2013 CURRENT AFFAIRS-AUGUST

• The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission says that Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party has won 142 seats of 210 seats in the general election. Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party claims victory in yesterday's Zimbabwean general election as the opposition Movement for Democratic Change alleges "massive fraud". 
• A new primate, the Lavasoa dwarf lemur, is discovered in Madagascar. Biologists from Madagascar and Germany led by Dr Andreas Hapke of the Johannes Gutenberg University’s Institute of Anthropology have described a new, extremely rare species of dwarf lemur that inhabits three isolated forests in the extreme south of Madagascar. 
• Hassan Rouhani receives his presidential precept and enters to the Sa'dabad Palace to begin his work as President of Iran. Cleric Hassan Rouhani has officially replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran. Mr Rouhani's election has been endorsed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a ceremony in the capital, Tehran. 
• The Syrian regime has used chemical weapons against rebel-held areas neighboring Damascus, according to rebel sources. Opposition activists claim that "Syrian regime forces" launched "a series of chemical attacks" on the Damascus suburbs of Adra and Houma. 
• India launches its first indigenous aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant. 
• Brahim Boubacar Keïta is elected as President of Mali. Although results have not yet been made official, his opponent Soumaïla Cissé has conceded defeat in the election. 
• Bo Xilai, a former member of Politburo of the Communist Party of China, charged with bribery and corruption, will go on trial on August 22 in the city of Jinan. On 22 September 2013, Bo was found guilty of corruption, stripped of all his assets, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He came to prominence through his tenures as the mayor of Dalian and then the governor of Liaoning. From 2004 to November 2007, he served as Minister of Commerce. Between 2007 and 2012, he served as a member of the Central Politburo and secretary of the Communist Party's Chongqing branch. 
• Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accuses American and Israeli influence of being the ouster of Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi; which are denied by both 
• Narendra Dabholkar, a rationalist from India, is assassinated while out walking. He was the founder-president of Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (MANS), an organization set up to eradicate superstition in 1989. Triggered by his murder on 20 August 2013, the pending Anti-Superstition and Black Magic Ordinance was promulgated in the state of Maharashtra, four days later.