Hoaxes

Military jets scrambled Thursday night and escorted a flight from Hawaii to Seattle after receiving a hoax call that there was a hijacker aboard. The FBI interviewed one of the passengers aboard the Alaska Airlines flight from Kona, Hawaii, but no arrest was expected, officials told reporters, according to the Associated Press. The incident was being investigated as a hoax,  FBI spokesman Tom Simon in Honolulu told reporters there. Two F-15 jets from the Oregon Air National Guard escorted Flight 819 in to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport after a threat call was received at the Honolulu FBI office in the afternoon.

As the odd story of Manti Te'o and his fake girlfriend continues to develop, the citizens of Te'o's hometown are rallying behind the Notre Dame star. Members of the community of Laie, Hawaii, said they were dumbfounded when they heard that Te'o's girlfriend, who supposedly died of leukemia last year, didn't actually exist. Te'o claims to be one of the victims of the hoax, and most of the people in Laie believe him. “I just don't see something like that being made up from him or having any part of that because they're not those kind of people,” Lokelani Kaiahuashe told the Associated Press.

Some of the key participants in the alleged Notre Dame star Manti Te'o-dead girlfriend hoax, have ties right here in the Southland. Lennay Kekua, Te'o's girlfriend, who apparently never existed, supposedly lived in Carson. Deadspin.com, which broke the girlfriend hoax story, first became suspicious when they called several mortuaries in and around the Carson area and dicsovered none of them had heard of Kekua. “We called all the mortuaries in Carson and they had no information,” said Deadspin.com editor Timothy Burke in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

Being an NFL linebacker means being able to disguise schemes and fool offenses. But if Notre Dame's Manti Te'o was involved in the bizarre ruse of his fictitious dead girlfriend - as a perpetrator, rather than a pawn - it could have a significant impact on his draft status. Teams are keeping a close eye on the situation, tracking Te'o's level of involvement, and surely will want a detailed retelling from him at the scouting combine in February. Te'o is widely regarded as the top middle linebacker in this draft class, and, before the scandal, was projected by many experts to be chosen in the top half of the first round - and at a position that doesn't typically go that early.

Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick held a news conference about the Manti Te'o controversy Wednesday night. You can watch the entire news conference above. Some highlights: Question: You said this is an online relationship, yet Manti has talked about speaking with a person he thought was Lennay. Did a person, in effect, take her position and talk to Manti as if she were his girlfriend? Swarbrick: Yeah, online and telephonic. There were lengthy, long telephone conversations.

Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o claims he was the victim of an Internet hoax after it was discovered that his girlfriend, whose death he said inspired him to play better as he led the Irish to the BCS title game, never existed. Te'o and the school said that someone using a fictitious name "apparently ingratiated herself" with Te'o, then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had died of leukemia. "On the morning of Dec. 26, very early morning, Manti called his coaches to inform them that while he was in attendance at the ESPN awards show in Orlando, he received a phone call from a number he recognized as having been that he associated with Lennay Kekua," Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said.

Facing a media throng just days before competing for a national championship, Notre Dame's star linebacker, Manti Te'o, fielded a question about the death of his girlfriend and his ability to rise above the tragedy. It was a benign question, one he had heard dozens of times before as Lennay Kekua's passing had been woven so tightly into the narrative of his triumphant senior year. And he answered it as he always had. But at that time Te'o - and university officials - knew there was far more to the story than platitudes about football and family.

The Cinderella story of Notre Dame's college football season ended in defeat in the BCS national championship game. The story that fueled Manti Te'o's emotional play, the loss of his girlfriend Lennay Kekua, however, ends in a lie, according to a report by Deadspin.com .It's not clear when Te'o became aware of the hoax, or if he was involved in its perpetuation, but according to Notre Dame spokesman and assistant vice president Dennis Brown, the...

Parents and educators confronted a jittery Monday across Southern California and the nation on the first day of classes after last week's massacre of 20 first-graders and six others at a Connecticut elementary school. There were threats, nearly all of them hoaxes, a heightened police presence and a surge of separation anxiety as thousands of schools forged into the last week before winter break, a time normally marked by holiday pageants and occasionally dicey winter weather. A calm beginning at Cambridge Elementary in San Antonio turned frightful with a call from a man who said he was en route to the school to shoot students.

LONDON -- A nurse who took a prank call from a pair of Australian radio hosts pretending to be British royalty was found hanging in her room and left three notes behind in a suspected suicide, authorities said Thursday. Jacintha Saldanha died Dec. 7, three days after the hoax call from disc jockeys who posed as Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles in order to obtain information about the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge at the hospital where Saldanha worked. The stunt made international headlines.