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Advertising info Legal disclaimer Accessibility Privacy policy Terms & Conditions Help Politics this week Sep 25th 2008 From The Economist print edition South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, was forced to resign by the leadership EPA of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). This followed a bitter legal and constitutional struggle with Jacob Zuma, who ousted him as party leader last year. Kgalema Motlanthe, an ANC ally of Mr Zuma, will serve as caretaker president until an election in which Mr Zuma is expected to win the post. Mr Mbeki’s deputy and ten ministers also resigned, of whom six said they would not serve in a new government. See article 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 UN’s General Assembly. Heavy fighting resumed in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, as Islamist fighters attacked African Union peacekeepers. Thousands fled the city; some 50 were killed. Iraq’s parliament passed a long-awaited law providing for provincial elections to be held, probably before the end of January, though they had been due next month. Elections in the disputed city of Kirkuk were to be postponed until a separate agreement could be reached. Speaking at the UN General Assembly, 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 towards collapse,” he said. America’s “world empire” was “reaching the end of its road”. Guns and bombs 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. Three car bombs exploded in Spain’s Basque country. Eleven people were wounded and a Spanish army officer was killed. Subsequently, police in France arrested at least 12 suspected members of the Basque terrorist group, ETA. In a sign of post-war tensions, Georgia claimed it had shot down a Russian drone over its territory. Earlier a Georgian policeman was shot dead at a checkpoint near Abkhazia, one of its breakaway enclaves. See article A former Chechen rebel commander, Ruslan Yamadayev, was shot dead in central Moscow. His younger brother, Sulim, is now a fierce rival of Chechnya’s strongman president, Ramzan Kadyrov. Suffering and innocent Getty Images The number of Chinese children admitted to hospital after drinking infant-milk