Macau is struggling without a stream of tourists, and a mix of consumer fear and government precaution isn’t helping to solve that any time soon. So, without many options available, the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) is looking inward, and hopes to start a successful staycation campaign.

In a Saturday address to local media, director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes revealed that as many as 47,000 people have participated in local tourist routes launched under the “Vamos Macau” (Macao Go) banner. 15 of these routes have been designed by the Macau government to boost the local economy.

The popularity of these routes have the MGTO looking to launch more itineraries to meet demand, but choosing what businesses and locations will make a route successful is tricky, the director noted, because residents are more interested in indoor and family activies. “There are many uncertainties that lead us to make several adjustments,” she said.

The government has subsidized this kind of activity, but Senna Fernandes could not clarify if businesses like hotels or casino concessionaires would be eligible for such funding. The casinos have been running their own initiatives to get locals in the doors, but the director noted they are struggling. “I believe that during Monday to Friday, a majority of people here would not choose to stay at hotels,” she said. “Even for the fact that the hotels are offering some promotions, people tend to choose [to stay] during weekends because they want to use the resorts’ facilities.”

In the roughly two weeks since Germany’s Wirecard payments processor crashed and burned, there have been a lot of developments. Every minute detail of the company is under scrutiny after it was revealed that $3 billion (initially, it was “only” $2 billion) was suddenly missing, and the investigation continues. Having served the gambling industry, among others, over the years, Wirecard had clients all over the world and this is only serving to increase the attention paid to the now-bankrupt company. Authorities in several countries, including the Philippines, want to talk to former chief operating officer (COO) Jan Marsalek over his management of the company, and a new twist to the saga has just been added. It appears, according to some chatter, that Marsalek may have been a spy. 

Marsalek still hasn’t been found, which is only adding fuel to the controversy. However, according to media outlet Die Presse in Austria, the executive, for reasons that still aren’t clear, had access to “highly confidential” information. This information, based on Die Presse’s assertions, was given Austria’s Freedom Party by Marsalek and included classified details related to the country’s secret services and interior ministry. 

Marsalek is also said to have bragged about his access to business associates in the U.K. The Financial Times (FT) reports that he showed them a recipe for novichok, a nerve agent that has been identified as the murder weapon to kill a former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in 2018. The missing executive allegedly wanted to impress the business associates with his knowledge, and reportedly also had ties to Russian military intelligence. 

The FT has apparently been working on an investigation of Wirecard and Marsalek for some time and, over the past six months, has interviewed a number of individuals close to him. It reportedly found out that Marsalek had established a network of contacts in the Austrian-Russian Friendship Society, a Russia-backed entity to promote better relations between Russia and Austria, and paid some of them as much as €200,000 ($226,360) a week to provide him with classified information. One of the sources told the FT, “I don’t know what his [Mr Marsalek’s] real plans were, but we were supposed to be a fig leaf for whatever he was doing. We were there to add a humanitarian gloss to things.” 

Any technology that makes its way to mainstream use goes through various degrees of improvement. Cell phones, when first introduced, were called bricks for very good reason and, now, are incredibly light, inexpensive (unless you’re dead set on owning an iPhone) and manageable. Large-screen TVs used to weigh a ton and required a bulldozer if you wanted to move them to a new location. Fast-forward to today, where the prices are much more accessible and the devices weigh virtually nothing, allowing them to be installed anywhere. Solar energy technology has followed the same path, and some of the panels being developed today are incredibly advanced compared to their predecessors. 

Now, solar energy panels are flexible and “printable” – they’re not quite ready for a home printing job, but maybe that’s down the road. In the meantime, the newest step in solar innovation promises to offer tremendous flexibility with regards to where and how solar energy production is possible. It should also help bring down the cost substantially.

The University of Newcastle in Australia is helping push the introduction of the new panels for commercial use. They use organic solar cell technology, built on perovskite solar cells, to offer a low-cost and flexible solar energy solution. Perovskites, as described by Science Direct, are “synthetic compounds that have an orthorhombic crystal structure identical to the naturally occurring mineral with the same name and that share a structurally similar chemical formula.”

Perovskite-based solar modules were developed by the University of Newcastle by lead inventor professor Paul Dastoor and his team. They’re already beginning to see installation, such as that in a greenspace development in Lane Cove in New South Wales. Dastoor explains, “Globally, there’s been so few of these installations, we know very little about how they perform in a public setting. This installation is the next critical step in accelerating the development and commercialisation of this technology. It presents a new scenario for us to test performance and durability against a range of new challenges.”

This is a guest contribution by Jon Southurst, a writer with CoinGeek.com. Companies like Paypresto are developing easy to implement solutions so that any company can implement easy Bitcoin SV payments. Southurst explains how their solution will soon offer cheap and secure transactions for any business. This article first appeared on CoinGeek.com.

Paypresto will build any kind of transaction for your app, make it easy to pay

One big advantage to developing on Bitcoin SV is the number of interesting toolkits and plugins emerging, all of which make apps faster and developers’ lives easier. The latest one is Paypresto, a “simple widget” that connects all kinds of complex transactions to a variety of existing wallets.

The advantage here is that, by adding Paypresto code, developers won’t have to build their own wallets from scratch if they want their apps to handle more complex transactions.

A supply chain expert might not be the first person you’d think of turning to when thinking of how your gambling operation can improve, but there’s a lot of overlapping experience when you come to think of it. And now, because Bitcoin SV (BSV) promises to improve both industries, its men like Stephan Nilsson, Founder and CEO of UNISOT, who can share their experiences and advice on how massively scaling blockchain technology can benefit everyone. He joined our Becky Liggero Fontana on the latest episode of The Long Con.

There are lessons everywhere to be learned from COVID-19, and the supply chain world is no different. “So supply chains, just like we have seen now with this situation here with the COVID is that our society at the moment is very vulnerable for any kind of disruption, and especially if you get things like this when people have to stay home or they are not allowed to work,” Nilsson said. “And a lot of supply chains today, even if we are living in a very digitalized world, supply chains today are still a lot of manual work. It’s moving physical things, it’s moving even paper between each other, exchanging papers still today, I don’t understand how that can still be possible, but they do. So, when you have things like it, when people cannot work, you have to stay home, or even get sick, even if not many have actually got sick, but then we see that supply chains are stopping.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNoNChER-vU?feature=oembed]

Thanks to the blockchain technology made capable by Bitcoin SV, its possible to mitigate these disruptions in the future. “If you look at the supply chain, it’s a network, it’s a distributed network of company, independent companies, and we have heard this before, distributed network, that is exactly what the blockchain is,” he said. “So, there is a very good fit between this distributive supply chain network with our distributed blockchain network. It does not mean that every company should mine, be their own miner stuff like that, that’s totally out of the way. But it means that we have a lot of different actors that are working together but maybe not really trust each other totally, and this is where we can start using blockchain.”

After a nerve-wracking wait, the 2017/18 and 2018/19 English Premier League champions Manchester City has been decided, and on appeal, the club have avoided a European football ban.

The backdrop to the decision has been one that football has never seen before.

The Coronavirus crisis has seen football placed in a lockdown that has lasted between two and three months in most European countries. Manchester City’s appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) came after they were told back in February that they would be banned from European competition for two full seasons – a potentially devastating impact on a club seen as one of Europe’s new superpowers.

Last week saw Manchester City learn the teams that stand in their way of winning the UEFA Champions League for the first time, which include the glamourous clubs of Juventus or Barcelona, and that’s after The Citizens deal with the second leg threat of Zinedine Zidane’s Real Madrid. But they could have been playing to win a competition that they would not be allowed to play in next season.

There was never any major doubt that Eldorado Resorts and Caesars Entertainment would be able to consummate their marriage, but there certainly have been a couple of touch-and-go moments. The waiting is now almost over as the two casino giants tackle their last remaining approvals and it seems that everything could be smooth sailing from here on in. Nevada regulators signed off on the deal last week, leaving only New Jersey and Indiana to weigh in. New Jersey regulators will discuss the issue in a couple of days, but Indiana has formally said yes, all but locking up the anticipated merger. However, The Indiana Gaming Commission (IGC), in giving its approval, threw in a catch.

The IGC got together last Friday to vote on whether or not the creation of the largest casino operator in the U.S. through the melding of Eldorado and Caesars was a good idea. So far, no state where either of the two companies operates has said no, but Indiana had raised some concerns that put the odds of the state greenlighting the merger a little longer. The Indiana Racing Commission (IRC) still needs to speak up before anyone can say that the state is locked in, but there shouldn’t be too much resistance if Eldorado and Caesars agree to make a few changes.

If the merger were to take place today, the resulting company, which will carry the Caesars name, would have five properties in Indiana – Horseshoe Hammond, Caesars Southern Indiana, Tropicana Evansville, the Indiana Grand and Harrah’s Hoosier Park. The last two on the list offer horseracing, and, as a result, the IRC gets to offer its input on the merger. The IRC has voiced some doubts over the horseracing experience of the two companies, but those concerns will be allayed.

When the IGC signed off on the merger request, it did so with the knowledge that the resulting company would control about 60% of the revenue of the state’s casino market. As of this past January, the five properties had an aggregate total of 45.5% of Indiana’s more than 17,200 slot machines and about 49.4% of the state’s table games. In order to keep the new operator from having too much control, Eldorado and Caesars are going to have to unload three of its properties before 2021 comes around, or the IGC could back down on its approval of the deal.

Hong Kong has received a lot of attention lately, but mostly for negative reasons. The coronavirus proved to be damaging to the local economy and, at the same time, the SAR has had to deal with a push by mainland China to weaken its democratic autonomy. There have been a number of protests and clashes resulting from the mainland’s desire to exert more control over the area, but, in the end, China won. As the dust began to settle, casino junket brand Suncity Group began facing accusations that it had helped the pro-democracy side with financing and rumors surfaced that it was under investigation by Chinese authorities to determine if it did, in fact, have a role in the protests. The company’s CEO, Alvin Chau Cheok Wa, has now spoken up on the issue, denying that the company is being investigated and reassuring its backers and clients that everything is fine.

The decision to release a statement was meant to quell the rumors of an investigation, as well as those that have asserted that Suncity is experiencing losses due to attrition. Social media posts have indicated that some clients had been withdrawing their funds from Suncity, and Chau asserts that the “late rumors about ‘Suncity Group subsidizing Hong Kong rioters’ are extremely absurd and unreasonable.” He added that there was no way the company would ever do anything that would jeopardize the sovereignty of China and its holdings.

Given China’s history of making those who question the country’s authority disappear, Chau wanted to reassure Suncity’s backers and customers that they were well protected, and that no client data had been turned over to the authorities. He explained, “The group has never received any request from overseas or mainland China demanding customer information. Suncity VIP Club has never encountered any leakage of customer information.”

Chau also took some time in statement to address the company’s financial health in an effort to reassure everyone that there’s no risk of it going under. Suncity, like many other gambling-focused companies, has suffered because of COVID-19, but has done well enough the past couple of years that it isn’t overly concerned about any short-term drop in revenue. Chau explained that the company is “undeniably financially robust,” adding, “Suncity VIP Club recognized a total amount of fiscal reserve of HKD10.58 billion [$1.36 billion], the total amount of cash flows in cage to be used in the daily operation of the VIP Club is HKD18.6 billion [$2.39 billion], plus a total deposit of HKD16.5 billion [$2.12 billion] in two Macau banks.”

As the gambling market in Las Vegas began to return to life last month, everyone thought that the coronavirus was in the rear-view mirror. However, as quickly as the doors were opened, new cases began to be seen once again, raising concerns over whether or not Nevada had relaunched its commercial operations too quickly. In order to keep things from shutting down once again, casinos have apparently been trying to keep quiet on any spike of new COVID-19 cases, putting the lives of employees and gamblers at risk in return for a few extra bucks in their pockets.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal (LVRJ) ran a story last Friday that appears to uncover the dirty little secret. A cage cashier at the M Resort, Aileen Rotzin, is reported to have tested positive for the coronavirus but, instead of being proactive and protecting staff and patrons, the casino’s human resources department ordered her to remain silent, asserting that it was “confidential information.” Rotzin states, “It’s just human decency, with this COVID-19, that they let other people know (when employees test positive).”

At The Cosmopolitan, there have been at least 15 workers who have tested positive for the coronavirus, but the number could be higher – casinos aren’t required to report the number of infected employees. At another casino, there have been at least 38 dealers who were diagnosed with COVID-19, and there could be even more. One of the dealers has tried to make contact with coworkers in order to notify them, since the casino won’t do it, and another employee asserts, “It’s just frustrating. It for sure feels like they’re trying to hide it. There’s been no transparency. It just feels horrible.”

The state is already beginning to see some of its commercial activity come to a halt once again. Clark County, where most of the gambling action in Las Vegas can be found, ordered bars to shut down as of last Friday following an order issued a day earlier by Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak. The brief, one-month return to action after a three-month lockdown certainly won’t be enough for many to survive, and casinos could be playing a major role in the failure of Las Vegas – an ironic and sad commentary on the mental state of the million-dollar executives running the show.

Several huge games had ramifications at the top of both La Liga and Serie A over the weekend as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi were both in action for their respective clubs of Juventus and Barcelona.

Both teams went into the weekend on the back of a dramatic Champions League draw that could see the sides on a collision course to meet each other at the semi-final stage in August. Of course, Bayern Munich will be hoping to stop Messi and company, while Manchester City or Real Madrid will provide the sternest of tests for Cristiano’s Juventus should the Italian giants overcome Lyon in their Last 16 decider.

There is the possibility that the two greatest players of their generation will meet on the Champions League pitch, however, and what a mouthwatering tie that would be.

Should they meet, however, there’s likely to be only one of the two men who will shake hands as a current league champion.

It was a weekend of Premier League football where mistakes were more important than match-winning moments. With fatigue a huge factor and just four games to go at the start of this weekend’s schedule, it was a case of whoever made least mistakes would come out of the fixtures feeling like their EPL fate was in their own hands.

Champions Liverpool could only stutter to a 1-1 draw with Burnley on Saturday that nearly saw them beaten, the width of the crossbar protecting a late Burnley winner. Elsewhere, there were big wins for Manchester City (5-0 at Brighton) and West Ham (4-0 at Norwich to send the Canaries down). Watford also sealed a magnificent 2-1 win at home to Newcastle which put Bournemouth and Aston Villa under massive pressure.

Sunday saw Wolves comfortably ease past Everton 3-0, while Aston Villa grabbed a vital three points with a 2-0 victory over Crystal Palace. The other results were ones that few fans saw coming.

Sheffield United 3-0 Chelsea

Ever lost your temper playing online poker? Of course you have, you’re a human being. Even the best lose their minds playing the game we love and never more so than when it’s for the highest stakes, also known as a World Series of Poker bracelet.

Event #10 of the World Series of Poker online saw GGPoker’s Daniel Negreanu streaming as usual, bringing his journey to the masses as he bids to win a seventh WSOP bracelet and triumph in a number of side bets. The superstar Canadian poker player has bet many players this summer that he’ll win a WSOP bracelet, so not to do so will cost him at least in the six figures bracket and possibly more.

So, when you’re deep in a WSOP event and your internet connection to the tournament fails… it can send you over the edge.

Daniel Negreanu did not enjoy losing touch with Event #10 of the World Series of Poker online event, but could see the funny side when he woke up:

It’s been a very busy weekend in the World Series of Poker. Three more bracelet winners were confirmed across a weekend where dreams came true, a player who had never played online poker won a bracelet at their first attempt and a laptop nearly got smashed in hilarious fashion.

It could only happen at the World Series of Poker… even if it is online.

Event #9

To the first event of the weekend, then, and a Friday night to remember for a first-timer who has played poker for years. Ron McMillen, who has played live poker for many years, had never opened up an online lobby in his life until compelled to do so during this year’s WSOP.