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 page towards the Chairman associated with the Texas Gambling Commission, Abbot said that a continuing state prohibition on gambling expansion is in spot to protect citizens and he ‘supports it wholeheartedly.’
Abbot’s veto comes in light of news that the state regulator was information that is gathering the feasibility of adopting new gambling games in Texas, in particular recreations betting and daily fantasy sports. In October, commission administrator manager Gary Grief joined staff on a fact-finding mission to Delaware to examine hawaii’s online gambling operations.
‘In light of constant external pressures to expand the footprint of gaming in Texas, it really is timely and necessary that I offer direction on prohibiting all such expansions without express authorization and direction by the Texas Legislature,’ published Abbot in a page dated November 9, 2015.
‘Please ensure this intent and direction is strictly enforced among the staff of this Texas Lottery Commission.
Please also notify the administrator director and staff that any request to go to gather information regarding gaming opportunities that are prohibited in Texas must certanly be denied.’
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 brings in $2.2 billion every two years for public training, is under threat and its abolition is 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 of this imagination.
A hastily put together ballot reinstated it.
The idea of gambling expansion does perhaps not sit well with the conservative and Christian sensibilities of the large part 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.
‘that it’s the Texas Legislature that sets policy. even as we continue our mission to generate revenue for Texas, we’re very mindful and respectful’
However, this Cripe told the Dallas Morning News that her organization would adhere to the governor’s wishes week.
Carl Icahn, who’s prepared to offer the house he rescued from bankruptcy for a $4 million revenue. (Image: businessinsider.com)
Fontainebleau, the big, ambitious $3 billion Vegas Strip megaresort that never was, is up for sale.
Carl Icahn, the billionaire corporate raider whom rescued the unfinished project from bankruptcy in 2010, is asking $650 million for the property, in accordance with CBRE Group, which has been hired to broker the offer.
The one caveat for potential buyers: you will have to complete building it yourself.
Fontainebleau was one of a few huge developments conceived before the global financial downturn of 2008 that were devastated whenever recession hit throughout the construction stage. The tower was never ever finished, and the resort stays just 70 % complete.
Fontainebleau had grand tips: named for a magnificent French chateau that was once home to the kings of France, its tower would, at 730-feet, be the tallest in Vegas.
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 had been famously dubbed ‘Ground Zero of the economic 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 depression, bailed on the project.
In April 2009, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, canceled $770 million in construction funding.
But Vegas happens to be on the up, and Ichan clearly thinks that Fontainebleau is no more a doomed folly to economic shortsightedness, but an exciting investment opportunity.
‘we think Las Vegas nevertheless has a fair quantity of space 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 build it out, which we have been considering doing,’ he told the Wall Street Journal this week.
The visitors have returned to the populous city in their droves and room rates have reached record levels. Meanwhile, other projects that were abandoned during the financial crisis, like the Echelon and the vegas Plaza, have found new owners that are ready to invest in their development.
Next door to your Fontainebleau, the Frontier, which closed down previously this is to be redeveloped into an extension of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s Convention Center District year. The future unexpectedly 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, nevada Review Journal.
‘We’ve come a way that is long. Gaming companies are spending in and renovating properties. Local gaming numbers are starting to exhibit enhancement. New projects are bringing vibrancy to our community.
I believe the recession is behind us now.’
It’s estimated Fontainebleau would simply take another two years to complete.
Cyber hacking collective ‘Anonymous’ announced it is going after ISIS following the militants that are terrorist to have killed over 130 individuals in Paris final 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 down the crooks with their own bad boy hacking skills.
Yup, the vigilante collective known as ‘Anonymous’ is going to war, and they are moving in having a type or kind of cyber-Robin Hood promise this time.
The world wide web hackers posted a video declaration against terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on the weekend, claiming the self-proclaimed perpetrators accountable for the attacks in Paris will be ‘hunted down’ and stopped in their cyber tracks.
Online communications, apparently now mostly moved onto gaming platforms in a ‘peer-to-peer’ mode that is inaccessible to police without acquiring warrants, have been the mode that is primary preparing these global and life-threatening attacks, based on media sources.
While clearly no one could mind if Anonymous succeeds at disabling its victims and greatly hindering their operations, the gambling community has also understand other (often unidentified) proficient computer hackers disrupting operations at both land-based and online casinos.
In ’09 and 2010, two separate incidents compromised online that is popular gambling processors Moneybookers and Neteller, with an untold amount of addresses, emails, telephone numbers, birthdates, and password hints taken.
Final year, Iranian hackers angered by Sheldon Adelson’s pro-Israel place infiltrated community servers during the billionaire’s Sands Bethlehem resort in Pennsylvania, effectively shutting down the casino. As well as in a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) assaults sent four Internet casinos offline in New Jersey for some 30 minutes july.
Hackers have largely been a force that is disruptive costs victims billions of dollars each year to protect, however for now the masterminds are putting their skills to good usage by going after ISIS, friends condemned by all 28 member states associated with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
ISIS is just a radical group that resides in 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 capability 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 more than 130 dead a ‘blessed attack’ and the ‘first of royal vegas casino uk the storm.’
Anonymous responded in its own Internet message, a video clip showing an agent donning the group’s Guy Fawkes mask saying, ‘Anonymous from all over the globe will hunt you down … We will launch the operation that is biggest ever against you.
‘ The French individuals are stronger than you and can turn out of this atrocity even more powerful,’ the hackers concluded.
The Anonymous group’s wishes to disrupt the online operations of ISIS could be significant. The line that is first of recruitment is done through the world wide web, the team maintaining a 24/7 social media presence that relies on its sympathetic followers to distribute its communications and viewpoints.
‘As part of its quest to terrorize the world, ISIS has learned an arena no group that is terrorist conquered before: the burgeoning globe of social media marketing,’ 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 accounts that have been highly active, tweeting on average 50 messages each day. Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iraq had been the top three reported locales of the tweeters, but concerning to Americans is the known fact that the usa was 4th.
Twitter does not reveal why or when it chooses to disable an account. ‘Is it ethical to suppress political speech, even when such rate is repugnant?’ Brookings asks.
Anonymous is planning to answer that concern on its own terms. Gamblers can simply hope that other such cyber hackers turn their attentions somewhere else as well.