ESPN interviewing Te'o about dead girlfriend hoax

Updated 11:45 PM ET

SOUTH BEND, Ind. Manti Te'o gave an interview to ESPN in which the network says he answered questions about the dead girlfriend hoax that exposed the feel-good story of the college football season as a bizarre fabrication, and left many wondering if Notre Dame's Heisman Trophy runner-up participated in the scam.

ESPN announced Friday night it was interviewing the All-American linebacker off camera and that audio clips of the session would be available on the network later.

Earlier, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said during the taping of his weekly radio show that Te'o has to explain exactly how he was duped into an online relationship with a fictitious woman whose "death" was then faked by perpetrators of the scheme.

Skeptics have questioned the versions of events laid out by Te'o and Notre Dame, wondering why Te'o never said his relationship was with someone online and why he waited almost three weeks to tell the school about being duped.

According to Notre Dame, Te'o received a call on Dec. 6 from the girl he had only been in contact with by telephone and online, and who he thought had died in September. After telling his family what happened while he was home in Hawaii for Christmas, he informed Notre Dame coaches on Dec. 26.

Notre Dame said it hired investigators to look into Te'o's claims and their findings showed he was the victim of an elaborate hoax.

Te'o released a statement on Wednesday, soon after Deadspin.com broke news of the scam with a lengthy story, saying he had been humiliated and hurt by the "sick joke." But he has laid low since.

ESPN officials posted a photo on Twitter late Friday night of reporter Jeremy Schapp with Te'o and his attorney. Te'o has been working out at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., as he prepares for the NFL combine and draft.

Swarbrick said earlier in the day that he believed Te'o would ultimately speak publicly.

"We are certainly encouraging it to happen," he said. "We think it's important and we'd like to see it happen sooner rather than later."

He said that before the Deadspin story, Te'o and his family had planned to go public with the story Monday.

"Sometimes the best laid plans don't quite work, and this was an example of that. Because the family lost the opportunity in some ways to control the story," he said. "It is in the Te'o family's court. We are very much encouraging them."

Former NFL coach Tony Dungy, who mentored Michael Vick when he returned to the NFL after doing prison time, had similar advice.

"I don't know the whole case but I always advise people to face up to it and just talk to people and say what happened," Dungy said while attending the NCAA convention in Dallas on Friday. "The truth is the best liberator, so that's what I would do. And he's going to get questioned a lot about it."

Te'o led a lightly regarded Fighting Irish team to a 12-0 regular season and the BCS title game, where they were routed 42-14 by Alabama and Te'o played poorly.

Dungy said Te'o could face the toughest questions from NFL teams.

"If I was still coaching and we're thinking about taking this guy in the first round, you want to know not exactly what happened but what is going on with this young man and is it going to be a deterrent to him surviving in the NFL and is it going to stop him from being a star," Dungy said. "So just tell the truth about what happened and this is why, I think, that's the best thing."

Deadspin reported that friends and relatives of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a 22-year-old who lives in California, believe he created Kekua. The website also reported Te'o and Tuiasosopo knew each other — which has led to questions about Te'o's involvement in the hoax.

Swarbrick understands why there are questions.

"They have every right to say that," Swarbrick said "Now I have some more information than they have. But they have every right to say that. ... I just ask those people to apply the same skepticism to everything about this. I have no doubt the perpetrators have a story they will yet spin about what went on here. I hope skepticism also greets that when they're articulating what that is."

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Armstrong Tearful Over Telling Kids Truth

Lance Armstrong, 41, began to cry today as he described finding out his son Luke, 13, was publicly defending him from accusations that he doped during his cycling career.

Armstrong said that he knew, at that moment, that he would have to publicly admit to taking performance-enhancing drugs and having oxygen-boosting blood transfusions when competing in the Tour de France. He made those admissions to Oprah Winfrey in a two-part interview airing Thursday and tonight.

"When this all really started, I saw my son defending me, and saying, 'That's not true. What you're saying about my dad? That's not true,'" Armstrong said, tearing up during the second installment of his interview tonight. "And it almost goes to this question of, 'Why now?'

"That's when I knew I had to talk," Armstrong said. "He never asked me. He never said, 'Dad, is this true?' He trusted me."

He told Winfrey that he sat down with his children over the holidays to come clean about his drug use.

"I said, 'Listen, there's been a lot of questions about your dad, about my career and whether I doped or did not dope,'" he said he told them. "'I always denied that. I've always been ruthless and defiant about that, which is why you defended me, which makes it even sicker' I said, 'I want you to know that it's true.'"

He added that his mother was "a wreck" over the scandal.

Armstrong said that the lowest point in his fall from grace and the top of the cycling world came when his cancer charity, Livestrong, asked him to consider stepping down.

George Burns/Harpo Studios, Inc.

Lance Armstrong-Winfrey Interview: How Honest Was He? Watch Video

Lance Armstrong-Winfrey Interview: Doping Confession Watch Video

After the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency alleged in October that Armstrong doped throughout his reign as Tour de France champion, Armstrong said, his major sponsors -- including Nike, Anheuser Busch and Trek -- called one by one to end their endorsement contracts with him.

"Everybody out," he said. "Still not the most humbling moment."

Then came the call from Livestrong, the charity he founded at age 25 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

"The story was getting out of control, which was my worst nightmare," he said. "I had this place in my mind that they would all leave. The one I didn't think would leave was the foundation.

"That was most humbling moment," he said.

Armstrong first stepped down as chairman of the board for the charity before being asked to end his association with the charity entirely. Livestrong is now run independently of Armstrong.

"I don't think it was 'We need you to step down,' but, 'We need you to consider stepping down for yourself,'" he said, recounting the call. "I had to think about that a lot. None of my kids, none of my friends have said, 'You're out,' and the foundation was like my sixth child. To make that decision, to step aside, that was big."

In Thursday's interview installment, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France admitted publicly for the first time that he doped throughout his career, confirming after months of angry denials the findings of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which stripped him of his titles in October.

He told Winfrey that he was taking the opportunity to confess to everything he had done wrong, including for years angrily denying claims that he had doped.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

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Matching names to genes: the end of genetic privacy?

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Are we being too free with our genetic information? What if you started receiving targeted ads for Prozac for the depression risk revealed by your publicly accessible genome? As increasing amounts of genetic information is placed online, many researchers believe that guaranteeing donors' privacy has become an impossible task.

The first major genetic data collection began in 2002 with the International HapMap Project – a collaborative effort to sequence genomes from families around the world. Its aim was to develop a public resource that will help researchers find genes associated with human disease and drug response.

While its consent form assured participants that their data would remain confidential, it had the foresight to mention that with future scientific advances, a deliberate attempt to match a genome with its donor might succeed. "The risk was felt to be very remote," says Laura Lyman Rodriguez of the US government's National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

Their fears proved to be founded: in a paper published in Science this week, a team led by Yaniv Erlich of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, used publicly available genetic information and an algorithm they developed to identify some of the people who donated their DNA to HapMap's successor, the 1000 Genomes Project.

Anonymity not guaranteed

Erlich says the research was inspired by a New Scientist article in which a 15-year-old boy successfully used unique genetic markers called short tandem repeats (STRs) on his Y chromosome to track down his father, who was an anonymous sperm donor. Erlich and his team used a similar approach.

First they turned to open-access genealogy databases, which attempt to link male relatives using matching surnames and similar STRs. The team chose a few surnames from these sources, such as "Venter",and then searched for the associated STRs in the 1000 Genomes Project's collection of whole genomes. This allowed them to identify which complete genomes were likely to be from people named Venter.

Although the 1000 Genome Project's database, which at last count had 1092 genomes, does not contain surname data, it does contain demographic data such as the ages and locations of its donors. By searching online phonebooks for people named Venter and narrowing those down to the geographic regions and ages represented in the whole genomes, the researchers were able to find the specific person who had donated his data.

In total, the researchers identified 50 individuals who had donated whole genomes. Some of these were female, whose identity was given away because of having the same location and age as a known donor's wife.

Matter of time

Before publishing their findings, the team warned the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other institutions involved in the project about the vulnerability in their data. Rodriguez says that they had been anticipating that someone would identify donors, "although we didn't know how or when".

To prevent Erlich's method from being used successfully again, age data has been removed from the project's website. Erlich says that this makes it difficult, although not impossible, to narrow the surnames down to an individual.

"The genie's out of the bottle," says Jeffrey Kahn of Florida State University in Tallahassee. "It's a harbinger of a changing paradigm of privacy." A cultural zeitgeist led by companies such as Facebook has led to more information sharing than anyone would have thought possible back in 2002 when HapMap first began, he says.

Recurring problem

This is not the first time genome confidentiality has been compromised. When James Watson made his genome public in 2007, he blanked out a gene related to Alzheimer's. But a group of researchers successfully inferred whether he carried the risky version of this gene by examining the DNA sequences on either side of the redacted gene.

While someone is bound to find another way to identify genetic donors, says Rodriguez, the NIH believes it would be wrong to remove all of their genome data from the public domain. She says that full accessibility is "very beneficial to science", but acknowledges that the project needs to strike a careful balance between confidentiality and open access.

It is especially pertinent, says Kahn, because genetic data does not just carry information from the person from whom it was taken. It can also reveal the genetic details of family members, some of whom might not want that information to be public. A relative's genome might reveal your own disease risk, for example, which you might not want to know or have an employer learn of. While laws prohibit health insurers and employers from discriminating against people based on their genetic data, it would not be difficult to give another reason for denying you a job.

An individual's relatives could not prevent that individual from learning about themselves, says Rodriguez, but researchers should encourage would-be genome donors to discuss the risks and benefits with their families.

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Some children outgrow autism: study

WASHINGTON: Some children diagnosed as autistic at a young age see their symptoms completely disappear when they get older, new research shows.

The small-scale study -- published in the "Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry" -- included 34 subjects who were diagnosed very early on with the disorder but who, by ages 18 to 21, no longer exhibited any signs of it.

Unlike when they were little, the subjects no longer showed deficits in speech, communication, recognizing faces or social interactions -- all hallmarks of autism.

"Although the diagnosis of autism is not usually lost over time, the findings suggest that there is a very wide range of possible outcomes," said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

Previous studies had already suggested it was possible for an autism diagnosis to disappear over time.

But this research looked deeper into the legitimacy of the phenomenon. The authors questioned whether the initial diagnosis had been accurate and whether the subjects had truly caught up to their peers.

In both cases, it turned out the answer was yes.

The researchers, led by Deborah Fein of the University of Connecticut, reviewed the original reports written when the children were diagnosed and had them examined by additional experts outside the research group.

The data was compared to groups of young adults whose diagnoses of autism and its milder sibling, high-functioning autism, persisted, and to a control group.

The analysis showed that, among the 34 subjects whose autism symptoms had abated, doctors had originally observed lower levels of social deficits than among the subjects with high-functioning autism.

But other symptoms, including language delays and repetitive behaviour, had been on par with the other group.

And the contemporary testing of the study subjects -- all of whom attended school in mainstream classrooms with no special services -- confirmed that the young adults no longer exhibited any deficits.

But the authors emphasised that the study offers no insight on what percentage of children with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, will grow out of their diagnosis.

"All children with ASD are capable of making progress with intensive therapy, but with our current state of knowledge most do not achieve the kind of optimal outcome that we are studying," said lead author Fein.

"Our hope is that further research will help us better understand the mechanisms of change so that each child can have the best possible life."

-AFP/fl

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Dreamliner fix: 'It's not easy'

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Grounding of aircraft model by regulators very rare, experts say


• The FAA grounded the DC-10 in 1979 for 37 days


• The time line for restoring service is uncertain, former airline mechanic says

(CNN) -- Whatever the reason for its recent spate of problems, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner won't fly again until regulators are satisfied the plane is airworthy.

Reports of fire and smoke have put the focus on the plane's cutting-edge lithium ion battery systems and grounded the fleet worldwide.

Only 50 Dreamliners are in service so far, but the airlines that bought these multimillion dollar aircraft are losing money while they sit on the ground. Big questions remain: How long will it take to get the Dreamliner back in the air? Will travelers feel safe enough to board them?

It's going to be "a big mess, cost Boeing a lot of money" and embarrass carriers that fly the 787, said aviation historian David T. Courtwright, a professor at the University of North Florida.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday ordered an emergency inspection of all U.S. 787s. United Airlines is the only U.S. carrier flying the aircraft, with six in its fleet. The airworthiness inspection will address the potential risk of battery fires. An in-flight fire aboard any aircraft is among the most dangerous aviation scenarios.

Grounding a plane is rare

It's very rare for the FAA to order an entire model of airliner out of service, even for a short time. Industry observers remember that the agency grounded the entire U.S. fleet of DC-10s for 37 days in 1979. That was after American Airlines Flight 191 crashed at Chicago's O'Hare airport, killing all 271 people aboard and two others on the ground. An NTSB investigation blamed design vulnerabilities and an engine pylon maintanance procedure.

"I was just starting my career flying at Delta and had just flown out of that airport a few days before,' said Kevin Hiatt, head of the Flight Safety Foundation and a former commercial pilot. "It was a big, beautiful DC-10. It was very, very distressing,"

Several DC-10s were involved in crashes caused by maintenance, design and other issues in the 1970s and 1980s, spurring doubt about the plane's safety. The last DC-10 to carry paying passengers flew in 2007.

The Dreamliner, of course, hasn't crashed in its 15 months of service and is making its debut during a period of unprecedented U.S. aviation safety.

Nonetheless, every day that Dreamliners are grounded ratchets up the pressure on Boeing, United and other airlines that have made commitments to buy the 787s.

A time frame for flying again

So now, Boeing looks for answers. A time frame for getting back in the air is anyone's guess, but the Dreamliner could be "grounded another two weeks or two months," said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board and ex-airline mechanic.

Experts will "figure out what's wrong, design a fix and build a part to fix it," said Goglia. "It's not easy."

Even if Boeing engineers get lucky and find the answer to the problem now, it might still take at least a couple weeks "to get up and running," he said.

With reports of problems continuing to plague the Dreamliner, Hiatt said the FAA didn't need to take any chances.

"They're acting with an abundance of caution," he said. "They're going to go ahead and be proactive and not have the same situation" as the DC-10.

Growing pains aren't unusual

Other aircraft, including the Airbus A380, have had problems during rollout, said University of Dayton professor Raul Ordonez, an aircraft electrical and computer engineer who spent time observing Dreamliner development at Boeing's Seattle headquarters. It's what often happens when a new aircraft is put into service.

"I know Boeing spent a lot of time testing things extensively," said Ordonez. "These are very complex systems ... and there may be problems they didn't anticipate. It's one of the most complex commercial aircraft ever."

With problems appearing in a forward electrical compartment on Wednesday's All Nippon Airlines (ANA) 787 emergency landing, aviation historian Courtwright, author of "Sky as Frontier: Adventure, Aviation, and Empire," worried the situation is more serious than simply problems confined to the aft electrical bay.

"It raises the specter of something more systemic and perhaps a defective lithium ion battery, he said.

The Dreamliner relies on electricity to power more functions than previous Boeing airliners, and that takes a lot of battery power. Lithium ion batteries replaced the traditional nickel cadmium batteries in the new aircraft. Lithium ion batteries keep a charge longer than nickel cadmium and weigh less, so the plane can save fuel.

But there are questions about using lithium ion batteries because they've never been used on an airliner to the extent that the Dreamliner uses them.

All this regulatory turbulence is part of a painful but necessary process of airline development.

"That's aviation," says airline pilot Patrick Smith of the aviation blog Askthepilot.com. "There's a certain statistical aspect that you're working with in that nothing is going to happen but the best thing is to take the plane out of service and take a time out."

CNN's Aaron Cooper contributed to this report.

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Manti Te'o kept girlfriend myth alive after revelation

SOUTH BEND, Ind. Not once but twice after he supposedly discovered his online girlfriend of three years never even existed, Notre Dame All-American linebacker Manti Te'o perpetuated the heartbreaking story about her death.

13 Photos

Manti Te'o

An Associated Press review of news coverage found that the Heisman Trophy runner-up talked about his doomed love in a Web interview on Dec. 8 and again in a newspaper interview published Dec. 11. He and the university said Wednesday that he learned on Dec. 6 that it was all a hoax, that not only wasn't she dead, she wasn't real.

On Thursday, a day after Te'o's inspiring, playing-through-heartache story was exposed as a bizarre lie, Te'o and Notre Dame faced questions from sports writers and fans about whether he really was duped, as he claimed, or whether he and the university were complicit in the hoax and misled the public, perhaps to improve his chances of winning the Heisman.

Yahoo sports columnist Dan Wetzel said the case has "left everyone wondering whether this was really the case of a naJive football player done wrong by friends or a fabrication that has yet to play to its conclusion."

Gregg Doyel, national columnist for CBSSports.com, was more direct.

"Nothing about this story has been comprehensible, or logical, and that extends to what happens next," he wrote. "I cannot comprehend Manti Te'o saying anything that could make me believe he was a victim."

On Wednesday, Te'o and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the player was drawn into a virtual romance with a woman who used the phony name Lennay Kekua, and was fooled into believing she died of leukemia in September. They said his only contact with the woman was via the Internet and telephone.

Te'o also lost his grandmother — for real — the same day his girlfriend supposedly died, and his role in leading Notre Dame to its best season in decades endeared him to fans and put him at the center of college football's biggest feel-good story of the year.

Relying on information provided by Te'o's family members, the South Bend Tribune reported in October that Te'o and Kekua first met, in person, in 2009, and that the two had also gotten together in Hawaii, where Te'o grew up.

Te'o never mentioned a face-to-face meeting with Kekua in public comments reviewed by the AP. And an AP review of media reports about Te'o since Sept. 13 turned up no instance in which he directly confirmed or denied those stories — until Wednesday.

Among the outstanding questions Thursday: Why didn't Te'o ever clarify the nature of his relationship as the story took on a life of its own?

Te'o's agent, Tom Condon, said the athlete had no plans to make any public statements Thursday in Bradenton, Fla., where he has been training with other NFL hopefuls at the IMG Academy.

Notre Dame said Te'o found out that Kekau was not a real person through a phone call he received at an awards ceremony in Orlando, Fla., on Dec. 6. He told Notre Dame coaches about the situation on Dec. 26.

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Manti Te'o's girlfriend hoax: How did it happen?

The AP's media review turned up two instances during that gap when the football star mentioned Kekua in public.

Te'o was in New York for the Heisman presentation on Dec. 8 and, during an interview before the ceremony that ran on the WSBT.com, the website for a South Bend TV station, Te'o said: "I mean, I don't like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer. So I've really tried to go to children's hospitals and see, you know, children."

In a story that ran in the Daily Press of Newport News, Va., on Dec. 11, Te'o recounted why he played a few days after he found out Kekau died in September, and the day she was supposedly buried.

"She made me promise, when it happened, that I would stay and play," he said.

On Wednesday, Swarbrick said Notre Dame did not go public with its findings sooner because it expected the Te'o family to come forward first. But Deadspin.com broke the story Wednesday.

Reporters were turned away Thursday at the main gate of IMG's sprawling, secure complex. Te'o remained on the grounds, said a person familiar with situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because neither Te'o nor IMG authorized the release of the information.

"This whole thing is so nutsy that I believe it only could have happened at Notre Dame, where mythology trumps common sense on a daily basis. ... Given the choice between reality and fiction, Notre Dame always will choose fiction," sports writer Rick Telander said in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Which brings me to what I believe is the real reason Te'o and apparently his father, at least went along with this scheme: the Heisman Trophy.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass blasted both Te'o and Notre Dame.

"When your girlfriend dying of leukemia after suffering a car crash tells you she loves you, even if it might help you win the Heisman Trophy, you check it out," he said.

He said the university's failure to call a news conference and go public sooner means "Notre Dame is complicit in the lie."

"The school fell in love with the Te'o girlfriend myth," he wrote.

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Lance Armstrong Admits to Doping

Lance Armstrong, formerly cycling's most decorated champion and considered one of America's greatest athletes, confessed to cheating for at least a decade, admitting on Thursday that he owed all seven of his Tour de France titles and the millions of dollars in endorsements that followed to his use of illicit performance-enhancing drugs.

After years of denying that he had taken banned drugs and received oxygen-boosting blood transfusions, and attacking his teammates and competitors who attempted to expose him, Armstrong came clean with Oprah Winfrey in an exclusive interview, admitting to using banned substances for years.

"I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times," he said. "I know the truth. The truth isn't what was out there. The truth isn't what I said.

"I'm a flawed character, as I well know," Armstrong added. "All the fault and all the blame here falls on me."

In October, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a report in which 11 former Armstrong teammates exposed the system with which they and Armstrong received drugs with the knowledge of their coaches and help of team physicians.

George Burns/Courtesy of Harpo Studios, Inc./AP Photo

Lance Armstrong Admits Using Performance-Enhancing Drugs Watch Video

Lance Armstrong's Oprah Confession: The Consequences Watch Video

Lance Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape Watch Video

The U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team "ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," USADA said in its report.

As a result of USADA's findings, Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France titles. Soon, longtime sponsors including Nike began to abandon him, too.

READ MORE: Did Doping Cause Armstrong's Cancer?

Armstrong said he was driven to cheat by a "ruthless desire to win."

He told Winfrey that his competition "cocktail" consisted of EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone, and that he had previously used cortisone. He would not, however, give Winfrey the details of when, where and with whom he doped during seven winning Tours de France between 1999 and 2005.

He said he stopped doping following his 2005 Tour de France victory and did not use banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the tour again in 2010.

"It was a mythic perfect story and it wasn't true," Armstrong said of his fairytale story of overcoming testicular cancer to become the most celebrated cyclist in history.

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present

PHOTOS: Tour de France 2012

Armstrong would not name other members of his team who doped, but admitted that as the team's captain he set an example. He admitted he was "a bully" but said there "there was a never a directive" from him that his teammates had to use banned substances.

"At the time it did not feel wrong?" Winfrey asked.

"No," Armstrong said. "Scary."

"Did you feel bad about it?" she asked again.

"No," he said.

Armstrong said he thought taking the drugs was similar to filling his tires with air and bottle with water. He never thought of his actions as cheating, but "leveling the playing field" in a sport rife with doping.

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NASA buys blow-up habitat for space station astronauts

NASA wants to blow up part of the International Space Station – and a Las Vegas firm is eager to help.

The US space agency has signed a $17.8-million contract with Bigelow Aerospace of Nevada to build an inflatable crew habitat for the ISS.

According to details released today at a press briefing , the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, will launch in 2015. Astronauts on the ISS will test the module for safety and comfort.

BEAM will fly uninflated inside the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Once docked and fully expanded, the module will be 4 metres long and 3 metres wide. For two years astronauts will monitor conditions inside, such as temperature and radiation levels.

Bigelow hopes the tests done in orbit will prove that inflatable capsules are safe and reliable for space tourists and commercial research, an idea almost as old as NASA itself. The space agency began investigating the concept of expandable spacecraft in 1958. Space stations like this would be easier to launch and assemble than those with metal components, so would be cheaper. But research ended after a budget crunch in 2000, and Bigelow licensed the technology from NASA.

Stronger skin

The company has made progress, developing shielding that resists punctures from space debris and micrometeorites. BEAM's skin, for instance, is made from layers of material like Kevlar to protect occupants from high-speed impacts. The craft's skin has been tested in the lab alongside shielding used right now on the rest of the ISS, says Bigelow director Mike Gold.

"Our envelope will not only equal but be superior to what is flying on the ISS today. We have a strong and absolute focus on safety," he says.

And we have to be sure that inflatable craft are safe, says William Schonberg, an engineer specialising in orbital debris protection at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. "The overall risk to the ISS is the sum of the risks of its individual components," he says.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but a flexible, inflatable design is just as likely to survive punishment from space debris as metal shielding, says Schonberg. "Certain composite cloth materials have been shown to be highly effective as shields against [high-speed space] impacts. So depending on what material is used, and in what combination it is used with other materials – such as thermal insulation blankets – the final design could be just as effective and perhaps better than the more traditional all-metal shields used elsewhere on the station."

Gold hopes BEAM will also demonstrate that fabric shielding can limit radiation risks. This is a major worry on missions to the moon or an asteroid say, where astronauts have to spend weeks or months outside Earth's protective magnetic field.

High-energy particles called cosmic rays constantly fly through the solar system, and when they strike metal shielding, they can emit secondary radiation in the form of X-rays. This doesn't happen with Kevlar-based fabric shields and so expandable habitats could be more desirable for travellers heading deeper into space, says Gold.

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Japan Dreamliners must remain grounded: govt

TOKYO: All Boeing Dreamliners operating in Japan must remain grounded until their batteries are confirmed to be safe, the government said Thursday, following a similar order in the US.

"Following the FAA (US Federal Aviation Administration) decision, Boeing 787s will not be allowed to fly until their battery safety is assured," said Hiroshi Kajiyama, Japan's vice transport minister, adding that a formal order would be issued later Thursday.

The comments come after a probable battery leak emerged as the focus of the investigation into the forced emergency landing of an All Nippon Airways (ANA) Dreamliner in Japan on Wednesday.

They also come after the FAA ordered that 787 Dreamliners in the United States stop flying until a fire risk linked to their lithium-ion batteries was resolved, dealing a huge blow to Boeing and its next-generation aircraft.

Lithium-ion batteries of different specifications are widely used in consumer electronics such as laptops and mobile phones.

Japan Airlines (JAL) and rival ANA -- which together operate half the world's Dreamliners -- voluntarily grounded their fleets after the ANA flight made an emergency landing in southwestern Japan.

India's transport safety agency said on Wednesday it was also launching a probe of the fuel-efficient Dreamliner.

Kajiyama on Thursday said officials investigating the safety scare "reported that there are problems in the battery" and other parts of the plane.

"Just by observing with the naked eye, the battery showed abnormalities, but electricity-linked equipment is complex so we need more investigation," he said.

Electrolyte leaks and burn marks have been found on the battery's metal casing, ANA said, with officials from the Japan Transport Safety Board working on the principle that it overheated, Kyodo News reported.

"Liquid leaked through the room floor to the inside of the outer wall of the aircraft," the agency quoted investigator Hideyo Kosugi as saying.

Japan's Transport Minister Akihiro Ota earlier described the emergency landing as a "serious incident that could have led to a serious accident".

Embattled Boeing on Wednesday backed its Dreamliner, considered an aviation milestone for its use of lightweight carbon fibre materials and advanced electronics systems.

"We are confident the 787 is safe and we stand behind its overall integrity," Boeing CEO Jim McNerney said in a statement.

"We will be taking every necessary step in the coming days to assure our customers and the travelling public of the 787's safety and to return the airplanes to service."

Boeing, whose shares make up part of the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average, tumbled 3.4 percent on Wednesday.

The FAA order means 30 of the world's 50 Dreamliners have been grounded, with the two Japanese carriers operating almost half the world's fleet.

United Airlines, the world's biggest airline, is currently the only US airline operating the 787, with six aircraft in service.

Speaking after the FAA announcement, an ANA spokeswoman told Dow Jones Newswires: "We'll examine the information we've gotten so far and exchange information further as necessary and will attempt to take appropriate steps as soon as possible."

The carrier, which together with JAL has invested billions of dollars in the Dreamliner with a combined order totalling 111 aircraft, "has not made any" decisions over future use of the aircraft, she added.

A spokesman for JAL said it was too early to comment on the FAA decision but added that "we will continue to collect information".

In Tokyo trading on Thursday, ANA shares were down 0.54 percent to 181 yen by the midday break while Japan Airlines was off 0.27 percent at 3,665 yen.

- AFP/al

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Notre Dame star's story goes from inspirational to bizarre

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Te'o's father had said his son, girlfriend met in Hawaii


• Manti Te'o is a hoax victim, Notre Dame says; university hired an investigative firm


• Sports website Deadspin raises questions about the existence of his girlfriend


• In September, Te'o talked about losing his grandmother, girlfriend in the same week

(CNN) -- Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o said Wednesday he was the victim of a "sick joke" that had him and legions of fans believing in a "girlfriend" who may never have existed.

Te'o was the subject of an inspirational story in which he overcame the deaths of his real-life grandmother and his girlfriend as his team marched toward the BCS National Championship Game.

Te'o, the Heisman Trophy runner-up, released a statement and Notre Dame held a news conference Wednesday night after the sports website Deadspin published an article that called the girlfriend story a hoax.

Last September and October, Te'o told interviewers the losses of the women, who reportedly died within hours of each other, inspired him to honor them with sterling play on the field.

"I miss 'em, but I know that I'll see them again one day," he told ESPN.

Notre Dame star Manti Te'o

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That and other media reports led to a gripping human interest story of determination. The girlfriend was identified as Lennay Kekua, who had supposedly died of leukemia.

Jack Swarbrick, director of athletics at Notre Dame, told reporters that Te'o was the victim of an elaborate hoax. "And he will carry that with him for a while," Swarbrick said. Investigators don't know how many people may have participated in the hoax, he said.

Notre Dame said the relationship between Te'o and the supposed girlfriend involved online and lengthy telephone communication.

As part of the hoax, several meetings were set up, including in Hawaii, but Kekua never showed, Swarbrick said. The linebacker grew up in Hawaii.

Te'o's father, Brian, told the South Bend (Indiana) Tribune last fall that his son did have the opportunity to meet Kekua.

"They started out as just friends," Brian Te'o said, according to the newspaper. "Every once in a while, she would travel to Hawaii, and that happened to be the time Manti was home, so he would meet with her there. But within the last year, they became a couple."

Media reports indicate the parents never met Kekua.

According to Swarbrick, Te'o in early December received a call from a woman claiming to be his girlfriend and telling him she was not dead. Those calls continued but Te'o did not answer, Swarbrick said.

Te'o's grandmother did in fact die in September, according to Deadspin, but there is no Social Security Administration record of the death of the athlete's supposed girlfriend, described as a Stanford University student.

Stanford University's registrar's office told CNN that it has never had a student registered by Kekua's name or an alternative spelling.

"Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there's no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed," Deadspin contends. "There was no Lennay Kekua."

According to the website, Kekua, 22, had reportedly been in a serious auto accident in California and was later diagnosed with leukemia.

Photographs showing a young woman identified as Kekua in online tributes and news reports actually are photos from social media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua and does not have leukemia, according to Deadspin. The woman never met Te'o, it said.

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After Notre Dame upset No. 10 Michigan State on September 15, Te'o told ABC about his late grandmother and girlfriend.

"They were with me. I couldn't do it without them," Te'o said. "I couldn't do it without the support of my family and my girlfriend's family."

"I'm so happy that I had a chance to honor my grandma and my family and my girlfriend," Te'o said. "That's what it's all about, family."

Timothy Burke, co-author of the Deadspin article, told Miami sports radio host Dan Le Batard, "We got an e-mail last week saying something isn't right" with the girlfriend story.

Te'o said Wednesday he "developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. 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."

In his statement reported by ESPN, the star said, "To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating.

"It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother's death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life."

Manti Te'o previously told reporters he and his girlfriend would spend hours speaking on the phone.

Notre Dame said it hired an independent investigative firm to look into the situation.

Swarbrick said the independent investigation found that the perpetrators were involved in "online chatter" indicating that it was a hoax, and Te'o was a victim.

"I will refer you to the documentary 'Catfish,'" the athletic director said.

"Catfish" is no longer simply a river dweller, but rather a verb defined as "to pretend to be someone you're not online by posting false information, such as someone else's pictures, on social media sites usually with the intention of getting someone to fall in love with you," according to an MTV show of the same name.

Swarbrick said he met with Te'o's family two days before Notre Dame played in the January 7 championship game and lost to Alabama. The linebacker is expected to be a first-round pick in the NFL draft this spring.

CNN's Amanda Watts contributed to this report.

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