The Japanese government is setting into motion plans to create a new agency with the sole objective of speeding up the legislation of the casino bill.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga made the proclamation last Friday, highlighting the importance of creating this task force to expedite the process of passing the casino bill. According to Suga, officials from a handful of government agencies will come together to work on the issue. The task force's main objective is to identify all the issues that have caused the process to bog down. In addition, the group will also take the responsibility of looking into specific cases and legal systems other countries have with the regards to their respective casino legislations.

The Integrated Resorts (IR) Bill was briefly discussed by the Cabinet Committee of Japan's lower house of parliament before the end of the regulator session last June 22 but those discussions amounted to nothing and were eventually tabled.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe remains optimistic that the bill will pass in the next session of parliament.

Crimea as the new gambling zone

The Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a new law, officially designating Crimea as a gambling zone while also extending the Krasnodar gambling zone to Sochi.

With the law now in place, the next step involves Crimean authorities is to determine the parameters of creating the borders of the new gambling zone.

The first option would be to spread gambling facilities across the entire peninsula evenly to accommodate more areas in need of economic and employment assistance. The second option involves a more concentrated gambling zone in the south coast of Crimea, near the town of Yalta where the majority of tourist destinations in Crimea are located.

The new law also extends the gambling zone in Russia's southern Krasnodar territory to cover the city of Sochi with its Winter Olympics venues. Casinos will be located near the Olympic Village.

Now that Putin has given his official blessing to turn Crimea into a gambling zone, it represents yet another significant step in Russia's aggressive casino expansion as part of its designated-zones plan across the entire country.

Russian lawmakers believe that allowing gambling in Crimea will attract investors, increase the number of tourists and create new jobs.

Crimea now joins the four established casino zones in the country, including ones in Kaliningrad near the Baltic Sea, the Primorye region in the Far East, Siberia's Altai Region and southern Krasnodar territory.

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