Nairobi - Some 250,000 Somalis living in one of the world's largest refugee camps are on the verge of a humanitarian emergency that can only be averted by urgent action, international charity Oxfam warned Friday.

The Dadaab refugee complex in north-eastern Kenya has become dangerously over-crowded as Somalis continue to flee a bloody insurgency that has claimed the lives of over 15,000 civilians since early 2007.

Oxfam warned that a public health crisis is brewing, with basic services stretched to breaking point by the mass of refugees.

London, March 26 : Lashing out at the corporate greed, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that he would work to set global principles and standards for salaries in the finance sector at next week''s G20 summit in London.

On Wednesday, Brown promised "detailed results'''' from the summit as he stopped in New York during a three-continent tour intended to drum up support for a coordinated international response to the global economic crisis.

Riga  - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will open a permanent office in the Baltic state of Latvia "very shortly" officials confirmed Thursday in the capital, Riga.

The news came after the IMF's Mark Griffiths and Elena Flores met with Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis, other members of his administration and officials from the Latvian central bank.

In response to a question from the German Press Agency dpa, Griffiths told reporters "We will be opening an office very shortly."

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain - The Spanish holiday island of Tenerife suffered a massive black-out on Thursday, local media reported.

The electricity company Unelco tentatively attributed the power cut to a flash of lightning which hit a power plant in stormy weather.

The black-out affected almost the entire island of 900,000 residents, causing people to get stuck in lifts and traffic lights to go off.

Some radio stations and a tramway linking the capital Santa Cruz with La Laguna also stopped functioning.

Washington - President Barack Obama's administration, in a massive overhaul of the US financial regulatory system, is seeking the power to keep watch on all types of financial firms and to seize failing companies integral to the health of the system.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled the plans in congressional testimony on Thursday, arguing that the current financial turmoil has proven the system is "too unstable and fragile" to be allowed to manage itself.

Vaduz, Liechtenstein - Liechtenstein has started negotiations with Germany and other countries and would begin talks with Britain next week as part of its pledge to rework tax agreements to fight tax evasion.

Klaus Tschutscher, the new prime minister of the Alpine principality, said his government would move to conclude Tax Information Exchange Agreements meeting the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) standards.