Amir Mir

Amir Mir is a Pakistani journalist who is currently the Deputy Editor/Editor Investigations for the English-language Pakistani daily The News International, based in Lahore. His areas of special interest include al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked militant and jihadi organisations, terrorism, intelligence agencies, armed forces, religious and political parties, and sectarian and ethnic groups.

Family

His paternal grandfather, Mir Abdul Aziz was a poet of the Urdu, Punjabi and Persian languages. His father, Prof. Waris Mir, was a writer. Amir Mir’s eldest brother Hamid Mir is also a Pakistani columnist and television anchor affiliated with Geo TV network while his younger brother Imran Mir works for Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV). An elder brother Faisal Mir is an industrialist.

Education and early career

Amir Mir graduated from Government College University in Lahore with majors in Political Science, Sociology and Psychology. He started his career as a reporter while studying for a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Punjab Lahore in 1989 at 20 years of age. In 1993, he became a part of Pakistan’s English daily The News International and worked as a team member of the News Bureau of Investigation. From then to 2001, Mir wrote on the political problems and issues of Pakistan. Along with The News, Mir also wrote for various publications home and abroad such as the Inter Press Service, the Straits Times, the Gulf News and weekly The Friday Times and Monthly Newsline.

Mir

Mir (Russian: Мир, IPA: [ˈmʲir]; lit. Peace [homonym: world]) was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, owned by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. Until 21 March 2001 it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit, succeeded by the International Space Station after Mir's orbit decayed. The station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and spacecraft systems with a goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space.

Mir was the first continuously inhabited long-term research station in orbit and held the record for the longest continuous human presence in space at 3,644 days until 23 October 2010 when it was surpassed by the ISS. It holds the record for the longest single human spaceflight, with Valeri Polyakov spending 437 days and 18 hours on the station between 1994 and 1995. Mir was occupied for a total of twelve and a half years out of its fifteen-year lifespan, having the capacity to support a resident crew of three, or larger crews for short visits.

Miré

Miré is a commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France.

See also

References

Mir (title)

Mir (مير) (is a title which is derived from the Arabic title Emir). It is an aristocratic title generally used to refer to a person who is a descendant of a commander in medieval Muslim tradition.

It was adopted in many languages under Islamic influence, such as Balochi, Ottoman Turkish,Persian, Turkish, Pashto, Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Sindhi and Bengali meaning leader of a group or tribe. According to the book Persian Inscriptions on Indian Monuments, Mir is most probably an Arabized form of Pir. Pir in Old Persian and Sanskrit means the old, the wise man, the chief and the great leader. It was Arabized as Mir then, with Al(A) (Arabic definite article), it was pronounced as Amir.

Title

Mir was also subsequently used as an honor rank. (See: Mirza).

Amongst Muslims, mir/meer has become an interchangeable synonym of sayyid (or syed), meaning "relative of prophet Muhammad".

(The last name Mirpourian is a present day example of sayyid, a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad.)

In Muslim princely states very few formal mirs have actually reached the level of salute state, notably in present Pakistan, where only two of the six have been entitled to a gun salute and the attached His Highness. The highest-ranking are the Amir of Bahawalpur), the Mir of Khairpur (17 guns) and the Mir of Hunza (15 guns).