A ventriloquist from Texas has won the $1 million prize in the final of the second series of America’s Got Talent. Terry Fator beat reggae singer Cas Haley in the NBC hit show which is judged by Osbourne, David Hasselhoff and Piers Morgan as well as voters from the viewing public.

Terry Fator impressed the audience, at home and in the studio with with his turtle puppet’s rendition of Roy Orbison’s hit ‘Crying’, followed by a duet with Kermit The Frog.

In third place was Beatboxer Antoinette “Butterscotch” Clinton and in fourth, 14-year-old country singer Julienne Irwin.

The Texan ventriloquist has been booked for a headlining show in Las Vegas next month.

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Eastenders will be losing a few of its characters in the next year. First up is EastEnders actor Phil Daniels who has chosen to quit the soap after 2 years in the square. In an interview with The Sun, the actor claimed that he had always intended to leave the soap after two years.

Due to Phil Daniels’ departure his on screen children played by Kellie Shirley and Matt Di Angelo, will not have their contracts renewed. The mother of the screen family (played by Diane Parish) will make a temporary exit at the same time while she has a baby in real life.

Recently comedian Bobby Davro signed to join the BBC soap as Vince Monks, a new love interest for barmaid, Shirley Carter (played by actress Linda Henry).

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Can an Asian-American ever hold the American Idol title? Paul Ethan Hahn says a resounding “yes” and Internet video might be his Ace in the Hole.

Paul grew up in Murray Hill, New Jersey and has always been a big country fan. He also loves the hit FOX-TV program American Idol. And if Paul has his way, he’ll be the first Asian country singer on American Idol.

“I wanna make Paula Abdul cry and show that jerk off Simon how to sing. I want to be the next American Idol!” Paul quips.

This week, Paul Hahn entered an online FOX 29 Philly Idol contest and hopes that a hi-tech edge will help him bypass the massive lines outside the first round of judges.

FOX 29 posted an open American Idol audition on their website. The winner gets to perform live on Fox’s morning show, Good Day Philadelphia, and gets to bypass the first round of judges at the open American Idol Philadelphia auditions later this month. To enter, all you had to do was upload a video of you singing.

Paul recorded his American Idol demo using his Apple MacBook Pro laptop, with a built in iSight camera, and the video editing program iMovie.

“It was so easy,” says Paul. “I just opened iMovie, recorded about a minute sample of my singing, burned a DVD and threw it into the mail. The whole process only took about 10 minutes.”

Since Idol’s first season, we’ve seen Kelly Clarkson belt out high notes, a plethora of Sanjaya hairstyles, and even a contestant who went on to win an Oscar. But we haven’t seen any serious Asian-American contestants get a real shot at the Idol crown (sorry but William Hung doesn’t count).

Will Paul’s dream of telling off Simon and getting to sing a country song on American Idol come true? Can Internet video voting give this American Idol hopeful a back door to stardom? That’s in the hands of you, the voters.

You can watch and vote for all the top 10 Philadelphia contestants, including Paul Hahn, on FOX 29’s web site: http://media.myfoxphilly.com/idol/idolvote.html. The top 5 get to perform live on FOX 29’s morning show Good Day Philadelphia and the winner gets to bypass the massive lines at the Philadelphia open auditions for season 7.

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Variety is reporting that Universal Media Studios has signed a two year deal with Battlestar Galactica executive producer Ronald D. Moore.

Moore, who is currently working on the fourth and final season of BSG which is due to finish next year, will also work on a number of new projects for the studio. As far as movies are concerned, Moore will work on the sequel to I, Robot for 20th Century Fox and also an update of The Thing for Universal Studios.

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Kristen Bell star of private detective series, Veronica Mars, is reportedly in discussions to join Lost. TV Guide has reported that the actress Bell is being considered for the role of Charlotte, a twenty-something described as being “precocious, loquacious and funny… a very successful academic who also knows how to handle herself in the real world.”

If Kristen Bell does get the part of Charlotte she will be appearing introduced in the second episode of season four, which will air in the US starting in February.

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Merry Miller is the Senior Programming Director for The Learning Annex in New York, USA. She was named as one of the 40 “rising stars” in 2007 by Crain’s magazine and is a former Miss Dallas. But that’s where this “rising star” starts to fade.

In late July of 2007, Merry conducted a poorly done interview with Holly Hunter on ABC News Now’s segment “What’s The Buzz.” Since its broadcast, the disastrous interview has been heavily viewed on YouTube [link] and other online video sites.

Not only were the interview questions awful, but for some reason Merry decides to phonetically read off the teleprompter - like a child. She also gives the wrong month for Holly Hunter’s show premiere (June instead of July) and accidentally encourages viewers to go to nbcnews.com not ABC News.com.

Merry Miller, welcome to the TV Disaster Hall of Fame! I’m sure NBC loved the plug.

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Even if you’re not a Harry Potter fan, you have to admire J.K Rowling. Not just as a writer with a world-class imagination, but also as a businesswoman and entrepreneur. She seemed to come out of nowhere to create one of the biggest entertainment franchises ever.

It’s hard to believe that she used to be unemployed, surviving on U.K. state benefits. That was 1995. Now it’s 12 years (and hundreds of millions of dollars) later, and she’s just finished her seventh and final Harry Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

iTunes Link: J.K. Rowling Interview

Rowling recently did an interview with Meredith Viera for the American news programs The Today Show and Dateline NBC. I only caught part of her Dateline NBC interview, so I was pretty happy to see that they posted the whole thing on iTunes. The interview is an interesting glimpse inside the world of Harry Potter, and it offers some real insight into the woman who created a billion dollar world of magic.

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