TV News LIES

More than 50 people have been killed and scores more wounded in a suicide attack at a wedding ceremony in Turkey's southeastern province of Gaziantep, near the Syria border.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that "Daesh is the likely perpetrator of the attack", using the Arabic name for ISIL, also known as ISIS.

The threats have come via emails, phone calls, and once with flowers delivered directly to the front door.

Amid months of sustained intimidation, harassment and threats, Palestinian human rights defenders are coming forward to denounce a campaign that they say aims to "plant fear" into their efforts to hold Israel accountable for human rights violations.

"This is a very organised and advanced campaign," said Shawan Jabarin, director of Al Haq, a prominent Ramallah-based Palestinian human rights organisation.

While much of the world’s media has focused on US swimmer Ryan Lochte’s fabricated account of an armed robbery, the real victims of Olympic crime in Rio de Janeiro are the city’s poorest residents, caught on the frontline of conflict between the authorities and drug traffickers.

Since the start of the Olympics, local media have reported at least 14 deaths in shootouts between gang members and police or soldiers from the 85,000-member security force deployed for the Games.

Doctors Without Borders says it is evacuating its staff from hospitals in northern Yemen after 19 people died when an airstrike hit one of its hospitals on Monday.

"Given the intensity of the current offensive and our loss of confidence in the Saudi-led coalition's ability to prevent such fatal attacks, MSF considers the hospitals in Saada and Hajjah governorates unsafe for both patients and staff," the group — also known as Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF — says in a statement. It adds that the hospitals will continue operating "with staff from the Ministry of Health and volunteers."

The United States has acknowledged that it waited for Iran to release American prisoners before delivering $400m in cash that it owed the country, but again insisted the payment was not a ransom.

"With concerns that Iran may renege on the prisoner release ... we of course sought to retain maximum leverage until after American citizens were released," US State Department spokesman John Kirby told a news conference. "That was our top priority."

Syrian government forces have bombed the last remaining civilian hospital in the besieged Damascus suburb of Daraya, according to activists, who say an incendiary weapon similar to napalm was used.

Government forces dropped the bombs on the hospital shortly after midnight on Friday morning, according to activists and the Britain-based Syrian Network for Human Rights.