Top rep warns UN council of Bosnia crisis

Bosnia and Herzegovina faces its most acute political crisis since the 1995 signing of the Dayton-Paris accords that ended the war in the Balkans, the international representative for the country told the U.N. Security Council on Monday.

Valentin Inzko told the 15-member council charged with international peace and security that a referendum scheduled for mid-June by Bosnia's Serbs is a "blatant attack" on the peace agreement, and the achievements made since then. The Serbs say they want to highlight their rejection of the country's federal institutions, especially its war crimes court, which they see as biased against them.

Hertz boosts buyout offer for Dollar Thrifty

Hertz is raising the stakes in its pursuit of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group Inc. in hopes of besting rival Avis' efforts to acquire the Oklahoma-based car rental agency.

The two vehicle rental heavyweights have been in a virtual tug-of-war over Dollar Thrifty for a little more than a year, with both looking to snag the Tulsa, Okla., company because its clientele is largely the leisure traveler. Hertz and Avis cater mostly to business travelers, so a Dollar Thrifty acquisition would automatically give either one a broader appeal.

Source: Bin Laden directing al-Qaida figures

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The wealth of information pulled from Osama bin Laden's compound has reinforced the belief that he played a strong role in planning and directing attacks by al-Qaida and its affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, senior U.S. officials said Friday.

And the data further demonstrates to the U.S. that top al-Qaida commanders and other key insurgents are scattered throughout Pakistan, not just in the rugged border areas, and are being supported and given sanctuary by Pakistanis, a senior defense official said.

U.S. counterterrorism officials have debated how big a role bin Laden and core al-Qaida leaders were playing in the attacks launched by affiliated terror groups, particularly al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen, and al-Shabab in Somalia.

Disasters challenge GOP governors of Ala., Miss.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Alabama's new governor thought his toughest job was going to be making double-digit spending cuts and deciding which state services to eliminate.

"Then on day 100 of our administration - exactly day 100 - we had this massive outbreak of tornadoes," Gov. Robert Bentley said.

The deadly storms that pounded the South on April 27 were a quick initiation for Bentley into the massive task of disaster recovery. They were just another chapter for his colleague next door, fellow Republican and second-term Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. Barbour has overseen his state's recovery from Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and is now bracing for Mississippi River floodwaters.

Gunmen kill 6 people in southwest Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) -- Assailants using rockets and guns attacked a group of people exercising at an open soccer field in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing six of them and wounding 13, police said.

Senior police official Hamid Shakil said the attackers fled quickly toward the nearby mountains after the attack on the outskirts Quetta, which is the capital of southwestern Pakistan's impoverished Baluchistan province.

About 50 people were exercising at the time of the attack, he said.

Europe's central bank slows pace of rate hikes

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet offered struggling Greece, Portugal and Ireland a little bit of relief Thursday by signaling that the bank would not raise interest rates as fast as the markets had been expecting.

Though the bank left its key rate unchanged at 1.25 percent, as expected, at a meeting in Helsinki, Finland, the euro suffered one of its worst days this year after Trichet signaled that another rate hike next month was not likely.

Spanish bank BBVA reports Q1 profits down 7.3 pct

MADRID (AP) -- Spanish bank BBVA said Thursday its first-quarter profits dropped 7.3 percent as a poor business climate in its home market offset a marked improvement in Mexico.

The profit figure for Spain's second-largest bank was euro1.15 billion ($1.71 billion), compared to euro1.24 billion in the first quarter of 2010. Despite the profit fall, the bank said the first quarter performance was the best in the last three quarters.

BBVA said the main reason behind the year-on-year decline was a 33.3 percent slide in Spanish profits to euro477 million. Some comfort was provided by the rise in Mexican profits to euro436 this year from euro347 million.

South Korea ratifies EU free trade deal

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea's ruling party rammed the country's free trade agreement with the European Union through parliament amid an opposition boycott in a result that shifts focus to a still unratified deal with the United States.

The approval, which paves the way for the tariff-slashing accord to take effect as early as July, came in a one-sided late night vote Wednesday that saw Grand National Party lawmakers wield their majority in the National Assembly. EU lawmakers approved the deal earlier this year.

Comcast 1Q earnings climb 9 pct to beat Street

NEW YORK (AP) -- Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable TV company, on Tuesday said earnings exceeded estimates for the first quarter, helped by healthy results both in its cable operations and the newly acquired NBC Universal business.

Comcast says it lost just 39,000 cable TV customers in the quarter, its lowest attrition in four years. Cable companies have been losing customers to satellite and phone company services.

Even though Comcast did a better job of keeping subscribers, Internet video company Netflix Inc. surpassed Comcast in the quarter. Netflix ended March with 22.8 million U.S. subscribers, about 34,000 more than Comcast.

Holocaust Museum to digitize vast archive for web

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Joseph Finkelstein had never seen a photograph of his grandfather. The family had no idea when he died or where he was buried. Finkelstein's father last saw him on April 28, 1945, when they were separated at Mathaussen Concentration Camp in Austria.

For decades Finkelstein's father, who's now 85, had carried an enormous load of guilt because they got split up. It took years of poring over microfilm and original documents for them to begin to find answers, but a Washington museum is hoping to use the Internet to make the process go faster for other families.

Persistent research at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum - and even a trip to Poland and Austria - helped the family learn in the last two years that Jakob Finkelstein had survived to see the camp's liberation but died four days later, simply too sick and weak. And he had a real burial spot in a municipal cemetery in Austria.