Bulgaria on Thursday officially requested the transfer from Libya of six medical workers whose death sentences for infecting children with HIV have been commuted to life imprisonment.

Ahead of general elections on Sunday, the leader of Turkey’s hardline nationalists flung a hangman’s noose from a podium to make a point during a political rally: the prime minister is soft on terrorism and should hang the imprisoned leader of Kurdish rebels.

Children raced to help parents collect food from UN aid distribution centres in the Gaza Strip as women sat in the shade near trucks, waiting for their names to be called to receive their food rations.