Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk (born 12 July 1946) is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. He has been Middle East correspondent of The Independent for more than twenty years, primarily based in Beirut. Fisk holds more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent and has been voted British International Journalist of the Year award seven times. He has published a number of books and reported on several wars and armed conflicts.

An Arabic speaker, he is one of a few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, which he did on three occasions between 1993 and 1997.

Early life and education

Fisk was an only child, born in Maidstone, Kent. His father, already in his mid-50s, was Borough Treasurer at Maidstone Corporation and had fought in the First World War.

He was educated at Yardley Court, a preparatory school, Then at Sutton Valence School and Lancaster University, where he cut his journalistic teeth on the student magazine John O'Gauntlet. He later gained a PhD in Political Science, from Trinity College, Dublin in 1983. The title of his doctoral thesis was "A condition of limited warfare: Éire's neutrality and the relationship between Dublin, Belfast and London, 1939–1945".

Middle East

The Middle East (also called the Mid East) is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the derived noun is Middle-Easterner. Formerly, the Eurocentric synonym Near East (as opposed to Far East) was commonly used. Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, Persians, and Turks constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population, while Armenians, Assyrians, Circassians, Copts, Druze, Jews, Maronites, Somalis, and other ethnic and ethno-religious groups form significant minorities.

The History of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the (geo-political) importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Several major religions have their origins in the Middle East, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; the Baha'i faith, Mandaeism, Unitarian Druze, and numerous other belief systems were also established within the region. The Middle East generally has a hot, arid climate, with several major rivers providing irrigation to support agriculture in limited areas such as the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds of Mesopotamia, and most of what is known as the Fertile Crescent. Most of the countries that border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil, with the dictatorships of the Arabian Peninsula in particular benefiting from petroleum exports. In modern times the Middle East remains a strategically, economically, politically, culturally and religiously sensitive region.

Keturi Brūkšniai

Keturi brūkšniai is a polemical book by Lithuanian historian Edvardas Gudavičius, written in the Lithuanian language. It was published in 2002 by Aidai in Vilnius (ISBN 9955-445-55-6). It does not have any proper title, but publishers and book sellers usually put four dashes (Lithuanian: Keturi brūkšniai) as the title.

References

Robert

The name Robert is a Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic *χrōþi- "fame" and *berχta- "bright". Compare Old Dutch Robrecht and Old High German Hrodebert (a compound of hruod "fame, glory" and berht "bright"). It is also in use as a surname.

After becoming widely used in Continental Europe it entered England in its Old French form Robert, where an Old English cognate form (Hrēodbēorht, Hrodberht, Hrēodbēorð, Hrœdbœrð, Hrœdberð) had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto.

Similar to the name, Richard, "Robert" is also a common name in many Germanic languages, including English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic. It can be used as a French, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian name as well.

Variations

Trivia

Robert, and also the name Joseph, were in the top 10 most given boys' names in the US for 47 years, from 1925 to 1972.

In Italy during the Second World War, the form of the name, Roberto, briefly acquired a new meaning derived from, and referring to the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It will cease to be produced in a print edition from late March 2016, but will continue in an online form.

The Independent was launched in 1986 and is one of the youngest UK national daily newspapers. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. The current editor, Amol Rajan, was appointed in 2013, and its former deputy editor, Archie Bland, in 2012. Bland was one of the youngest people to be appointed to a senior managerial post in the British newspaper industry, at 28 years old. Rajan was not quite 30 at the time of his appointment in June 2013.

Nicknamed the Indy, it was originally a broadsheet newspaper, the newspaper has been published in a tabloid or "compact" format since 2003.The Independent is regarded as coming from the centre-left, on culture and politics, but tends to take a more pro-market stance on economic issues. It has not affiliated itself with any political party and features a range of views given on its editorial and comment pages. The paper originally described itself as "free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influence"—a banner it carried on the front page of its daily edition. This banner was dropped in September 2011.