The eyes of the world will be on Pakistan as the drawdown and handover in neighbouring Afghanistan take place.

drawdown
a reduction in the size of a military force
Afghanistan gains will be lost quickly after drawdown.
Afghanistan after the drawdown

After suffering a debacle in the 2013 elections, the PPP has been virtually confined to one province.

debacle
a complete failure or disaster; tragedy
He should take responsibility for the debacle and resign.
The army would suffer a debacle if it continued with the military operation.

antonym: success

Talks will be a watershed.

watershed

a turning point

The discovery of penicillin was a watershed in the history of medicine.

The War in Kosovo was a watershed for us.

The NATO war against Serbia had seemed to be a watershed.

There must be zero tolerance for hate speech that demonises any sect or religion.

demonise
to portray as wicked; make into a demon
He was demonized by the right-wing press.
The Nazis used racist propaganda in an attempt to demonize the Jews.

Consumers are paying inflated prices for food.

inflated
excessively high
company directors with inflated salaries
inflated wages

He was banned from preaching because of his inflammatory sermons.

inflammatory
arousing to action or rebellion; provocative
inflammatory remarks/comments

antonym: conciliatory

Corrupt employees to get the sack

the sack
dismissal from a job
He  got the sack  for swearing.
Her work was so poor that she was  given the sack.
Four hundred workers face the sack.

The government’s policy of dialogue with militants is both theoretically and in practice riddled with holes.

be riddled with sth

to be full of sth, especially sth bad or unpleasant

His body was riddled with cancer.

Her typing was slow and riddled with mistakes.

The woods are riddled with rabbit holes.

1. The Prophet said: I take refuge with the light of Your face that repairs the troubles of this world and the hereafter.

repair

set right; put right

2. The Prophet said: All power and strength stem from You.

stem

grow out of; originate in

3. His people were even more antagonistic to him and his religion than before.

agnostic

hostile

Sharif calls on Obama

Fourteen years after his last Oval Office visit, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is poised to meet this Wednesday with U.S. President Barack Obama. In between, Sharif was deposed in a 1999 coup and then endured nearly a decade in the political wilderness. His arrival this week in Washington marks another moment of triumph for one of South Asia’s political heavyweights.   

word	meaning	usage
poised	completely ready for sth	The British team is poised to win the title.
endure	experience hardship; bear	The pain was almost too great to endure.
heavyweight	a very important person	a political heavyweight.   a heavyweight journal

(Time 22 October 2013)

Karzai Is Planning To Be There For A Successor

With less than a year left in his final term, President Hamid Karzai insists that he is eager to leave the presidential palace and lead a quieter life. It turns out, though, he may just be moving next door, to a lavish new home yards from the complex that has been the seat of his power for more than a decade.

According to Afghan officials, Mr. Karzai’s new home will be an old, European-style mansion that, once renovations are done, will be roughly 13,000 square feet.

words	meanings	usage
lavish	luxurious; large in quantity and expensive	They lived a very lavish lifestyle.
complex	a group of buildings of a similar type	a sports complex
mansion	a large impressive house	an 18th century country mansion
renovation	repair; reconstruction	buildings in need of renovation

(The New York Times 5 October 2013)

Alarming picture: Capital flight

The governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, Yasin Anwar, is perhaps the first senior official to concede that capital is being moved out of the country in very large sums, and also to quantify it. In his testimony before senators on Tuesday, Mr Anwar said $25m were being ‘smuggled’ out of the country in briefcases every day from four major airports — Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Quetta. He did not say how the bank had worked out the size of the illegal capital outflows and since when this practice had been going on — and these gaps in information have left some economists puzzled. However, even if half this staggering amount is going out of the country each day, it would confirm how porous our custom checkpoints have become, not least because of corruption and weak controls.

words	meanings	usage
concede	admit; acknowledge antonym: deny	He was not prepared to concede that he had acted illegally. I had to concede that I’d overreacted.
quantify	determine the number of; tell antonym: guess	The risks to health are impossible to quantify. It's difficult to quantify how many people will be affected by the change.
work out	calculate; find out by calculation	to work out an answer. to work out a sum
outflow	flowing out antonym: inflow	Capital outflow took place on a very large scale. The central bank has announced controls on capital outflows.
porous	having many small holes; penetrable antonym: impenetrable	porous brick walls. porous material/rocks

(Dawn 03 October 2013)

Local interests

  

The original Supreme Court deadline of September 15 to hold the local bodies elections throughout the country has come and gone and still the provinces are holding out[1]. Punjab and Sindh, in particular, seem in no hurry to follow the constitution which stipulates[2] that local government elections should be held within 90 days of a general election. Now the Supreme Court – without giving a specific date – has ordered the government to hold the elections, and if they dither[3] unnecessarily then the court will set a date. Of late[4] the Election Commission seems to have moved[5] and has called a meeting of all the provinces at the end of this month to discuss the issue.

The PML-N has been the major impediment to holding local elections in Punjab. Since the PML-N already controls Punjab after sweeping the provincial elections, its elected members probably do not see much benefit in holding local polls and diluting[6] their personal power. There is also a slight chance that the PTI and the JI could form an alliance and make inroads[7] into the province. Either way, the constitutional requirement to hold the local bodies polls should not be held hostage to the whims[8] of politicians. This is where Supreme Court intervention is so welcome. It has shown flexibility in not setting a date that would unduly burden the Election Commission of Pakistan and give political parties scant[9] time to organise and campaign. But if the provincial governments continue to stall[10] for time the Supreme Court will be left with no choice but to set an arbitrary date.

(International The News, 18 September 2013)

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[1] to resist

[2] to demand something

[3] to vacillate; hesitate about what to do because you are unable to decide

[4] recently

[5] to take action; to do sth; to act

[6] to weaken; to make sth weaker or less effective

[7] to start to have a direct and noticeable effect

[8] a sudden wish or idea, especially one that cannot be reasonably explained

[9] inadequate; not sufficient

[10] to delay; to use delaying tactics

Merit of the Call to Prayer

The Prophet said, on him be peace: “On the Day of Resurrection, three people will find themselves on a ridge of black musk. They will have no reckoning to fear, nor any cause for alarm while human accounts are being settled. First, a man who recites the Qur’an to please God, Great and Glorious is He, and who leads the Prayer to people’s satisfaction. Second, a man who gives the Call to Prayer in a Mosque, inviting people to God, Great and Glorious is He, for the sake of His good pleasure. Third, a man who has a hard time making a living in this world, yet is not distracted from the work of the Hereafter.”

words and meanings

ridge

a long narrow hilltop

musk

a substance with a strong smell that is used in making some perfumes

reckoning

punishment or vengeance for wrongs committed

Lessons from Iraq, Libya loom large as diplomats ponder Syrian weapons probe	words	meanings	sentences/phrases
When Moammar Gaddafi renounced chemical weapons in 2003, the Libyan dictator surprised skeptics by moving quickly to eliminate his country’s toxic arsenal. He signed international treaties, built a disposal facility and allowed inspectors to oversee the destruction of tons of mustard gas. But Gaddafi’s public break with weapons of mass destruction was not all that it seemed. Only after his death in 2011 did investigators learn that he had retained a large stash of chemical weapons. In a hillside bunker deep in Libya’s southeastern desert, Gaddafi had tucked away hundreds of battle-ready warheads loaded with deadly sulfur mustard. (The Washington Post, 15 September 2013)	toxic	poisonous	toxic chemicals/ gases
	arsenal	a collection of weapons such as guns and explosives	Britain’s nuclear arsenal
	mustard gas	a poisonous gas that burns the skin
	stash	a secret store	a stash of money
	tuck away	put in a safe or secluded place	She kept his letters tucked away in a drawer.
	warhead	destructive material carried by missile	nuclear warheads
	sulfur	a chemical element