'Skyfall,' 'Game of Thrones' win SAG stunt awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The James Bond adventure "Skyfall" and the fantasy series "Game of Thrones" have picked up prizes for best stunt work from the Screen Actors Guild.

The stunt honors were announced Sunday on the red carpet before the official SAG Awards ceremony, as stars were gathering for their guild's big night.

JoBeth Williams and Scott Bakula announced the winners, noting the value of stunt players, who often are overlooked for their contributions to film and television.

"The stunt men and women of our union are critical to the work that gets done," Bakula said. "They keep us healthy, they keep us alive, they keep us working. They keep our shows working."

The SAG honors are the latest show in a puzzling Academy Awards season in which Hollywood's top prize, the best-picture Oscar, looks up for grabs among several key nominees.

Among nominees for the 19th annual guild awards are Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones for the Civil War epic "Lincoln"; Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway for the Victor Hugo musical adaptation "Les Miserables"; and Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Oscar recipient Robert De Niro for the oddball romance "Silver Linings Playbook."

De Niro and Jones are in an exclusive supporting-actors group where all five nominees are past Oscar winners. The others are Alan Arkin for the Iran hostage-crisis thriller "Argo," Javier Bardem for the James Bond adventure "Skyfall" and Philip Seymour Hoffman for the cult drama "The Master."

Honors from the actors union, next weekend's Directors Guild of America Awards and Saturday night's Producers Guild of America Awards — whose top honor went to "Argo" — typically help to establish clear favorites for the Oscars.

But Oscar night on Feb. 24 looks more uncertain this time after some top directing prospects, including Ben Affleck for "Argo" and Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty," missed out on nominations. Both films were nominated for best picture, but a movie rarely wins the top Oscar if its director is not also in the running.

Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" would seem the Oscar favorite with 12 nominations. Yet "Argo" and Affleck were surprise best-drama and director winners at the Golden Globes, and then there's Saturday's Producers Guild win for "Argo," leaving the Oscar race looking like anybody's guess.

The Screen Actors Guild honors at least should help to establish solid front-runners for the stars. All four of the guild's individual acting winners often go on to receive the same prizes at the Academy Awards.

Last year, the guild went just three-for-four — with lead actor Jean Dujardin of "The Artist" and supporting players Octavia Spencer of "The Help" and Christopher Plummer of "Beginners" also taking home Oscars. The guild's lead-actress winner, Viola Davis of "The Help," missed out on the Oscar, which went to Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady."

The guild also presents an award for overall cast performance, its equivalent of a best-picture honor. The nominees are "Argo," ''The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," ''Les Miserables," ''Lincoln" and "Silver Linings Playbook."

Yet the cast prize has a spotty record at predicting the eventual best-picture recipient at the Oscars. Only eight of 17 times since the guild added the category has the cast winner gone on to take the best-picture Oscar. "The Help" won the guild's cast prize last year, while Oscar voters named "The Artist" as best picture.

Such past guild cast winners as "The Birdcage," ''Gosford Park" and "Inglourious Basterds" also failed to take the top Oscar.

Airing live on TNT and TBS, the show features nine television categories, as well.

Receiving the guild's life-achievement award is Dick Van Dyke, who presented the same prize last year to his "The Dick Van Dyke Show" co-star, Mary Tyler Moore. Van Dyke's award will be presented by his 1960s sitcom's creator and co-star, Carl Reiner, and Alec Baldwin.

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Ariel Sharon Brain Scan Shows Response to Stimuli

JERUSALEM — A brain scan performed on Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister who had a devastating stroke seven years ago and is presumed to be in a vegetative state, revealed significant brain activity in response to external stimuli, raising the chances that he is able to hear and understand, a scientist involved in the test said Sunday.

Scientists showed Mr. Sharon, 84, pictures of his family, had him listen to a recording of the voice of one of his sons and used tactile stimulation to assess the extent of his brain’s response.

“We were surprised that there was activity in the proper parts of the brain,” said Prof. Alon Friedman, a neuroscientist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a member of the team that carried out the test. “It raises the chances that he hears and understands, but we cannot be sure. The test did not prove that.”

The activity in specific regions of the brain indicated appropriate processing of the stimulations, according to a statement from Ben-Gurion University, but additional tests to assess Mr. Sharon’s level of consciousness were less conclusive.

“While there were some encouraging signs, these were subtle and not as strong,” the statement added.

The test was carried out last week at the Soroka University Medical Center in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba using a state-of-the-art M.R.I. machine and methods recently developed by Prof. Martin M. Monti of the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Monti took part in the test, which lasted approximately two hours.

Mr. Sharon’s son Gilad said in October 2011 that he believed that his father responded to some requests. “When he is awake, he looks at me and moves fingers when I ask him to,” he said at the time, adding, “I am sure he hears me.”

Professor Friedman said in a telephone interview that the test results “say nothing about the future” but may be of some help to the family and the regular medical staff caring for Mr. Sharon at a hospital outside Tel Aviv.

“There is a small chance that he is conscious but has no way of expressing it,” Professor Friedman said, but he added, “We do not know to what extent he is conscious.”

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Rules to simplifying life come up short

Los Angeles-area author Matthew E. May has hit upon an attractive theme in his recent book, "The Law of Subtraction: 6 Simple Rules for Winning in the Age of Excess Everything" published by McGraw-Hill.

Who does not yearn for a guide to simplifying, synthesizing and subtracting some of the clutter, overload and demands of the "Age of Excess Everything"?

He has also cleverly subtracted from his own workload by inviting others, mostly authors and consultants like him, to contribute about a third of the material for his six laws for doing more with less in the form of summaries of their views.

Mind you, it took fellow author Daniel Pink to point out the appeal of the subject. "Subtraction is your meme. It's out there; it's growing," he told May just before he took the stage at a corporate conference, urging him to "own" it. "Best. Advice. Ever," writes May.

This exchange is itself a little guide to what the book is like. Not only is it full of people talking in a slightly artificial, visionary way about common sense objectives, it is also filled with contradictions. "Subtraction is growing" is only the first.

The book does contain good examples of the less-is-more theme, some well-known, some less so. May's opener (illustrating Law No. 1: "What isn't there can often trump what is") is the FedEx logo, featuring an arrow created by the blank space between the E and X. Lindon Leader, its designer, explains how he "didn't overplay it, didn't mention it" when pitching the idea. (He makes up for that here.)

May, who lives in Westlake Village, also provides a brief history of how Lockheed Corp. put a team of design engineers in a circus tent next to a foul-smelling plastics factory to design a jet fighter: the secret Skunk Works became a byword for how to foster innovation. (Law No. 5: "Break is the important part of breakthrough.")

He cites J.K. Rowling, who was inspired for the idea for Harry Potter on a long, boring train journey, in support of Law No. 6. ("Doing something isn't always better than doing nothing.").

My favorite came from contributor Bob Harrison, a retired police chief, who introduced an "unplan" to withdraw officers directing traffic after a July 4 fireworks display and discovered everyone got home more quickly. (Law No. 2: "The simplest rules create the most effective experience.")

But I find every subtractive success story has an additive counterweight, some of which are explicit in May's examples.

It is true that "creativity thrives under intelligent constraints" (Law No. 4), but Michelangelo — ordered to work on a fresco for the Sistine Chapel, not a sculpture, his preferred medium — then "expanded the job's scope," covering the walls as well as the ceiling.

Steve Jobs was a great simplifier, who "handed control to us" as users of Apple devices. But he was also a control freak when it came to designing the same artifacts, supervising fine detail, adding features and forcing his team to work all hours, rather than giving them time for "purposeful daydreaming," as May advocates elsewhere in his book.

"The Artist," the silent, black-and-white film that provides May with the book's coda, was a worthy Oscar winner — but so was 2008's "Slumdog Millionaire," with its cast of thousands and Bollywood-style excess.

May does not avoid these contradictions, but he does not really address them, either. He prefers to list examples of his six laws rather than explore how employers or their staff could reconcile the daily conflict between constraints and freedom, perspiration and inspiration.

In the interests of "owning" his Zen-inspired meme, May subtracts these complexities. Instead he offers tips, such as his invitation to take "long, languid showers" — No. 8 on a list of ways to relax the mind. This point "needs no explanation," May writes, "which is good, because I could find no research on the subject."

For most people at most companies, where the pressure to add customers, revenue and value is intense, it is as difficult to "subtract" as it is for most grown-ups to follow the advice of one of the book's contributors and live out of a suitcase in a near-empty apartment.

It is a pity, given the need to simplify many business processes, that May adds so little to the sum of knowledge about how to do it.

Hill is the management editor of the Financial Times of London, in which this review first appeared.

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Prison riot continues in Venezuela with 55 reported dead

Relatives of inmates pray outside the Uribana prison in Venezuela as a riot in the facility continued Saturday. (Leo Ramirez / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images / January 26, 2013)

By Mery Mogollon and Chris Kraul

January 26, 2013, 11:07 a.m.

CARACAS, Venezuela -- The unofficial death toll rose to 55 on Saturday from a ongoing prison riot as human-rights critics urged the government to improve Venezuela's overcrowded jails, described as some of the worst in Latin America.
 
National Guard members and police at midday were still trying to quell the riot at the Uribana prison in the western city of Barquisimeto, where violence broke out Thursday night when authorities began a search of cells for hidden weapons. 
 
The prison is one of many severely overcrowded jails in Venezuela. It is reputed to be dominated by gangs whose tentacles extend to criminal enterprises across the country, including the sale of drugs and control of buildings and farms occupied by squatters.
 
Although the government has not released totals of dead and wounded, Raul Medina, director of Central Hospital of Barquisimeto, told reporters early Saturday that the toll was 55 dead. Other sources reported that 93 people had been wounded.

Many of the victims were disfigured and only 12 have been identified, Medina said.
 
Iris Varela, minister for penitentiary services, was scheduled to hold a news  conference later Saturday, but issued a statement Friday in which she blamed local Barquisimeto media for announcing the prison search in advance. She also said many of the deaths were a “settling of scores” among rival prison gangs.
 
The Uribana jail has a long history of violence and appalling conditions. In a joint statement Friday, two human rights groups noted that the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in 2007 called on the government of President Hugo Chavez to take immediate steps to alleviate overcrowding and “avoid the loss of life” at the facility.
 
“Even then the court was asking the government to seize arms that were in the possession of the prisoners,” said the Venezuelan Prison Observatory and Federation of Colleges of Attorneys in their statement. Not just prisoners but guards and inmates’ families were unnecessarily at risk, the statement said.
 
The watchdog groups went on to criticize the abortive prison search for “excessive force” and for “not having been coordinated nor performed with the experts and methods called for.”

ALSO:

22 killed as death sentences in Egypt soccer riot spark clashes

Haitians found at sea not screened for asylum, U.N. agency says

Russian lawmakers give initial OK to gay 'propaganda' bill

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How to Share Vine Videos on Tumblr

When Twitter launched Vine Thursday it omitted one important social network from its sharing options: Tumblr. Looped GIF images are extremely popular on Tumblr, so the audience there for Vine videos is potentially huge.

Just because there’s no native way to share Vines on Tumblr, doesn’t mean you can’t share your creations on the site. Here are few different ways you can include Vine videos in your Tumblr posts:

[More from Mashable: Facebook Explains Why Vine Can’t Access Your Friends]

Upload Directly To Tumblr

If you want to share your Vine on Tumblr, one of the easiest ways is to just upload it directly to your Tumblr from your iOS device using Tumblr’s app.

Every Vine you create is automatically saved to the camera roll on your device. To upload to Tumblr:

[More from Mashable: John Tesh Thanks 500 Helpful Tweeters With $ 5 Gift Cards]

• Launch the Tumblr app on your phone


• Create a new post


• Select video from the options


• Choose existing video


• Select the Vine you’d like to upload from the video clips stored on your phone

Vine videos shared this way will just play through once rather than loop. To get that looped effect, you can import the video clip into your favorite mobile video editor (Splice is a good example, but there are many others) and copy it several times, laying the copies down on the timeline, one after another. Once you’ve reached your desired length, export the video and upload it just as you would a traditional video through Tumblr.

If you don’t have a video editor on your phone, you can email the clip to yourself from your phone’s Photo Library and edit it on your computer instead.

Embed a Tweet

Embedding a tweet on Tumblr is the easiest way to share the looped version of your Vine. To embed a tweet:

• Share your Vine on Twitter


• Go to Twitter.com


• Click on the More button on the tweet associated with your Vine


• Select Embed Tweet


• Copy the code generated by Twitter and add it to a post on Tumblr

If you don’t want to share all your Vines through your own Twitter stream but want the ability to embed them, consider creating a Twitter account just for your Vines. Once you tweet them, you’ll be able to copy/paste tweets or links to your Vine from your special account to your main account fairly easily, and you won’t pollute your traditional Twitter stream.

Upload To Your Favorite Video Service

iOS devices offer the ability to upload video clips directly from your Photo Library to YouTube.

Vine video files are saved as MOV’s so you can upload the file to almost any video service and then embed that player into your Tumblr blog.

The file can also be downloaded onto your computer and uploaded to Tumblr (or other sites) any way you’d like.

Have you tried sharing Vine videos on Tumblr, or another site? Let us know your own tips and tricks for sharing the video clips in the comments.

Click here to view the gallery: How To Use Vine

Photo by Emily Price, Mashable

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Kutcher takes on tech idol Steve Jobs in 'jOBS'

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Ashton Kutcher says playing Steve Jobs on screen "was honestly one of the most terrifying things I've ever tried to do in my life."

The 34-year-old actor helped premiere the biopic "jOBS" Friday, which was the closing-night film at the Sundance Film Festival.

Kutcher plays the Apple Inc. founder from the company's humble origins in the 1970s until the launch of the first iPod in 2001. A digital entrepreneur himself, Kutcher said he considers Jobs a personal hero.

"He's a guy who failed and got back on the horse," Kutcher said. "I think we can all sort of relate to that at some point in life."

Kutcher even embodied the Jobs character as he pursued his own high-tech interests off-screen.

"What was nice was when I was preparing for the character, I could still work on product development for technology companies, and I would sort of stay in character, in the mode of the character," he said. "But I didn't feel like I was compromising the work on the film by working on technology stuff because it was pretty much in the same field."

But playing the real-life tech icon who died in 2011 still felt risky, he said, because "he's fresh in our minds."

"It was kind of like throwing myself into this gauntlet of, I know, massive amounts of criticism because somebody's going to go 'well, it wasn't exactly...,'" Kutcher said.

While the filmmakers say they tried to be as historically accurate as possible, there was also a disclaimer at the very end of the credits that said portions of the film might not be completely accurate.

Still, realism was always the focus for Kutcher, who watched "hundreds of hours of footage," listened to Jobs' past speeches and interviewed several of his friends to prepare for the role.

The actor even adopted the entrepreneur's "fruitarian diet," which he said "can lead to some serious issues."

"I ended up in the hospital two days before we started shooting the movie," he said. "I was like doubled over in pain, and my pancreas levels were completely out of whack, which was completely terrifying, considering everything."

Jobs died of complications from pancreatic cancer.

Still, Kutcher was up to the challenge of playing Jobs, in part because of his admiration for the man who created the Macintosh computer and the iPod.

"I admire this man so much and what he's done. I admire the way he built things," Kutcher said. "This guy created a tool that we use every day in our life, and he believed in it when nobody else did."

The film also shows Jobs' less appealing side, withholding stock options from some of the company's original employees and denying child support to the mother of his eldest child.

Kutcher still found the man inspiring. Jobs had a singular focus, Kutcher said, and felt like anyone could change the world.

"I don't know if there's ever been an entrepreneur who's had more compassion and care for his consumer than Steve Jobs," Kutcher said. "He wanted to put something in your hand that you could use and you could use it easily... and he really cared about that."

___

AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy.

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Religious Groups and Employers Battle Contraception Mandate

Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency

President Obama, with his health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, offering a compromise on the contraception mandate last year.

In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious freedom and health care access that appears headed to the Supreme Court.

In recent months, federal courts have seen dozens of lawsuits brought not only by religious institutions like Catholic dioceses but also by private employers ranging from a pizza mogul to produce transporters who say the government is forcing them to violate core tenets of their faith. Some have been turned away by judges convinced that access to contraception is a vital health need and a compelling state interest. Others have been told that their beliefs appear to outweigh any state interest and that they may hold off complying with the law until their cases have been judged. New suits are filed nearly weekly.

“This is highly likely to end up at the Supreme Court,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia and one of the country’s top scholars on church-state conflicts. “There are so many cases, and we are already getting strong disagreements among the circuit courts.”

President Obama’s health care law, known as the Affordable Care Act, was the most fought-over piece of legislation in his first term and was the focus of a highly contentious Supreme Court decision last year that found it to be constitutional.

But a provision requiring the full coverage of contraception remains a matter of fierce controversy. The law says that companies must fully cover all “contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures” approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including “morning-after pills” and intrauterine devices whose effects some contend are akin to abortion.

As applied by the Health and Human Services Department, the law offers an exemption for “religious employers,” meaning those who meet a four-part test: that their purpose is to inculcate religious values, that they primarily employ and serve people who share their religious tenets, and that they are nonprofit groups under federal tax law.

But many institutions, including religious schools and colleges, do not meet those criteria because they employ and teach members of other religions and have a broader purpose than inculcating religious values.

“We represent a Catholic college founded by Benedictine monks,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has brought a number of the cases to court. “They don’t qualify as a house of worship and don’t turn away people in hiring or as students because they are not Catholic.”

In that case, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, a federal appeals court panel in Washington told the college last month that it could hold off on complying with the law while the federal government works on a promised exemption for religiously-affiliated institutions. The court told the government that it wanted an update by mid-February.

Defenders of the provision say employers may not be permitted to impose their views on employees, especially when something so central as health care is concerned.

“Ninety-nine percent of women use contraceptives at some time in their lives,” said Judy Waxman, a vice president of the National Women’s Law Center, which filed a brief supporting the government in one of the cases. “There is a strong and legitimate government interest because it affects the health of women and babies.”

She added, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Contraception was declared by the C.D.C. to be one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.”

Officials at the Justice Department and the Health and Human Services Department declined to comment, saying the cases were pending.

A compromise for religious institutions may be worked out. The government hopes that by placing the burden on insurance companies rather than on the organizations, the objections will be overcome. Even more challenging cases involve private companies run by people who reject all or many forms of contraception.

The Alliance Defending Freedom — like Becket, a conservative group — has brought a case on behalf of Hercules Industries, a company in Denver that makes sheet metal products. It was granted an injunction by a judge in Colorado who said the religious values of the family owners were infringed by the law.

“Two-thirds of the cases have had injunctions against Obamacare, and most are headed to courts of appeals,” said Matt Bowman, senior legal counsel for the alliance. “It is clear that a substantial number of these cases will vindicate religious freedom over Obamacare. But it seems likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately resolve the dispute.”

The timing of these cases remains in flux. Half a dozen will probably be argued by this summer, perhaps in time for inclusion on the Supreme Court’s docket next term. So far, two- and three-judge panels on four federal appeals courts have weighed in, granting some injunctions while denying others.

One of the biggest cases involves Hobby Lobby, which started as a picture framing shop in an Oklahoma City garage with $600 and is now one of the country’s largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 stores in 41 states.

David Green, the company’s founder, is an evangelical Christian who says he runs his company on biblical principles, including closing on Sunday so employees can be with their families, paying nearly double the minimum wage and providing employees with comprehensive health insurance.

Mr. Green does not object to covering contraception but considers morning-after pills to be abortion-inducing and therefore wrong.

“Our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and have supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families,” Mr. Green said in a statement. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit last month turned down his family’s request for a preliminary injunction, but the company has found a legal way to delay compliance for some months.

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Hackers take over sentencing commission website

The hacker-activist group Anonymous says it hijacked the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist who committed suicide. The FBI is investigating.

The website of the commission, an independent agency of the judicial branch, was taken over early Saturday and replaced with a message warning that when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago "a line was crossed."

The hackers say they've infiltrated several government computer systems and copied secret information that they now threaten to make public.

Family and friends of Swartz, who helped create Reddit and RSS, say he killed himself after he was hounded by federal prosecutors. Officials say he helped post millions of court documents for free online and that he illegally downloaded millions of academic articles from an online clearinghouse.

The FBI's Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said in a statement that "we were aware as soon as it happened and are handling it as a criminal investigation. We are always concerned when someone illegally accesses another person's or government agency's network."

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Deadly protests roil Egypt on anniversary of revolution

CAIRO — At least five people were killed and hundreds were injured Friday as protests swept across Egypt over the Islamist-led government's failure to fix the besieged economy and heal the politically divided nation two years after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

The anniversary of the revolution that led to Mubarak's downfall was marked more by bloodshed than joy as familiar and troubling scenes played out amid the widening despair. Gunshots echoed through cities, rock-throwing youths lunged at police through clouds of tear gas, and peaceful demonstrators waved banners and shouted epithets against those in power.

Five people, including police officers, were killed by unknown gunmen in the port city of Suez, according to state media. Unconfirmed reports from a private television station said nine people had died throughout the country. Nearly 400 people, including scores of police officers, were injured, with many of the wounded treated in mosques and alleys.

President Mohamed Morsi has been engulfed for months by anger from secularists, who claim he and his Muslim Brotherhood party have turned increasingly authoritarian in a bid to advance an Islamist state at the expense of social justice. The protests were the latest reminder of the volatile politics and persistent mistrust that threaten Egypt's transition.

"Morsi is finished," said Tarik Salama, an activist. "A big part of the population hates him now. It's too late for him to turn around and say, 'Hey guys, I love you.' He's in the same place as Mubarak was two years ago. Morsi's biggest problem is that he failed to unify the country. A lot of people voted for him, but he failed."

One banner raised in Cairo's Tahrir Square read, "Two years since the revolution, and Egypt still needs another revolution." Protest chants that harked back to the 18-day revolt that toppled Mubarak were now directed at Morsi: "Leave, leave."

The days ahead may prove more violent. Many of the youths clashing with police in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities are angry about an economy that offers little hope. They have been joined by hard-core soccer fans, known as Ultras, demanding that police officials be held accountable for the deaths of 74 soccer fans killed last year in a stadium riot.

A court verdict in that case is expected Saturday. In recent days, youths in Cairo have battled police with stones and gasoline bombs around the high concrete barricades that block streets leading from Tahrir Square to parliament and the Interior Ministry.

Young men pulled part of the barrier down but police drove them back, firing steady volleys of tear gas that cloaked the square and drifted over the Nile.

"These young men and kids have no jobs," said Salama. "The young in Egypt feel there is no future for them. This is the big danger."

By dusk Friday, youths with rags and scarves over their faces hurled stones and rushed the barriers, preparing for another night of clashes. The unrest spurred the emergence of an anarchist group, known as the Black Bloc, whose masked and black-clad members threw Molotov cocktails and attempted to overrun the presidential palace and the Shura Council, the upper house of parliament.

Protesters attacked offices of the Muslim Brotherhood and blocked highways and rail lines. To avoid adding to the violence, the Brotherhood ordered its followers to stay away from Tahrir and instead participate in community programs, such as planting trees and handing out food to the poor. A militant arm of the Brotherhood was blamed last month for deadly attacks against anti-Morsi protesters.

The backlash against Morsi intensified in November when he expanded his presidential powers and, sidestepping the courts, pushed through a referendum on an Islamist-backed constitution. The liberal opposition, which has long been disorganized, denounced him for ruining the promise of democracy that inspired the 2011 revolution.

Morsi has said his actions were an effort to root out Mubarak-era loyalists from the government and propel the country toward parliamentary elections in the spring.

But his biggest problem perhaps is Egypt's troubled economy, which has lost more than half its foreign reserves and worsened conditions for the approximately 40% of Egyptians who live on $2 a day.

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

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Dr. Phil to interview alleged girlfriend hoaxer

NEW YORK (AP) — Dr. Phil McGraw has booked the first on-camera interview with the man who allegedly concocted the girlfriend hoax that ensnared Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o.

A "Dr. Phil Show" spokesperson confirmed on Friday the interview with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo (roh-NY-ah too-ee-AH'-so-SO'-poh), the man accused of creating an online persona of a nonexistent woman who Te'o said he fell for without ever meeting face-to-face.

The ruse was uncovered last week by Deadspin.com, which reported that Tuiasosopo created the woman, named Lennay Kekua, who then supposedly died last September.

No further details of the "Dr. Phil" interview, including its airdate, were announced.

This interview follows the first on-camera interview with Te'o conducted this week by Katie Couric.

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