Las Vegas (AP) - Major gambling companies' ledgers have told the same, sinking story for a year: Fewer people are visiting casinos, their trips are getting shorter and they're not gambling as much. Casino construction has slowed or halted from one end of the Las Vegas Strip to the other, more than a dozen projects across the U.S. and abroad have been modified or dropped, and more than 40,000 new rooms in Las Vegas planned by some of the industry's biggest players are on hold.

When the Sands Macao opened in 2004, Asia's first Las Vegas-style casino prompted an extraordinary boom for Macau and casino owner Las Vegas Sands (LVS). Thereafter, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong reversed decades of ruling party opposition to approve two casino resorts, hoping to emulate Macau's and LVS's success. Macau and LVS are now both reeling as the world's economies take a turn for the worse, and some analysts forecast Singapore's integrated resorts (IRs)...

For the first time since Ontario entered the commercial casino business in Windsor in 1994, the province has released financial statements that show its four Las Vegas-style casinos are losing money. Financial statements obtained by The Star Thursday show that what is now Caesars Windsor, Niagara Casino, Niagara Fallsview Casino and Casino Rama in Orillia lost CAD 55.9 million in 2007-08.

Hartford, Connecticut (AP) - Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says he's going to urge legislators again to ban smoking at the two casinos in the state. Blumenthal says he's responding to an agreement Mohegan Sun officials have made with the governor to eliminate second-hand smoke with high-tech ventilation systems. Workers at Foxwoods Resort Casino delivered a letter to Gov. M. Jodi Rell's office Wednesday...

(Bloomberg) -- MGM Mirage’s new chief executive officer, James Murren, said he plans to “dramatically” reduce debt and will consider further casino sales as he overhauls the company’s balance sheet. Murren plans to refinance maturing bonds as bank lending resumes and markets open up. MGM Mirage may buy back some notes trading at discounted levels, either through market purchases or tender offers, he said in an interview yesterday.

Atlantic City - New Year's Eve is to the casinos what the Super Bowl is to the NFL and the Academy Awards are to the motion picture industry. It is one gigantic blowout bash featuring lavish parties, extravagant meals and big-name entertainment to reward high rollers for their loyalty and keep them coming back in the new year. But as Atlantic City continues to struggle with the recession and plunging revenue, the most important holiday on the casino calendar will not be as grand as in years past.

The first tender to be held by the Government of San Juan province in 2009 will be the one in Barreal Hotel, and the novelty is that they will add casinos to the tender process, according to Governor José Luis Gioja. Besides, the government aims to tender two new hotel casinos in two other councils: Valle Fértil and Iglesia. The aim is to put to tender Hotel Barreal, in Calingasta, for 20 years.

The credit crunch has broken the bank at some of Britain's biggest casinos. In the last 12 months, nine gambling dens have closed their doors - victims of government tax increases, the smoking ban and the worsening economic climate. Gala Coral, owned by private equity firms Permira, Candover and Cinven, has shut four casinos, including its upmarket haunt in London's Picadilly Circus. Genting Stanley has shut two in Liverpool and Manchester and axed 400 staff. It is currently in a pay dispute with the GMB union.

Hundreds of Queensland welfare recipients have bet millions of dollars in state casinos under a money laundering scam linked to crime gangs. The 329 pensioners and Newstart Allowance recipients, who get less than AUD 300 a week, have bought AUD 45 million of gaming chips at the state's four casinos in just 16 months. The scam is simple. Pension recipients, working independently or on behalf of organised crime syndicates, take thousands of dollars in dirty money, "buy-in" at a casino, place a few bets and then cash in gaming chips; in effect cleaning the cash.

As millions of Americans are having problems paying their mortgages, so too are some Atlantic City casinos. Trump Entertainment Resorts became the second casino operator to say it would not make a scheduled loan payment while it tries to work out new terms with its lenders. Last month, Resorts Atlantic City did the same thing, and more could follow. It’s the latest proof that Atlantic City’s casinos, once thought to be recession-proof, are subject to the same financial pressures affecting the rest of America.

More than 1,000 casinos have been closed down in Moscow in the past 18 months under a law passed last year to move gambling from large cities to far-flung regions, a Moscow government official said on Friday. Under the law designed to curb Russians’ growing addiction to gambling, approved by parliament and signed by then-president Vladimir Putin, casinos in the capital and other cities are to disappear completely by next July.

After rejecting the budget and the increment in taxes, the political counterattack of the opposition was to propose the government to charge an 8% tax to the collection of riverboat casinos, bingo halls and slots in Palermo horse racetrack. With these resources, they say, it could be replaced the tax increment proposed by City Mayor Mauricio Macri. "When I was Mayor of the City, we fought for the gambling sector to pay Gross Incomes, but companies obtained judicial statements on their favor."