At least 37 undocumented immigrants started a hunger strike in a Sofia prison on Friday to protest their jail sentences for border trespassing, the human rights group the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) said. The inmates, from Algeria, Rwanda, and Syria and other Middle East countries, were initially handed a suspended sentence for entering the country illegally but this was turned into one- and two-year sentences after they tried to leave again.

A Swiss prisoner jailed for violent crime in 2009 died Wednesday after launching a hunger strike more than 10 weeks ago to try to win his freedom, local security authorities said. The 32-year-old man, who was not identified by name, passed away in a hospital in Baar in eastern Switzerland, the security department of the canton of Zug said in a statement. "The individual, who was in full possession of his mental faculties, made a conscious choice to refuse food," it said. The man's stated goal was to be released, which was impossible under the law.

Balochistan Caretaker Chief Minister Nawab Ghaus Bakhsh Barozai Monday paid a surprise visit to civil Secretariat and inspected offices of different departments.He expressed displeasure over cleanliness situation in the premises of secretariat and furniture placed in the galleries. He described this furniture as unserviceable and termed it wastage of resources and directed it should be repaired immediately.

An Israeli court handed a Palestinian hunger striker eight months on Thursday for violating his parole, but though he has already served most of his sentence, his fate still lies with a military court. At Jerusalem Magistrates Court, Samer Issawi, 33, was convicted of breaching the terms of his early release from jail in October 2011 by taking his car to be fixed at a garage in the West Bank, his lawyer Andre Rosenthal told AFP. "He admitted going to the West Bank and he was sentenced to eight months," he said.