International

Dozens of Palestinians, the majority of whom were children and women, were martyred and others were injured as the Israeli occupation aggression against the Gaza Strip enters its 116th consecutive day.According to the Palestinian news agency (WAFA), the occupation aircrafts launched several raids on the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, targeting at least one house in El-Geneina neighborhood. They also bombed a target in Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, while artillery shelling of the camp continued, killing and wounding a number of Palestinians.Artillery shelling of the vicinity of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, was renewed at dawn Tuesday.In the same context, at least 20 Palestinians were martyred, and others were injured, the majority of them children and women, in an Israeli shelling that targeted the Madoukh familys house in Sabra neighborhood Monday evening.The toll from the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip since Oct. 7 rose to 26,637 martyrs, the majority of whom are women and children, and 65,387 injured, in addition to more than 8,000 people remain missing under the rubble and on the roads, as the occupation forces prevent ambulance crews from reaching them.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the violence that occurred in the disputed Abyei region between Sudan and South Sudan, which resulted in the deaths of 54 people, including two members of the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA)."The Secretary-General condemns the violence and attacks against UNISFA and calls on the Governments of South Sudan and Sudan to swiftly investigate the attacks, with the assistance of UNISFA, and bring the perpetrators to justice," the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric said.He explained that "The Secretary-General reminds all parties that attacks on United Nations peacekeepers may constitute war crimes."UNISFA announced earlier that the renewed conflict in the region had resulted in the killing of 52 civilians, in addition to two members of its forces, while 64 people were gravely wounded.Abyei region, located on the border between Sudan and South Sudan, is a disputed area claimed by both countries since the independence of South Sudan in 2011.The administrative territory of Abyei is economically important due to its abundant oil reserves, and disputes occur between different tribes, especially warring youth, over these resources, and the UN Security Council (UNSC) deployed a peacekeeping force, known as UNISFA, to the region in June 2011 due to violence.

UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri said that famine has become 'inevitable' in the Gaza Strip, after the decision of some countries to stop funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).Fakhri explained on X platform that stopping support for UNRWA means leaving 2.2 million people under the weight of hunger.Several countries suspended their funding to UNRWA after allegations, which are being investigated, of the participation of a number of its employees in the Oct. 7 attacks on the Israeli entity.UNRWA was established by a decision of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 1949, and was mandated to provide assistance and protection to refugees in its five areas of operations: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, West Bank, occupied Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.Since Oct.7, 2023, the Israeli occupation forces have launched a devastating aggression against the Gaza Strip, which has so far left 26,637 martyrs and 65,387 injured, most of them children and women, and caused massive destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, while more than 8,000 citizens are still missing under rubble and on the roads.

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) warned that children in Gaza are at risk of missing their routine vaccinations as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression since October 7, leaving diseases like pneumonia and polio looming over them.UNICEF and partners are on the ground helping to protect children from preventable diseases by administering essential vaccines, the UN agency said.The agency said it has delivered 962,550 doses of essential vaccines to the Strip.According to medical sources, the number of civilians killed since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip on October 7 has risen to 26,637, the majority of whom were children and women. In addition, at least 65387 people were injured and about 8,000 were reported missing.

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced his resignation on Monday.The announcement came ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections due by October."Today, I am leaving the post of prime minister," Garibashvili told a press conference, adding that he would become chairman of the Georgian Dream after the party congress on Feb. 1.The current chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party Irakli Kobakhidze would take the place of Garibashvili.Garibashvili is the Prime Minister of Georgia since 2021. He previously served as Prime Minister from 2013 until 2015.

The South Korean military announced that North Korea fired several cruise missiles off its western coast, just two days after it test-fired cruise missiles from a submarine off its eastern coast.The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the South Korean Army said, in a statement broadcast by Yonhap news agency, that it had detected North Korea launching cruise missiles from its west coast at around 7 am (local time), without specifying their number."While strengthening our monitoring and vigilance, our military has been closely coordinating with the United States to monitor additional signs of North Korea's provocations", the statement added.This marks the third cruise missile launch carried out by North Korea within a week.

Pakistan and Iran pledged yesterday to improve dialogue and swap liaison officers as both nations sought to ease tensions after deadly cross-border strikes threatened diplomatic relations.The tit-for-tat raids earlier this month in the porous border region of Baluchistan — split between the two nations — stoked regional tensions already inflamed by the Gaza war.During a visit to Pakistan yesterday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the hostilities could not be described as a “crisis” because relations had always been strong.“It was natural that we would manage to overcome this,” Amir-Abdollahian told a news conference.“Through joint co-operation between Islamabad and Tehran, we will not let terrorism endanger relations between us.”Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi would soon visit Pakistan, Abdollahian added.Pakistan Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani told the same briefing that both sides had agreed to strengthen dialogue at all levels, and would speed up a plan to place liaison officers in each other’s countries.“We have managed to bring this situation back to normal in the shortest time,” he said.Tehran carried out strikes against an anti-Iran group in Pakistan on January 16, the same week the nation’s military targeted Iraq and Syria.Two days later, Pakistan responded in kind with a pre-dawn raid on “militant targets” in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province, one of the few mainly Sunni Muslim regions in Shiite-dominated Iran.The initial Iranian strikes, which Pakistan said killed at least two children, drew a sharp rebuke from Islamabad, with the government recalling its ambassador from Tehran and blocking Iran’s envoy from returning to his post.Tehran also summoned Islamabad’s charge d’affaires over Pakistan’s strikes, which left at least nine people dead.The two countries, however, last week announced they had decided to de-escalate and allow both ambassadors to return to their posts.On Saturday, gunmen in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province killed nine people, with Islamabad’s ambassador identifying them as Pakistanis.So far, no group has claimed responsibility.The earlier exchange of air strikes by Iran and Islamabad prompted concern from the United States and European Union, who urged restraint, while China offered to mediate.But both foreign ministers insisted yesterday that strong long-term relations and respect for each other’s borders had ensured a swift outcome.Pakistan’s Jilani said good relations between Pakistan and Iran were “an important source of stability for the whole region”.He said both sides had agreed to speed up the development of border markets along the frontier to further encourage trade and cultural exchanges.They would also establish a new “consultative mechanism” at the ministerial level and plan regular meetings to be held in each other’s capitals.“Our discussions were marked by convergences of all issues of mutual interest,” he said.

A batch of newly released images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope show in remarkable detail 19 spiral galaxies residing relatively near our Milky Way, offering new clues on star formation as well as galactic structure and evolution.The images were made public yesterday by a team of scientists involved in a project called Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) that operates across several major astronomical observatories.The closest of the 19 galaxies is called NGC5068, about 15mn light years from Earth, and the most distant of them is NGC1365, about 60mn light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9tn miles.The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched in 2021 and began collecting data in 2022, reshaping the understanding of the early universe while taking wondrous pictures of the cosmos. The orbiting observatory looks at the universe mainly in the infrared. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990 and still operational, has examined it primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.Spiral galaxies, resembling enormous pinwheels, are a common galaxy type. Our Milky Way is one.The new observations came from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). They show roughly 100,000 star clusters and millions or perhaps billions of individual stars.“These data are important as they give us a new view on the earliest phase of star formation,” said University of Oxford astronomer Thomas Williams, who led the team’s data processing on the images.“Stars are born deep within dusty clouds that completely block out the light at visible wavelengths — what the Hubble Space Telescope is sensitive to — but these clouds light up at the JWST wavelengths. We don’t know a lot about this phase, not even really how long it lasts, and so these data will be vital for understanding how stars in galaxies start their lives,” Williams added.About half of spiral galaxies have a straight structure, called a bar, coming out from the galactic centre to which the spiral arms are attached.“The commonly held thought is that galaxies form from the inside-out, and so get bigger and bigger over their lifetimes. The spiral arms act to sweep up the gas that will form into stars, and the bars act to funnel that same gas in towards the central black hole of the galaxy,” Williams said.The images let scientists for the first time resolve the structure of the clouds of dust and gas from which stars and planets form at a high level of detail in galaxies beyond the Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud, two galaxies considered galactic satellites of the sprawling Milky Way.“The images are not only aesthetically stunning, they also tell a story about the cycle of star formation and feedback, which is the energy and momentum released by young stars into the space between stars,” said astronomer Janice Lee of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, principal investigator for the new data.“It actually looks like there was explosive activity and clearing of the dust and gas on both cluster and kiloparsec (roughly 3,000 light years) scales. The dynamic process of the overall star formation cycle becomes obvious and qualitatively accessible, even for the public, which makes the images compelling on many different levels,” Lee added.Webb’s observations build on Hubble’s.

Posy Simmonds is only the fifth woman and the first Briton to win the grand prix at France’s prestigious Angouleme comics festival, an honour she is thrilled with — even if toothache prevented her from collecting it in person.Cartoons and comics have been “a boys’ club for a long time and certainly over the last decades women have infiltrated it. Of course, I am really pleased to be one of them,” she told AFP this week. Simmonds, 78, is best known in Britain for her work in The Guardian newspaper and her gentle satirisation of the English middle classes.In France, however, she became famous for Gemma Bovery (1999), considered an iconoclastic masterpiece, with a complex plot delivered in very dense text, reimagining the bored heroine of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.That work was initially commissioned by The Guardian which asked her for 100 episodes. But feeling she had a lot more to say, Simmonds decided to accompany her drawings with numerous long texts. This would become her trademark in the graphic novels that followed, such as Tamara Drewe or Cassandra Darke.“You can say things in three lines that happened in the past, like, you know, ‘he’d been married three times and he hated cats’,” she said.“You don’t have to draw it. It also allowed me to have several different voices in my books, so that you saw the story from a different angle. And I think that added depth to it,” she added.Simmonds works from a small room in her 12th floor apartment in central London, filled with books, pencils and drawings, far from the countryside where she grew up. The Angouleme International Comics Festival in southwestern France is widely seen as the industry’s most illustrious event. Although she couldn’t make it to France on Wednesday for the announcement, the long-time Francophile who studied at the Sorbonne, confesses she finds becoming the first Briton to win the prize “quite extraordinary”.“I was astonished first of all, I said ‘wow’...and then of course I was very pleased,” she told AFP.Simmonds says Britain lags behind France in its interest in comics or BD (bandes dessinées) as they are known.“I always remember going to Paris and being in the FNAC (book store), and there were adults reading BD and children at their feet reading BD. I thought this is just amazing,” she said. A constant in her work is strong female characters, whether it is Gemma, an Englishwoman who cheats on her husband in the Normandy countryside, or Cassandra, a cantankerous old Londoner, who defends herself tooth and nail against adversity.

Two suspects of the armed attack on the Santa Maria Church in Turkiye's city of Istanbul were arrested, said Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya Monday.He indicated that the two suspects were apprehended after murdering a Turkish citizen, highlighting that the security forces carried out over 30 raids following the attack, which resulted in arresting 47 individuals and capturing the two suspects, one of them from Tajikistan and the other one from Russia who are purported to be affiliated with ISIS group. (QNA)

The Government Media Office in the Gaza Strip said that the Israeli occupation forces committed 38 massacres over the past 48 hours that claimed the lives of 350 martyrs in Khan Yunis governorate alone.The Israeli occupation forces carried out field executions and brutal and horrific massacres in the last two days, which amply demonstrated its premeditated intention to carry out ethnic cleansing and genocide, the Government Media Office said in a statement.According to the statement, the occupation forces prevented medical teams and civil defense crews from approaching dozens of martyrs whose bodies are still disposed of in the streets in flagrant violation of international law, international humanitarian law, and all international treaties.A total of 150 dead bodies were buried inside the Nasser Medical Complex, as the occupation army prevented medical teams and citizens from burying the martyrs in the governorate's cemeteries.The statement called on the free world and all international organizations to put pressure on the occupation in order to stop the war of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.

A fire that destroyed around 600 hectares of a national park in Argentina was the result of arson, an official said Sunday."We have confirmed that the fire originated intentionally," said Ignacio Torres, the governor of Chubut province, who had flown over Los Alerces National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, to inspect the destruction."Those responsible for starting the fire will have to answer to the courts," he added, calling for "exemplary measures."Torres had alleged in an earlier radio interview that the fire was started by members of the Mapuche Ancestral Resistance (RAM), a marginal Indigenous group which claims land taken by the state during the 19th century and advocates against logging."The problem is not Indigenous people but these criminals who take land under false flags... I think it is time to put a definitive stop to it," he had said.Firefighters are battling the blaze that has ravaged the park for three days, trying to prevent the flames from reaching the nearby towns of Esquel and Trevelin, about 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) southwest of Buenos Aires.They are being supported by two hydrant planes, an observation aircraft and two water-bombing helicopters, according to official information.The Chubut governor's office said the work on Sunday was complicated by weather conditions, which caused smoke to hang over the area and reduce visibility.Temperatures in Patagonia, a normally cold and windy region in Argentina's far south, have topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in the southern hemisphere summer, with two provinces declaring states of emergency due to fire risk until April.Los Alerces Park covers more than 260,000 hectares. Glaciers have shaped the landscape of the region, creating strings of ponds and lakes, hanging valleys and rivers.It is also home to pristine forests of alerce trees, the second-longest living tree species in the world.

Under-fire Dutch medical device maker Philips said Monday it would halt new sales of sleep machines in the US after a series of recalls that continued to weigh on results.The firm trimmed its losses for 2023 compared with the previous year, as it seeks to bounce back from what it had described as a "very difficult" 2022.Philips posted losses of 463 million euros over the full year, compared with 1.6 billion euros in 2022, with chief executive Roy Jakobs hailing "strong results.""While there is more work to be done, the progress we achieved in a volatile world lays a solid foundation for sustained performance," said Jakobs.Since 2021, the company has been battling a series of crises over its DreamStation machines for sleep apnoea, a disorder in which breathing stops and starts during sleep."Resolving the consequences of the Respironics recall for our patients and customers is a key focus area and I acknowledge and apologise for the distress and concern caused," said Jakobs.The firm said it had clinched a "consent decree" deal with US authorities that consists of a "roadmap" of targets to allow Philips to conform with regulatory requirements."Until the relevant requirements of the consent decree are met, Philips Respironics will not sell new... sleep therapy devices or other respiratory care devices in the US," the company said.It said it had set aside a provision of 363 million euros in the fourth quarter to settle the deal, which still needs to be finalised and requires court approval."We are fully committed to complying with the consent decree, which is an important step and provides a clear path forward," said Jakobs.- 'Signs of overheating' -The firm's latest woes came in November when the US Food and Drug Administration warned that its new "DreamStation 2" machine to help patients sleep risked overheating.The US body said it had received reports "such as fire, smoke, burns, and other signs of overheating" from people using the machine.Philips said it had filed 270 reports of possible malfunctions with the FDA that covered a three-year period.The overheating issue was unrelated to a recall of sleep machines in 2021 that sent the company into turmoil.In that recall, the FDA said foam in the machine could potentially be breathed in or swallowed, posing possible health risks to patients.The recall and provisions for possible legal settlements pushed the firm deep into the red in 2022 and led to the loss of thousands of jobs.The company has already completed the vast majority of the recalls and announced in May that independent tests showed the respirators were "unlikely" to harm patients.Financially, the firm has been fighting back, posting stronger third-quarter sales and profits that prompted it to raise its 2023 full-year outlook.It recorded a net profit of 90 million euros ($95 million) in the third quarter, compared with a loss of 1.3 billion during the same period last year.The firm was also in the black in the fourth quarter, posting a profit of 38 million euros. It lost 105 million euros in the same period last year.Once famous for making lightbulbs and televisions among other products, Amsterdam-based Philips in recent years has sold off its subsidiaries to focus on medical care technology.

South Korea aims to develop an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft deployable from warships by 2028, the South Korea arms procurement agency said Monday, amid efforts to boost surveillance against North Korean threats.On Dec. 2023, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) signed a contract worth 143.3 billion won ($107.1 million) with defense company Hanwha Systems to develop the rotary-wing aircraft by Dec. 2028.DAPA said the aircraft is designed to be deployed from warships, as well as Marine Corps units on northwestern islands near the border with North Korea, to carry out surveillance and reconnaissance missions.The unmanned rotorcraft will be the first of its kind in South Korea and will be equipped with electro-optical and infrared sensors and radar systems, according to DAPA.

Seven people were killed after a small plane crashed in the rural area of Itapeva, a town in southeast Brazil's Minas Gerais state.Two others may have been on board the aircraft but have yet to be located, according to the state's Fire Department.Witnesses in the accident area told Brazil's Globo news network that the plane exploded in midair before hitting the ground.According to residents, at the time of the accident, a storm with rain and wind was hitting the area where the plane crashed.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has overseen the test-fire of submarine-launched cruise missiles, state media reported Monday.The new Pulhwasal-3-31 strategic cruise missile precisely hit an island target after flying over the East Sea for 7,421 seconds and 7,445 seconds, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, suggesting the test involved two missiles.Kim stressed Sunday that "the nuclear weaponization of the navy is an urgent task of the times and a core requirement for building the state nuclear strategic force," the KCNA said.The South Korean military said Sunday it had detected the North's launch of several cruise missiles over waters near the eastern port city of Sinpo, where a shipyard to build a North Korean submarine is located, according to South Korea's News Agency (Yonhap).In September last year, North Korea unveiled what it claimed was its first tactical nuclear attack submarine capable of carrying out an underwater nuclear attack.A nuclear-powered submarine is on the list of high-tech weapons that the North's leader vowed to develop during a key party congress in 2021, along with a hypersonic warhead, spy satellites and solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The World Health Organization (WHO) appealed to donors not to suspend their funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)."We appeal to donors not to suspend their funding to UNRWA at this critical moment," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X."Cutting off funding will only hurt the people of Gaza who desperately need support," he added.Several countries have announced the suspension of funding for UNRWA in the wake of the allegations that some of its staff were involved in the Oct. 7 attacks on the Israeli entity.

Thailand and China have signed off on a visa waiver agreement at talks between their foreign ministers as the two countries look to boost ties.The agreement inked yesterday by Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi allows people from the two nations to travel to one another’s country visa-free from March 1.Thai officials hope the deal will encourage more Chinese to come and boost the kingdom’s vital tourism sector, which has struggled to bounce back from the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.“This agreement is a symbol of our long-lasting friendship, trust and confidence ... and help to stimulate the tourism industry in both countries,” Parnpree said.Wang welcomed the agreement, saying that Thai and Chinese people “are one family”.“This visa-free era will bring people-to-people exchanges to a new height,” Wang said.Precise details of the visa arrangements were not announced yesterday, but earlier this month Thai officials said the deal would allow stays of up to 30 days per visit.“There will be a big increase in the number of Chinese tourists visiting Thailand,” Wang said.The number of Chinese tourists to Thailand plunged to 3.5mn last year from 11mn in 2019 before the pandemic.Beijing and Bangkok also pledged to speed-up the construction of the China-Thailand railway and work together in combating transnational crimes, Wang said.Before his talks with Parnpree, Wang held two days of talks in Bangkok with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan covering the sensitive issues of Taiwan and the attacks in the Red Sea by Houthi rebels.

Former Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte’s son has urged President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to resign, calling him lazy and uncompassionate in a deepening rift between the two politically powerful families.Marcos teamed up with Duterte’s daughter Sara to make her vice-president in their 2022 election win.However, cracks in the families’ alliance have emerged as the incumbent has veered away from his predecessor’s anti-drugs and foreign policies.Sebastian Duterte, who is mayor of Philippines’ third most populous city Davao, said that there had been a resurgence in crime after his father’s hardline campaign had been relaxed.At a leadership forum, he also accused Marcos of endangering innocent Filipinos by allowing the Americans in, a reference to expanded US access to military bases, including several close to Taiwan.The older Duterte had forged closer ties with China.Sebastian Duterte also opposed Marcos’s decision to restart peace negotiations with communist rebels, saying that he did not know anything about the suffering of people living in areas that used to be rebel strongholds.“You are lazy and you lack compassion. That’s why we are unhappy,” he said.He spoke just before Marcos took the stage at a government-led rally in the capital to drum up support for his “Bagong Pilipinas (New Philippines)” campaign, where he has promised to improve state services and budget transparency.Marcos’s alliance with the Dutertes was crucial to his presidential victory, so a souring of their relations could have implications in his bid to solidify his support base ahead of the mid-term Senate and congressional election next year.Sara Duterte, who is also education secretary, attended the president’s rally before flying to Davao to join her father and siblings at a prayer rally against moves to amend the Philippine constitution, which Marcos backs.Some opponents of constitutional change, including the Dutertes, say that it is driven by an agenda to change the political system and remove term limits, including that of the president, who can currently serve just one six-year term.“He is putting politics first, their self-preservation ... rather than focusing on the job,” Sebastian Duterte said. “Mr President, if you have no love and aspirations for the nation, resign.”Like her brother, Sara Duterte has openly defied some of Marcos’s policies, including the peace talks with communist rebels which she said was an “agreement with the devil”.There was no immediate comment from Marcos’s office or from the vice-president on Sebastian Duterte’s remarks.At the Davao rally, the Duterte patriarch warned Marcos that “you may suffer your father’s fate” and called on the police and military to “protect the constitution”.An ever-shifting coalition of powerful families has long ruled the Philippines, holding onto power for generations.Left-wing political party Akbayan branded the rallies as a “dynastic war among ruling elites” that did not serve the interests of regular Filipinos.Police estimated 400,000 people were at the Manila rally, many of them government workers, while more than 40,000 were at the Davao event.“This would be the most public and deliberate way of letting the people know that the Unity Team is no more,” University of the Philippines political science professor Jean Franco told AFP.In Manila, some members of the crowd told AFP that they believed in Marcos, although they said they knew next to nothing about the constitution controversy.“If he runs again why not, for as long as he is doing a good job for the country,” Manila resident Dennis Ardea, 53, told AFP, adding: “The Dutertes belong to the past. We should go with another (leader).”

Pakistani police detained at least two dozen supporters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan yesterday as they tried to rally in the country’s biggest city ahead of elections next month.Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has been severely hamstrung ahead of the February 8 poll, with rallies banned, its party symbol taken away, and dozens of its candidates rejected from eligibility to stand.Rights groups have warned the national and provincial elections lack credibility, with the powerful military accused of trying to influence the vote.Yesterday, PTI officials urged supporters to rally across the country despite police withdrawing or declining permission for the gatherings to take place.Thousands gathered in Karachi, the bustling southern port city of over 20mn people on the Arabian Sea, where AFP correspondents saw about two dozen PTI supporters detained by police and taken away in trucks.PTI media adviser Zulfiqar Bukhari said there had also been arrests in Rawalpindi — the sprawling garrison city neighbouring the capital, Islamabad — as well as in other parts of Punjab, the country’s most populous province.Police officials said they had no information on arrests.The election has largely been a lacklustre affair so far, with few mass rallies — a combination of party inaction, voter apathy, and the cold winter weather.Three-time premier Nawaz Sharif, whose Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is expected to take the most seats, has barely been seen on the campaign trail, although Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who heads the other major dynastic political group, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), has been more visible.He held a rally attended by several thousand in Rawalpindi yesterday.Much of the action has taken place in the country’s courts, which for months have been at the centre of battles by politicians and parties challenging everything from the use of election symbols to the eligibility of candidates to run for office.This weekend, several Pakistani journalists, political commentators and bloggers said they were summoned by the country’s top crime agency to answer charges they were running a “malicious campaign” against Supreme Court judges ahead of the elections.They had received notices from the Federal Investigation Agency summoning them to a hearing in the capital this week.“This is the price one has to pay for this sort of journalism,” Asad Ali Toor, one of the journalists who had received a notice, told AFP, adding that he had faced similar cases under successive governments.Farieha Aziz, a digital-rights activist in Karachi, told AFP the investigation was part of an increase in censorship in Pakistan.Earlier this week, the government announced it had formed a team to “ascertain facts behind a malicious social media campaign” against Supreme Court judges.Murtaza Solangi, the caretaker information minister, said more than 500 social media accounts had taken part in the anti-judiciary campaign, adding that “action will be taken”.This month, PTI lost a crucial battle at the country’s top court to retain its cricket bat election symbol — vital in a nation where the adult literacy rate is just 58 percent, according to World Bank data.The verdict, deemed harsh by many legal experts, was severely criticised on social media.Media groups have faced heavy pressure from the establishment — a term commonly used to refer to the country’s military and intelligence services — in the lead-up to the election, including a ban on mentioning Khan’s name on the airwaves.Pakistan’s military has directly ruled the country for roughly half of its history, and critics say it continues to maintain control over many aspects of governance.