes, but the tan, splotchy pythons have natural camouflage that gives them an important advantage in the ecosystem they have invaded.

As of Thursday, 21 pythons had been killed for the contest, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

It's hard to pin down exactly how many Burmese pythons slither through Florida's Everglades, but officials say their effect is glaringly obvious. According to a study released last year, sightings of raccoons, opossums, bobcats, rabbits and other mammals in the Everglades are down as much as 99 percent in areas where pythons are known to live.

It's believed that the pythons are devouring the native wildlife and officials worry the snakes' voracious appetite will undermine the ongoing, multimillion-dollar effort to restore natural water flow through the Everglades.

Bergeron led U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., into the Everglades to hunt pythons Thursday afternoon. They splashed from their airboat through knee-deep water into several islands that rise in small bumps above the sawgrass, but they always emerged empty-handed.

They didn't flush out any of the mammals Bergeron thought he'd see, either. The only thing they did find: signs of feral hogs, another problematic invasive species.

"Rabbits were like rats. Growing up, you saw them everywhere," said Jim Howard, a Miami native and a python permit holder participating in the contest. "I haven't seen a rabbit in 20 years. I don't see foxes. I hardly see anything."

He has caught a python in the Everglades in each of the last two years, though. Each was more than 12 feet long and contained more than 50 eggs.

He returned to those locations Wednesday, poking under ferns and discarded wooden boards with a hook at the end of a 3-foot-long stick. All he found were the sheddings of some large snake each transparent scale was the size of a fingertip.

After spending hours steering his boat along 14 miles of canals to levees and embankments where pythons might lurk, Howard extended the hook toward the dense, impenetrable grass that stretched all the way to the horizon, with no landmarks or vantage points.

Millions of acres in any direction in the Everglades are exactly the same. From that perspective, the hunt for well-hidden pythons seems futile.

"We're looking at inches," Howard said.

Officials say the number of pythons caught during the contest isn't as important as the data they provide.

"I'm going to be ecstatic if we see 100," said Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida professor of wildlife ecology who is helping the commission with the contest.

He continued to low-ball expectations for the final tally. "I'm happy with 11. I'm going to be happy with whatever we have. The small number only proves that they're really hard to find," he said.

The state hopes to use the information from python necropsies particularly what's in their stomachs to improve their attempts at dealing with the snakes.

"Our list of what pythons eat is not complete yet," Mazzotti said.

The population of Burmese pythons, an invasive species in Florida, likely developed from pets released into the wild, either intentionally or in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. They can grow to be more than 20 feet long and have no natural enemies in Florida other than very large alligators or cold weather, which drives heat-seeking snakes onto sunny roads and levees.

Florida prohibits owning or selling pythons for use as pets, and federal law bans importation and interstate sale of the species.

Mazzotti had one tip for hunters frustrated by the pythons' near-invisibility: Stop and listen for a dry, rustling sound in the grass.

"It sounds like something large," he said.

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Online:

Python Challenge: http://pythonchallenge.org/

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Follow Jennifer Kay on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jnkay

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - The tip that led to the revelation that one of the most widely recounted U.S. sports narratives of the past year was a hoax came to the editors of an online sports blog as many of their news tips do: an unsolicited email.

That email led Deadspin.com assignment editor Timothy Burke on the hunt of a story that exposed the heart-wrenching tale of standout Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o's dead girlfriend as a fabrication, Burke said on CNN on Thursday.

Te'o sprang to national prominence last fall when the senior co-captain was seen heroically leading the Fighting Irish to an underdog victory against the Michigan State Spartans within days of learning his grandmother had died. Moreover, it was widely reported, Te'o's girlfriend had died of leukemia just hours after his grandmother's death.

From that point, Te'o's narrative was a prominent feature in coverage of the team, which has a dedicated following and whose games are televised nationally each week.

Notre Dame went on to an undefeated regular season, culminating in a berth in the national championship game, which the Fighting Irish lost to the Alabama Crimson Tide on January 7.

"We got an email last week at Deadspin.com that said 'Hey, there's something real weird about Lennay Kekua, Manti Te'o's allegedly dead girlfriend. You guys should check it out,'" Burke said.

The email prompted Burke and co-author Jack Dickey to begin searching online for background on Kekua. "So we start Googling the name Lennay Kekua. We can't find any evidence of this person that wasn't attached to stories about her being Manti Te'o's dead girlfriend."

Their investigation led about a week later to a 4,000-word expose, published Wednesday under the headline "Blarney," that painstakingly debunked the story of Kekua's existence. The story went viral online.

Within hours of its publication, officials at Notre Dame, one of the most powerful institutions in college football and U.S. collegiate athletics overall, held a hastily organized press conference to assert that Te'o had been duped in a hoax perpetrated by a friend of his.

The girlfriend, who called herself Kekua and claimed to be a Stanford University graduate, was merely an online persona who "ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia," university spokesman Dennis Brown said in a statement.

Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said the university learned of the hoax from Te'o on December 26. Te'o answered questions forthrightly and private investigators uncovered several things that pointed to Te'o being a victim in the case, Swarbrick said.

Deadspin's Burke said he remains skeptical of this being a hoax perpetrated on Te'o rather than by Te'o.

"Ask yourself why and what incentive a person would have to execute such a lengthy, time-consuming and expensive con that would involve multiple people and essentially consume his entire life just to screw around with a guy that he knows?" Burke said on CNN.

Deadspin.com said the woman whose photograph was frequently shown on TV and in news reports about Kekua was actually a young California woman who had never met or communicated with Te'o. The website declined to identify her by name.

On Thursday, TV newsmagazine "Inside Edition" said the woman in the photograph was a 23-year-old marketing professional in Los Angeles named Diane O'Meara. Inside Edition, which is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution, said O'Meara was a former classmate of one of Te'o's friends. It Aredid not give the friend's name.

In the expose published Wednesday, Deadspin.com said a friend of Te'o's named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo was "the man behind" the hoax.

Outside Tuiasosopo's home in Palmdale, California on Thursday, a member of his family who did not identify himself told reporters, "Please, we have no comment. Please respect that."

The Te'o hoax is the latest black eye Notre Dame's legendary football program has suffered in recent years.

In 2011, the school was fined $42,000 by an Indiana agency over the death of football videographer Declan Sullivan, 20, who died in October 2010 after a hydraulic lift he was using to record practice toppled over in high winds.

In 2010, Elizabeth "Lizzy" Seeberg, a freshman at nearby St. Mary's College, killed herself ten days after accusing a Notre Dame football player of sexual battery. Her family began questioning the campus police department's reluctance to gather evidence and a 15-day delay in interviewing the accused.

After a federal investigation into the matter, the school agreed to revise its policies on sexual misconduct.

(Additional reporting by Dan Burns, Dana Feldman, David Bailey and Mary Wisniewski.; Editing by Vicki Allen, Greg McCune and Andrew Hay)

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BRASILIA (Reuters) - A judge in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state has confiscated copies of wildly-popular trilogy "Fifty Shades of Grey" and other erotic books from two stores, saying proprietors must seal the novels to prevent children leafing through them.

Police and judicial officials in the Rio town of Macae seized 64 books including 11 copies of the "Fifty Shades of Grey" series by British author E.L. James after the shops flouted Brazilian laws by failing to conceal erotic images and content deemed inappropriate for under-18s.

Officials will return the books within five days if the bookshop proprietors ensure they are sealed before being put back on display.

Judge Raphael Baddini de Queiroz Campos from the local family tribunal acted after finding a group of children gathered around a window display at one of the town's bookshops where erotic content was on display, the Rio de Janeiro justice service's web site said.

(Reporting by Peter Murphy; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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