A court has ordered Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to pay 10,000 Turkish Lira (£2,500) in compensation to an artist for calling his sculpture – meant to promote reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia – a “monstrosity”.
Erdogan expressed his dislike in 2011 of Mehmet Aksoy’s giant Monument To Humanity, which was being erected in the eastern city of Kars, prompting local authorities there to dismantle it. Mr Aksoy then sued Mr Erdogan for “insult”. The court ordered Mr Erdogan to compensate Mr Aksoy for the mental anguish caused, the Anadolu press agency said.
Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic ties and are at odds over the mass killings of Armenians under Ottoman rule. Next month, Armenians mark the 100th anniversary of the start of what experts deem to be genocide.
Sophie the dinosaur in full detail
Sophie, the world’s most complete Stegosaurus skeleton now greeting visitors at one of the main entrances to London’s Natural History Museum, weighed around 1.6 tonnes when alive and was about the same size as a small rhinoceros.
Scientists have been able to calculate the body mass of the dinosaur, which was a young adult when it died 150 million years ago. Professor Paul Barrett, the museum’s chief dinosaur expert, said: “These findings identify just how important exceptionally complete specimens like this are for scientific research and collections.
“Now we know the weight, we can start to find out more about its metabolism, feeding requirements and the growth rates of Stegosaurus. We can also use the same techniques on other complete fossils to find out much more about the wider ecology of dinosaurs.”
Dream doghouse for hi-tech hound
Dog owners wanting to pamper their pets could be in luck as a £20,000 Dream Doghouse comes on the market just in time for this year’s Crufts. Representing the ultimate in dog luxury, the hi-tech kennel was designed by a team of architects to celebrate Samsung’s sponsorship of Crufts 2015.
The structure, based on research that showed 64 per cent of dog owners believe their pet would benefit from more technology, features an area for dining and entertainment and an outside artificial-turfed leisure space.
Massive Japan WWII wreck ‘found’
Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen and his research team have found a massive Japanese Second World War battleship off the Philippines near where it sank more than 70 years ago, his representatives said.
The apparent discovery of the wreckage of the Musashi, one of the largest battleships in history, comes as the world marks the 70th anniversary of the war’s end.
Allen and the team aboard his superyacht M/Y Octopus found the ship on Sunday, more than eight years after their search began, his publicity agency Edelman said in a statement. Allen’s team found the battleship just off the Sibuyan Sea, using an autonomous underwater vehicle in its third dive after narrowing down the search area using detailed undersea topographical data and other locator devices.
The Musashi, commissioned in 1942, sank in October 1944 in the Sibuyan Sea during the battle of Leyte, losing half of its 2,400 crew members.
Daughter commits grave offence
A New Hampshire woman who told police she dug up her father’s grave in search of his “real will” but found only vodka and cigarettes has pleaded guilty.
Melanie Nash was one of four accused in the plan to open Eddie Nash’s vault in Colebrook, then rifle through his coffin last May in a scene a prosecutor compared to an Edgar Allen Poe story.
Police said she felt she was left short over her share of the inheritance after her father died in 2004. They did not find a different will in the coffin. The 53-year-old pleaded guilty to charges of criminal mischief, interference with a cemetery, conspiracy and abuse of a corpse.