Canada is the most popular country in the world, according to a BBC World service poll of 12 heavy-hitting nations. Britain, China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela and the U. S. were also contenders for the "best" nation poll, but Canada roped the majority of the 28,000 respondents from 27 countries into saying something nice about it.

A Connecticut woman is now the nation's oldest person. Emma Faust Tillman, 114, was born to former slaves in North Carolina in 1892. The world's oldest person, 115-year-old Julie Winnifred Bertrand of Montreal, Canada, died early Thursday. Tillman is now the second-oldest person in the world. A 115-year-old Puerto Rico man is the oldest.

As a part of a promotion for a two-day Invitational Bull Riders event on Jan. 6-7, five cabs decorated in brown and white fake cowhide with roofs topped with bull's horns lined up just outside Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. According to Gavin Harvey, a cable TV executive backing the event, "It's hard to get noticed in New York. "

After receiving a large amount of non emergency calls, British police have requested people to call 999 only for dangerous emergency calls in dire situations. The decision came after police in England's West Midlands region had a called that complained of not hearing the television due to a car's noise outside. According to Sky News, the 999 calls - Britain's equivalent of 911 calls in the United States and Canada - is onstantly flooded with useless and time wasting calls.

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.