WASHINGTON (AFP) –
Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke was one of hundreds of victims of an identity fraud ring that stole over 2.1 million dollars from individuals and financial institutions, Newsweek magazine reported on Wednesday.

The magazine, citing court documents, said the central bank chief became entangled in the scam after a thief stole his wife's purse in August of last year and began cashing checks on the family's bank account.

The purse-snatcher was working for a crime ring that federal agents and police in several US states had been investigating for months, Newsweek said, adding that Bernanke's wife, Anna, was not specifically targeted.

It said the theft of the Bernanke checkbook became part of a wide-ranging identity-theft investigation by the US Secret Service and US Postal Inspection Service which had been previously underway.

Newsweek said the probe culminated in a series of arrests, criminal complaints, and indictments brought by federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia.

One of the group's ringleaders, Clyde Austin Gray, known as "Big Head," pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud last month, Newsweek said.

Gray employed an army of pickpockets, mail thieves, and office workers to swipe checks, credit cards, military IDs, and other personal records, it said, citing his plea agreement and other court records filed in his case.

Bernanke, in a statement to Newsweek, said "identity theft is a serious crime that affects millions of Americans each year.

"Our family was but one of 500 separate instances traced to one crime ring," he said. "I am grateful for the law enforcement officers who patiently and diligently work to solve and prevent these financial crimes."

JERSEY CITY, New Jersey (Reuters) –
Tiger Woods aims to ease the sting of a rare season without a major title when he launches his bid on Thursday for the FedExCup series title and the $10 million bonus it awards the winner.

Woods will be playing in the Barclays Classic for the first time since 2003 when he tees off at 0821 (1221 GMT) with fellow-Americans Steve Stricker and Zach Johnson at scenic Liberty National in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

The world number one lost a Sunday duel with Yang Yong-eun of South Korea at the U.S. PGA earlier this month, failing for the first time to capitalize on holding the lead heading into the last round of a major after 14 such triumphs.

The runner-up finish sealed Woods's first season since 2004 without a major title.

"That night was tough, no doubt," Woods, 33, told reporters on Wednesday about his defeat to Yang at Hazeltine. "It was disappointing that I didn't win.

"But it's just like golf, you move on to the very next week. Went home and took a few days off away from golf and didn't touch the clubs after three straight weeks of playing golf just about every day.

"I was a little tired of it, and (then) started working for it this week."

Woods played a light schedule early in the year to ease his way back after season-ending knee surgery last June. He still racked up five wins, including victories in the two events preceding the PGA.

"It's worked. I feel great now," Woods said about his pacing. "The whole idea is to make sure that I was ready for this long haul at the end of the season, and I didn't hurt myself at the beginning of the season."

However, Woods said he felt the effects of the grind of playing three weeks in a row culminating in a major.

"Three weeks is fine, but being in contention just about every day, it puts a toll on you," he said. "Still, I was in position to win the championship on the last day and just didn't get it done. It was a long three weeks."

Woods said returning to action at Liberty National was important given the tweaking of the format for this year's playoffs to add suspense after Vijay Singh virtually clinched the 2008 series by winning the first two events.

"You want to put more weight at the end of the season which they are trying to do, trying to make it a little more interesting," said Woods, who heads the field of 124 players in the Barclays.

The top 100 players on the points list, now led by Woods, advance to the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston, with 30 more players eliminated for the BMW Championship in Chicago.

Points will be reset for the finale, the Tour Championship, which will be contested by the top 30. The reset will allow any player in the top five to clinch the big prize with a victory in Atlanta.

"I think we have to support the tour, there's no doubt, especially in this economy right now," Woods said.

(Editing by Justin Palmer)

COLOGNE, Germany (Hollywood Reporter) –
Films and videogames would seem a match made in heaven, so why are games based on hit movies so bad? Despite sharing the same demographic of devoted fans, action, sci-fi and fantasy films rarely translate into branded videogame hits.

"Movie-based games almost never work. No matter how cool the movie, the game is almost always lame," said Philipp Dollinger, a gamer reviewer for German blog Pressakey.com and one of thousands of gamers swarming the halls of the gamescom trade fair, which runs until Sunday in Cologne.

"Most are just bad imitations of better games already out there," he added.

Hollywood has been burned before in the gaming space. Just ask Brash Entertainment, the U.S. group that raised $400 million to buy up film licenses and turn them into hit games. After two major flops -- an "Alvin and the Chipmunks" game and one based on Fox's sci-fi feature "Jumper" (2008) -- Brash folded. It was a similar story for Pandemic Brisbane, the Australian outpost of the Los Angeles-based game developer, which shuttered in February after a disastrous attempt to deliver an ambitious game based on Christopher Nolan's blockbuster "The Dark Knight."

Despite those warning signs, there are plenty of new A-list movie ties at gamescom, and plenty of developers saying they have learned their lessons.

LONG-TERM PROJECTS

"For a lot of movies, the game is an afterthought," said Jake Meri, a producer at LucasArts. "The filmmakers are close to finishing production and they say, 'Oh, what about the game?' But a good game takes years of development."

LucasArts put in the time for its new release, "Star Wars: The Old Republic," a game it is developing with Canadian outfit BioWare for games giant Electronic Arts.

"Star Wars"-based games have gotten mixed reviews in the past, but the buzz has been strong for "The Old Republic." LucasArts and BioWare have spent years designing the title, which will be a massively multiplayer online game similar to "World of Warcraft" -- a game intended to be played online by thousands of people simultaneously.

PC Gamer U.K. called "The Old Republic" "a credible 'World of Warcraft' killer," and the lineups to see the demo at gamescom have been longer than those at most movie premieres.

"We have a lot to live up to with this game, which is why we've spent so much time and money on it," Meri said. "It will be the first fully voiced MMO game in the world. Voicing this game has been the most ambitions voiceover project ever -- we have thousands of characters speaking more than 200,000 lines of dialogue."

LucasArts is famous for its obsessive protection of the "Star Wars" franchise, but the trend toward closer cooperation between film and games studio is one seen across the industry. James Cameron was hands-on for the more than three years France's Ubisoft took to develop "Avatar," a combat game based on Cameron's upcoming film.

"It was really unprecedented," Ubisoft developer Patrick Naud said. "We had full access to everything -- the story boards, the concept art, the sound, the voices, the animation. It wasn't a typical movie licensing, where you buy the license and go away and make the game. It was a much closer collaboration."

"Avatar" will be one of the first big tests of this kind of tight movie-game teamwork when it hits stores in November, ahead of the film's holiday release. "It might be too soon to say this, but James Cameron is a trendsetter, so maybe, in the future, this is the way everyone will be doing business," Naud said. "It would certainly make a lot more sense."

(Editing by SheriLinden at Reuters)

KABUL (AFP) –
Ballot counting in Afghanistan's presidential election is over with results to be released next week and turnout expected at 40 to 50 percent, the election authority said Friday.

Afghans voted on Thursday to elect a new president and for 420 councillors in 34 provincial councils.

"The counting is finished for the presidential race," Independent Election Commission official Zekria Barakzai told AFP.

Counting for the provincial vote was continuing in Kabul, Nangarhar, Baghlan and Herat, he said.

"The turnout was different from south to the north and central parts of Afghanistan but still it is satisfactory and I expect that turnout will be from 40 to 50 percent," he said.

"The turnout will be known as soon as we have the results," he said.

Observers said Thursday they expected turnout to be lower than the 50 percent of the last election, which was for parliament and the provincial councils.

Barakzai, deputy chief electoral officer, said that the commission would start releasing the results from Tuesday.

"We will wait for the hard copies of the results sheets from all of the provinces and from August 25 we will announce partial results as we receive the results sheets," he said.

Bomb blasts and rockets attacks struck across the country on election day, leaving 26 Afghan security forces and civilians dead, according to the government.

But the United Nations said the levels of violence were lower than expected.

The insurgent Taliban had threatened to attack polling stations and warned Afghans to not vote.

The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001, when they were removed in a US-led invasion. They have mounted an insurgency that this year reached record levels.

The head of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's re-election campaign said Friday the incumbent was decisively leading the count and there would be no need for a second round run-off.

"From what we have obtained so far, we can claim that there is no need for a run-off and we can claim that we're in the lead," campaign chief Din Mohammmad told AFP.

"We have got this figure from our observers at the (voting) sites," he added.

At the same time a spokesman for the campaign team of Abdullah Abdullah claimed the opposition presidential candidate was ahead of incumbent Karzai based on partial results they had received.