Travelers are looking for "power vacations", clean hotels and places where natural disasters might not occur, a U.S. survey finds.

Adventure activities such as heli-skiing, whitewater rafting and bungee jumping were the top activities sought by vacationers, with gambling a close second.

65% have been to a destination known to have celebrity guests, while 85% consider hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes as a factor when choosing travel destinations...

A former bank manager known as "Mr Halifax" fraudulently obtained £10m from his employer and clients and spent the money on luxury cars, racehorses and internet gambling, a court heard.

During a four-year fraud, Graham Price, 58, persuaded 84 individuals to invest a total of £3.5m in a bogus property scheme and used the money, together with a further £6.9m stolen from the Halifax bank, to support a lifestyle as a high-rolling gambler, spending £1m on racing tips and buying shares in 13 horses...

There are several key aspects to gambling at the online casinos. One of the most important is the payout rate. This tells the player a lot about the integrity of the online casino he or she is playing at.

For one, the payout rate must be verified by a third party auditor and if the online casino in question is paying to have this done, it´s probably a good sign that they are operating a clean site. Big names like eCOGRA and The Online Players Association are responsible for such audits...

Thousands of miles from the nearest casino, in a state where gambling is illegal, people in Hawai'i are wagering thousands of dollars in poker tournaments and other games without getting arrested.

And they are doing it from the comfort of their homes, where many have high-speed access to the world's largest casino: the World Wide Web. Money flowing in and out of thousands of gambling sites on the Internet is expected to reach $15 billion this year...

When I meet someone new and they ask what I do, I just say 'I play poker'.

I used to have more of a problem with it, not least because I'd end up explaining it at length, as people are often more interested in online poker than in talking about what they do.

I make about $40 an hour on average and play poker 30 hours a week - it's not quite a full-time job, and it leaves me time to do a bit of web consultancy, read a lot of books, and go off on holiday without having to arrange leave.

Much of what was on display at the 2005 Global Gaming Expo (G2E), which was held earlier this month at the Las Vegas Convention Center, revealed not only a glimpse at what the future holds for the games we'll be playing but also how the casino operators will exercise greater control over what we play and how we play them.

The first major technological step toward this end took place several years ago with the creation of ticket-in/ticket-out slot play, eliminating the need for coins...

Studies in the United States and Canada indicate that about 80 percent of young people said they gambled during the past year, with at least 10 percent showing early signs of a gambling problem, according to Keith Whyte, the National Council on Problem Gambling's executive director.

"Most kids start gambling before they start trying cigarettes and drinking beer," Whyte said. "We know that kids who gamble are more likely to engage in risk-taking behavior." Gambling may be a gateway to dangerous activities such as smoking, unsafe sex and drug abuse, he said.

Video games are not just for nerds anymore. During the past three decades, they have grown from a niche hobby to an industry valued at more than $9.4 billion. As young people continue to drift away from traditional media outlets to spend more time in virtual worlds, the annual sales of game hardware and software regularly outstrip Hollywood box-office receipts.

However, as video games continue to establish economic and creative legitimacy, the popular image of video-game players remains firmly rooted in the past.

New gaming jurisdictions are emerging around the world, from Florida's racinos to the United Kingdom's cyberspace domain.

But what seems to be the universal characteristic of all of the new players is that it takes longer to bring them on line than most people anticipate because of legislative, judicial and regulatory issues that spring up while the details are worked out.

In a city known for being big on building big, MGM Mirage is giving the public its first look at the biggest thing ever built here -- or maybe anywhere.

On Thursday morning, the company released more detailed plans for its Project CityCenter, a $5 billion mixed-use monster on the Las Vegas Strip that will boast 18 million square feet of casino, hotel, condominium and retail space -- roughly six times the size of the company's flagship Bellagio resort.