Google’s 4Q earnings rise despite Motorola woes

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google eked out slightly higher earnings in the fourth quarter, despite a financial drag caused by the Internet search leader’s expansion into device manufacturing and a decline in digital ad prices as more people gaze into the smaller screens of smartphones.

The results announced Tuesday pleased investors, helping to lift Google’s stock by 5 percent in extended trading.

More advertising poured into Google during the holiday shopping season, fueling a moneymaking machine that has steadily churned out higher profits since the company went public in 2004. Google’s fourth-quarter ad revenue totaled $ 12.1 billion, a 19 percent increase from the previous year.

Some of that money, though, has been shifting away from personal computers as advertisers try to connect with an expanding audience that relies on smartphones and tablet computers to reach Google’s search engine, email and other online services. By some estimates, about one-fourth of the clicks on Google’s search ads are now coming from mobile devices.

So far, advertisers have been unwilling to pay as much money to market their wares on mobile devices, largely because the smaller screens leave less room for commercial links and other marketing messages. The trend is one of the reasons that the average price for the ads that Google shows next to its search results has fallen from the previous year in five consecutive quarters, including the final three months of last year.

In a positive sign, though, Google’s average ad prices in the most recent quarter dropped by just 6 percent from the same period in 2011. That’s the smallest decline during the pricing downturn, raising hopes that Google may be starting to solve the pricing problems posed by the growing usage of mobile devices.

In a conference call Tuesday, Google CEO Larry Page predicted ad prices will gradually rise as the devices become even more sophisticated to unleash new ways to reach potential customers at the times they are most likely to buy something.

“In today’s multi-screen world, the opportunities are endless,” Page said.

Google earned nearly $ 2.9 billion, or $ 8.62 per share, during the fourth quarter. That compared to net income of $ 2.7 billion, or $ 8.22 per share, at the same time last year.

If not for the costs of employee stock compensation and certain other accounting items, Google said it would have earned $ 10.65 per share. On that basis, Google exceeded the average earnings estimate of $ 10.54 among analysts surveyed by FactSet.

It proved to be a difficult quarter to decipher because of an accounting quirk and the additions of new business lines that muddied the comparisons with the previous year.

For instance, Google Inc. didn’t own Motorola Mobility in 2011, having completed its $ 12.4 billion acquisition of the troubled handset maker eight months ago. What’s more, the Google is bringing in more revenue from tablet computers, which it began selling under the Nexus brand during the final half of last year.

Things were further complicated by Google’s recent agreement to sell a part of the Motorola Mobility division that makes cable TV boxes. That division is now accounted for as a discontinued operation whose revenue wasn’t booked in the latest quarter, even though it will remain a part of Google until the $ 2.35 billion sale is completed later this year.

Under that equation, revenue surged 36 percent from the previous year to $ 14.4 billion.

After subtracting advertising expenses, Google’s revenue totaled $ 11.3 billion. That figure was well below the average analyst estimate of $ 12.1 billion, according to FactSet.

But many of the analyst forecasts included revenue from Motorola Mobility’s set-top division, which Google excluded from its breakdown. Had the set-top division been included in Google’s accounting, the company’s net revenue would have matched analyst estimates.

The performance boosted Google’s stock by $ 35.33 to $ 738.20 in Tuesday’s extended trading.

Google would be doing even better if not for problems at Motorola Mobility, a cellphone pioneer that has been struggling since Apple revolutionized the industry with the release of the iPhone in 2007.

Motorola Mobility suffered an operating loss of $ 353 million on revenue of $ 1.5 billion in the fourth quarter

Google has been able to offset the slump in its search advertising prices by selling more video advertising on its YouTube subsidiary and other more graphical forms of marketing. The number of clicks on Google ads has still been rising, too. That’s important because the company typically gets paid by the click. In the fourth quarter, Google’s total ad clicks rose 24 percent from the previous year.

To gain a foothold in the mobile market, Google bakes its services into its Android software, an operating system that it gives away to makers of smartphones and tablets.

Android is now powers more than 500 million mobile devices worldwide, giving it a wide lead over Apple’s software for iPhones and iPads. Through September, Apple had shipped about 370 million iPhones and iPads. Apple Inc., which has morphed from a Google ally to bigger rival in the past five years, is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter results after the stock market closes Wednesday.

Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., didn’t update how many more Android devices were activated in the fourth quarter..

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Paula Deen: How My Whole Family Got Fit!

By Liza Hamm

01/23/2013 at 07:45 AM EST

Paula Deen is the first one to admit: "When I first found out I was diabetic, I had no solutions. I couldn’t even help myself, much less somebody else." 

Now – one year after she announced her Type 2 diabetes diagnosis to a mix of criticism and support – Deen is not only showcasing how she trimmed off 40 lbs. 

In this week's issue, the 66-year-old Food Network star invited PEOPLE into her Savannah home to share how her family members adopted different weight loss strategies and lost an astounding 178 lbs. total.

By figuring out a diet plan that works for their particular schedule and lifestyle, Deen's husband Michael Groover shed 60 lbs., her oldest son Jamie got rid of an excess 45 lbs., and her youngest son Bobby maintained his 33-lb. loss.

But no one sacrificed their love of Southern food. Instead they learned to stick to Deen's new mantra. "Moderation, moderation, moderation," says Deen, whose new cookbook The New Testament due out this fall will include her go-to recipes and tips. "I love feeding people but now I also want to help people eat right."

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IHT Rendezvous: Oscar Anticipation in the Subtitle Category

PARIS—With the multiple nominations for “Lincoln,” “Django Unchained” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” Europeans may see this year’s Academy Award field as something of a celebration of American history, in the age of Obama.

Still, “Amour,” Michael Haneke’s Austrian film shot in France and in French, made it into the best picture category, confirmation that the Academy thinks subtitled films can hold their own against American blockbusters. “Amour,” about life, death, age and love, is nominated in five categories (best picture, best foreign film, best actress, director and screenplay).

As Vanessa Thorpe wrote recently in The Guardian, “Academy voters appear to be hinting at a new openness to other cultures and the growing acceptability of subtitled entertainment.”

She theorized that a larger cultural shift is happening:

The new appetite for foreign fare might have started with the mass popularity of translated Scandinavian thrillers, from Stieg Larsson to Jo Nesbo, or it may have been the accidental result of cash-strapped public television schedulers searching for new quality drama with a reasonable price tag.

France took great national pride in last year’s best picture winner, “The Artist,” but, as Elaine Sciolino wrote at the time, it was shot in Los Angeles with an American crew, the rights were bought by an American, and it is all about Hollywood.

The fierce competition this year, and perhaps its grim subject matter, makes “Amour” something of a long shot as best picture. Among the best foreign-language film nominees, however, it stands as the overwhelming favorite to take the prize at the awards ceremony on Feb. 24.

The film has already swept all the European awards, including the 2012 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or; it was given the Golden Globe last week for best foreign language film, and more than 20 other awards and nominations. Oscar observers tend to agree it should leave with a golden statue, if not for best picture then surely for best foreign film.

But award ceremonies sometimes welcome surprises, and the foreign film category this year has some other strong contenders. The selection was made from a record-breaking 71 submissions in the category this year.

With two Scandinavian films in the running, three of the five nominees are from Europe. Denmark’s entry, “A Royal Affair,” a sumptuous romantic drama set in the 18th century, lost to “Amour” at the Golden Globes but took two awards at the Berlin International Film Festival: for best script and best actor for Mads Mikkelsen, whom you might recognize as the villain from “Casino Royale.”

“Kon-Tiki,” a box-office hit from Norway, got a double Golden Globe-Oscar nomination. It tells the story of Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 trip across the Pacific on a small raft with five other men. Larry Rohter, who has been following the foreign film race closely for The New York Times, writes on the Carpetbagger blog that the Weinstein brothers are reportedly planning to release it in English this year.

Last year’s contenders included Iranian and Israeli films, this year the remaining two nominees are from the Americas.

The Chilean director Pablo Larrain was third-time lucky with “No,” his third film about the Pinochet years. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal, the film is about the 1988 referendum that ended the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. This is Mr. Larrain’s second attempt at the award after being shortlisted in 2008 for his film “Tony Manero,” With “No,” which opens in February in the United States, Mr. Larrain won the top prize in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes.

In a recent Q&A with Larry Rohter, the 36-year-old director talked about the difficulty that film committees face in choosing their entries for the Oscars. “What happens when the committee in each country meets to decide, sometimes they make the mistake that they think the movie that should be submitted is the one that they like more themselves,” he said.

Canada got a nod with “War Witch,” a film shot primarily in Congo about an adolescent girl-soldier trapped in civil war. The film, in French and the African language Lingala, wowed the critics and was awarded a top prize at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The nomination was yet another win for the government-supported National Film Board of Canada, which has garnered Oscar nominations for three years in a row.

Neither “No” nor “War Witch” made it into the Golden Globes selection.

The nomination will probably help “No” when it begins its release in Europe and the United States next month, as being in the Oscar race often gives movies a “nomination bump” in box-office figures, though Edmund Helmer wrote in an analysis recently for Reuters that a Golden Globe may be a better win financially.

One film that didn’t need to wait for its Golden Globe nomination to rock the box-office was “The Intouchables,” perhaps the most surprising absentee of the Oscars’ foreign film selection. The French movie, about the friendship between a rich Parisian quadriplegic and his caretaker, has become the highest-grossing film ever made in a language other than English, with a worldwide box-office take of roughly $410 million, about three times that of “The Artist.” Take that, Oscar.

Are you more likely to see a movie if it has won awards? Does the prospect of subtitles keep you from seeing a movie? And are there films you’ve seen that you think should have been nominated in the foreign film category that weren’t?

Fill out your own ballot in The New York Times Oscar poll.

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

___

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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County official calls car leasing contract procedure 'embarrassing'

Auditors reviewing a $1.75-million car leasing contract given to a company with a politically connected lobbying firm found that Los Angeles County officials had failed to create a "truly competitive" process, but that there was no evidence of improper influence.

Investigators with the county auditor-controller's office reviewed the Enterprise Rent-a-Car contract at the request of Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich. A report by KCET-TV had raised questions about the way the business was awarded.

Enterprise was given a sole-source, five-year deal in March to provide 60 leased  vehicles to the county's Community Development Commission and to maintain the agency's existing fleet. Commission staff projected that outsourcing the fleet services would save about $300,000 a year.

The Nov. 28 report on KCET's "SoCal Connected" focused on the lobbying firm Englander Knabe & Allen and questioned whether its clients — including Enterprise — got an unfair advantage because partner Matt Knabe is the son of county Supervisor Don Knabe, who voted along with all the other supervisors to award the contract.

Both Knabes have said that their relationship has never posed a conflict, and a spokesman for the Englander firm has said Matt Knabe never lobbies his father directly.

The auditor-controller found no evidence of attempts to influence the rental car award. Matt Knabe told investigators that no one from his firm had lobbied on the contract, and the commission's executive director said he was "100% confident" the supervisor's son did not influence the process.

"The report shows that Matt acted professionally and used no undue influence in his dealings with the county," said Englander partner Eric Rose.

But the review did find that county staff did an "inadequate" job of trying to find other potential bidders.

Asked by KCET what vendors had been contacted and given a chance to compete for the business, a county analyst created a list to make it appear the department had reached out to 50 companies. In fact, only 16 firms had been contacted, auditors found. Enterprise was the only company that responded to the email request, and staff made no follow-up attempt to contact the other firms.

According to the auditor's report, the count of 50 vendors was originally used as a "place holder" in a template document and never corrected. By the time the contract was awarded, the contract analyst "felt he could not correct the number without embarrassment."

Investigators also found that the agency violated its own policy by not advertising the contract on the commission's or the county's websites, and that the contract should have gone through a full bidding process.

In addition, several vendors that contract officials emailed to invite interest had no "realistic potential" to provide a leased fleet to the county in the first place, the review concluded.

Investigators wrote that they couldn't determine whether the commission could have gotten a better deal but said "the potential for greater savings from a more competitive process appears to be plausible."

County auditor-controller Wendy Watanabe called the situation "embarrassing" but chalked up the issues to incompetence rather than intentional steering.

"I think they got lazy, they took a shortcut, and they didn't think it was that big of a deal," she said.

Watanabe said the investigation had focused on the Enterprise contract, so she could not say whether there was a broader issue with the agency's contracting process.

Commission representatives could not be reached Monday. The commission was slated to respond to the report's findings within 30 days.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

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Cycling-No sympathy for Armstrong on social media

LONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Lance Armstrong’s televised doping confession has done nothing to restore his shattered reputation, a study of responses posted to the Twitter social media site showed.

“What was particularly noticeable in our analysis of the Armstrong revelation was the sheer lack of sympathy out there,” said Charlie Dundas of sports market research company Repucom.

“The tone of the discussion around the Oprah Winfrey interview highlighted the level of disappointment and anger that exists. It’s clear the public are far from ready to forgive Lance Armstrong,” he added.

In the interview, Armstrong admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs on his way to his seven Tour de France titles. The Texan also said he hoped a lifetime ban would one day be lifted to allow him to compete in events like marathons.

The Armstrong interview generated 1.9 million Twitter posts between Jan. 14-20, Repucom said. America accounted for more than a quarter of these, with Australia the second most active nation on the site. (Writing by Keith Weir, editing by Mark Meadows)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Jennifer Lopez Obsesses Over Peanut Butter Souffle in Miami

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IHT Rendezvous: Obama's Second Term: Not Necessarily Cursed

WASHINGTON — Second-term U.S. presidents encounter political turbulence, their poll ratings plummet as the public sours. Right?

Wrong.

In my latest Letter from Washington, I lay out who in Washington believes Barack Obama has a chance of actually accomplishing something in his second term and who doesn’t — and why.

(Technically, Mr. Obama has already begun his second term. He was sworn in on January 20 before noon Eastern time, per the Constitution, though the public inauguration is only at noon Monday.)

But the historical record is more nuanced than the conventional wisdom that second terms are doomed to end in failure or scandal.

Over the past 60 years, there have been five re-elected U.S. presidents: Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Two fit the conventional notion: Mr. Nixon, whose ratings fell through the floor when he became ensnared in Watergate criminality, was eventually forced to resign. Mr. Bush’s second term failed after his major miscalculation in trying to partially privatize Social Security and his administration’s woeful response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

The other two-termers went out on a high, with approval ratings of 60 percent or higher. Even with political setbacks, President Eisenhower maintained his status as an above-the-fray figure that he had acquired since serving as the supreme allied commander in World War II.

The re-elected President Reagan had a rough first couple of years with a flawed new chief of staff, the former Wall Street executive Donald Regan, and the Iran-contra scandal. However, led by his Treasury secretary, Jim Baker, he was able to lead the way to sweeping tax reform. And encouraged by his wife, Nancy, and Secretary of State George Shultz, Mr. Reagan signed a nuclear-arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union. He was enormously popular when he left office.

So was Bill Clinton in 2001, with a backlash against the political effort by House Republicans to impeach him for lying about an affair. Right before he left office, the Gallup poll reported that President Clinton had a 66 percent approval rating. Within weeks, his popularity plummeted when news surfaced of his final-hours pardon of the tax fugitive Marc Rich. Ever resilient, he came back and today there is no more popular political figure in the United States.

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

___

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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Father of man behind Manti Te'o hoax thanks church for support

The father of the man publicly named as the one behind a hoax involving Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o became emotional Sunday as he thanked his Antelope Valley congregation for their support.

The group of about 90 people clapped and cheered when Pastor Titus Tuiasosopo was introduced during Oasis Christian Church's Sunday service — the first since news of the scandal broke.

"I want to thank you for your prayers, church family," Tuiasosopo said at the end of the two-hour service, his voice breaking. "I love you. Thank you for being here."

Earlier in the service, held at Lancaster United Methodist Church, Tuiasosopo acknowledged the half a dozen reporters who were in attendance, but declined to discuss details of the incident afterward.

"My statement is: God is still on his throne," he said before a guest pastor delivered the sermon.

Reporters have swarmed both the church and Tuiasosopo's Palmdale home after his son, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, was named as a perpetrator of the Te'o hoax, revealed last week in a Deadspin.com report.

According to the report, Tuiasosopo allegedly was involved in creating a Twitter account for a "Lennay Kekua" and connecting her with Te'o. The Heisman Trophy-runner up spoke to the media repeatedly about his girlfriend and her supposed battle with cancer.

After more than a year of corresponding on social media and by telephone with Kekua, Te'o said he was told in September the woman had died of leukemia. Three months later, the player got a call from a phone number he recognized as Kekua's with the voice on the other end telling him Kekua wasn't dead.

On Dec. 26, Te'o told Notre Dame officials he had learned his girlfriend did not exist, the university said.

In an interview with ESPN, Te'o denied a role in the ruse. "I wasn't faking it," he said. "I wasn't part of this."

Te'o also identified Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a former high school football and volleyball star, as the person behind the bizarre hoax.

Te'o told ESPN he met Tuiasosopo for the first time on Nov. 24, after Notre Dame beat USC at the Coliseum.

"I hope he learns," Te'o told ESPN. "I hope he understands what he's done. I don't wish an ill thing to somebody. I just hope he learns. I think embarrassment is big enough."

Titus Tuiasosopo's brother, former pro football player Peter "Navy" Tuiasosopo, said his family had obtained legal counsel and were organizing some sort of formal interview regarding the allegations.

"The family is strong," Tuiasosopo told reporters in the church parking lot after Sunday's service. "The family will stay together."

Tuiasosopo said his family continues to support his nephew.

"I don't know how he feels," he said in response to a question about Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. "He doesn't feel his best."

kate.mather@latimes.com

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