NEW YORK (Reuters) - A business analyst from Virginia beat out 8.15 million other entries to win ESPN's annual prediction contest for the NCAA basketball championship - but has gained more attention for the handle he created than his powers of prognostication. Craig Gilmore, inspired by several pints of beer and using the name Lannay Kekua, won the contest, accurately picking Louisville to defeat Michigan in Monday night's college basketball championship game before the 64-team tournament began.

Following is a summary of current odd news briefs. Amusement park planned in Pakistan town where bin Laden lived

By David Bailey Jan 24 (Reuters) - Notre Dame football player Manti Te'o said he was the victim of an elaborate online hoax and denied in an interview broadcast on Thursday having had any part in the construction of the dramatic story of his dying girlfriend. "No, I did not," Te'o said in the interview with Katie Couric broadcast on the daytime talk show "Katie." "I think what people don't realize is that the same day that everybody else found out about this situation, I found out."

NEW YORK, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Manti Te'o, the Notre Dame linebacker entangled in a girlfriend hoax that gives a whole new meaning to the term "air kiss," is inspiring a new fad racing through social media: Te'oing. An avalanche of pictures of people hugging empty chairs or puckering up to an otherwise empty room were posted to Twitter with the hashtag #Te'oing days after the college football star's story about his girlfriend's cancer death was exposed as a fraud. Not only did she never have leukemia, she never existed.