The Lede Blog: Video Suggests Missile Hit Syrian University

Video posted online by Syrian opposition activists appears to have been recorded during the second of two explosions at Syria’s Aleppo University last week.

At least one of the two explosions that killed more than 80 people at Syria’s Aleppo University last week was caused by a missile, according to two analysts who examined new video of the attack posted online by Syrian opposition activists.

Traces of what appears to be a missile descending moments before the huge blast can be seen in three still frames taken from the brief video clip, which seems to have been recorded on the university campus as the second rocket shattered a dormitory.

As my colleague C.J. Chivers noted on his blog, if the new video of the second blast is authentic, those frames and the loud whirr of the missile just before the explosion, appear to rule out initial claims from the government that the explosions were caused by car bombs.

Like another clip of the second explosion posted online last week, the new video does not resolve the question of whether the rockets were fired by Syrian Air Force jets, as some activists claimed, or were ballistic missiles. Late on the day of the attack, Syrian officials cited by the state-run news media claimed that the rebels had fired two rockets at the school, although the insurgents are not known to possess ballistic missiles.

While no image of a jet has yet appeared, some opposition activists insisted that they did see a plane before the explosions. An Aleppo blogger who has been critical of the armed rebellion on his @edwardedark Twitter feed wrote last week that he heard what he took to be a jet just before the blast.

As my colleagues Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt reported in December, Obama administration officials said that President Bashar al-Assad’s military had fired at least six Soviet-designed Scud missiles — not known for their precision — at rebel fighters north of Aleppo last month from a base outside Damascus.

An undated YouTube clip, apparently recorded from Syrian state television by an Israeli defense news magazine, appears to show that Syria’s military has openly test-fired Scuds and other missiles.

Video of Syria’s military testing missiles apparently recorded from Syrian state television by an Israeli defense news magazine.

According to Joseph Holliday, a former Army intelligence officer and a senior analyst at the Institute for the Study of War who studied the clip for The Lede, the video strongly suggests that a missile struck the university. “There’s no jet noise before or after the strike and only missiles would be supersonic – the ripping noise at the end is just the missile ripping through the air,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Add to all that the size of the blast definitely seems more like a ballistic missile than a bomb.”

Mr. Holliday added:

This also solves the mystery of who would target the university and why, and I think the answer is that the regime didn’t mean to target the university, but their Scuds just aren’t accurate enough and they screwed up – big time. I say Scuds here, but I can’t confirm whether or not it’s a different type of ballistic missile, it’s just that they have more Scuds in inventory than anything else.

Mr. Holliday showed the video to another analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, Christopher Harmer, a former Naval officer, who observed: “I am 90 percent confident that is either a Scud or a large surface to surface rocket – that is much bigger than a Qassam or Katyusha. Might be a Fajr-5 rocket.” He arrived at that conclusion, he wrote, by the following process of elimination:

R.P.G.? No — explosion is too big. Mortar? No — explosion is too big for the size of mortars in theater. Artillery? No — explosion is too big for any of the artillery pieces in theater. Also, if it were fired by artillery, they would have heard firing. Air-dropped bomb? Possible, but unlikely. No visual indication of jets in the area.

Based on size of explosion, sound of inbound projectile, assess this is either a large rocket (Fajr-5) series or a Scud ballistic missile.

On the possibility that the bomb might have been dropped by a jet, Mr. Harmer wrote:

I don’t buy it. You can hear something like an aircraft engine at 0:40, but it sounds more like wind to me than jet engine. Also, if this were an air attack, I think there are enough photographers up there that somebody would have caught it on video. The day is clear – no clouds or fog. The aircraft would have been visible.

Separate technical issue – Syrian Air Force has old jets. They make a lot of noise. At the altitudes they have been flying at, we almost certainly would have heard the jet engine noise. It is possible it was an air attack, but if so, it would have been a fairly high altitude attack, high enough that the jet was not visible to any of the amateur photographers on the ground, and high enough that we did not clearly hear the jet engine.

In a note to The Lede, Mr. Chivers, a former marine who has reported from Syria and written extensively about the insurgent arsenal for The Times and his personal blog, observed: “this now appears to have been a military strike, with ordnance that the Free Syrian Army does not have.”

He added:

The thing about these kind of attacks is they seem to be inherently inaccurate. I’ve been going to craters in Syria in recent days trying to figure out exactly what types of missiles are involved. So far, still stumped, though I have some scraps of their remains and have circulated pictures to some friends. But they simply do not seem to come near their targets in many cases — they miss by a kilometer or more. And that may be what happened here.

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BlackBerry Z10 Looks Like iPhone 5, Takes on Siri






RIM is set to announce the first devices running its new BlackBerry 10 operating system at an event on January 30. A lucky few, however, have already gotten their hands on what looks to be the new hardware, including German site TelekomPresse.


[More from Mashable: Watch These iPhone Knockoffs Get Bulldozed]






The site has the BlackBerry Z10, a touchscreen device with a similar look to some of the other popular smartphones out there — especially the iPhone 5.


Curious to see how the two compared, they put them side-by-side in the video above, running through both the physical design of both devices as well as some of their features.


[More from Mashable: RIM May License BlackBerry 10 to Other Manufacturers]


Notably, the video shows a Siri-like voice control functionality in BlackBerry 10, that we haven’t seen previously. As you can see in the test above, it beats Siri for speed.


SEE ALSO: RIM Adds 15,000 BlackBerry 10 Apps in a Weekend


While similar at first glance, design-wise the two phones do have some differences. The Z10 has a 4.2-inch screen, slightly larger than the iPhone 5’s 4-inch display. Both phones have a power button on top, however, the button on the BlackBerry is in the center of the top of the phone, while the iPhone’s is on the right on the device.


The volume controls are on the right side of the Z10, and left side of the iPhone 5. When it comes to power, the connection for the iPhone 5 is on the bottom of the device with the headphone jack, while the HDMI and USB connections on the Z10 are located on the left.


Check out the video above for a look at the full comparison of the two devices. Are you looking forward to BlackBerry 10? Can the new OS save RIM? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.


BlackBerry 10 Lock Screen


You unlock a BlackBerry 10 device by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.


Click here to view this gallery.


This story originally published on Mashable here.


Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Denise Richards's Dog Dies at 13















UPDATED
01/22/2013 at 04:45 PM EST

Originally published 01/22/2013 at 03:45 PM EST







Denise Richards's dog Hank


Courtesy Denise Richards; Inset: Cindy Ord/Getty


Denise Richards is mourning an old friend.

The actress's beloved French bulldog died on Sunday and she took to Twitter to memorialize him.

"Last night we lost our beloved Hank … I will miss him dearly, 13 yrs old … been there for me thru it all Best dog ever & part of our family," she wrote, with a picture of the black pup.

The mother of three girls, and ex-wife of actor Charlie Sheen, has a large pack of cats and dogs that will comfort her during this difficult time.

Most recently, she adopted Lily, a rescue puppy displaced by Hurricane Sandy in November.

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S&P 500 ends at five-year high on banks, materials

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank and commodity shares led the Standard & Poor's 500 to a fresh five-year closing high on Tuesday on hopes that the global economy continues to mend.


The Dow Jones industrial average also ended at a five-year high, buoyed by an advance in Travelers' shares after the insurer's earnings.


The market also gained on signals that Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives aim on Wednesday to pass a nearly four-month extension of the U.S. debt limit. The White House welcomed the move, saying it defuses fears of a U.S. default on its debt.


Investors, however, were cautious ahead of an increase in earnings reports and as the S&P 500 rose for a fifth straight day.


Jack de Gan, chief investment officer of Harbor Advisory Corp, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, said better economic numbers in the United States and China, as well as more stabilization in Europe, were driving buyers into sectors associated with economic growth.


"Any (bearish) news could turn us down for a day or so," he said, referring to the recent string of gains.


Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold led gains in the materials sector after it reported a 16 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit on higher production. Shares gained 4.6 percent to $35.19.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 62.51 points, or 0.46 percent, to 13,712.21 at the close. The S&P 500 <.spx> gained 6.58 points, or 0.44 percent, to 1,492.56. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 8.47 points or 0.27 percent, to 3,143.18.


Signs of improved sentiment toward world growth were seen in European bond markets. The yield on Portugal's benchmark 10-year note fell below 6 percent for the first time since late 2010 on news that the country was set to tap the bond market this week for the first time since it was bailed out in 2011.


Technology shares underperformed as concerns about Apple's ability to continue to grow at hyper speed and a weak outlook from Intel Corp diminished optimism about the sector's prospects. The S&P technology index <.splrct> added 0.16 percent, compared with 0.9 percent gains in energy <.spny>, financials <.spsy> and basic materials <.splrcm>.


In extended-hours trading, Google shares rose 4.5 percent to above $734 after the world's No. 1 search engine reported a jump in fourth-quarter revenue, while IBM added more than 3 percent to trade above $200 after the world's largest technology services company reported earnings and revenue that beat estimates.


During the regular session, shares of blue chips Travelers , DuPont , and Verizon Communications rose following earnings


Travelers rose 2.2 percent to $77.95, a closing high. DuPont's shares gained 1.8 percent to $47.82 and Verizon's stock rose 0.9 percent to $42.94.


Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning showed that of the 74 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 62.2 percent have topped expectations, roughly even with the 62 percent average since 1994, but below the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.


Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to have risen 2.6 percent. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast from the start of earnings season, but well below the 9.9 percent fourth-quarter earnings forecast from October 1, the data showed.


U.S.-listed shares of Research in Motion rallied 13 percent to $17.90 a day after its chief executive said the Canadian company may consider strategic alliances with other companies after the launch of devices powered by RIM's new BlackBerry 10 operating system.


About 6.2 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below last year's daily average of about 6.45 billion shares.


On the NYSE, advancers outnumbered decliners by a ratio of roughly 7 to 3. On the Nasdaq, five stocks rose for every three that fell.


(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)



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U.N. Agency Warns of Rising Unemployment





PARIS — More than 197 million people worldwide are jobless, and an additional 39 million have simply given up looking for work, a United Nations agency said on Monday, warning that government budget-balancing was hurting employment and would probably lead to more job losses soon.







Luca Bruno/Associated Press

Perusing job postings in Milan. More than 197 million people worldwide are unemployed.







With global growth stalling five years after the financial crisis upended much of the world economy, the number of jobless is expected to rise by 5.1 million this year, to more than 202 million, the International Labor Organization said in a special report. And it predicted there would be a further three million newly jobless people next year.


High unemployment rates in the developed world — 7.8 percent in the United States, 11.8 percent in the euro zone — weigh on demand and hold back economic growth. Global gross domestic product will probably expand about 3.6 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund said in October, below its previous forecast.


Addressing the issue of unemployment last Thursday, the I.M.F.’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, urged governments to focus on “growth that can actually deliver jobs.”


“We stopped the collapse,” Ms. Lagarde said during a news conference in Washington, warning about the risks to growth posed by complacency in Europe and difficult budget negotiations in the United States. “We should avoid the relapse, and it’s not time to relax.”


The International Labor Organization found that macroeconomic imbalances “have been passed on to the labor market to a significant degree.” With aggregate demand weakening, employment “has been further hit by fiscal austerity programs in a number of countries, which often involved direct cutbacks in employment and wages, directly impacting labor markets.”


More troubling, it said, was that while governments had sought to counter the effects of the financial crisis with fiscal stimulus, later austerity measures in some countries appeared to be reinforcing the downturn.


The effects of the recession in Europe are being felt elsewhere through “a spillover effect,” the organization found, mostly through the mechanism of reduced demand for foreign goods, but also in the form of volatile capital inflows in places like Latin America and the Caribbean. These forces have left policy makers with difficult choices about how to keep soaring currencies in check without strangling economic growth.


The agency said that it was common for the rate of job creation to be slow after a financial crisis, but that there had been “a short-lived respite” for developed countries beginning in 2010. That period has now ended, and once again “further job restructuring is likely before a stronger rebound can be expected in labor markets.”


More people were simply leaving the job market altogether, particularly in the developed world, with labor force participation rates falling “dramatically,” it said, “masking the true extent of the jobs crisis.”


The ratio of employment-to-population ratio has fallen as much as four percentage points or more in some areas, it noted, and even where jobless rates have eased, the participation rate “has not yet recovered.”


The labor organization also spotlighted youth unemployment, noting that there were 73.8 million young people unemployed worldwide. It estimated that an additional half million would join the ranks of the jobless this year. The youth unemployment rate, now 12.6 percent, will probably rise to 12.9 percent by 2017, the agency said.


“The crisis has dramatically diminished the labor market prospects for young people,” the agency said, “as many experience long-term unemployment right from the start of their labor market entry, a situation that was never observed during earlier cyclical downturns.”


The agency said employment tapered off in 2011 before turning negative in 2012, with four million people added to global unemployment rolls last year.


But even countries in which jobless rates have not risen “often have experienced a worsening in job quality,” the organization said.


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 22, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the International Monetary Fund’s forecast for global growth in 2013, made in October. It forecast an expansion of 3.6 percent, not 3.3 percent, which was its revised 2012 forecast.




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Putin orders Russian computers to be protected after spy attacks






MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian authorities to protect state computers from hacking attacks, the Kremlin said on Monday, after an Internet security firm said a spy network had infiltrated government and embassy computers across the former Soviet bloc.


Dubbed Red October, the network used phishing attacks – or unsolicited emails to intended targets – to infect the computers of embassies and other state institutions with a program designed to harvest intelligence and send it back to a server.






Putin signed a decree on January 15 empowering the Federal Security Service (FSB) to “create a state system for the detection, prevention and liquidation of the effects of computer attacks on the information resources of the Russian Federation”.


State computer and telecommunications networks protected by the cyber security system should include those inside Russia and at its embassies and consulates abroad, according to the decree, which was published on a Kremlin website on Monday.


The Russian Internet security firm Kaspersky Labs said last week that the computer espionage network, discovered last October, had been seeking intelligence from Eastern European and ex-Soviet states including Russia since 2007. (http://r.reuters.com/mag45t )


Many of the systems infected belonged to diplomatic missions, Vitaly Kamluk, an expert in computer viruses at Kaspersky Labs, said last week. He declined to name specific countries.


Kamluk said last week that the network was still active, and that law enforcement agencies in several European countries were investigating it.


Kaspersky Labs said the infiltrators had created more than 60 domain names, mostly in Russia and Germany, that worked as proxies to hide the location of their real server.


The FSB declined immediate comment last week when asked whether Russia had taken action to bring any suspected members of the espionage network to justice, or acted to improve Internet security in light of the discovery.


The FSB – the main successor agency of the Soviet KGB – requested a written query, to which it has not yet responded. The Kremlin declined immediate comment on Monday when asked whether Putin’s decree was linked to Red October.


(Reporting by Steve Gutterman and Thomas Grove; Editing by Kevin Liffey)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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President Obama: I Love Michelle's New Bangs















01/21/2013 at 04:20 PM EST







President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama


Matthew Cavanaugh/EPA/Landov


First Lady Michelle Obama's new do has the approval of a very powerful man.

Following his official swearing-in ceremony on Sunday, President Barack Obama attended an Inauguration eve gala at the National Building Museum, where he complimented his wife's fresh look.

"To address the most significant event of the weekend, I love her bangs," Obama said, according to USA Today. "She looks good. She always looks good."

The First Lady debuted her cut in a photo released on her 49th birthday last Thursday – and showed it off (along with her Thom Browne dress) again at the Inauguration on Monday.

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European shares test two-year highs, yen volatile before BOJ

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares inched towards two-year highs on Monday, as a political attempt to break a budget impasse in the United States and expectations of aggressive Japanese stimulus bolstered the appetite for shares.


U.S. House Republican leaders said on Friday they would seek to pass a three-month extension of federal borrowing authority in the coming days to buy time for the Democrat-controlled Senate to pass a plan to shrink budget deficits.


European shares <.fteu3> were supported by the news <.eu>, but with no clear response from the Democrats and a thin session expected due to a market holiday in the United States, the impact on assets such as bonds and commodities was limited.


By 1500 GMT London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> were up 0.4 to 0.6 percent, leaving the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 within touching distance of a two-year high and MSCI's world index <.miwd00000pus> steady at a 20-month high. <.l><.eu/>


Expectations that the Bank of Japan will deliver a bold monetary easing plan at the end of its two-day meeting on Tuesday also supported shares and created choppy conditions in the currency market.


According to sources familiar with the BoJ's thinking, the government of new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the central bank have agreed to set 2 percent inflation as a new target, supplanting a softer 1 percent 'goal'.


The yen, which has fallen 13 percent against the dollar over the last two months as the shift in Japanese policy has taken shape, touched a new 2-1/2 year low in early trading but then firmed as traders cut short positions given the BOJ has often fallen short of market expectations.


"Investors are being mindful that the moves we have seen over the course of the last month or two are just worth locking in at least until we understand how the BOJ are really going to play in the future," said Jeremy Stretch, head of currency strategy at CIBC World Markets.


CURRENCY WARS


Japanese equities have surged in recent weeks in anticipation of a more aggressive monetary policy stance, but not everyone is happy.


The slump in the yen has prompted Russia's deputy central bank governor to warn of a new round of 'currency wars' and the medium-term risk of running ultra-loose monetary policies is likely to be a theme of the World Economic Forum in Davos, which opens on Wednesday.


With little in the way of economic data or debt issuance and U.S. markets shut for the Martin Luther King public holiday, the rest of the day was expected to be a fairly quiet for investors.


As the first European finance ministers' meeting of the year got under way, most euro zone government bonds were trading virtually flat and the euro was steady at $1.3316.


Market pressure on Europe is now less intense thanks to the European Central Bank's promise to prevent a collapse of the euro. Policymakers are set to discuss Cyprus's plight and plans for the euro zone's bailout fund to directly recapitalize banks.


French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said as he arrived at the Brussels meeting that a proper recapitalization strategy was very important.


"Negotiations will be complex, and a final decision is unlikely to emerge soon. Risks for sovereign spreads in the periphery should be limited, but we have some concerns that the long-term solution may fall short of what a real banking union needs," said UniCredit economist Marco Valli.


POLITICAL GAME


The efforts by Republican lawmakers to give the U.S. government leeway to pay its bills for another three months dented demand for safe haven assets and pushed German government bond yields near the top of this year's range.


The U.S. Treasury needs congressional authorization to raise the current $16.4 trillion limit on U.S. debt sometime between mid-February and early March. A failure to achieve that could lead to a debt default.


"This is part of the political game, it remains to be seen whether the Democrats will accept it," KBC strategist Piet Lammens said, adding that investors' working scenario was that a solution to raise the ceiling would be eventually found anyway.


One of the key factors that drove 2-year German yields higher last week was also the prospect of sizeable early repayments of the 1 trillion euros euro zone banks took from the ECB roughly a year ago.


The central bank will publish on Friday how much banks plan to return at the optional first repayment date on January 30. A Reuters poll on Monday showed around 100 billion euros are expected to be repaid although some predict it could be as high as 250 billion.


OIL OVERSUPPLY


German markets showed no reaction after the country's center-left opposition party edged Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives from power in a regional election on Sunday, reviving its flagging hopes for September's national election.


The Bundesbank's latest report delivered an upbeat message on the country's economy, saying a recent slump should be short-lived and may have already bottomed out.


Oil prices took their cues from a report in the United States at the end of last week that showed consumer sentiment at its weakest in a year as a result of the uncertainty surrounding the country's debt crisis.


Concerns about demand overshadowed supply disruption fears reinforced by the Islamist militant attack and hostage-taking at a gas plant in Algeria, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.


Brent futures were down by 40 cents to $111.47 per barrel by mid-afternoon. U.S. crude shed 43 cents to $95.13 per barrel after touching a four-month high last week.


"The over-riding fundamental feeling in the market is that crude oil is over-supplied in 2013," said Tony Nunan, an oil risk manager at Mitsubishi.


Last week's data showing a pick-up in the Chinese economy helped keep growth-sensitive copper prices steady at roughly $8,056 an ounce. Gold, meanwhile, reversed Friday's losses to stand at $1,688 an ounce.


(Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Marious Zaharia and Anooja Debnath; Editing by Peter Graff)



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Coup Attempt Is Said to Fail in Eritrea





GARSEN, Kenya — Eritrea, a sliver of a nation in the Horn of Africa that is one of the most secretive and repressive countries in the world, was cast into confusion on Monday after mutinous soldiers stormed the Ministry of Information and took over the state-run television service, apparently in a coup attempt.




According to several people with close contacts inside Eritrea, the coup attempt failed, with government troops quelling the would-be rebellion and no one rising up in the streets. But many analysts said it was only a matter of time before President Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s brash and steely leader for the past 20 years, is overthrown — and most likely from within.


“There’s a lot of dissatisfaction within the armed forces,” said Dan Connell, a professor at Simmons College in Boston and the author of several books on Eritrea. “If this is suppressed, it won’t be the end.”


Eritrea is often called the North Korea of Africa because it is so isolated and authoritarian, with few friends and thousands of defectors in recent years as Mr. Isaias tightens his grip and the economy teeters on the brink of ruin.


In the early 1990s, when Mr. Isaias first took power, Eritrea was hailed as a beacon of hope in Africa, a country of low crime, ethnic harmony and can-do spirit along the Red Sea. The Eritreans fought for years in trenches and from craggy mountaintops to defeat a Soviet-backed Ethiopian government and win their independence.


But the euphoria did not last. In the late 1990s, Eritrea and Ethiopia waged a costly war over their shared border, in which tens of thousands of people died. Shortly afterward, Mr. Isaias rounded up political dissidents and journalists, dooming them to years in prison, often in sweltering, underground shipping containers.


Thousands of young Eritreans have been drafted into the army and then required to work indefinitely for the government for pittance wages in what is called “national service.” Each year, many young people risk their lives to escape.


Eritrea has waged war with just about all of its neighbors, and it has been sanctioned by the United Nations over what is suspected to be its support of Somali militants.


By nightfall on Monday, it seemed that the government had beaten back the mutineers, with some analysts saying that the government broadcaster, Eri-TV, whose motto is “Serving the Truth,” was back on the air.


The rebellious soldiers, believed to number around 100, made it as far as the director’s office in the Ministry of Information, forcing him to read a statement on air calling for the release of political prisoners. Then the broadcast signal abruptly cut out. They also may have briefly taken hostage Mr. Isaias’s daughter, Elsa, who is said to work in the Ministry of Information.


It was not clear what happened to the renegade soldiers; analysts said that troops loyal to the government had surrounded the Ministry of Information and that the mutineers would most likely be captured and imprisoned.


The United States State Department said that the situation remained fluid, and the small embassy in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, sent out a warning on Monday to the few American citizens living there.


“The U.S. Embassy has been made aware of increased military presence in some sections of Asmara,” the warning said. “Employees of the U.S. government have been advised to limit their movements within the city, avoid large gatherings and exercise caution. We strongly recommend that private U.S. citizens do likewise.”


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Notre Dame football star says he was not in on hoax – ESPN






(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 leukemia 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 honor 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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