Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin has threatened to begin a hunger strike if he is not granted conjugal visits with the woman he says he married by proxy, a spokesman for the Israeli Prisons Authority said today.

Jailed Palestinian uprising leader Marwan Barghouti was transferred to the general population in his southern Israeli prison today, an Israeli official said, ending almost three years of separation from other Palestinian prisoners.

An Iranian prison governor has been sacked after an inmate lost his hands after being suspended from a ceiling in handcuffs.