
Not on his watch: Texas Governor Greg Abbott offers a resounding ‘no’ to online gambling.
Texas officials must stop their line of inquiry into legalizing online gambling, Governor Greg Abbot said this week.
In a letter towards the Chairman associated with Texas Gambling Commission, Abbot said that the state prohibition on gambling expansion is in destination to protect citizens and he ‘supports it wholeheartedly.’
Abbot’s veto comes in light of news that the state regulator has been information that is gathering the feasibility of adopting new gambling games in Texas, in particular sports betting and daily fantasy sports. In October, commission executive manager Gary Grief joined up with staff on a fact-finding objective to Delaware to examine the state’s online gambling operations.
‘In light of continuous pressures that are external expand the footprint of gaming in Texas, it’s timely and necessary that I provide direction on prohibiting all such expansions without express authorization and direction by the Texas Legislature,’ wrote Abbot in a letter dated November 9, 2015.
‘Please ensure this intent and way is strictly enforced on the list of staff regarding the Texas Lottery Commission.
Please additionally notify the professional staff and director that any demand to journey to gather information about video gaming opportunities which are prohibited in Texas ought to be denied.’
Gambling in Texas
The only forms of gambling currently legal in Texas are the state lottery, charitable bingo and raffles beyond the parimutuel betting at horseracing and dog tracks and the state’s one Indian casino.
Perhaps the lottery, which earns $2.2 billion every two years for public education, is under hazard and its abolition was debated in the legislature every year since its 1991 inception.
In 2013, lawmakers voted by 81-65 to scrap the lottery, before realizing that plugging that $2.2 billion hole with raffles and bingo might be a stretch associated with the imagination.
A hastily put together ballot reinstated it.
Opposition in the Legislature
The concept of gambling expansion does perhaps not sit well with the conservative and Christian sensibilities of the large an element of the legislature, and a bill to liberalize gambling this year ended up being summarily quashed.
‘that we may serve as a resource to the legislature should they decide to consider these other forms of gaming,’ Texas Lottery spokeswoman Kelly Cripe said of the reasoning behind the recent mission to Delaware though we may not offer these games, we want to be knowledgeable of the industry so.
‘As we carry on our mission to build revenue for Texas, our company is very mindful and respectful so it is the Texas Legislature that sets policy.’
However, this week Cripe told the Dallas Morning News that her organization would abide by the governor’s wishes.
Fontainebleau Resort Goes on the Market for $650 Million
Carl Icahn, who is prepared to sell the property he rescued from bankruptcy for the $4 million profit. (Image: businessinsider.com)
Fontainebleau, the big, committed $3 billion Las Vegas Strip megaresort that never was, is up for sale.
Carl Icahn, the billionaire corporate raider who rescued the unfinished project from bankruptcy in 2010, is asking $650 million for the property, based on CBRE Group, which has been hired to broker the offer.
The one caveat for potential purchasers: you will have to complete building it yourself.
Fontainebleau was one of a few huge developments conceived before the global economic downturn of 2008 that were devastated when recession hit through the construction stage. The tower was never finished, and the resort remains only 70 percent complete.
Fontainebleau had grand ideas: named for a magnificent French chateau that was once home to the kings of France, its tower would, at 730-feet, end up being the tallest in Vegas.
Investment Opportunity
But, like experience Atlantic City, no project better symbolizes the financial crash that ravaged the casino industry from 2008 to 2011, during which time Las Vegas ended up being famously dubbed ‘Ground Zero of the economic downturn.’
Work started on the property in 2007. Developers Fontainebleau Resorts of Miami, spent $2 billion before being forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, as lenders, spooked by the depression that is economic bailed on the project.
In April 2009, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, canceled $770 million in construction capital.
But Vegas happens to be on the up, and Ichan demonstrably thinks that Fontainebleau is not a doomed folly to economic shortsightedness, but an investment opportunity that is exciting.
‘we think Las Vegas still has a reasonable quantity of room to run,’ said Icahn, who paid around $150 million for Fontainebleau. ‘But I’d rather offer it than take the full time and energy to create it out, which we have been considering doing,’ he told the Wall Street Journal this week.
On the Up
The visitors have returned to the city in their droves and room rates have reached record levels. Meanwhile, other jobs that were abandoned through the financial crisis, for instance the Echelon and the Las Vegas Plaza, have found new owners who are ready to invest in their development.
Across the street to your Fontainebleau, the Frontier, which closed down earlier this year, is to be redeveloped into an extension associated with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s Convention Center District. The future abruptly looks bright for the end that is north of Strip.
‘Las Vegas don’t simply have a recession, it had a depression,’ John Knott, executive vice president of CBRE Las Vegas told the Las vegas, nevada Review Journal.
‘We’ve come a way that is long. Gaming companies are investing in and renovating properties. Regional gaming numbers are beginning to exhibit improvement. New projects are bringing vibrancy to our community.
I believe the recession is behind us now.’
It’s estimated Fontainebleau would take another couple of years to complete.
Hacker Group ‘Anonymous’ Targets Terrorists Over Payment Processors
Cyber hacking collective ‘Anonymous’ announced it is seeking ISIS after the terrorist militants claimed to have killed over 130 individuals in Paris last Friday. (Image: americasfreedomfighters.com)
Call them Terrorist Haters Anonymous, if you shall. Nevertheless the team that lives up to its name is for once likely to bring down the bad guys with their own boy that is bad abilities.
Yup, the vigilante collective known as ‘Anonymous’ is going to war, and they’re planning by having a kind of cyber-Robin Hood promise this time.
The world wide web hackers posted a video declaration group that is against terrorist State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on the weekend, claiming the self-proclaimed perpetrators in charge of the attacks in Paris will be ‘hunted down’ and stopped in their cyber tracks.
Online communications, apparently now mainly moved onto gaming platforms in a ‘peer-to-peer’ mode that is inaccessible to police force without getting warrants, have been the mode that is primary preparing these global and deadly attacks, in accordance with media sources.
Gaming World Knows DDoS Attacks All Too Well
The gambling community has also become familiar with other (often unidentified) proficient computer hackers disrupting operations at both land-based and online casinos while obviously no one would mind if Anonymous succeeds at disabling its victims and greatly hindering their operations.
During 2009 and 2010, two separate incidents compromised online that is popular gambling processors Moneybookers and Neteller, with an untold quantity of addresses, emails, phone numbers, birthdates, and password tips stolen.
Last year, Iranian hackers angered by Sheldon Adelson’s pro-Israel place infiltrated community servers at the billionaire’s Sands Bethlehem resort in Pennsylvania, effectively shutting down the casino. As well as in July, a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) assaults sent four online casinos offline in nj-new jersey for some 30 mins.
Hackers have largely been a force that is disruptive costs victims vast sums of bucks each year to defend, however for now the masterminds are putting their skills to good usage by going after ISIS, a group condemned by all 28 member states regarding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Yes, ISIS Tweets
ISIS is a group that is radical resides into the Iraq desert, primarily Ramadi, a city it captured once US forces withdrew from the area. ISIS’ headquarters that is war-ravagedn’t without technology, the guerrillas possessing the power to distribute its messages and claims of obligation online, because it has reportedly done regarding the Paris attacks.
Distributed through Twitter, ISIS called the bombings and mass shootings in Paris that left more than 130 dead a ‘blessed attack’ and also the ‘first of the storm.’
Anonymous responded in its own Internet message, a video showing an agent donning the group’s Guy Fawkes mask saying, ‘Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down … we shall launch the operation that is biggest ever against you.
‘ The French folks are stronger than you and can emerge of this atrocity even more powerful,’ the hackers concluded.
Consequential Outcomes
The Anonymous collective’s wishes to disrupt the internet operations of ISIS might be significant. The first line of ISIS recruitment is performed through the net, the group maintaining a 24/7 social media presence that relies on its sympathetic followers to spread its messages and viewpoints.
‘As part of its quest to terrorize the world, ISIS has learned an arena no terrorist group had conquered before: the burgeoning globe of social networking,’ writers Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger wrote inside their book on Islamic extremism, ISIS: hawaii of Terror.
A report in March by the Brookings organization found upwards of 2,000 pro-ISIS Twitter reports that have been highly active, tweeting an average of 50 communications each day. Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iraq were the top three advertised locales of the tweeters, but concerning to Americans is the known fact that the usa was 4th.
Twitter doesn’t reveal why or whenever it chooses to disable a free account. ‘Is it ethical to suppress political speech, even when such speed is repugnant?’ Brookings asks.
Anonymous is preparing to answer that royal vegas casino canada concern on its terms that are own. Gamblers can only just hope that other such cyber hackers turn their attentions elsewhere as well.
