Austria to expel up to 60 imams, shut 7 mosques

AFP / JOE KLAMARAustria says it will move to expel up to 60 Turkish-funded imams and their families in a government crackdown on "political islam"

Austria said Friday it could expel up to 60 Turkish-funded imams and their families and shut down seven mosques as part of a crackdown on "political Islam", triggering fury in Ankara.

"The circle of people possibly affected by these measures - the pool that we're talking about - comprises around 60 imams," said Interior Minister Herbert Kickl of the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), the junior partner in Austria's coalition government.

In total 150 people risked losing their right to residence, he said at a press conference in Vienna.

Ankara quickly denounced the move.

"Austria's decision to close down seven mosques and deport imams with a lame excuse is a reflection of the anti-Islam, racist and discriminatory populist wave in this country", presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Twitter.

Seven mosques will also be shut after an investigation by the religious affairs authority into images which emerged in April of children in a Turkish-backed mosque playing dead and reenacting the World War I battle of Gallipoli.

"Parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation have no place in our country," Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of the ruling centre-right People's Party said.

In several cases the process of expelling imams connected to the Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations (ATIB) organisation was underway, Kickl said.

The interior minister added that the government suspects them of contravening a ban on foreign funding of religious office holders. ATIB is a branch of Turkey's religious affairs agency Diyanet.

The photos of children, published by the Falter weekly, showed the young boys in camouflage uniforms marching, saluting, waving Turkish flags and then playing dead.

Their "corpses" were then lined up and draped in the flags.

The mosque in question was run by ATIB.

ATIB itself condemned the photos at the time, calling the "highly regrettable" event and said that "called off before it had even ended".

Turkey's relations with Austria have long been strained, with Kurz calling on the European Union to break off negotiations on Ankara joining the bloc.

Last week Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attacked Kurz, saying: "This immoral chancellor has a problem with us".

"He's throwing his weight around and making a scene," Erdogan went on.

Both Kurz, of the centre-right People's Party (OeVP) and the FPOe made immigration and integration major themes in their election campaigns last year.

In Friday's press conference Kurz was keen to emphasise that the action was being taken under legislation to regulate Islamic associations that he himself brought in as a minister in the previous government.

Tetrapod fossil discovery in S. Africa dispels tropical myth

University of the Witwatersrand/AFP / Maggie NEWMANA reconstruction by the Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences of the University of the Witwatersrand showing Tutusius and Umzantsia

The discovery of two Devonian tetrapods in South Africa suggests that the evolution of these creatures from water to land could have occurred anywhere else, and not only in the tropics as was previously thought, a study has established.

The evolution of tetrapods - four legged vertebrates- from fishes was a key event in human ancestry and for a long time scientists have assumed that they had originated in Laurasia - the smaller supercontinent which included modern day North America, Greenland and Europe.

The discovery of Tutusius umlambo and Umzantsia amazana in the coastal Eastern Cape province, near polar latitudes, suggests that four-limbed animals were more widespread in their early stages of evolution, contrary to widespread views that the ancestors of all vertebrates – the amphibious, aquatic tetrapods that first colonised the land – evolved in warm tropical environments.

"Now we have evidence of two types of Devonian tetrapod from the other end of Gondwana, on the other side of the South Pole, in the Antarctic Circle," Dr Robert Gess, one of the leading researchers, told AFP.

"These are our ancestors. It's now equally possible that they came from here than from the other side of the world".

The complete study will be released Friday.

Although the fossils are incomplete, alive these creatures would have resembled a cross between a crocodile and a fish, sporting a crocodile like head, stubby legs and a tail with a fish-like fin.

- 'Lived all over the world' -

Twelve Devonian tetrapods have previously been described, all of which came from the Devonian tropics, between 30 degrees north and south of the equator.

All but two of them came from Laurasia.

Only one Devonian tetrapod jaw came from Gondwana - the supercontinent which incorporated present day Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica and India. This was found in Eastern Australia which was on the extreme northern tropical coast of Gondwana.

It was then deduced that all Devonian tetrapods were tropical, with a tropical origin, and that the move onto land probably occurred in tropical environments.

The conditions in Devonian tropical lakes and estuaries therefore seemed to hold the key to understanding the causes of this pivotal macroevolutionary transition.

"So we now know that tetrapods, by the end of the Devonian lived all over the world, from the tropics to the Antarctic circle. So it’s possible that they originated anywhere and that they could have moved onto land anywhere. It really broadens the scope of possibilities." said Gess.

The latest fossil discovery of the meter long Tutusius umlambo, which is named after nobel peace prize winner Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, and Umzantsia amazana means their terrestrialisation could have happened anywhere.

Gess explained that when naming the creature Desmond Tutu came to mind because this was the type of creature that "ultimately pioneered the way for our ancestors up out of a somewhat anoxic, dangerous, swampy world into the sunshine and a bright new future. "

The study was jointly conducted by South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand and Sweden's Uppsala University

South Africa holds one of the most comprehensive databases of human evolutionary history in the world. This includes the Cradle of Humankind, the world's richest early hominin site and is home to around 40 percent of the world's known human-ancestor fossils.

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