It’s the bro-five. That moment when two like minded members of a brotherhood come together, outstretched hands colliding in a clasp somewhere between a high-five and a handshake.

If Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, had any nerves about how he would be received at the G20 summit – his first major trip since being implicated in the murder of a dissident journalist – then Vladimir Putin’s warm but calculating greeting would have put him at ease.

The opening session on Friday was freighted with symbolism and vivid reminders of the realpolitik at work in Argentina. For world leaders are assembling at a time of extraordinary geopolitical turbulence, setting up a string of contentious clashes.

A looming Brexit, the new round of hostility between Russia and Ukraine, global trade wars and the fall-out from the killing of Jamal Khashoggi have officials struggling behind the scenes to find a joint statement that would rescue the summit from failure.

So an awkward air hung over the traditional “family photo” of prime ministers, presidents and princes. MBS, as the crown prince is known, found himself on the periphery, visibly and diplomatically, with empty space to either side at stage left. Theresa May, Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau placed themselves to the right, where they could be sure not to catch his eye.

Picture done, MBS exited quickly. He was alone again minutes later standing at his allotted seat in the conference hall. And alone he might have remained, were it not for Mr Putin who swept in with that beaming smile and bro-five to remind the world that a Saudi with massive reserves of oil and a need for military defence systems is never long in want of an ally.

For all the public posturing, the criticism of MBS, the lining up of governments alongside Ukraine after its gunboats were seized by Russia, the anger at Mr Trump for his unilateralist foreign policy, the merry-go-round still has to spin.

Mrs May will still meet the crown prince even if Number 10 is avoiding saying whether or not she will shake his hand. And Mr Trump may well talk to Mr Putin even if he issued a very public tweet cancelling a planned, formal meeting.

It is a two-track summit. One designed for public consumption back home and the other, more discreet, calculated to get business done.

The same old game of public perception and private diplomacy as world leaders dance around the issues and each other. Just perhaps more so as a new breed of populist leader ups the ante.

But in this age of social media and cameras in every pocket, it is not an easy line to draw. You can imagine the delight of the Saudi foreign office when it published a photograph of Mr Macron chatting happily with the crown prince on the sidelines.

And then there is Mr Putin. Already at odds with the West, condemned for the Salisbury poisoning and facing additional sanction for seizing Ukrainian naval vessels at the weekend, he can burnish his domestic credentials with another display of independence and an embrace of MBS.

If you already have blood on your hands, what difference does a bro-five with a man accused of ordering the murder of a journalist matter anyway?

The ultra-conservative and anti-immigration Vox has stormed into the Andalucian assembly in Sunday’s regional election, marking the first time a far-Right party has achieved parliamentary representation on any level in Spain’s recent history as a democracy.

The party that favours the end of autonomy in Catalonia and the expulsion of all immigrants who entered Spain illegally won 12 out of 109 seats in Andalucia’s parliament with 11 per cent of the vote.

“Vox was the party that led the political debate,” said the party’s secretary general, Javier Ortega.

“We put on the table the need to control our borders and end illegal immigration, end abusive levels of taxation and the need to put an end to ideological laws relating to gender.”

Despite running out narrow winner in the region it has ruled continuously for 36 years, the PSOE Socialist party of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez suffered a hugely disappointing result in Andalucia. The party’s all-time low of 28 per cent and 33 seats mean it will not be able to govern with a majority, even with the support of the Left-wing coalition Adelante Andalucia, which includes Podemos.

Spain’s main conservative opposition force, the Popular Party (PP), also lost ground, sliding six percentage points to just under 21 per cent, while the liberal Ciudadanos was the night’s only winner among the established parties, doubling its share to 18 per cent.  

Ahead of European and possibly a general election in 2019, Spain’s political scene appears more fractured than ever after the dramatic emergence of Vox on the extreme right of the spectrum.

Despite having seen its number of seats in the Andalucian parliament shorn from 33 to 26, the PP appeared to welcome the arrival of Vox on the political scene.

For the PP’s candidate for the presidency of the region, Juan Manuel Moreno, it was a “historic day” on which “Andalucia had chosen change”, saying he wants to lead a right-of-centre coalition including Vox and Ciudadanos.

“Ahead of this election we proposed change, now we guarantee change,” Mr Moreno told an ecstatic crowd of PP members in Seville.

Ciudadanos’ leader in Andalucia, Juan Marín, echoed the PP’s message. “There is a majority in the parliament for change; change has arrived in Andalucia,” Mr Marín said.

Ciudadanos’ national leader, Albert Rivera, challenged Spanish Prime Minister Sánchez to call national elections now that “the Andalucians have turned their back on you”.

The PP and Ciudadanos’ candidates have been careful not to describe Vox as far-Right, while also refusing to rule out accepting the support of the ultra-conservative grouping to remove the Socialists from power.

Andalucian President Susana Díaz blamed a low turnout of 59 per cent for her Socialist party’s small margin of victory, and asked all other mainstream political forces to freeze out Vox from the political scene.

“This phenomenon we have seen in other European countries is now present in the Andalucian parliament. I call on all the other political parties who consider themselves defenders of our democratic constitution to brake the extreme right,” she said. 

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…