Canada was down 2-0 after the first period, as goaltender Devan Dubnyk surrendered two goals on six shots. Jan Urbas scored both goals for Slovenia.

Matt Duchene and Stamkos pulled Canada even with goals in the first minute of the second period, but Slovenia captain Tomaz Razingar put his team up 3-2 less than five minutes later.

Defenceman Brenden Dillon wired a shot past Slovenia goaltender Luka Gracnar in the third period to tie the game at three.

Canada has already qualified for the quarter-finals, and can still finish first in its group if Switzerland loses in regulation time to Belarus on Tuesday.

Slovenia earned its second point of the tournament with the overtime loss.

Old-school robberies by masked criminals are being eclipsed by stealth multimillion dollar cybercrime operations which are catching companies and investigators by surprise.

"We are seeing an unprecedented number of cyberscams that include phishing for financial data, viruses, credit card fraud and others," Marcin Skowronek, an investigator at Europol's European Cybercrime Center in The Hague said on Saturday.

"In Europe, we are generally quite well protected against some types of fraud because of the chip and pin technology we use, but there are still shops and machines around the world who still take cards without chips. And the most popular destinations for this type of fraud are the United States and the Dominican Republic."

U.S. Investigators said Thursday a gang hit cash machines in 27 countries in two attacks the first netting $5 million in December and then $40 million in February in a 10-hour spree that involved about 36,000 transactions.

Hackers got into bank databases, eliminated withdrawal limits on prepaid debit cards and created access codes. Others loaded that data onto any plastic card even a hotel keycard with a magnetic stripe

A similar scam yielded some 50 arrests this year in Europe during a joint police operation between Romanian police and Europol, Skowronek said.

The operation took more than a year, involved some 400 police officers across Europe and required work comparing bank losses to illegal transactions and then cross-referencing suspects, said Skowronek, who said many national police forces were beefing up their undercover work in the cyberworld to catch criminals.

Investigators found illegal workshops for producing devices and software to manipulate point-of-sale terminals. Illegal electronic equipment, financial data, cloned cards and cash were seized in raids in Britain and Romania.

The group stole credit and debit card numbers and PIN codes by implanting card reading devices and malicious software on point-of-sale terminals. The criminals then used counterfeit payment cards with stolen data for further illegal transactions in countries that included Argentina, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand and the United States.

Some 36,000 debit card and credit card holders in some 16 countries were affected, Skowronek said. The amount stolen was unclear.

Bank fraud, ATM scams and phishing are common in Romania, one of the most corrupt countries in the European Union, according to Transparency International which monitors and measures graft.

Under the late communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was ousted and executed in 1989, Romanians specialized in mathematics and computer coding and criminal gangs have tapped into those skills. The tradition has continued and Romanian school students are more advanced in mathematics than many of their European counterparts.

Nadine Spanu, a spokeswoman for Romania's anti-crime prosecutors, said Saturday she had no statement to offer on the $45 million heist or a possible Romania connection.

Skimming works when criminals place devices on ATMs that copy consumers' card details and leave them vulnerable to fraud.There have been similar cases in the United States and Britain.

The EU is the world's largest market for payment card transactions and it is estimated that organized crime groups derive more than 1.5 billion euros ($1.9 billion) a year from payment card fraud in the EU.

Mike Urban, director of financial crime solutions at Fiserv, a Brookfield-Wisconsin-based company that provides financial technology to banks, credit unions and corporations across the world, says banks have not caught up with the threat of electronic crime.

"Compare this to a physical bank security. If someone walks in today, they're probably not going to get very much money, the dye pack is going to explode, they will be caught on video, they're probably not going to get away with it, and they're probably going to spend a long time in jail," said Urban. "Online, in the cyberworld, we're not there yet."

One security loophole thieves have learned to exploit is the lack of real-time transactions in ATM-speak.

Known as the "Gone in 60 Seconds" scam, thieves deposit money and then make coordinated cash-advance withdrawals in various places but all in less than 60 seconds so the machines essentially regard all of the withdrawals as one transaction.

In October, some 14 people were charged following an FBI-led investigation into the theft of more than $1 million from Citibank using the 60-second scam. The simultaneous transactions at casinos in California and Nevada tricked the system into thinking that they were one transaction. Even on some joint accounts where both partners have cards for the same account, users can often bypass withdrawal limits if the transactions are done at the same time.

"This type of attack might be preventable if ATM networks were able to monitor transactions in real time for unusually large numbers of transactions involving individual cards or cards from the same issuing institution. Unfortunately, that type of infrastructure doesn't exist today, but perhaps it's time to consider creating and implementing it now, especially after this latest attack," said Tom Cross, director of security research at the Lancope, a company specializing in flow analysis for security and network performance based in Alpharetta, Georgia.

Police Maj. Gen. Pisit Paoin, chief of Thailand's Technology Crime Suppression Division, said in a telephone interview Saturday that Thai police have arrested more than 20 suspects involved in the $45 million cyber heist including those from Bulgaria, Bangladesh and eastern Europe.

He said that in the latest arrest in early April, a group of Bangladeshi and Malaysian suspects were using about 50 cards to withdraw cash from machines in Bangkok for a month and took out about 10 million baht ($336,000).

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Thanyarat Doksone from Bangkok, Alison Mutler from Bucharest and Martha Mendoza from San Francisco contributed to this report.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp's phone chief hates to call the new Nokia Lumia 521 cheap, but the lower-priced smartphone launching in the United States is the company's boldest move yet to win mass market share from leaders Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.

The world's largest software company has so far focused on putting its Windows Phone software into expensive, high-end devices - chiefly from Nokia and HTC Corp.

But the new model will go on sale at Walmart later this month at an unsubsidized price under $150, relatively cheap for a new phone running up-to-date software without a long-term contract.

"There is an opportunity for us to offer a very high quality device in the mainstream," said Terry Myerson, head of the Windows Phone unit, at Microsoft's campus near Seattle last week. "That's where we've made progress in the last couple of months and it's a strategy we'll continue to explore in the United States."

The Nokia Lumia 521 went on sale on the Home Shopping Network (HSN) last week, where it has already sold out. The 4G phone, sold overseas as the Nokia 520, is essentially a mid-range phone with some high-end features, such as four-inch touch screen, five megapixel camera and high-definition video display.

Next week the phone will go on sale at less than $150 at Walmart, along with T-Mobile US Inc's $30 per month unlimited data and text plan, which works out much cheaper over the long run than heavily subsidized iPhones and upscale Android devices that generally come with pricy long-term contracts.

The early popularity of the Lumia 521 on HSN is a minor boost for Microsoft, whose mobile plans have stuttered and stumbled since Apple's iPhone destroyed its early dominance in the smartphone market in 2007.

After completely redesigning its software, Microsoft-powered phones now have 3.2 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, compared to 39 percent for Apple and 52 percent for Google Inc's Android system, according to comScore.

Nokia, which now only makes smartphones running Windows, sold 5.6 million of its Lumia handsets in the first quarter, up 27 percent from the previous quarter, although that is still dwarfed by 37 million iPhone sales.

Microsoft does not detail overall Windows phone sales or financials, but did say last quarter that phone-related revenue rose by $259 million, which includes licensing revenue from Android phones, which use some technology patented by Microsoft.

Windows phones tend to fare better overseas, where they have as much as 20 percent share in some markets such as Mexico and Poland, and almost 7 percent in Britain, according to Microsoft.

That is partly because the role of powerful carriers such as AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless, which dominate U.S. phone retail, is less pronounced in overseas markets.

"AT&T and Verizon have been great partners," said Myerson. "But where the market dynamics are different, and where the operators play a different role, we have done better."

Heavy up-front subsidies from AT&T and Verizon, in return for long-term service contracts, mean U.S. customers can afford the best hardware from Apple and Samsung. Even though Windows phones are also subsidized, Myerson admits it has been hard to break that lock on the home market.

"It (subsidization) is a compelling business model for them. If you are Samsung, Apple, AT&T or Verizon, it's where everything's working, you are growing share, you are growing profits," said Myerson. "If you are an incumbent with a successful business model, you're not going to be jumping to throw it out."

As a challenger to those incumbents, Myerson says Microsoft has to differentiate on more than just price.

After introducing "killer hardware", he says the next task for Windows phones is to leverage Microsoft's Office and Xbox products to make a genuinely new phone experience, whether as a work tool or advanced toy.

"I don't think we've come near to the full potential," he said. "Those are our two dimensions here, Office and Xbox. We want to bring to life getting work done and bring to life that serious fun, here on this thing in your pocket. That's going to develop over time."

Myerson played down reports that Microsoft was working on a phone of its own, to follow up on its Surface tablet.

"Nokia's doing a great job," he said. "They really are receiving all of our go-to-market energy right now."

(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Obama also disputed the notion that his cautious response to reported chemical weapons use in Syria a move he had said would cross a "red line" could embolden North Korea's unpredictable young leader and other U.S. foes.

"Whether it's bin Laden or Gadhafi, if we say we're taking a position, I would think at this point the international community has a pretty good sense that we typically follow through on our commitments," Obama said, referring to the al-Qaida commander Osama bin Laden and former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, both of whom were killed during Obama's watch.

Tuesday's meetings between Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye followed months of increased tensions on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea conducted an underground atomic test in February and had appeared ready for another. New U.S. intelligence assessments also showed for the first time that North Korea may have the know-how to launch a nuclear-armed missile, though American officials say Pyongyang still appears to lack the capability to carry out an attack.

Ahead of Tuesday's talks, the North appeared to send mixed messages. U.S. officials said Pyongyang removed from a launch pad a set of medium-range ballistic missiles that had been readied for possible test-firing. But North Korea also warned the U.S. and South Korea that it would retaliate if joint military exercise between the two allies resulted in any shells landing on its territory.

Speaking at a joint news conference at the White House, Obama and Park warned Pyongyang of unspecified consequences if it pressed ahead with provocative actions, with Obama vowing to protect the U.S. and its allies using both "conventional and nuclear forces."

Still, in keeping with their countries' long-standing policies, the two leaders left open the possibility of direct negotiations should the North signal its readiness to end its nuclear pursuits or take other meaningful actions.

"Should North Korea choose the path to becoming a responsible member of the community of nations, we are willing to provide assistance, together with the international community," Park said.

Analysts see some of North Korea's recent bluster as an attempt by the country's new leader, Kim Jong Un, to establish himself as a power player, both within his own country and in the international community. Obama said he knew little about Kim personally and has never spoken to him, but added that his actions were leading him down a dead end.

"There's going to have to be changes in behavior," Obama said. "We have an expression in English, 'Don't worry about what I say, just watch what I do.'"

North Korea ratcheted up its provocations this year after the U.N. Security Council tightened sanctions in response to the February nuclear test, its third since 2006. Pyongyang claims to have scrapped the 1953 Korean War armistice and has threatened nuclear strikes on the U.S., prompting Washington to bolster missile defenses.

While another nuclear test had seemed likely, a pair of launch-ready missiles has been removed from a launch pad, according to two U.S. officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss a matter involving sensitive U.S. intelligence.

Park's visit was also focused on building a rapport with Obama, who had a close relationship with her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak.

Lee took a hard line on relations with Pyongyang, cutting aid to the impoverished nation. While his approach had Obama's firm backing, public frustration in the South has mounted over the North's continued weapons tests and other provocative actions, including attacks in 2010 that left dozens of South Koreans dead.

In a change of tone, Park, although a conservative, has advocated trying to build trust with Pyongyang through aid shipments and large-scale economic initiatives if there's progress on the nuclear issue, even as she and South Korea's military promise to respond forcefully to any attack from the North.

Obama made clear Tuesday that there continues to be no daylight between the White House and the new South Korean leader.

"If Pyongyang thought its recent threats would drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States or somehow garner the North international respect, today is further evidence that North Korea has failed again," he said.

Park arrived at the White House with a color guard lining the driveway from Pennsylvania Avenue. Her Oval Office meeting, working lunch and joint news conference with Obama will be followed Wednesday by an address to a joint meeting of Congress.

During their news conference, Obama called Park "tough," spoke of a great friendship between the two nations and joked that "the Korean wave" of culture has hit the United States.

"My daughters have taught me a pretty good 'Gangnam Style,'" Obama joked, a reference to the hit dance song by South Korean singer PSY that has become YouTube's most watched video with 1.5 billion views since its release last summer.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Pennington and Robert Burns contributed to this report.

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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Among the deaths, two occurred in the eastern province of Jiangsu; one was from eastern Zhejiang; while another was from central Anhui, based on a Reuters analysis of the data provided by Chinese health authorities on Monday.

The government did not provide more details of the victims.

Chinese health authorities said two new infections were reported in the eastern coastal province of Fujian. The virus, which was mostly concentrated in the region around the commercial capital of Shanghai, spread to Fujian in late April.

The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) has said it has no evidence that the new strain of bird flu, which was first detected in patients in China in March, is easily transmissible between humans.

Chinese scientists have confirmed that the H7N9 strain has been transmitted to humans from chickens. But the WHO has said 40 percent of people infected with H7N9 appear to have had no contact with poultry.

The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the current strain of bird flu cannot spark a pandemic in its current form - but he added that there is no guarantee it will not mutate and cause a serious pandemic.

(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Michael Perry)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China is using espionage to acquire technology to fuel its military modernization, the Pentagon said on Monday, for the first time accusing the Chinese of trying to break into U.S. defense computer networks and prompting a firm denial from Beijing.

In its 83-page annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments, the Pentagon also cited progress in Beijing's effort to develop advanced-technology stealth aircraft and build an aircraft carrier fleet to project power further offshore.

The report said China's cyber snooping was a "serious concern" that pointed to an even greater threat because the "skills required for these intrusions are similar to those necessary to conduct computer network attacks."

"The U.S. government continued to be targeted for (cyber) intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military," it said, adding the main purpose of the hacking was to gain information to benefit defense industries, military planners and government leaders.

A spokeswoman said it was the first time the annual Pentagon report had cited Beijing for targeting U.S. defense networks, but China dismissed the report as groundless.

The U.S. Defense Department had repeatedly "made irresponsible comments about China's normal and justified defense build-up and hyped up the so-called China military threat," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

"This is not beneficial to U.S.-China mutual trust and cooperation," Hua told reporters. "We are firmly opposed to this and have already made representations to the U.S. side."

China's defense build-up was geared towards protecting its "national independence and sovereignty," Hua said.

On the accusations of hacking, Hua said: "We firmly oppose any groundless criticism and hype, because groundless hype and criticism will only harm bilateral efforts at cooperation and dialogue."

Despite concerns over the intrusions, a senior U.S. defense official said his main worry was the lack of transparency.

"What concerns me is the extent to which China's military modernization occurs in the absence of the type of openness and transparency that others are certainly asking of China," David Helvey, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, told a Pentagon briefing on the report.

He warned of the "potential implications and consequences of that lack of transparency on the security calculations of others in the region."

The annual China report, which Congress began requesting in 2000, comes amid ongoing tensions in the region due to China's military assertiveness and expansive claims of sovereignty over disputed islands and shoals. Beijing has ongoing territorial disputes with the Philippines, Japan and other neighbors.

Beijing's publicly announced defense spending has grown at an inflation-adjusted pace of nearly 10 percent annually over the past decade, but Helvey said China's actual outlays were thought to be higher.

China announced a 10.7 percent increase in military spending to $114 billion in March, the Pentagon report said. Publicly announced defense spending for 2012 was $106 billion, but actual spending for 2012 could range between $135 billion and $215 billion, it said. U.S. defense spending is more than double that, at more than $500 billion.

The report highlighted China's continuing efforts to gain access to sophisticated military technology to fuel its modernization program. It cited a laundry list of methods, including "state-sponsored industrial and technical espionage to increase the level of technologies and expertise available to support military research, development and acquisition."

Dean Cheng, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, said he was surprised by the number of cases of human espionage cited in the report.

"This is a PLA (People's Liberation Army) that is extensively, comprehensively modernizing," Cheng said. "...China is also comprehensively engaging in espionage."

China tested its second advanced stealth fighter in as many years in October 2012, highlighting its "continued ambition to produce advanced fifth-generation fighter aircraft," the report said. Neither aircraft of its stealth aircraft was expected to achieve effective operational capability before 2018, it said.

Last year also saw China commission its first domestically produced aircraft carrier. China currently has one aircraft carrier bought abroad and conducted its first takeoff and landing from the ship in November.

(Reporting By David Alexander and Phil Stewart, Additional reporting by Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Following his acclaimed debut last year, the pressure has been stacked on the Belgian designer to deliver again in what is only his second ready-to-wear show in one of the most influential jobs in fashion. And Friday saw Simons live up to expectations.

He confidently evolved the angular portions of previous seasons' work into softer, more saleable silhouettes. The new Bar jacket, looser and in trendy wool denim, seemed to point to a man who's finally settled in to his role.

This season was the supplest fusion so far of his minimalism and the house's ultra-femininity and curves.

Fall-winter 2013-14 saw a parade of "memory dresses," some 48 looks that delved into the iconic houndstooth, peplums, and Monsieur Dior's original '40s designs. They hit the catwalk outside Paris' Hotel des Invalides, reimagined, alongside enormous mirror ball decor.

Like thought bubbles, the reflective spheres set the tone for the musing, which included an embroidered tulle bustier A-line dress, an archive piece called "Miss Dior 1949" reworked in hip embroidered black leather. Elsewhere, blown-up houndstooth had a surreal quality, in vertical slices down column silhouettes. It was a great re-working of the classic pattern first used by the house in the late '50s.

The more muted palette of black, white, pale pink and navy was further proof of his evolution. After all, while at Jil Sander, it was Simons who started the bright color trend.

There was plenty of imagination, like prints and embroideries of surreal eyes and tears that resembled ants, reminiscent of Salvador Dali. However, the show could have done without motifs by Andy Warhol, like a sparking stiletto print, which sometimes jarred as overly adolescent, and a tad tacky.

Overall, the show was a success; one step further on in Dior's mission statement for the designer, to "propel its iconic style into the 21st century."

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Thomas Adamson can be followed at http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP

The latest study to document social learning in animals, published today (April 25) in the journal Science, has found thatlearned a new feeding technique from other humpbacks, a trait that stuck around and spread throughout the population.

In 1980, a whale in the Gulf of Maine (off the coast of New England) was first seen slapping its tail on the surface of the ocean before feeding on a type of fish called sand lance. This behavior soon spread and was passed down over several generations. It's now a commonplace behavior in humpbacks throughout the region, said Jenny Allen, a study co-author and researcher at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

27 years of data

It is difficult, of course, to prove that a certain , especially when it comes to marine animals. But the researchers behind the study developed a powerful computer model that allowed them to compare the likelihood that this behavior arose via social interaction versus individual learning.

Drawing upon a database of 27 years of observations of whale foraging, the model returned a result that, at a bare minimum, the humpbacks were 1 million times more likely to have learned the feeding technique from peers than to have each learned it individually.

"It was so big my supervisor made me run it again because he thought I might have messed it up somehow," Allen told LiveScience. "It was so startling to have that strong a result."

The whales perform this behavior, slapping their mammoth tales on the surface one to four times, just before diving and , which helps to organize them into schools upon which the whales can more easily feed, Allen said. The purpose of the technique, called lobtail feeding, is unclear, but it's possible it helps organize the fish into tighter formations before mealtime, she added.

Learning from peers

Whales learn the technique from other whales that they tend to spend a lot of time with, the study found. Importantly, the humpback whales didn't appear to learn the technique from their mothers, said Jooke Robbins, a senior scientist at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Mass., who wasn't involved in the study. That makes it easier to conclude that the behavior is socially learned, as opposed to genetically preprogrammed.

Humpbacks have somewhat loose social structures compared to other whales; youngsters separate from their mothers after two years and don't usually interact with them much after that, Allen said. "They have associations that are kind of weak and flexible but even in that situation you can have information that's transmitted in a social context," Robbins said.

This is the first quantitative proof that whales can socially learn a new feeding behavior, Allen said. But it's hardly the first evidence of cultural transmission in whales: Humpbacks have been shown to learn songs from one another, and spermthat can be described as traditions, Allen said. []

These whales, in other words, have multiple traditions. And they likely have other socially learned behaviors and cultural quirks. "The reason we were able to identify this is because its a 50-foot whale waving its tail at you. But there are probably many other subtle behaviors that aren't as obvious and easy to record," that are also culturally transmitted, Allen said.

Scientists have also found abundant evidence for social learning and cultural transmission in a variety of primates. Another study published today in Science found that wild vervet , learning to eat what "local" monkeys in new areas are eating.

Email or follow him . Follow us , or . Article originally on LiveScience.com.

Police began searching for the suspects on Friday in the southern region of Araucania.

Officials say the 3-day-old baby was thrown onto a bonfire in November because the leader of the sect believed that the child was the antichrist.

Police arrested four other members of the sect Thursday after a months-long investigation. Among them was the baby's mother, 25-year-old Natalia Guerra.

In her written court statement, she said that all sect members knew that her child "would be murdered" and that they had to obey the leader because he "was God."

The ringleader is 36-year-old Ramon Gustavo Castillo. Police say he escaped to Peru and authorities are working with Interpol to capture him.

At the burial shortly afterward, amid tears and embraces, the brothers vow vengeance against the leftist rebels who kidnapped and killed him.

It's a crucial moment in a Colombian paramilitary soap opera that has stirred unprecedented controversy by dramatizing and some say romanticizing the career of the Castano brothers, central figures in the creation of the country's murderous far-right militias.

While founded to fight leftist guerrillas, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia evolved into criminal gangs, enriched by drug trafficking, that killed thousands and stole land from tens of thousands more, colluding with scores of prominent politicians.

The soap opera is called "Three Cains," an allusion to the Biblical story of Cain slaying his brother Abel, in part because Vicente Castano had his brother Carlos murdered in 2004.

A grassroots campaign against the show, which runs on the Mundo Fox cable channel in the United States and RCN in Colombia, also has raised questions about a whole genre of Colombian TV series that focuses on the country's top drug traffickers. Some say such shows glorify killers while minimizing victims.

"It's clear that those topics have to be dealt with. The question is, why treat them from the point of view of Cain and not Abel?" said Daniel Naranjo, who with three friends launched a Facebook campaign promoting an advertising boycott against the series that has gained thousands of supporters.

Instead of focusing on the Castano brothers, or the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, he asked, why not instead focus on their victims?

"Three Cains" portrays the brothers in their loves as well as their conflicts aspects of their lives that were sometimes entangled, at least on the screen, as they sent killers after romantic rivals or those who betrayed them. The first few weeks also have traced the Castanos' secret alliance with police and soldiers to attack Escobar and his allies.

Less detail so far has been given to incidents such as the January 1990 Pueblo Bello massacre, in which the brothers' gang kidnapped 43 peasants, loaded them into trucks, hauled them away to a family ranch and killed them, according to the Inter-American Human Rights Court. The Castanos allegedly believed at least some of the villagers had aided rebels who had stolen cattle from them.

Among the dead was Wilson Fuentes, a 45-year-old banana farmer and rancher. For his daughter Katy, who was 14 when her father was seized, the series is an affront.

"It makes me re-live that moment," she said. "What it does is re-victimize us ... It's a lack of respect for the victims."

Her father's body, like most of those slain, was never found, and the possible explanations say much about the Castanos' reputation. "There are many versions," Fuentes said. "Supposedly they had an oven; they tossed them in the oven and they were incinerated. Other versions say they had some lions and they gave them to the lions to eat. Others say they threw them into the Sinu River."

"The truth, nobody knows," said Fuentes. "Or if they know, they do not want to say."

The fate of two of the Castanos themselves is a mystery as well. While Carlos was killed in 2004, just as the paramilitaries were disbanding as part of a peace deal with the government, Fidel and Vicente both disappeared under murky circumstances. Carlos had long maintained that Fidel died in combat in the 1990s but no corpse was ever recovered. Vicente's fate is unknown.

While some earlier TV series generated protests, the campaign against "Three Cains" is the first to prompt sponsors such as the Falabella chain of stores and Nivea cosmetics to pull backing from a show, local media analysts say.

Even so, the show is winning viewers. It has been among the top five most-viewed programs on Colombian television during its run.

RCN Television, which produced the show and is the target of the protests, refused to comment on the complaints when contacted by The Associated Press. A screenwriter for the series, Gustavo Bolivar, rejected the campaign against it as "bordering on censorship" and denied glorifying the criminals.

"We are showing how these drug traffickers became paramilitaries and these paramilitaries attacked the civilian population," he said.

A chapter of Colombia's history "is being told, for good or ill," Bolivar said. "Those who want, watch it. Those who don't have the remote control in their hands and can watch another program."

Still, the societal trauma from Colombia's seemingly interminable conflict the paramilitary phenomenon is just one offshoot of a nearly half-century-old guerrilla conflict is so deep that many are offended by an attempt to earn television ratings by dramatizing it.

"The issue is that paramilitarism is still a relatively recent topic, so sectors of the population still have an open wound," said Jeronimo Rivera, head of the audiovisual department at the University of La Sabana in Bogota.

For sociologist Miguel Angel Hernandez of the University of the Atlantic, the show's depiction of huge houses, luxurious cars and numerous bodyguards leaves the message "that evil pays."

"Evil pays for 95 percent of the series and in the 5 percent at the end it says that evil does not pay. Why"? So it can be, let's say, presentable before public opinion."

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Associated Press writer Cesar Garcia contributed to this report.