UNESCO's World Heritage List http://whc.unesco.org/en/list exists to help identify, protect and preserve sites and landscapes that are considered to be of outstanding universal value to humankind. This means that their significance reaches beyond national and cultural boundaries, and (if our attempts at preservation are successful) will remain as a source of inspiration for many generations into the future.

Astronomy in Brazil grew to around 500 astronomers in the last 30 years and is producing around 200 papers per year in refereed journals. Brazilian astronomers are participating in several international collaborations and the development of instrumentation is on the rise.

The President of the IAU, Dr. Catherine Cesarsky, welcomed the delegates and members to this the XXVII General Assembly. The delegates confirmed the agenda of the meeting as in the Program Book. The President invited the General Secretary, Dr. Karel A. van der Hucht, to present the first item.

The President of the IAU, Dr. Catherine Cesarsky, welcomed the delegates and members to the 2nd session of the XXVII General Assembly. The delegates confirmed the agenda of the meeting as in the Program Book. The President invited the General Secretary, Dr. Karel A. van der Hucht, to present the first item.

There were four 1.5-hour sessions of Division I business meetings during the XXVIIth IAU General Assembly. The first three were devoted to the reports of Commissions, Working Groups and services associated with the Division, discussion about plans for the next triennium and future structure of the Division. Scientific presentations on the future space astrometric mission Gaia were made at the fourth session.

Dr. George Kaplan, the current Vice-President of the Commission was nominated to be the new President. Dr. Catherine Hohenkerk was elected to be the next Vice-President of the Commission. As for the Membership of the Organizing Committee, Dr. Vondrak stepped down and Drs William Folkner of JPL and Steve Bell of HMNAO have been added. In the below, we present summaries of the reports from various institutions presented at the business session.

The meeting began at 11:00 am with a brief address by outgoing president Burns highlighting the most relevant advances in Celestial Mechanics that occurred in the last 3 years.

The business meeting was opened by the President, Irina Kumkova. She presented the agenda, which was approved. This session was attended by 42 participants. The meeting approved Dafydd Evans as secretary of minutes.

The IAU Commission 19 meeting during the XXVII IAU General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro was held on Wednesday 5 August 2009, sessions 3 (14:00–15:30) and 4 (16:00–17:30). It was attended by about 40 participants. The meeting was split into three sessions.

Dr R. N. Manchester and Dr M. Hosokawa have been elected as, respectively, the new President and Vice-President of the Commission for the next term, 2009-2012. Concerning the Organizing Committee (OC) Members, we welcome as new members: Felicitas Aris (BIPM, France), Philip Tuckey (LNE-SYRTE, France), Vladimir Zharov (MSU, Russia), and Shougang Zhang (NTSC, China) and we acknowledge the outgoing members: Demetrios Matsakis, Gerard Petit, Mizuhiko Hosokawa, Sigfrid Leschiutta and Zao-Cheng Zhai. P. Defraigne remains on the OC as immediate Past-President.

The IAU Commission 52 “Relativity in Fundamental Astronomy” (RIFA) has been established during the 26th General Assembly of the IAU (Prague, 2006) to centralize the efforts in the field of Applied Relativity and to provide an official forum for corresponding discussions.

This report is on activities of the Division at the General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro. Summaries of scientific activities over the past triennium have been published in Transactions A, see Melrose et al. (2008), Klimchuk et al. (2008), Martinez Pillet et al. (2008) and Bougeret et al. (2008). The business meeting of the three Commissions were incorporated into the business meeting of the Division. This report is based in part on minutes of the business meeting, provided by the Secretary of the Division, Lidia van Driel-Gesztelyi, and it also includes reports provided by the Presidents of the Commissions (C10, C12, C49) and of the Working Groups (WGs) in the Division.

The meeting was opened by Ted Bowell, president, at 11 am. The 2006 Division III meetings were reviewed by Guy Consolmagno, secretary; as the minutes of those meetings have already been published, they were assumed to be approved.

This report of the business meeting of Commission 15 at the 2009 IAU GA is based on notes provided by Walter Huebner, past president, and on the minutes taken by Daniel Boice, secretary of Commission 15 in the triennium 2006 to 2009, with additional notes from the current secretary, Daniel Hestroffer. The business meeting was split into two sessions, the first held on 5 August and the second held on 11 August. This report presents the minutes of the two Commission 15 business-meeting sessions held during General Assembly XXVII.

The Business Meeting of IAU Commission 16 was held at the General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro on August 13, 2009. The meeting was called to order at 9:15am by Commission President, Régis Courtin, with 12 members present. Commission 16 now has 312 members, up from 271 at the last General Assembly. It is now the third largest Commission in Division III, after Commission 15 and Commission 51.

We have for this General Assembly 25 new applications for C20 membership, which represents about 10% increase with respect to the total number of members. We are very satisfied with the increase rate of our commission membership, which reflects the high degree of activity in our field. Nevertheless we note that there are not many people involved in the commission business.