San Salvador, El Salvador (dpa) - Latin America and Spain on Thursday at the 18th Iberian American Summit in San Salvador demanded a greater presence in global financial decisions at a time of crisis.

Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, among other countries, called for a fairer multilateral world order that would take into account the views of emerging countries in the face of a crisis that developed in industrialized nations and threatens to hit developing countries particularly hard.

New York - The UN Security Council condemned "in the strongest terms" on Thursday the wave of bomb attacks in Somalia that killed at least 26 people, including two staff members of the UN Development Programme.

The two staff members were Somalis who worked for the UN for years. The attacks took place Wednesday in the breakaway Somaliland and Puntland regions.

Beirut - A bomb exploded late Thursday inside the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh, east of the southern port city of Sidon, according to Lebanese and Palestinian sources.

The bomb went off near an office for the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement, causing panic and material damage.

In recent months, there have been several clashes in Ain al-Hilweh between Fatah and the mainly Sunni Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), an Islamist group. The Lebanese Army does not enter the camps, leaving the responsibility for security to Palestinian factions.

Beirut - Syria will deploy more troops along its border with Lebanon in a move aimed at combating smuggling between the two countries, the Lebanese Army said Thursday.

Lebanese Army chief Jean Kahwaji and his Syrian counterpart Ali Habib discussed the deployment of Syrian Army units along the eastern border over the next few days, an Army statement said.

"This deployment comes in the framework of measures to stop smuggling and prevent the movement of people illegally across the borders," it said.

New York - The UN General Assembly should establish better ties with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in order to resolve some of the problems deriving from the global financial crisis, the top UN economist said Thursday.

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz called for reform in the relationship among the three institutions so that the assembly can assume a leading role in monitoring financial organizations and their decisions that will have impacts on economic growth, unemployment and poverty.

Los Angeles - Barack Obama's 30 minute infomercial was watched by some 30 million viewers Wednesday night and beat the normal ratings of the networks on which it was screened, according to preliminary ratings released Thursday by Nielsen.

The viewing figures showed that for the six networks that aired the programme simultaneously, the spot had a household rating of 21.7 per cent, meaning that 21.7 percent of all households watching television were tuned to the spot. The total of network viewers was 26.3 million viewers, with millions more watching on cable channels which also aired the ad.