Watercooler Stories

Product tests dog intelligence

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., March 10 (UPI) -- PoochIQ.com of Beverly Hills, Calif., is marketing a product it says can assess the mental prowess of man's best friend.

The company said the Pooch IQ Kit includes 15 "mentally stimulating" tasks designed to determine whether a dog's intelligence is above, below or at the average, the New York Post reported Monday.

"We developed it in-house and we did a ton of research on both human and dog intelligence," said PoochIQ.com spokeswoman Stacy Stubblefield.

One dog tested by the Post scored a 121 IQ on the test, putting him in the 91st percentile of dogs according to the company's standards. Another scored 104 IQ, an average score, and a third came in with just an 89 IQ, below average.

Former fugitive charged in wife's death

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, March 10 (UPI) -- A Chinese immigrant to New Zealand has been charged with his wife's death in the capital, Auckland, after he was arrested in the United States.

Nai Yin Xue, who fled to the United States after he allegedly killed his wife, An An Liu, and hid her body in a car outside her home in Mount Roskill, New Zealand, the Wellington Dominion Post reported Monday. He has been charged with murder in the case.

Authorities said they dropped kidnapping charges against the suspect that were filed after it emerged that he took his 3-year-old daughter to a Melbourne railway station and abandoned her there after the alleged slaying. The charges were dropped due to technical difficulties involved in charging someone with the kidnapping of his or her own child, said Xue's lawyer, Chris Comeskey

The suspect was captured in Chamblee, Ga., after a Chinese group there invited him to one of their meetings and then turned him over to authorities when he arrived.

Candidate advertises on the cheep

TEHRAN, March 10 (UPI) -- It's a toss-up about who wants to cross the road in Siah-Koleh, Iran -- chickens or people trying to read a candidate's campaign logo on chickens.

Supporters for the unnamed parliament hopeful used the cluckers as running billboards in the run-up to Majlis elections March 14, IRNA reported Monday.

An unruffled local official calling the campaign tactic "a new way to campaign."

"This way of campaigning is not banned according to the elections law," Gholam Lack, deputy for Doroud's governor, told INRA.

The Doroud and Azna constituencies have 16 hopefuls running for the region's only seat at the Iranian Majlis.

Mistaken texting leads to romance

CARDIFF, Wales, March 10 (UPI) -- An engaged British couple said their romance began with an errant text message and a double case of mistaken identity.

Anthony Hubbucks of Gateshead, England, said he was attempting to text an old friend when he put the wrong number in and instead contacted Michelle Morris, who lived 335 miles south in Wales, the Evening Chronicle reported Monday.

The flirted via text for a time before Morris realized the texts might not have been coming from the source she suspected.

"I was flirting because I thought it was my friend Simon," she said. "But something didn't feel quite right and I sent a text saying 'Who is this?'"

However, the revelation of their true identities did not keep the pair from communicating and moving beyond text to speaking on the phone.

After exchanging in-person visits to their respective locations, Hubbucks moved to the village of Cymru, Ebbw Vale, to be closer to Morris.

The two became engaged in October.