The office of Rodrigo Duterte, the controversial Philippine president, on Thursday was forced to play down remarks he had made about killing bishops, claiming it was only “hyberbole” and not a genuine threat. 

In a speech to local government officials on Wednesday, Mr Duterte, who has a running feud with the influential Catholic Church over its criticisms of his drugs war, lashed out again, calling it “the most hypocritical institution” and denouncing priests as “useless.”

“These bishops, kill them, those fools are good for nothing. All they do is criticise,” he said, according to the Rappler news site. 

Salvador Panelo, the presidential spokesman, later clarified to reporters that the president’s provocative statement was borne out of frustration that his efforts to improve the country were being under-appreciated. 

“I think that’s only hyberbole on the part of the president. We should be getting used to this president. He makes certain statements for dramatic effect,” he said. 

“The president, just like any ordinary human being, is upset when the good things that he does for this country and not even appreciated by people who are supposed to support it, like the Church,” Mr Panelo added. 

However, the country’s Commission on Human Rights slammed his statements against religious leaders as “gravely alarming”, warning that they could embolden violence against government critics, reported the Philippine Star.

“Churches and priests… work directly with communities and families who continue to suffer the many forms of human rights violations allegedly stemming from the government’s drug campaign,” said Jacqueline Ann de Guia, the CHR spokesperson.

“Instead of calling them useless, the government must take their concerns as valid challenges from the ground and as means to improve, rather than degrade protection of human rights of all,” she added. 

An estimated 90 per cent of the Philippines 100-million-strong population identify as Catholic and the Church has played a central role at times of political upheaval, including during the 1986 “people power” revolution that overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos. 

It initially refrained from criticising the war on drugs launched by Mr Duterte in 2016, but began to campaign against it last year as the death toll mounted, particularly among the poor. 

Based on official police records, at least 4,000 drugs dealers and users have been killed, but human rights groups allege the death toll is three times higher, with many of the victims, some innocent bystanders, targetted by gun-wielding assassins on motorbikes. 

Mr Duterte has been incensed by the Church’s stand against his drugs campaign, most recently focussing his ire on Manila Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, whose innercity Caloocan parish has been badly hit by vigilante killings. 

The president accused the bishop of having links to drugs and stealing church donations, reportedly also threatening to cut off his head. 

Bishop David denied the charges, urging people to pray for their leader, who was “a very sick man.”

In an interview with The Telegraph last year, the bishop admitted he was sometimes fearful he would be targetted over his strong stance against the drugs war. 

“Who would not be afraid? I’m just a human being. I know how they operate,” he said. 

“Sometimes we’re in a car and the car stops in the middle of traffic and then you have people in motorcycles riding in tandem coming up the side of you. You get a bit queasy, thinking if this man has a gun that could be the end of me,” he said. 

Bishop David’s fears are not unfounded. Three Catholic priests have been killed since December last year, although their murderers’ motives have not been established.

Their deaths have raised alarm among church leaders over “a culture of impunity.”

"They are killing our flock. They are killing us, the shepherds. They are killing our faith. They are cursing our church," Catholic leaders said in a strongly-worded statement earlier this year, urging Mr Duterte to refrain from “verbal prosecution” that could embolden more crimes.    

For decades since Lynette Dawson went missing in Sydney’s northern beaches, her family has believed that the case was mishandled and that the evidence pointed to her husband, Chris Dawson, who moved his teenage lover into the family home two days after his wife disappeared.

Despite pleas to politicians and authorities, and two coroner’s inquiries in 2001 and 2003 concluding that Dawson should be charged, the 70-year-old former sports teacher and professional rugby league player lived a quiet life in the state of Queensland. 

Earlier this year, the case was taken up by a podcast, The Teacher’s Pet, which painstakingly reviewed the evidence, re-interviewed witnesses, and raised allegations that…

It is 8am and the rain is coming down in sheets. The streets are empty except for a dozen women and their pimps – women from some of the world’s poorest regions including Moldova, Romania, West Africa and Southeast Asia. Some are still in their teens.

Not far away are numerous massage parlors and saunas offering women and girls for sale.

This is not Amsterdam or a seedy quarter of one Asia’s megacities. It is Geneva, Switzerland, home to the World Health Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross and countless other UN bodies and NGOs dedicated to humanitarian causes.

Human trafficking and modern slavery are supposed to be what they are fighting against. Yet here it is happening…

Rohingya refugees are fleeing India and going into hiding amid fears that a government campaign to collect their personal information is a prelude to mass deportation.

The data-gathering, which includes biometric information, follows the government’s first transfer of seven Rohingya back to Burma last month.

Critics say the ruling, Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is targeting the persecuted Muslim community ahead of a general election due in May.

“We are sure the Indian government is preparing to send us back to Burma,” said Abul Foiz, who ran away from a Rohingya refugee camp in the northern city of Jammu last week.

Intelligence officers had visited the camp and asked him to write down the date he entered India and his original address in Burma.

“In the past few days over 200 Rohingyas have disappeared from Jammu,” Mr Foiz said. “No one wants to return to Burma where we are still facing violence and persecution.”

Abu Hossain, 65, told the Telegraph he fled a refugee camp in Jammu after six years and entered Bangladesh last week.

“Our camps were set alight by people we suspect were from the Hindu groups. Police said they could not help us… The situation was turning very hostile,” Mr Hossain said from his new home in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp.

Rohingya in Buddhist-majority Burma have faced discrimination for decades and last year the UN accused Burma’s government of “genocidal intent” after a bloody military crackdown forced 700,000 of the Muslim minority out of the country.

The Indian home ministry refused to discuss deportation of Rohingya with the Telegraph.

As it has not signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, India treats the roughly 40,000 Rohingya in the country as illegal immigrants rather than refugees.

Around 18,000 are registered with the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, which issues ID cards to help avoid arrest, detention and deportation. But many ID-card holders are still scared of deportation, said Ko Ko Linn, a Bangladesh-based Rohingya political activist.

Even card-holders are now also "on the run", Mr Linn told the Telegraph, having been frightened by last month’s deportations and the move to collect personal details and biometric information. 

In an emailed statement, UNHCR New Delhi said that it was “concerned about the anxiety in the Rohingya community” caused by the latest developments.

Although Rohingya lived in India without much trouble for decades, Narendra Modi’s BJP has been fanning resentment since it won election in 2014. 

Last year the government ordered all states to identify and deport Rohingya, saying they were “more vulnerable for getting recruited by terrorist organisations”. Deportation efforts now appear to be getting underway.

On October 10th, the government of Assam state announced it would send 23 Rohingya back to Myanmar. In Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-dominated state, one right-wing Hindu group has threatened to “identify and kill” all of the state’s 7,000 Rohingya the government fails to expel.

Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan said that claims the refugees are involved in terrorism are absurd. No member of the community has been implicated in “any matter that would jeopardise India’s national security,” the lawyer, who is fighting deportation efforts, told the Telegraph, adding that the allegations "being put forward by the government aim at polarising Indian society on communal lines.”

Calcutta-based Human rights activist Ranjit Sur said the BJP-led government has launched the anti-Rohingya drive with an eye on the general elections next year.

“Rohingya human rights have been sacrificed at the altar of electoral and communal politics,” he said.

A UN plane will evacuate 50 wounded Houthi militants from Yemen’s rebel-held capital Sana’a on Monday as a "confidence building measure" ahead of planned peace talks in Sweden, a Saudi-led military coalition said.

"A UN chartered plane will arrive at Sana’a international airport Monday to evacuate 50 wounded combatants… three Yemeni doctors and a UN doctor, from Sana’a to Muscat," a coalition spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The fate of wounded rebels had been a stumbling block to the start of a previous round of aborted peace talks in September.

The coalition agreed to facilitate the medical evacuations at the request of Martin Griffiths, the UN envoy, for "humanitarian reasons" and as a "confidence building measure", the spokesman added.

Houthi rebels on Thursday said they will attend UN-brokered peace talks in Sweden this week if guarantees to ensure they can leave home and return back are maintained.

Yemen’s internationally recognised government, which is also backed by a Saudi-led coalition, has already said it would attend the planned talks in Sweden.

Mr Griffiths has held talks separately in the past few days with officials from both sides as part of efforts to lay the ground work for the peace talks.

In September, a previous round of UN-led talks failed when the Houthis refused to travel to Geneva, accusing the world body of failing to guarantee their delegation’s return to Sana’a or secure the evacuation of wounded rebels to Oman.

Previous talks broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal and left rebel delegates stranded in Oman for three months.

According to UN figures, nearly 10,000 people have been killed since the coalition joined the conflict in 2015 to bolster the government of Abd-Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, triggering what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Rights groups fear the actual toll is far higher.

Chinese paleontologist Xu Xing is on a roll. This year alone he has discovered seven new species of dinosaur, including one that is 200 million years old – the most ancient specimen he has unearthed so far.

In all, Mr Xu has named over 70 dinosaurs, more than any other living paleontologist. But his discoveries aren’t just down to long hours at dusty archaeological digs. His success is owed to China’s construction boom churning up soil and fossils as vast cities continue to rise from the ground.

While bulldozers have unearthed prehistoric sites in many countries, the scale and speed of China’s urbanisation is unprecedented, according to the United Nations Development Program.

Mr Xu, 49, spends…

British intelligence provided the tip-off that led to the arrest of a retired Austrian army officer on suspicion of spying for Russia, an Austrian newspaper has claimed.

The tip-off was politically motivated and came amid British displeasure at the Austrian government’s refusal to distance itself from Russia in the wake of the Skripal poisoning, Kleine Zeitung newspaper alleged. 

British and Austrian authorities declined to confirm or comment on the claims. Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian chancellor, said last week the case had been brought to authorities’ attention by a tip-off from a “friendly intelligence service”.

The suspect, an unnamed 70-year-old retired colonel in the Austrian army, is being held on charges of spying for Russia over a 20-year period. He is alleged to have passed details of Austrian weapons systems and other secrets to Russia in exchange for payments of €300,000 (£260,000).

The case has severely shaken normally warm relations between Austria and Russia. Mr Kurz, who previously spoke of wanting his country to be a “bridge” between Russia and the West, has demanded an explanation from Moscow.

Initial reports last week suggested the tip-off came from Germany. But Kleine Zeitung quoted an unnamed “senior officer” in the Austrian army as saying it had come from Britain.

The officer believes British intelligence acted deliberately in order to distance Austria from Russia, the newspaper claimed.

Austria was one of few Western countries not to expel any Russian diplomats in the wake of the Skripal poisoning affair in Salisbury, and senior figures in the Austrian government have close links to Russia.

Vladimir Putin was a guest at the wedding of Karin Kneissl, the Austrian foreign minister, in August, and danced with her in front of the cameras. Ms Kneissl has cancelled a planned trip to Russia in the wake of the spying arrest.

Britain has not commented on the claims, but government sources said last week: “It is interesting that this a spying operation against a country that has a mixed reputation when it comes to its relationship with Russia. 

“This is another Russian intelligence operation against a European nation. An operation that was exposed, once again, as a result of European cooperation. Russian behaviour continues to be egregious and widespread. The threat is a reality.”

Austrian opposition parties have accused the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ), which is junior partner in the country’s coalition government, of being too close to Russia.

“One of the biggest security risks is the links between with the Russian leadership and the FPÖ,” Peter Pilz, leader of the opposition Pilz List party said last week.

While Ms Kneissl, who danced with Mr Putin at her wedding, is officially independent, she was nominated as foreign minister by the Freedom Party. The party also controls the Austrian interior and defence ministries.

Russia has reacted angrily to the allegations and accused Austria of “megaphone diplomacy”.

"We are accused and asked to apologise for something we know nothing about,” Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister said last week.

Russian prosecutors on Monday accused Bill Browder, a prominent critic of Vladimir Putin, of ordering the murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and several other business associates – the latest in a string of efforts to discredit one of the most vocal advocates of sanctions against the regime.

Magnitsky, a lawyer working for Mr Browder, was arrested in 2008 after uncovering evidence of large-scale tax fraud among Russian officials. He died a year later in a Moscow prison, after he was reportedly assaulted and denied proper medical treatment. Mr Browder, once an early supporter of Mr Putin, has since lobbied tirelessly for sanctions against the Russian president and his entourage.

Mr Browder, the British head of investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, branded the accusations "Kafka-esque". Writing on social media, he cast them as a vendetta waged by Mr Putin for his lobbying, which in 2012 led to US sanctions on Russia in what is widely known as the Magnitsky Act.

"I really struck a nerve with the Magnitsky Act," Mr Browder said. 

The accusations come as Interpol, an international body for coordinating national police efforts, meets this week to elect a new president. A report published by The Sunday Times said a Russian Interior Ministry official is expected to win, sparking concern that Moscow may use the organisation to target critics and dissidents residing beyond Russian police jurisdiction.

“Russia has made seven abusive attempts to have me arrested since 2013 on politically motivated charges,” Mr Browder told Newsweek. “If Russia is allowed to take over Interpol it is like the mafia taking over global law enforcement.”

In May, Mr Browder was briefly arrested in Madrid by Spanish police acting on an Interpol Red Notice issued by Russia, but was released amid an international outcry. The Council of Europe has previously accused Moscow of abusing the Interpol system to pursue "political goals", referencing its pursuit of the British financier.

Prosecutors also said at a press conference in Moscow on Monday that Mr Browder is being formally charged with operating a vast international money laundering empire, calling again for his arrest. These charges were used to argue that Magnitsky was a member of this organisation, giving Mr Browder motive to order his death, the Interfax news agency reported.

In an odd parallel to the recent case surrounding the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, prosecutors said there was evidence Magnitsky and three other deceased former Browder associates showed evidence of poisoning by a “toxic inorganic aluminum compound,” Interfax reported.  Only the US, France and Italy have studied such compounds they said, not Russia.