In London, president Shimon Peres of Israel has been awarded with an honorary knighthood. The Queen presented the Israeli head of state with the Order of St. Michael and St. George, which was founded in 1818. It is awarded to men and women of high office or to those who render important nonmilitary services abroad. Foreigners are eligible for honorary versions of the award. Among past recipients are former the US presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and U2 lead singer Bono.
Meanwhile, the leader of Lithuania's Jewish community Simonas Alperavicius, 80, has received the German Cross of Merit, First Class. Alperavicius has been a leader of Lithuania's 4,000-strong Jewish community since 1989, two years before the Baltic state won back its independence from the crumbling Soviet Union. He was born in Vilnius in 1928 when the city was still part of Poland, but spent much of his childhood in Lithuania's then capital Kaunas. Alperavicius and his family settled in Vilnius in 1944, after the Nazis were driven out by the Soviet army, and he later trained as a lawyer. Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union until 1991 and joined the European Union in 2004.
In France, Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor, former minister and former president of the European Parliament, has been elected as a member of the prestigious Académie française (French Academy). Veil, 81, succeeds former French prime minister Pierre Messmer, who died in August 2007. The academy is one of the oldest institutions in France. It was set up in 1635 during the reign of Louis XIII by Cardinal Richelieu to guard over the French language. More recently, it attracted controversy with defiant attacks on the excessive use of English words in modern French. With her election, Veil becomes one of the 40 'immortals' who make up the French Academy at any one time. They are elected for life and cannot resign.
