MockSutraCurrent Affairs

Sunil Bharti Mittal to Receive France's Knight of the Legion of Honour

12 October 2026National

Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, is to be made a Knight (Chevalier) of the National Order of the Legion of Honour, France's highest civilian distinction. French President Emmanuel Macron will confer it at the French Embassy in New Delhi on 28 October 2026, recognising more than three decades of India-France business engagement that began in 1992, when Compagnie Generale des Eaux partnered Mittal to introduce mobile telephony in India. Instituted by Napoleon Bonaparte on 19 May 1802, the Order has five classes rising from Chevalier to Grand-Croix, and has previously gone to Indians including Ratan Tata and Lata Mangeshkar.

Static GK

France's highest civilian honour is the Legion of Honour; India's is the Bharat Ratna | Bharti Airtel was founded in 1995; Bharti Enterprises is headquartered in New Delhi | The five classes of the Order are Chevalier, Officier, Commandeur, Grand Officier and Grand-Croix

ShareWhatsAppTelegram

More Awards Current Affairs

SBI Named Global Finance's World's Best Consumer Bank 2026 for the Second Consecutive Year

State Bank of India was named World's Best Consumer Bank 2026 by Global Finance magazine for the second year in a row, and also won Best Bank in India 2026. Chairman Challa Sreenivasulu Setty received the awards at the World's Best Bank Awards ceremony held alongside the IMF Annual Meetings 2026 in Bangkok, Thailand. The recognition cited SBI's revamped YONO platform, which has crossed 10 crore registered users. Other winners included Banco Santander of Spain as World's Best Bank, DBS Bank of Singapore as World's Best Corporate Bank, BBVA as Best Emerging Markets Bank and Ecobank of Togo as Best Frontier Markets Bank.

GK ByteSBI is headquartered at Mumbai; it traces its origin to the Bank of Calcutta (1806), became the Imperial Bank of India in 1921 and was constituted as SBI on 1 July 1955 | SBI, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank are India's Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs) | YONO, short for 'You Only Need One', was launched by SBI in 2017 as its integrated digital banking platform
📅 19 Oct 2026AwardsRead complete →

SEWA's Reema Nanavaty Receives the Hillary Rodham Clinton Award at Georgetown University

Reema Nanavaty, Director of India's Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), received the Hillary Rodham Clinton Award at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) in Washington, D.C., for her work on women's economic empowerment, livelihoods, peace and security. A Padma Shri (2013) awardee for social work, she has led SEWA's expansion among informal-sector women workers. The award, instituted in 2014, was presented by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The other 2026 honourees were fashion designer Tory Burch, of the Tory Burch Foundation, and Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of Grameen Bank.

GK ByteSEWA, the Self-Employed Women's Association, was founded in 1972 at Ahmedabad by Ela Bhatt as a trade union of informal-sector women workers | Ela Bhatt received the Padma Shri (1985), the Padma Bhushan (1986) and the Ramon Magsaysay Award (1977) | Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering microcredit in Bangladesh
📅 19 Oct 2026AwardsRead complete →

Israel to Honour Indian Pilot Smit Machchhar With Its Highest Civilian Bravery Award

Israeli President Isaac Herzog announced that Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian pilot flying for flydubai, will receive the Presidential Award for Civilian Heroism - Israel's highest civilian bravery honour - for resisting a mid-flight cockpit attack by his co-pilot and saving 174 passengers and crew. The co-pilot, an Omani national, allegedly attacked him with a crash axe. Machchhar has over 9,750 flying hours on Boeing aircraft and spent over 11 years at SpiceJet as Senior Commander and Line Training Captain before joining flydubai in June 2022. Instituted after the 7 October 2023 attack, the award rarely goes to a foreign national.

GK ByteIsaac Herzog has been President of Israel since July 2021; the President is elected by the Knesset for a single seven-year term | Israel's currency is the Israeli new shekel and its seat of government is Jerusalem | flydubai is a Dubai government-owned low-cost carrier launched in 2009
📅 12 Oct 2026AwardsRead complete →

Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford Win the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2026 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Robert E. Hall of Stanford University and Michael Woodford of Columbia University on 12 October 2026, for work on the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation. The two Americans rebuilt macroeconomic models on the observed behaviour of households and firms, giving central banks a rigorous basis for steering interest rates against boom-bust cycles; Woodford's interest-rate rules underpin modern inflation targeting. The SEK 12 million prize is shared equally. Economics closed the six 2026 Nobel announcements, after optogenetics, IceCube, asymmetric synthesis, Anne Carson and Navi Pillay.

GK ByteThe Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences was instituted in 1968 and first awarded in 1969 to Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen | It is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which also decides the Physics and Chemistry prizes | All Nobel Prizes are presented in Stockholm except the Peace Prize, which is presented in Oslo
📅 12 Oct 2026AwardsRead complete →
See all Awards →All Current Affairs