2006 March 14 Gambling News, Events and Happenings - Page 7

DES MOINES The man who reluctantly created Iowas lottery with the stroke of his pen 21 years ago says he has no regrets about opening the floodgates to legal gambling in Iowa.

Pinnacle Entertainment yesterday agreed to buy Aztar, which counts the Tropicana in Atlantic City as its flagship, in a $2.1 billion deal that will give Pinnacle a foothold in all major gambling markets in the U.S.

The European Commission may take legal action against six of its member countries for restricting some gambling operations while permitting citizens to participate in lotteries.

When police in Las Vegas recently had to rappel down the outside of the Harrah’s Las Vegas hotel, window to window, to catch a gunman, my mind took a slight detour.

The weekend happenings at Calvin Ayre’s upmarket Costa Rican mansion, where “busloads” of police staged a raid on grounds of suspected illegal gambling early one evening have received widespread mainstream media coverage and considerable Internet exposure, giving fresh impetus to speculation that there may have been a hidden publicity motive.

The International Herald Tribune reports that six European Union countries face legal action later this month by the European Commission for maintaining bans on gambling while permitting their citizens to wager in their national lotteries.

Getting blacklisted at a highly respected site like Mike Shackleford’s The Wizard of Odds is a serious indictment likely to cause commercial damage, but that is what the entire Gambling Federation group has managed to achieve as a result of a ruling on a dispute that goes back to July last year.