13-year-old Pennsylvania teen wins $25,000 prize in New York text-messaging contest

By: Associated Press Wire Reports | Sunday, April 22, 2007 7:47 PM PDT ∞

Thirteen-year-old Morgan Pozgar, of Claysburg, Pa., was crowned LG National Texting champion on Saturday after she typed "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from "Mary Poppins" in 15 seconds.

"I'm going to go shopping and buy lots of clothes," the teen said after winning her $25,000 prize from the electronics company LG.

Morgan defeated nearly 200 other competitors at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan to become East Coast champion and then beat West Coast champion Eli Tirosh, 21, of Los Angeles.

She estimated that she sends more than 8,000 text messages a month to her friends and family.

Tornado flattens houses, knocks out power in Texas Panhandle town

CACTUS, Texas (AP) -- Downed power lines, flattened houses and roads littered with debris kept many residents from returning to their homes Sunday in this rural Panhandle town hit hard by what appeared to be a group of tornadoes.

At least 14 people were injured, two of them critically, during the storms late Saturday that knocked out power to about 20,000 customers in the region, officials said.

About 50 townspeople were unaccounted for Sunday, Moore County Judge Rowdy Rhoades said. However, he said most of the town's 2,500 residents likely evacuated after hearing tornado sirens.

Officials were checking for gas leaks in the many homes damaged by the storm, Rhoades said.

"Anytime (a tornado) can take an 18-wheeler with a gravel dump, slide it sideways and jackknife it, it's pretty strong," he said.

Cactus was among one of the few areas in the Panhandle still without power Sunday, Xcel Energy spokesman Wes Reeves said.

The National Weather Service in Amarillo, about 60 miles south of Cactus, sent survey teams to the area Sunday to determine how many tornadoes hit the region.

At least a dozen homes and as many businesses were destroyed in Tulia, about 50 miles south of Amarillo, but there were no serious injuries, Tulia police dispatcher Ken Patton said.

Texas jury awards $9 million in damages to man beaten, dumped in field

LINDEN, Texas (AP) ---- A jury awarded $9 million to a black man who suffered permanent brain damage after being beaten and dumped in a field by four white men in 2003.

Billy Ray Johnson, 46, lives in a nursing home because of the injuries he suffered in the beating. In the criminal case, the men accused of assaulting him were fined and sentenced to probation and jail time, but none served more than 60 days behind bars.

In a four-day civil trial in District Court that ended Friday, jurors found James Cory Hicks and Christopher Colt Amox responsible for Johnson's injuries. Defendants Dallas Chadwick Stone and John Wesley Owens previously reached confidential settlements, attorneys said.

A jury of 11 whites and one black deliberated less than four hours before returning a unanimous verdict, said attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of Johnson.

"The jury told all of Texas and, indeed, the entire country, that Billy Ray is a human being who deserves to be treated with dignity -- that the life of each of us, rich or poor, black or white, abled or disabled, is truly precious," said Morris Dees, founder and chief trial attorney for the Montgomery, Ala.-based law center.

Authorities in this poor, pine-locked east Texas hamlet had said that Johnson, well-known around town as a friendly but "slow" character, was lured to an all-white party where underage drinkers fed him alcohol and picked on him.

Authorities said Johnson, who lived with his mother and brother and had no criminal background or history of violence, was taunted for the defendants' amusement. He was found unconscious on an ant mound and had suffered a serious concussion and bleeding in the brain.

Jurors in the criminal cases against Amox and Hicks acquitted them of felony charges, instead convicting them of a lesser charge and recommending probation. Stone and Owens pleaded guilty to an "injury to a disabled individual by omission" charge.

District Attorney Randal Lee said before the sentences were imposed that the juries' decisions were in line with other juries who sympathize with first-time offenders. He pointed out that the so-called beating involved one punch.

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