May 18, 2004

Video games gaining star power CNN International - The video game industry was once an afterthought in Hollywood, at most an ancillary source of revenue like action figures. The people passionately developing the computer-based form of entertainment were seen as dorks compared with the celebrities. Not anymore. Now that games have matured into a $11 billion business, topping movie box-office sales and siphoning television viewers, the lucrative and increasingly influential genre has attracted more star power than ever. 4:05:11 PM

Why is it funny to me that so many people are trying to explain away the SARIN shell found in Iraq this week. I have heard everything from there could not have been any Sarin in it, to the US must have planted it. On December 15, 2003 Time magazine published a story on the Iraqi insurgents which detailed an inventory of shells filled with chemicals.  No one should be surprised to see them being used. I am always surprised that Time could find WMD, and David Kay couldn't, but I guess that's just me. 3:12:17 PM

U.S. officials confirmed a report in a Japanese daily newspaper that a train explosion on April 22 killed about a dozen Syrian technicians near the Ryongchon province in North Korea. The officials said the technicians were accompanying a train car full of missile components and other equipment from a facility near the Chinese border to a North Korea port. 2:54:10 PM

Canadian held on child sex charge Toronto Star, Canada -  The father of a Canadian man arrested in Atlanta for allegedly attempting to arrange a sexual encounter with a four-year-old girl on the Internet says he believes his son was framed and the allegations are "destroying" the family. "We're devastated as you can well imagine . . . we're a very strait-laced, family-oriented family and it's just destroying us," Bill Krygsman, who lives in this southwestern Ontario community, said in an interview today while his 33-year-old son William was being held in custody in Atlanta. The FBI says William Krygsman, a resident of Tillsonburg just southeast of London, was the subject of a three-week investigation during which he talked via the Internet to an FBI agent he thought was the mother of the four-year-old at the centre of the investigation. She agreed to meet Krygsman at an Atlanta restaurant, where he was arrested Saturday. Krygsman has been charged with using the Internet to arrange illegal sexual activity with a minor and is being held pending a bond hearing tomorrow. Bill Krygsman says his son heads the family's tool-and-die company in London and added that his son does a lot of business in the United States. He said his son was en route to a business meeting in Florida when he stopped in Atlanta and "apparently had some connection with this lady in a chat room, which is the root of all evil as far as I'm concerned." Krygsman said he spoke to his son last night after supper and he told him "he's been framed." "He feels they're going to throw the book at him and he's totally innocent," he said. "He did not make a special trip (to Atlanta) and it's devastating to hear the allegations against him and we support him 100 per cent and trust him with our soul." "The things he's accused of are absurd. It's not the case at all," added Bill Krygsman. "He's never shown any inclination of the crimes he's accused of." The FBI says Krygsman went by the alias Billy London and his Yahoo screen name "special - benefits." While searching Krygsman's car, an FBI release said, "agents discovered a variety of materials which they believe were intended for use in enticing and abusing the victim." 2:36:22 PM

Anti-Semitic cleric barred from entering Canada National Post (Subscription) OTTAWA - The senior cleric at Saudi Arabia's Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudais,  will not be allowed into Canada.  This is because of his virulent anti-Semitic preaching, a senior government official said yesterday. Let us be clear, the Canadian Government has decided that the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, a man who only says what the Saudi Government allows him to say, expresses "virulent anti-Semitic preaching". According to statements beginning in June 2003 made by Washington D.C. Saudi-embassy spokesman Adel Al-Jubeir, "Hundreds of imams [in Saudi Arabia] who violated prohibitions against preaching intolerance have been removed from their positions and more than 1,000 have been suspended and referred to educational programs." Clearly, this is not the case with Saudi Arabia's leading imam, Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, who continues to preach incitement from the most holy site in all of Islam.  10:59:16 AM

Four people have been arrested over the beheading of American Nicholas Berg, Iraq sources say. [ Sky News ] UPDATE: According to news.com.au, none of the four included Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who US authorities believe carried out the killing. I will bet that one or two of them know where Zarqawi sleeps at night, or at least knows other people who would know something.  10:00:22 AM