Murder counts increase for Vancouver pig farmer
PORT COQUITLAM, British Columbia Police filed three more murder charges yesterday against a pig farmer already charged with two counts involving some of the 50 women who have disappeared from the Vancouver area over the past two decades.
Robert Pickton, 52, now faces five counts of first-degree murder in a case that raised fears of a serial killer stalking Vancouver’s east end, an area populated by prostitutes and drug addicts.
Mr. Pickton, a pig farmer, and his brother operated a drinking club frequented by bikers and prostitutes in this community 20 miles east of Vancouver.
Greece bans cameras from showers
ATHENS Greece’s television-watchdog agency yesterday ordered two popular reality shows, including “Big Brother,” moved to time slots after midnight and told producers to pull the plug on cameras inside showers.
The National Council for Radio and Television instructed the two main private channels, Antenna and Mega, to shift their hourly shows from about 10 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Antenna airs “Big Brother” and Mega broadcasts “The Bar.”
The agency also ordered both shows to remove television cameras from showers used by contestants. So far, contestants have been shown showering in bathing suits.
Argentines say Falklands belong to them
BUENOS AIRES As thousands of war veterans looked on, President Eduardo Duhalde insisted yesterday that Argentina would one day reclaim the Falkland Islands through diplomacy not by waging war.
“They’re ours and we’re going to recover them,” he said at a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the war Argentina lost to Britain for control of the South Atlantic archipelago.
Argentina contends it inherited the remote islands, populated by about 2,200 people of mostly British ancestry, from the Spanish crown before they were occupied by Britain in 1833.
Argentina invaded the islands about 300 miles off the South American coast and home to 2,000 sheep-farming colonists on April 2, 1982. Britain won the ensuing 10-week war.
Venezuela seeks proof of FARC ties
CARACAS, Venezuela Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez yesterday challenged Colombia’s government to reply to a protest by his country over a disputed Colombian general’s report that Marxist FARC guerrillas were operating out of Venezuela.
Venezuela last week lodged a strongly worded diplomatic protest rejecting a March 21 report by a Colombian army general, Martin Orlando Carreno, who said that Colombia’s FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, had crossed from Venezuela to attack his troops.
Moldovans demand early elections
CHISINAU, Moldova About 3,000 Moldovans, who had camped overnight outside government headquarters, vowed yesterday to continue mass rallies after the communist government refused to meet their demands for an early election.
The demonstration, led by the opposition nationalists, was the latest in a series aimed at ousting a government the protesters say is trying to drag the ex-Soviet state back into the sphere of its imperial master, Russia.
A deputy for the nationalists said the government had refused to call an early election after condemning the rallies as illegal and had sent hundreds of riot police to surround the parliament building.
Police patrols enter Macedonian rebel areas
SKOPJE, Macedonia Ethnically mixed police patrols have entered two former rebel strongholds in tense northern and northwestern regions, regaining control of more territory held for months by ethnic-Albanian insurgents, a spokesman said yesterday.
Under the watchful eye of international observers, lightly armed police units made up of Macedonians and ethnic-Albanian officers entered the former rebel stronghold of Slupcane in the Kumanovo area, some 20 miles north of the capital, Skopje, government spokesman Zoran Tanevski said.
