Picky travelers keen on comfort have rated a former flop house as one of the five best hotels in America for 2007. The 28-room Mansion on Delaware Avenue earned the Zagat guide's highest ranking for service and tied for the second-highest ranking for room quality in a hotel with under 100 rooms. The Mansion was the only urban hotel in the U. S. to earn high rankings from travelers responding to Zagat's survey.

A Cambodian girl who went missing 19 years ago at aged eight has been found after reportedly living wild. A man claiming to be her father identified her through scars although she cannot speak any intelligible language. Rochom P'ngieng had disappeared while looking after buffalo in the Rattanakiri province, northeast of Phnom Penh.

Police have arrested a woman after finding a frying pan coated with remnants of ground beef and rat poison in her trash. The 55-year-old woman allegedly cooked up poisonous was meatballs and fed it to a neighbor's dog because she didn't like its barking. Police reportedly charged Charmaine Twarozek on Friday for poisoning a dog and cruelty to animals, misdemeanors, police said.

In a strange case of smuggling, two Buffalo men were caught smuggling by hiding four birds in a pocket and three in a fanny pack. U. S. Customs and Border Protection agents reportedly asked them to pay $1,000 in fines after they seized seven birds from two men as they re-entered the United States from Canada via Buffalo's Peace Bridge. According to AP reports, the custom officers became suspicious after the two men, identified as John Beale, 59, and Frank Salvini, 65, had gone to Canada Friday to buy 25 pounds of millet bird seed.

Two farmers who live in neighboring villages in India have decided to use a DNA test to resolve a spat over the ownership of a buffalo. The test will cost 10,000 rupees ($220) - more than twice the value of the disputed buffalo. Each of the farmers, who live in Nellore district in southern Andhra Pradesh state, say the buffalo was sired by one of their flock. The paternity test will settle the argument once and for all.