NEW YORK (AP) – OMG!

Thirteen-year-old Morgan Pozgar, of Claysburg, Pa., was crowned LG National Texting champion on Saturday after she typed the first two lines of the “Mary Poppins” song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” 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.

Calls fly in after YouTube posting

SOUTHBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – Ryan Fitzgerald is unemployed, lives with his father and has a little bit of time on his hands.

So, he decided to offer his ear, to anyone who wants to call. After posting a video with his cell phone number on YouTube on Friday, the 20-year-old told The Boston Globe he has received more than 5,000 calls and text messages. Fitzgerald said he wanted to “be there,” for anyone who needed to talk. “I never met you, but I do care,” a spiky-haired Fitzgerald said into the camera on his Youtube posting.

He planned to take and return as many calls he could, but today at 5 a.m., his T-Mobile cell phone payment will begin charging him for his generosity when he is no longer eligible for free weekend minutes.

“I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to do about it,” he said. “Come Monday, no way I’m going to just hang up on people and say, ‘I don’t have the minutes.”‘

Fitzgerald, who said people consider him “easy to talk to,” was inspired by Juan Mann. Youtube video clips of Mann offering “Free Hugs” to strangers became wildly popular on the user-controlled Internet site.

“Some peoples own mothers won’t take the time to sit down and talk with them and have a conversation,” Fitzgerald said.

Gator surfaces in New York state

HUNTINGTON, N.Y. (AP) – Humans weren’t the only species basking in the Northeast’s warm weekend weather, as police helped capture a small alligator sunbathing by a small pond in this Long Island town.

It was a startling sight on Saturday in a community just 35 miles from Manhattan. The American alligator is native to the South and it is against New York law to own one, said Ray Gross, chief of the Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Green with yellowish stripes and roughly 2 feet long, the animal appeared to be about 3 years old, Gross said.

County police helped capture the alligator, which “wasn’t too happy to see us,” said Officer Vinny O’Shaughnessy.

“We were incredulous at first, but then we knew that we had to do something about it,” he said.

The SPCA is looking for whoever may have released the alligator. That person could face animal cruelty charges, Gross said. He said the animal had probably been raised in captivity and would be unable to fend for itself in the wild.

Greek-Americans march in sunshine

NEW YORK (AP) – What a difference a week makes.

The Greek-American Independence Day Parade, postponed April 15 because of a drenching nor’easter, made its way through Manhattan on Sunday afternoon under cloudless blue skies and a sparkling sun.

Organizers rescheduled the 86th annual parade because of the storm’s torrential rains and high winds. But on Sunday, Zeus, the god of weather, evidently showed favor: The high temperature reached an above average 78 degrees, the National Weather Service said.

The parade, which celebrates Greeks’ independence from the Ottoman Empire, made its way up Fifth Avenue from about East 61st Street to about East 80th Street.

Fifty-six floats, 22 bands, 37 societies and members of the Presidential Guard marched in the parade as thousands of spectators, many of them waving Greece’s blue and white flag, watched and cheered from crowded sidewalks. Many yelled, “Long live Greece!” in Greek.

“It describes us, how we are,” said Angie Tsitouridou, 21, of Queens.