The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health wants a total ban on minors' gambling. A working group at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health is proposing that teens under 18 years of age would be prohibited from playing slot machines, lotto and toto. The group also proposes gambling games to be equipped with identification devices to help ensure that age restrictions are abided by.

Macau - The world's busiest casino town is straining to handle the affections of the world's largest population. By the boatload, gamblers gripping Chinese passports jostle off ferries and cram, sardinelike, into a customs building in this once-sleepy former Portuguese colony on China's coast. They line up, hundreds deep on a weekend morning, for an entry stamp. Then they line up again for scarce taxis or catch shuttle buses into a town bristling with new casinos, fountains and resorts.

The soothing commercials for Proposition 94-97 suggest their passage would offer a pain-free, USD 9 billion elixir for California's budget woes. These measures are neither pain-free nor an elixir. Passage of these propositions would allow four of the state's wealthiest tribes - Agua Caliente, Morongo, Pechanga, Sycuan - to dramatically expand their Southern California gambling operations by adding up to 17,000 Nevada-style slot machines.

Russia’s Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov inked a ruling to set up a gambling zone, Azov-City, in the Scherbinovsky district of Krasnodar area and the Azov district of Rostov region, the RF government’s press service reported. The gambling zone will extend to 20.022 million sq meters, covering a portion of the Krasnodar area and the Rostov region in southern Russia.

China may legalise gambling on horse races for the first time since the Communist Party took power in 1949, the official Xinhua news agency said. The government in Beijing has approved the start of regular horse racing in the central city of Wuhan, and is considering the introduction of betting on those races on a trial basis next year, Xinhua reported. The experiment is seen as heralding the return of nationwide betting on horses in China, Xinhua said.

As part of a series of changes to the Law Number 56/2007, published last December 28th, Spain introduced an additional measure in which the government is forced to approve, in a year, a law in which games and bets are regulated, “in particular those made by interactive systems based in electronic communications”. One of the principles to which the law should attend, is the following:

Leading human rights lawyer Chris Sidoti says he has been appointed to oversee the new Casino, Liquor and Gaming Authority in New South Wales to help minimise the damage caused by gambling. The former federal human rights commissioner has had a lengthy involvement in international human rights issues and is the chairman of the UK Government's Northern Ireland Bill of Rights Forum.

Hong Kong - Sociedade de Jogos de Macau, Macau's dominant gaming group, controlled by casino tycoon Stanley Ho, kicked off an informal road show in Hong Kong this week, getting set for its initial public offering, aiming to raise up to USD 1 billion. SJM plans to issue 1.25 billion new shares, accounting for about 25% of its enlarged share capital. Among the new shares, 85% will be sold to institutional investors, and 5% will be reserved for employees, leaving 10% available to the general public.

The Seminole Tribe paid USD 50 million to the state Monday, as required under its gambling agreement with Gov. Charlie Crist, after the controversial deal became official. "Today's transfer of USD 50 million to the state of Florida is just the beginning of revenue that will potentially provide billions of dollars to Florida's schools during the next 25 years," Crist said in a statement.

A group of men who ran a multi-million dollar Costa Rica-based sports betting website have been charged with illegal gambling and money laundering offenses, in the latest example of US authorities’ crackdown on internet gambling. Authorities across the US have been pursuing a mounting number of cases against internet gambling companies, and businesses that offer services such as money transfers for them, over the last 18 months.

The casino industry lobby has filed legal challenges against two petitions that propose a tripling of the state’s gaming tax. The Nevada Resort Association claims that the petitions amount to taxation without representation because they would allow other states’ tax rates to influence Nevada’s. Under the petitions, the gaming tax rate in Nevada would be set at the average maximum rate applied in the 11 other states with casino gambling.

The UK Gambling Commission has compiled and published a regulatory document entitled The Prevention of Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism. The publication follows extensive consultation that has been ongoing since October and sets out how remote and non-remote casinos must comply with the Proceeds of Crime Act and Money Laundering Regulations, which came into effect in December.