New Delhi, Dec 31 (PTI) Aug 1: San Juan: Hurricane Isaias snapped trees and knocked out power as it blew through the Bahamas on Saturday and headed toward the Florida coast, where officials said they were closing beaches, parks and coronavirus testing sites.

Aug 2: Cape Canaveral (US): Two NASA astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday in a dramatic, retro-style splashdown, their capsule parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico to close out an unprecedented test flight by Elon Musk's SpaceX company.

Aug 3: New York: Technology giant Microsoft has said it will continue talks to purchase the popular Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok's American business after its India-born CEO Satya Nadella and President Donald Trump had a conversation.

Aug 4: Beirut: A massive explosion rocked Beirut on Tuesday, flattening much of the port, damaging buildings across the capital and sending a giant mushroom cloud into the sky.

Aug 5: New York: Dr Dave A Chokshi, a 39-year-old Indian-origin physician with expertise in public health, has been appointed as New York City's new health commissioner by Mayor Bill de Blasio who praised him for playing a crucial role in addressing the unprecedented coronavirus challenges faced by the city.

Aug 6: Lahore: A Pakistani court on Thursday indicted Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif and his son Hamza Shahbaz in a corruption case.

Aug 7: Colombo: Mahinda Rajapaksa will be sworn in as Sri Lanka's Prime Minister for the fourth time on Sunday after his party registered a landslide victory in the general election, securing two-thirds majority in Parliament needed to amend the Constitution to further consolidate the powerful Rajapaksa family's grip on power.

Aug 8: Beirut: Security forces fired tear gas and clashed with stone-throwing demonstrators Saturday in Beirut, and a group of protesters stormed the foreign ministry amid mounting fury over this week's explosion that devastated much of the city and killed nearly 160 people. Dozens were still missing and nearly 6,000 people injured.

Aug 9: Colombo: Mahinda Rajapaksa was sworn in on Sunday as Sri Lanka's new prime minister at a centuries-old Buddhist temple after his party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections that allowed the influential family to consolidate power for the next five years.

Aug 10: Beirut: Lebanon's prime minister stepped down from his job Monday in the wake of the catastrophic explosion in Beirut that has triggered public outrage, saying he has come to the conclusion that corruption in the country is “bigger than the state.”

Aug 11: Moscow: President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday announced that Russia has developed the world's first vaccine against COVID-19 that works "quite effectively" and forms a "stable immunity" against the deadly disease as he disclosed that one of his daughters has already been vaccinated.

Aug 12: Washington: In a major breakthrough for Indian-Americans in US politics, Joe Biden has picked Senator Kamala Devi Harris as his running mate to woo the Black voters and the influential Indian diaspora who could play a key role in his bid to defeat Donald Trump in the presidential election.

Aug 13: Dubai/Jerusalem/Washington: In a major diplomatic breakthrough, the UAE on Thursday became the first Gulf country and the third in the Arab world to establish diplomatic relations with Israel as part of a deal to halt the controversial annexation of parts of the West Bank that Palestinians see as a part of their future state.

Aug 14: Sofia (Bulgaria): Bulgaria's embattled prime minister said Friday that he would step down if lawmakers approve his plans for the election of a grand national assembly that would push through constitutional amendments to overhaul the country's political system.

Aug 15: Beijing: President Xi Jinping on Friday described the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a “landmark project” under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and said it is of great importance to promoting in-depth development of the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries.

Aug 16: Seoul: The United States and South Korea will begin their annual joint military exercises this week, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday. But a spreading coronavirus outbreak has apparently forced the allies to scale back an already low-key training program mainly involving computer-simulated war scenarios.

Aug 17: Wellington: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has delayed New Zealand's elections by four weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak in Auckland.

Aug 18: Washington: The Democratic National Convention kicked off with a call to unite the US -- in the wake of widespread nationwide protests against racism and the deadly coronavirus that has taken a toll on the country's economy -- by defeating President Donald Trump in the November 3 elections.

Aug 19: Washington: Democrats have officially named Joe Biden as their presidential candidate after several elder statesmen lauded the former US vice president's leadership skills to challenge incumbent Republican President Donald Trump in November.

Aug 20: Washington: Kamala Harris, who scripted history in US politics as she became the first Indian-American and Black woman to get a major party's vice presidential nomination, has assailed President Donald Trump's "failure of leadership" that has cost "lives and livelihoods."

Aug 21: Moscow: Russian doctors gave a dissident who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning permission to be transferred abroad for medical treatment, a senior physician said on Friday.

Aug 22: London: A pair of gold-plated spectacles believed to have been worn by Mahatma Gandhi and presented as a gift in the 1900s to a family from England have broken all records for a UK auction house after a US-based collector acquired them with a whopping bid of 260,000 pounds.

Aug 23: Beijing: China successfully launched a new optical remote-sensing satellite from its Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China on Sunday.

Aug 24: Beijing/Islamabad: China has launched first of the four advanced naval warships it is building for Pakistan, amid deepening economic and defence ties between the two all-weather allies.

Aug 25: London: Swedish teen climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg on Tuesday threw her weight behind postponing the NEET and the JEE exams in India in view of the coronavirus, saying it is “deeply unfair” that students are asked to appear in the crucial tests during the pandemic.

Aug 26: Islamabad: Pakistan's Opposition-dominated Senate has rejected two bills related to the tough conditions set by the FATF, jeopardising the government's efforts to escape from being blacklisted by the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog.

Aug 27: Baltimore (US): The US economy shrank at an alarming annual rate of 31.7 per cent during the April-June quarter as it struggled under the weight of the viral pandemic, the government estimated Thursday. It was the sharpest quarterly drop on record.

Aug 28: Beijing: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, on a rare visit to Norway, warned Oslo against granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Hong Kong pro-democracy activists much on the lines of awarding the prize to China's human rights activist Liu Xiaobo and Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in the past, causing strains in bilateral ties.

Aug 29: Los Angeles: American actor Cadwick Boseman, best known for his titular superhero role in "Black Panther" and as baseball icon Jackie Robinson in "42", has died after a four-year-long secret battle with colon cancer. He was 43.

Aug 30: Washington: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases globally has topped 25 million.

Aug 31: Abu Dhabi/Jerusalem: In a historic step towards peace in the Middle East, the first commercial direct flight between Israel and the UAE landed in Abu Dhabi on Monday after both countries announced normalisation of relations. PTI

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)