Not on his watch: Texas Governor Greg Abbott offers a resounding ‘no’ to online gambling.
Texas officials must cease their line of inquiry into legalizing online gambling, Governor Greg Abbot said this week.
In a letter to your Chairman associated with the Texas Gambling Commission, Abbot said that the continuing state prohibition on gambling expansion is in destination to protect residents and he ‘supports it wholeheartedly.’
Abbot’s veto comes in light of news that the state regulator was collecting information on the feasibility of adopting new gambling games in Texas, in particular recreations betting and daily fantasy sports. In October, commission executive director Gary Grief joined staff on a fact-finding mission to Delaware to examine the state’s online gambling operations.
‘In light of constant external pressures to expand the footprint of gaming in Texas, it’s timely and necessary that I offer direction on prohibiting all such expansions without express authorization and direction by the Texas Legislature,’ composed Abbot in a page dated November 9, 2015.
‘Please ensure this intent and way is strictly enforced among the staff associated with the Texas Lottery Commission.
Please also notify the professional staff and director that any demand to travel to gather information about gaming opportunities that are prohibited in Texas is denied.’
Gambling in Texas
Beyond the parimutuel betting at horseracing and dog songs therefore the state’s one Indian casino, the only forms of gambling presently appropriate in Texas are the state lottery, charitable bingo and raffles.
Perhaps the lottery, which brings in $2.2 billion every two years for public training, is under danger and its abolition was debated in the legislature every since its 1991 inception year.
In 2013, lawmakers voted by 81-65 to scrap the lottery, before realizing that plugging that $2.2 billion hole with raffles and bingo may be a stretch for the imagination.
A hastily assembled ballot reinstated it.
Opposition in the Legislature
The concept of gambling expansion does perhaps not sit well with the conservative and Christian sensibilities of a large the main legislature, and a bill to liberalize gambling this year was 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.
‘that it’s the Texas Legislature that sets policy. once we continue our objective to generate revenue for Texas, we have been extremely mindful and respectful’
However, this week Cripe told the Dallas Morning News that her organization would stay glued to the governor’s wishes.
Fontainebleau Resort Goes on the marketplace for $650 Million
Carl Icahn, that is ready to offer the property he rescued from bankruptcy for a $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 raider that is corporate 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 prospective purchasers: you will have to finish building it yourself.
Fontainebleau was one of a few huge developments conceived before the global economic downturn of 2008 that were devastated whenever recession hit throughout the construction stage. The tower was never completed, and the resort continues to be only 70 % complete.
Fontainebleau had grand ideas: named for the magnificent chateau that is french was as soon as house to the kings of France, its tower would, at 730-feet, be the tallest in Vegas.
Investment Possibility
But, like Revel in Atlantic City, no project better symbolizes the financial crash that ravaged the casino industry from 2008 to 2011, during which time nevada was famously dubbed ‘Ground Zero of the financial downturn.’
Work began in the property in 2007. Developers Fontainebleau Resorts of Miami, invested $2 billion before being forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, as lenders, spooked by the economic despair, bailed on the project.
In April 2009, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, canceled $770 million in construction financing.
But Vegas is currently on the up, and Ichan clearly believes that Fontainebleau is not any longer a doomed folly to economic shortsightedness, but an investment opportunity that is exciting.
‘we think Las Vegas nevertheless has a fair quantity of room to run,’ said Icahn, who paid around $150 million for Fontainebleau. ‘But I’d rather offer it than take enough time and energy to create it out, which we have been considering doing,’ he told the Wall Street Journal this week.
Regarding the Up
The visitors have came back to the populous city in their droves and room rates are at record levels. Meanwhile, other projects that were abandoned throughout the overall economy, including the Echelon and the nevada Plaza, have discovered new owners who’re ready to invest in their development.
Next door towards the Fontainebleau, the Frontier, which closed down earlier in the day this 12 months, would be to be redeveloped into an extension of 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 did not simply have a recession, it had a depression,’ John Knott, executive vice president of CBRE Las Vegas told the Las Vegas Review Journal.
‘We’ve come a good way. Gaming companies are spending in and renovating properties. Neighborhood gaming numbers are starting to exhibit improvement. New projects are bringing vibrancy to our community.
We believe the recession is behind us now.’
It’s estimated Fontainebleau would take another two years to perform.
Hacker Group ‘Anonymous’ Targets Terrorists Over Payment Processors
Cyber hacking collective ‘Anonymous’ announced it is going after 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. But the team that lives up to its name is for once about to bring straight down the criminals with their own bad boy hacking skills.
Yup, the vigilante collective known as ‘Anonymous’ is going to war, and they’re going in with a kind of cyber-Robin Hood promise this time.
The net hackers posted a video declaration against terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) over the weekend, claiming the self-proclaimed perpetrators responsible for the attacks in Paris will be ‘hunted down’ and stopped in their cyber tracks.
Online communications, apparently now largely moved onto gaming platforms in a ‘peer-to-peer’ mode that is inaccessible to law enforcement without obtaining warrants, have already been the main mode for planning these global and life-threatening attacks, according to media sources.
Gaming World Knows DDoS Attacks All Too Well
While demonstrably no one would mind if Anonymous succeeds at disabling its victims and significantly hindering their operations, the gambling community has also know more about other (often unidentified) adept computer hackers disrupting operations at both land-based and online casinos.
In 2009 and 2010, two separate incidents compromised popular online gambling payment processors Moneybookers and Neteller, with an untold amount of addresses, emails, telephone numbers, birthdates, and password tips taken.
Final year, Iranian hackers angered by Sheldon Adelson’s pro-Israel position infiltrated network servers during the billionaire’s Sands Bethlehem resort in Pennsylvania, effectively shutting down the casino. Plus in July, a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) assaults sent four Internet gambling enterprises offline in nj for some 30 minutes.
Hackers have mostly been a disruptive force that costs victims billions of bucks every year to protect, but also for now the masterminds are putting their skills to good usage by going after ISIS, a group condemned by all 28 member states of this North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Yes, ISIS Tweets
ISIS is a radical group that resides within the Iraq wilderness, 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 capacity to distribute its communications and claims of obligation online, since it has reportedly done about the Paris attacks.
Distributed through Twitter, ISIS called the bombings and mass shootings in Paris that left a lot 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 around the globe will hunt you down … We will introduce the operation that is biggest ever against you.
‘ The French folks are stronger than you and certainly will come out of this atrocity even more powerful,’ the hackers concluded.
Consequential Results
The Anonymous group’s wishes to disrupt the web operations of ISIS might be significant. The first line of ISIS recruitment is done 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 casino royal vegas ligne world, ISIS has learned an arena no terrorist group had conquered before: the burgeoning world of social networking,’ authors Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger wrote within their book on Islamic extremism, ISIS: their state 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 fact that the usa was fourth.
Twitter doesn’t reveal why or when it chooses to disable a free account. ‘Is it ethical to suppress political speech, even when such speed is repugnant?’ Brookings asks.
Anonymous is planning to answer that concern on its own terms. Gamblers can simply hope that other cyber that is such turn their attentions somewhere else as well.