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.

Washington - The top US envoy for Africa arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday for talks aimed at ending the violence that has embroiled the country.

Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer was in Kinshasa to meet with President Joseph Kabila and has tentative plans to visit neighbouring Rwanda for talks with President Paul Kagame, deputy State Department spokesman Robert Wood said.

"She is there to try to promote a peaceful solution to the conflict," Wood said.

Berlin - Key industrial employers in Germany offered 800,000 workers in and near the carmaking city of Stuttgart a wage rise of 2.1 per cent Thursday as pay bargaining hung in the balance.

The militant IG Metall trade union announced weeks ago that it was seeking a hike of 8 per cent, prompting an indirect rebuke from the European Central Bank, which said it feared a wage-price spiral.