Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte channeled his inner Donald Trump and fired a top government lawyer who expressed a legal opinion that special economic zones may issue casino permits to operators.

The president’s press conference on Tuesday turned into a scene from Trump’s defunct TV show “The Apprentice” after Duterte called Philippine Government Corporate Counsel Rudolf Philip Jurado in front of the local media to announce the lawyer’s outright dismissal from his post.

“May I call the government corporate counsel now? Are you here? Because if you are here, come out. You are fired,” Duterte told Jurado, according to the ABS-CBN News report.

The firing of Jurado confirms a CalvinAyre.com news report last week that officials from the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC) and members of APECO BOARD are the most likely candidates to get the boot from the President, not Philippine Amusement Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) chair Andrea Domingo.

The odds are getting slimmer for casino proponents in Chicago after a bill seeking to expand gambling in Illinois fails to get enough support from state lawmakers.

Proponents of Senate Bill 7 (SB7) suffered a major setback after an Illinois House panel thumbed down plans to expand gambling in the state, The Chicago Sun Times reported.

In summary, SB7 seeks to add six new casinos in the state, bringing the number of the land-based gaming facilities to 16. They hope to open new casinos in Chicago, The South Suburbs, Williamson County, Rockford, and Danville.

SB7 will amend the Illinois Horse Racing Act of 1975 and the Riverboat Gambling Act to authorize electronic gaming at race tracks. The measure will also allow for increased winnings on video gaming and additional gambling, including slot machines, at horse racing tracks. The measure didn’t include fantasy sports betting, internet gaming or sports betting.

The man who has launched an Australian telecommunications company more than a decade ago and turned it into a billion dollar business will soon take the helm of casino operator Silver Heritage Group Ltd.

In a disclosure to the Australian Stock Exchange on Monday, Silver Heritage announced the appointment of James Spenceley as non-executive chairman and director of the company. Spenceley will replace David Green, who made an abrupt goodbye several weeks ago.

Spenceley’s appointment came less than five months after the company the company launched casino operations at its US$52 million Tiger Palace Resort Bhairahawa in Nepal, located just eight kilometers from the Indian border.

Silver Heritage described Spenceley as an “award-winning entrepreneur and experienced company director,” while local Australian newspapers said the newly appointed chairman “loves challenges.”

Almost as quickly as Japan muttered the word ‘casino,’ Bloomberry Resorts was standing in line, hoping to get a license. The Philippines-based casino operator has been operating a permanent office in Tokyo since 2014 and has a particular interest in creating an integrated resort (IR) in Japan’s Wakayama Marina City.

Bloomberry is one of seven IR operators who recently met with the governor of Wakayama, Yoshinobu Nisaka, during the Japan Gaming Congress earlier this month. Representing Bloomberry was Takeshi Hojo, president of the firm’s Japanese arm, who left the meeting feeling positive about the fact that the governor is looking to make the licensing procedure a non-political issue, according to an Asia Gaming Brief report.

Governor Nisaka doesn’t want the casino to be a foreign-only destination, another plus for the casino operators. In an interview with AGB, Bloomberry Resorts CFO and Treasurer Estella Tuason-Occeña explained, “You know we operate a casino in Jeju, and we can tell you, if it’s a foreign-only casino, you can never get any of your money’s worth.”

Bloomberry’s chances at getting the IR license are good, but there it is still an uphill battle. The company doesn’t have the deep pockets that some its competitors do, but is working hard to obtain the license. Tuason-Occeña said, “Whether or not our effort will come to fruition, we still want to do it anyway.”

For any bitcoin (BCH) bull, May is ending with some decidedly bearish price action. After nearly tripling from April to May from $632 to $1,818, most of those gains have since evaporated, all but confirming that we are not going to see $4,000 again any time soon. Segwit (BTC) for its part has been a bit less volatile, but the parabolic rise is clearly over. This may not be so great for bitcoin as a speculative asset, it is a good thing for bitcoin as a money.

What makes something a good money, among other things, is its relatively stable value over time relative to most other goods. Without relative stability, a good like bitcoin cannot function as a money, but only as an intermediary to money. People use money, final money, to calculate important things and take accurate measurements of profits and losses. You can’t measure profits and losses in a good whose value fluctuates wildly. And without knowing if you are operating at a profit or a loss, an economy, whether that economy by a single person or a nation, cannot allocate resources properly. The economy breaks down. See Venezuela for reference. The money there does not have a stable value, the economy cannot allocate resources properly, and people die.

Let’s face it. If bitcoin enthusiasts really tried to treat bitcoin as a full on money and record their transactions in bitcoin terms instead of using bitcoin as an intermediary but ultimately calculating in dollar terms, then their households, companies, or whatever they operate would not function.

Bitcoin appears to now be moving out of the mass recognition phase, The next step is to build the mass adoption phase. In the mass recognition phase, most of the cryptocurrency crowd consisted of speculators looking to make dollars on a quick trade. A lot of them get in and by December we were at the biggest parabola in human history. It appears that the last of the speculators are drifting out of the market, giving up on another parabolic run for now. When they are gone, or at least when they are at a minimum because there will always be some speculators, then the bulk of bitcoin owners will be either long term holders or those who actually use it as it was intended to be used, to buy things.

Two tales from the World Poker Tour including Pete Chen winning the Asian Player of the Year award, and Las Vegas Golden Knight’s announcer Mark Shunock joining the team in readiness for the Las Vegas Esports Arena onslaught.

There’s always one that sneaks under my eye like the peas that roll off my daughter’s plate only to vanish into the too-wide cracks of the kitchen floor that house all manner of nastiness.

Pete Chen has won the World Poker Tour (WPT) Asia Player of the Year (POY).

The #3 Ranked All-Time Taiwanese Money Earner started Season XVI like a seal in a seahorse race beating 400-entrants to win WPT Beijing Main Event, the first of the series, banking $299,485. Chen followed that up with a decent showing at WPT Korea, making two final tables in side events, winning one and hitting the rail in fifth in another. Chen also cashed in a side event in India.

Italy’s scandal-ridden former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi may end up riding to the rescue of the country’s gambling industry.

On Sunday, Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella surprised the nation by rejecting the new coalition government’s choice for finance minister. The news prompted a frustrated Prime Minister-designate Giuseppe Conte to resign, meaning Italian voters are likely headed back to the polls in another few months.

Earlier this month, the recently formed coalition of the Euro-phobic Five Star Movement (MS5) and the right-wing League party released a document outlining their plans for governing Italy, which included “the elimination of gambling machines (slot machines, video lottery terminals)” and “an absolute ban on [gambling] advertising and sponsorships.”

Industry reaction to the coalition document was a mix of incredulity and alarm, and reaction to the coalition’s sudden demise has been a mix of relief and uncertainty as to what comes next.