Online gambling will be banned in Germany starting January 1 as part of an accord with states that preserves the country’s state monopoly for lotteries and most forms of betting. All 16 German state legislatures voted by mid-December to approve the new online-betting laws, which the states negotiated after the Federal Constitutional Court overturned earlier rules. The new rules ban any form of Web-based gambling or brokering of games over the Internet.

The United States has reached a deal with the European Union, Japan and Canada to keep its Internet gambling market closed to foreign companies, but is continuing talks with India, Antigua and Barbuda, Macau and Costa Rica, US trade officials said. "We are pleased to confirm that the United States has reached agreement ... with Canada, the EU and Japan," Gretchen Hamel, a spokeswoman for the US Trade Representative’s office, said in a statement several hours after the EU had announced details of the deal it had reached with Washington.

A new trade pact shuts companies like Partygaming out of the US market for good and sends them looking for new markets in Europe and Asia. The odds seem to be stacked against Europe’s online betting sector. After being shut out of the US market last year, companies such as British Partygaming and Austrian Bwin were dealt another blow on December 17 when the European Commission announced a trade settlement with the US that scuppers their chances of re-entering that lucrative market.

Canberra - Oscar-winning Australian actor Russell Crowe has succeeded in a long-running fight to have gambling machines banned from the Sydney football club he co-owns in a bid to make it more family-friendly. Crowe and fellow owner, millionaire businessman Peter Holmes a Court, on Wednesday night succeeded in convincing skeptical board members of the South Sydney Rabbitohs to dump the club's 160 slot machines...

An opening ceremony started the construction process Calama’s casino, which will be the most important venue in Norte Grande, in Chile. A series of features addressed to satisfy the needs of the business, hotel, events, entertainment, tourism as well as to improve the quality of life of the community, is the aim of Latin Gaming, the operating company.

Macao -- Macao saw its economy unleashed by the booming gaming industry in the past eight years, but further development requires a more diversified economic pattern, said a Macao legislator in an interview with Xinhua on Monday. "Historically speaking, the special administrative region (SAR)is at the best time for its economic development in the light of its rapid growth in the past eight years," said Ieong Tou Hong, a member of Legislative Assembly of the Macao SAR and Board Chairman of Macao Association of Economy Promotion.

The Canadian government treated a bill that almost made online gambling illegal in Canada, but before the bill passed, Senator George Baker found that some amendments to modernize bookmaking laws by removing Criminal Code references to telephone and telegraph could cause problems for gamblers and Internet gambling services. Baker told Law Times the new amendments had gone through four House of Commons committee hearings with no mention of how the changes could affect online gamblers.

Antigua and Barbuda expects to receive a big damage award from the World Trade Organization in a long-running Internet gambling dispute with the United States, a lawyer for the Caribbean nation said this week. The expected ruling by a WTO arbitration panel is set for tomorrow, Friday. “We feel pretty confident about our case, to be honest. We really feel like we have the upper hand here,” Mark Mendel, a private attorney representing Antigua.

Harrah’s Entertainment informed that it received approval from the Louisiana Gaming Control Board and the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission for the proposed acquisition of Harrah’s by affiliates of Apollo Management, L.P. and TPG Capital. The transaction remains subject to approval by other jurisdictions in which Harrah’s subsidiaries operate and other conditions to closing set forth in the agreement and plan of merger entered into on December 19, 2006.

Senators from political parties Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Acción Nacional (PAN) and Revolución Democrática (PRD) demanded the presence of Roberto Correa Méndez, deputy general director of Games and Draws of SEGOB, to communicate the causes of the increment of licenses for activities of that kind. Senator Felipe González assured that at least 50% of the games and draws held in the country are irregular, because he said his organizers have appeals for protection to work, altough they do not have operating licenses.

Televisa demanded the Mexican government to take legal measures against owners of illegal gambling and betting houses that proliferated in the whole country. A 20 % tax on games and draws was approved by the congress last September, as part of a fiscal reform proposed by President Felipe Calderón. It is expected to have a harmful effect in the sector in which Televisa has just entered.

Four weeks after a Phoenix TV station reported that some gambling chips manufactured by a Las Vegas company contained exceptionally high lead content, anxious casino dealers say they still don't know if they're handling toxic materials for a living. The report put the manufacturer, Gaming Partners International - the world's largest gaming chip maker - on the defensive; the casino industry's trade association said after some delay that the issue is being reviewed, and government health experts shrug.