Ten Things of Goad and Chilly

Mixed reception for Erdogan golden statue/EPA

1. The German city of Wiesbaden has removed a 4m (13ft) golden statue of Turkey's president after it was defaced with the words "Turkish Hitler".
2. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has defended Mesut Ozil, a German footballer with Turkish roots who has faced criticism for posing in photos with Turkey's leader. President Erdogan said: "Should we lynch a German player who plays in our country when he takes a photo with Frau Merkel [the German chancellor]?" Ozil quit international football in July, citing "racism and disrespect" towards him in Germany over the photos.
3. Germany have beaten Turkey to host Euro 2024 after a vote by Uefa's executive committee. The decision means Turkey is yet to host a major international football tournament. It has seen previous attempts to host Euro 2016 and the 2020 Summer Olympics fail, while Germany staged the 2006 World Cup.
4. The eastern Mediterranean is set to see a rare and powerful hurricane-like storm across Greece and toward Turkey. The storm, called Zorba, has been dubbed a "Medicane" because of its location in the Mediterranean and its tropical-storm-like qualities.
5. Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du Monde, one of the most provocative works of art history depicting a naked woman's genitalia and torso, was commissioned by Ottoman-Turkish diplomat Halil Sherif Pasha. The woman in the photo is now thought to be the Pasha's ballet dancer mistress.
6. Vance Serchuk says that the economic trouble in Turkey reveals the perils of strongman rule, which has been at the leading edge of a global trend, while Michael Moore, who was booed when he denounced the Iraq war in his 2003 Oscar speech, was proved right about the lies that sent America to war and about Donald Trump becoming president.
7. A Russian man accused of the Salisbury poisoning is a military officer who received an honour from Vladimir Putin, an investigative website says, and not an innocent tourist as he claims.
8. JK Rowling has defended the casting of a Korean actress as Voldemort's snake Nagini in the Fantastic Beasts sequel. Some have criticised the fact the only Asian actor in the cast plays a reptile that is a villain's slave.
9. Psychologist and father of positive psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman has said the reason humans are wired to expect the worst is because of Ice Age natural selection survival.
10. Japan's space agency (Jaxa) has released new images from the robot rovers it has deployed to the surface of an asteroid.

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