Morning Brief: Finance, Fitness and Facebook

With your morning coffee, afternoon tea or cheeky Friday flask pull:

The United States and its Caribbean neighbor, Antigua and Barbuda, have pushed their World Trade Organization settlement deadline back to Oct. 1, 2008. The two countries have been in negotiations since late January over the United States' decision to withdraw gambling services from the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

When asked by the Antigua Sun whether any meeting would be scheduled between now and Oct. 1, Mark E. Mendel, counsel for Antigua, said he was not sure but noted this was a time when “traditionally, the W.T.O. people take their holiday . . . so I wouldn’t expect a whole lot to happen in the immediate future.”

As expected, CryptoLogic Ltd. revealed second-quarter revenue was down 12.9 percent to $16.8 million against the previous quarter, though it did announce software licensing deals with Gaming Media Group Ltd., owner of The Poker Channel, as well as British Sky Broadcasting Group.

For those curious about yesterday's results from Ladbrokes -- and the company's decision to pair with Microgaming Software Systems Ltd. -- IGamingNews will release its report with analysis from one of the industry's leading financial experts. He tells us: "There will be some technology and development savings but this was primarily about liquidity."

For our Facebook community, David Sargeant, one of our members, asked: "Is Ladbrokes going into a US facing poker network a sign of things to come for other European operators? and in other gaming sectors?" To read my response, and to give your own, please log on and visit the discussion board.

Finally, Mark Balestra, publisher of IGN, has put together a blog entry examining the athletic transformation of David Carruthers of BetonSports during his time in St. Louis. Mr. Balestra (and all of us, really) are pretty impressed.