More on the newspaper article

Hi! How are the holidays going? :)
The newspaper article that I was reffering to was the article titled ‘UN Urges Huge Aid Push For Pakistan Floods’Reffering to was the article titled ‘UN Urges Huge Aid Push For Pakistan Floods’. According to Wikipedia, the flood resulted from heavy monsoon rains in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan regions of Pakistan and affected the Indus River basin.
Ms J bracketed for us many sentences in the article, and I have done some research on them.

1. ‘The Pakistani Taliban, which has been fighting the military in the tribal belt, has called on the government to turn down all foreign aid for the victims.’
What is ‘The Pakistani Taliban’? well, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehrik-i-Taliban_Pakistan, it is an umbrella organization of various Islamist militant groups based in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border in Pakistan. It is also known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. Why have they called the government to turn down all foreign aid for the victims? If you continue to read on, at the later part, it says that they believe that ‘it will lead to subjugation.’ It also says that their ‘jihad against America will continue’. So many words.
· Subjugation: ‘to lead to complete control or subjection’
· Jihad: ‘a holy war against infidels undertaken by Muslims in defence of the Islamic faith’
Hope that answers questions!

2. ‘Government has admitted being unable to cope with the scale of the crisis’, ‘political opposition piles pressure on President Asif Ali Zardiri’
According to the newspaper article, 14 million people face direct or indirect harm (the internet says that the floods directly affected about 20 million people, mostly by destruction of property, livelihood and infrastructure, with a death toll of close to 2,000) and UN says that the children are the most vulnerable, and there are 1,243 people confirmed while UN believes that there will be 357 more people dead. According to Wikipedia, 10 million people were forced to drink unsafe water. No wonder the poor government was so stressed!

3. ‘What we need is substantial foreign aid and not peanuts’
This statement was made by the chief minister of Sindh, Syed Qaim Ali Shah and he was referring to the help given to the people in the provinces (although, according to him, that up to 3.5 million people could have been affected although there were few deaths), in terms of money, which they need real badly. He claims that they are not given enough money.

4. ‘Effort has been woefully slow.’
The whole sentence is ‘But critics say the official relief effort has been woefully slow.’ The word ‘but’ shows that there have been efforts, which is really, well, ‘big’. The ‘efforts’ is ‘US military helicopters had evacuated 2,305 people and supplied aid including water, rice, flour and meal packages. Wow, that is a lot but it was slow.

The end of the story isn’t exactly what you would call a happy one because of its long term effects on the country. For example, the floods submerged 17 million acres (69,000 km2) of Pakistan's most fertile crop land, killed 200,000 livestock and washed away massive amounts of grain. A major concern was that farmers would be unable to meet the fall deadline for planting new seeds in 2010, which implied a loss of food production in 2011, and potential long term food shortages. It is also estimated that 5000 schools have been affected. The aftermath was also thought likely that The floods' aftermath was thought likely contribute to public perception of inefficiency and to political unrest. What’s more, the floods cost more than 5.3 million jobs. I will continue to pray for them, and I hope you would too.