AUGUST

NATIONAL

01 The 1973-batch IFS officer  Nirupama Rao takes charge as Foreign Seretary of India.

03 A 14-year-old girl dies of swine flu in Pune, making it the first death case in the country.

05 Railways launch two ladies’ special EMU trains for the benefit of working women of Delhi and Mumbai.

06 Three Lashkar-e-Taiba members sentenced to death in 2003Mumbai bomb blasts case.

08 President Pratibha Patil inaugurates the long-awaited Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT).

10 Son of Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal, Sukhbir Singh Badal is sworn-in as Deputy Chief Minister of the state; The World Badminton  Championship starts in Hyderabad.

11 The former governor of Reserve Bank of India C. Rangarajan is appointed the Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council.

12 The Jammu and Kashmir government decides to hand over the Shopian rape and murder case to CBI; ISRO launches ‘Bhuvan’, its own edition of a mapping application similar to Google Earth.

19 The Bhartiya Janata Party expels senior leader Jaswant Singh from the primary membership of the party following a controversy over his remarks on Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Sardar Patel in his new book ‘Jinnah Prtition-India Independece’.

20 CBI files charge sheet against the suspnded Nationalist Congress Party MP Padamsinh Patil in the murder case of Congress leader Pawan Raje Nimbalkar.

27 The Union Cabinet approves the proposal for setting up seven new Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) in various states of the country.

29 Ten months after its launch, the ambitious Chandrayaan-1 comes to an abrupt end after lossing contact with ground control.

INTERNATIONAL

01 The former Prime Minister of Denmark Anders Fogh  Rasmussen assumes office as the Secretary General of NATO.

03 Bolivia becomes the first country in the history of South America to declare the right of indigenous people to govern themselves.

05 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is officially sworn in as President of Iran for a second term.

06 Iran bans all pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in an attempt to contain the spread of swine flu; The Iraqi cabinet agrees a draft law to restrict smoking in public places and ban tobacco advertising.

09 Sonia Sotomayor creates history by taking oath as the first Hispanic justice of the Supreme Court of United States.

10 Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa is sworn in for a second term vowing to deepen his socialist revolution; More than 350 new speciesincluding 244 plants and 16 amphibiansare discovered in the Eastern Himalayas.

11 A court in Burma finds Aung San Suu Kyi guilty of violating the terms of her detention, and sentences her to a further 18 months house arrest.

13 The International Olympic Committee decides to include women’s boxing in the 2012 Summer Games in London.

16 Jamaica’s Usain Bolt obliterates his own 100 metres World Record in a breath taking 9.58 seconds during the World Championship in Berlin; Zimbabwe batsman Charles Coventry equals Pakistan’s Saeed Anwar’s record highest individual score of 194 runs in ODI matches.

17 Japan officially exits the recession.

22 Officials from North and South Korea meet for talks for the first time in two years.

23 Miss Venezuela Stefania Fernandez wins the title of Miss Universe 2009 beauty pageant.

24 England cricket team regains Ashes beating Australia 2-1 in a five-match series.

25 Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud is killed in a drone attack by US; South Korea launches its first space rocket, Naro-1, but fails to put the STSAT-2A satellite into the planned orbit.

30 The Democratic Party of Japan win 308 seats in the 480 seat House of Representatives, ending nearly 50 years of control by the Liberal Democratic Party; A presidential election takes place in Gabon.