No time for tremors

Turkish universities have toiled long and hard to introduce a state-of-the-art earthquake-warning system in the country. But, according to the Turkish Daily News, the system they developed remains part-time. The recent earthquake in Istanbul, which measured 4.8, was not detected because it happened out of office hours. Several of the monitoring stations that report earth tremors via a web-based data network are turned off at night to avoid running up huge phone bills.