Nomura, a Japanese investment bank, offered to buy bits of the European, Middle Eastern and Asian divisions of Lehman Brothers, an American rival that declared itself bankrupt last week, for an undisclosed sum. Barclays, a British bank, bought Lehman's main American unit for $250 million, and several of its properties for $1.29 billion.

In a bid to attract more investment to America's financial sector, the Federal Reserve relaxed rules on bank ownership to allow private-equity firms to own bigger stakes.

Moody's, a rating agency, lowered its outlook for 12 Russian banks, despite a government rescue package worth $120 billion. The state-owned Development Bank said it would take over Svyaz Bank, a struggling private one. Meanwhile a fund controlled by Mikhail Prokhorov, a former mining magnate, agreed to buy half of Renaissance Capital, a big Russian investment bank, for $500 million.

EDF, a French utility, struck a deal to buy British Energy, a partially state-owned nuclear power firm, with a slightly improved offer of $23 billion.

The government of Iraq and Royal Dutch Shell, a multinational energy firm, plan to set up a joint venture to collect and sell gas from Iraq's southern oil fields. The deal is the first in the country involving a Western oil firm since Iraq nationalized its oil industry in 1972.

Political economy South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, was forced to resign by the leadership of the ruling African National Congress. This followed a bitter legal and constitutional struggle with Jacob Zuma, who ousted him as party leader last year.

Nearly two weeks after a power-sharing agreement was agreed on in Zimbabwe, ministerial posts in a unity government had yet to be allocated. President Robert Mugabe and a large entourage went to New York to attend the annual opening session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Heavy fighting resumed in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, as Islamist fighters attacked African Union peacekeepers.

Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denounced "Zionist murderers" and said that a small number of "deceitful" Zionists were manipulating the West. "The Zionist regime is definitely sliding toward collapse," he said. America's "world empire" was "reaching the end of its road."

Finland's prime minister called for tougher gun controls after a gunman shot and killed nine students and a teacher at a college in the west of the country before killing himself.

The number of Chinese children hospitalized after drinking infant-milk formula tainted with melamine, an industrial chemical, climbed to 13,000. Li Changjiang, the head of China's quality-control watchdog, resigned. Melamine is believed to have been added to watered-down milk to mask the resulting protein deficiency and food quality tests.

Suicide-bombers detonated an enormous bomb outside the Marriott Hotel in the center of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, killing 53 people.