Lie detectors find their place in Turkish phones

Lie detectors find their place in Turkish phones
REUTERS

IZMIR DEC 15: "So, were you really washing your hair, or were you actually working late..I am sorry you had a flooded kitchen..." Well, it was none of the above. You were only trying to avoid a call from your billers'and if you are in Turkey it is most likely that you are caught by surprise. Reason: Lie-detecting telephone may soon take off in Turkey.

"This is a phone that enables you to tell if someone is telling the truth or not on the other end of the line," said Tulay Ispirli, manager of a shop called Vakkorama in the western city of Izmir, which is selling the phones for $159 each.

The phone has an electronic device which notes changes infrequency that the ear cannot discern.

A red flight flashes if the person is lying, a yellow lightmeans you should take their words with a pinch of salt, and a green light means you can believe what you hear.

Ispirli said there had been a lot of interest in thelie-detector phone, though at first customers were doubtful about its abilities. "But once they try it they enjoy it," she said.

BANGKOK - Thailand's election watchdog was forced to throwout evidence of vote buying because it couldn'T stand the smell.

The offices of the Election Commission in the Thai capitalhave been filled with thousands of items from soap bars to clocks to cooking utensils given by candidates to voters ahead of the January 6 general election.

Some of the gifts have begun to rot.

"Fresh items such as eggs started to rot and fish sauce inbroken bottles caused a foul smell in our office," Election Commission Secretary-General Vijit Yusuparp told Reuters.

"So we had to throw them away and took pictures of the itemsas evidence instead."

HARTFORD - He is a grumpy old goat who refuses to go away.

Despite some recent competition from the likes of Dr. Seuss'green-skinned Grinch, old Ebenezer Scrooge remains the original and best-known holiday grouch. His story has been reinvented by film and television writers around the world for 100 years, with varying degrees of faithfulness to the 1843 novella by Charles Dickens.

"It's interesting how just the name 'Scrooge,' and the ideaof Scrooge, have become part of our culture and vocabulary and collective consciousness," said Fred Guida, 47, a film historian who has spent a good chunk of his life ferreting out obscure adaptations of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

"Even people who have never read 'A Christmas Carol' knowwho Scrooge is and will understand references to him," said Guida, whose "A Christmas Carol and its Adaptations: Dickens' Story on Screen and Television" was published this year by McFarland & Company, Inc.

To date, there have been about 22 film releases of "AChristmas Carol" and 140 or so television and direct-to-video versions, including situation comedies and animated stories, Guida said. Movie versions have been coming since November 1901, when British film pioneer Robert Paul released "Scrooge; or Marley's Ghost."

BRASILIA - Macho Brazil will swear in its first femaleSupreme court judge on Thursday -- but she'll have to wait a little longer to go to the bathroom.

Ellen Gracie Northfleet, 52, will assume her post on the11-seat Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) in Brasilia, a building still without a women's bathroom in the judges' chambers.

"If she has to go to the bathroom, she'll have to do itbefore the ceremony or wait until after it's over," said a STF spokesman.

Luckily for Northfleet, there will only be one court sessionnext Tuesday before the STF adjourns for the holiday recess. Officials plan to divide the current judges' bathroom into "his" and "hers" stalls before they return in February.

And to avoid any problems, court officials will cordon offone of the five common bathrooms for the public next Tuesday for Northfleet's exclusive use, the spokesman said.

ROME - It took nearly a century, but an Italian pensionerhas discovered that experience and enthusiasm in the bedroom aren'T necessarily the right ingredients for a happy marriage, an Italin newspaper reported on Thursday.

Rome's la Repubblica said the unnamed 94-year-old foundhimself in court in the central Italian town of Chieti on Wednesday after his third wife, a 52-year-old Belorussian he met through a marriage agency five months ago, filed for divorce.

Explaining to the court why he thought the marriage had broken down, the nonagenarian dynamo was quoted as saying it was probably because he'D Wanted too much sex.