Jerusalem - Sheldon Adelson has spent the past two decades collecting a string of casinos, but now the billionaire - considered by many to be the richest Jew in the world - is taking another kind of gamble. Two weeks ago, Adelson, CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., launched Yisrael Hayom, or Israel Today, a free daily newspaper that on its first day was already one of the largest-circulation papers in the country.

In 1950, the teenage Sheldon Adelson ran a business stocking Boston shoe-factory vending machines. As plants closed in the summer, he headed to the beach, outfitting delivery trucks with freezers to sell ice cream. A half-century later, Adelson recalls, he was drawn to another chance to turn a profit when Chinese officials took him to a planned landfill site in the South China Sea off Macau. The chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp., the world's fastest-growing casino company, envisioned the biggest gambling resort ever.

Casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, one of America's richest men, dismissed critics of China on Thursday, saying that the Chinese are living a good life and the United States shouldn't try to police the entire world. The capitalist from Las Vegas defended the communist regime as he checked on the progress of a USD 2.3 billion (EUR 1.74 billion) casino resort he is building in Macau on China's southeastern coast. The tiny city is the only place in China where casino gambling is legal.