MIAMI – With a booming economy, shrinking unemployment, and fast-rising property prices, Florida hardly fits the description of a destitute state desperately in need of a $500 million windfall from the legalization of Las Vegas-style slot machines.

Yet many of the arguments used to push through gambling laws in the depressed states of America's Bust Belt in recent years are being presented to voters in southern Florida as they go to the polls Tuesday to settle what has become a highly contentious debate.

Players and industry observers alike this week continued to comment on the puzzling silence of the Interactive Gaming Council (IGC) and iGGBA, both trade associations in the industry where Gambling Federation and its CEO Flaviano Fogli are members. In fact in the case of the IGC, Fogli is a Board member, making its silence even more inexplicable.

Readers will recall the shocking admissions by Fogli last week that his company had knowingly included malware in their gambling software download to players over a period of some months in order to grapple with a competitor.

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. -- The folks who play bingo at the Klamath Basin Senior Citizen Center are no longer outlaws. Five months ago, the Department of Justice contacted officials at the senior center after getting a complaint that bingo games were being played for cash. Nickels, to be exact.

The senior center has a gambling license for the higher-stakes bingo program. But the Golden Age Club, which has about 200 members, is separate from the senior center and has never had a gaming license for its nickel-bingo operation.

The results of local elections for Housing Authority in Canton, Ohio are resting on, among other issues, the fate of bingo.

Controversy stirred in the Ohio town last summer, after the current Housing authority voted to rid itself of. The group most maddened, and perhaps most affected by the decision, is Canton's senior citizen constituency.

One member of this community, Ron Grinnell, decided to take action, joining together with three others in hiring a lawyer. Grinnell was also inspired to join the race for Housing Authority chairman.

About 200 students who have read and demonstrated their comprehension of books in the Accelerated Reader (AR) Program were honored with a bingo party last Friday afternoon in the cafeteria. The number of students who have successfully met the goal of 25 points in the AR Program has increased by 40 percent since the first marking period.

In the AR Program, students read books according to their grade level. They are then tested on what they've read. They must earn 25 points or 80 percent on their comprehension.

After a two year absence, Town Hall Bingo is returning to Jackson Rancheria Casino, Hotel & Conference Center.

The popular bingo program was suspended during the recent major expansion which included remodeling Dalton Town Hall, where the bingo games are held. Bingo’s regular schedule, which started Jan. 29, includes sessions on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Six regular games will pay seven times the winning bingo number. Paper buy-ins start at $7 and machine buy-ins at $18.

Most members of a legislative committee believe that electronic bingo has no place in Wyoming.

On Wednesday, the House Travel Committee voted seven to two against legalizing video bingo.

A state district judge recently ruled that state law prohibits bingo games that aren’t played with the traditional cardboard or paper cards.

JEFFERSON CITY- The rise of riverboat casinos helped spur the fall of the neighborhood bingo game, longtime moneymakers for charities, churches and civic groups across the country.

So a Missouri lawmaker is borrowing an idea from Washington and Oregon to create a big-prize bingo game that links players throughout Missouri. His proposal would allow bingo halls across the state to join up nightly for a televised game with a jackpot that could top $50,000.

A collection of anti-gambling groups and state legislators called for a moratorium on gambling expansion in New York on Monday, just one week before Gov. George Pataki is set to release his budget.

The Coalition Against Gambling in New York said that the spread of gambling is detrimental to communities both socially and economically. All groups agreed that for various reasons, gambling growth must be stopped.

"China's anti-gambling campaign has forced 84 casinos and small gambling houses in the neighboring countries out of business in the past two months, reported the Beijing News on Monday.

"The casinos, spread along China's southwestern border with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, were forced to close down as their business shrunk dramatically in the wake of an intensified fight against gambling carried out by police in Yunnan province since last December.