When US billionaire Steve Wynn opened the latest addition to his casino empire in Macau in September, he made sure the residents of the former Portuguese colony in southern China got a show they wouldn't forget in a hurry. A massive fireworks display erupted around the Wynn Macau hotel and casino on the stroke of midnight, while Frank Sinatra's "Luck Be A Lady" boomed out across the man-made lake in the front of the luxury resort.

Ladbrokes has held preliminary talks with online gaming companies 888 Holdings and PartyGaming and is believed to be taking an interest in some of Austrian-based rival Bwin's operations as consolidation moves in the beleaguered online industry gather pace.

A casino in the Swiss city of Lucerne has agreed to hand over to staff 2.4 million Swiss francs (1.5 million euros, 1.9 million dollars) in tips which it had pocketed in 2002 and 2003. A local court had ordered the payment after two employees complained about the casino's earlier practice of keeping tips from winning customers to pay its bills.

Karl Stoss to succeed Leo Wallner as Director General, Paul Herzfeld appointed Deputy Director General, Dietmar Hoscher appointed new Member of the Board.

Antigua, the Caribbean island nation accounting for a quarter of online betting, says its effort to overturn a US ban on Internet gambling through the World Trade Organization is a last chance for the industry. WTO arbitrators first backed Antigua’s claim that the U.S. illegally discriminated against foreign Internet betting companies two years ago. Last month, President George W. Bush signed a law making it a criminal act for credit-card companies to collect payments for online gambling.

Online gambling has more than doubled in the last five years, an independent research review published by the Department of Culture Media Sport reveals. The research was commissioned ahead of the first ever online gambling summit, hosted by Great Britain at Royal Ascot. The summit was held to secure international standards for the regulation of online, interactive TV and mobile phone gambling.

Moscow: Could there be a better symbol for the new Moscow - seductive, indulgent, awash in got-quick riches - than the casino? There are more than 60 of them in the city now, neon palaces of capitalist glitter and risk that have become as ubiquitous as the onion domes of Russian Orthodoxy. One major street, Novy Arbat, has more than a passing resemblance to the Las Vegas Strip, and even a casino called the Mirage.

The Stardust, the neon-wrapped casino with a mobbed-up past whose 1,065 rooms once set the standard for size on the Las Vegas Strip, witnessed its last roll of the dice Wednesday. Wistful longtime employees and loyal gamblers gathered for a last farewell to the iconic 48-year-old institution, which is to be razed early next year to make way for Boyd Gaming Corp.'s planned USD 4 billion Echelon Place resort.

The culture secretary has said there is a "consensus" of support for tough regulation of internet gambling. Tessa Jowell was speaking ahead of addressing an international summit at Ascot racecourse on Tuesday on the growing industry and associated problems such as addiction. She said that the government would not go down the American route of "prohibition" by banning credit card companies from paying online casinos.

A consortium led by resort builder Mark Advent said a 10-storey waterfall will be the centrepiece of its USD 3.5 billion proposal to build and run Singapore’s second casino resort. Advent’s privately-held Eighth Wonder and its three partners said their plans for the 49-hectare complex located on Singapore’s resort island of Sentosa would include also a hotel built around a football stadium affiliated to Brazilian soccer star Pele and a spa retreat run by new-age guru Deepak Chopra.

British government signalled yesterday it would not protect online gaming executives from extradition requests from countries where they had taken Internet wagers illegally. "People have to abide by the laws of particular countries," sports minister Richard Caborn told a news conference when asked how the government would treat extradition requests.

This week, British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell will urge 32 nations to back a code of principles on Internet gambling, the first major international measure to regulate the industry as the U.S. imposes a ban. Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, South Africa and other nations on October 31 will meet outside London for talks hosted by Jowell. The nations will attempt to agree on a code of conduct for companies that offer gambling over the web.