Atlantic City, N.J. – An internationally known expert in exposing casino cheats has been arrested in Atlantic City, N.J. – on charges of fleecing high-rollers in a high-tech crooked poker game.
Players in town for last month’s $1.7 million poker tournament at the Borgata hotel were lured to a private game in a luxurious upstairs room rigged with miniature hidden cameras aimed at their cards.
Authorities said one of the four conspirators whispered what the players were holding to an accomplice at the table wearing a tiny earpiece. Another henchman was running the odds on each deal of the cards on a laptop behind the scenes.
Among the four men arrested was Steve Forte, 51, a famed Las Vegas sleight-of-hand artist and casino cheating consultant. Forte’s clients include most of the major Las Vegas Strip casinos, gaming halls from Aruba to Macau, numerous law enforcement agencies and TV shows.
News of the June 7 arrests was kept quiet because the probe is ongoing, said a New Jersey attorney general’s office spokesman.
Additional nation/world news briefs:
LONDON
RAF base to welcome U.S. missile defense
Britain has agreed to let the United States use a Royal Air Force base as part of its planned missile defense system, British Defense Secretary Des Browne announced Wednesday.
Browne said Menwith Hill, a U.S. military listening station in northern England, would be equipped with communications equipment enabling it to route satellite warnings about missile launches to British and American officials.
LONDON
Hindu protest fails to save TB-infected bull
Shambo, a bull sacred to Hindus but condemned by health authorities after testing positive for bovine tuberculosis, will be slaughtered, his keepers said Wednesday.
The Skanda Vale Hindu monastery in Wales said monks had been told that Shambo would be taken away this morning.
Regulations stipulate that cattle suspected of carrying TB be slaughtered, but Shambo’s caretakers mounted a determined campaign to save the beast. Hindus revere cattle, and the monastery’s lawyers argued that slaughtering the bull would violate their religious rights.
On Monday the Court of Appeal in London ruled that Shambo’s slaughter was justified.
OSLO, Norway
Anti-jellyfish sunblock needs brave testers
Wanted: bold people willing to be stung by jellyfish. Reward: sunscreen that protects against – what else – jellyfish stings.
Norwegian researchers want bold, nonhairy humans to bare their arms and offer them up in the name of science. Testing a new sunscreen aimed at warding off jellyfish stings, the University of Oslo wants volunteers to be burned by jellyfish tentacles on both arms – one with ordinary sunblock, the other with anti-jellyfish sunscreen.
Torgrim Andersen, spokesman for the university’s biology department, said only five people have registered for the test, but Andersen said he was optimistic about getting a team of more than 10 people. The compensation? Three bottles of anti-jellyfish sunscreen.
UNITED NATIONS
Gaza Strip economy falters amid blockade
The U.N. Mideast envoy warned Wednesday of impending economic collapse in the Gaza Strip unless Israel reopens the Hamas-led territory’s main commercial crossing to the outside world to ease international isolation.
Michael Williams said the closure of the Karni crossing in early June has prevented the export of agricultural and industrial goods to Israel, the West Bank and elsewhere, as well as the import of materials needed for manufacturing and construction. The restriction has brought the Gaza economy to a standstill.
The World Bank estimates that 75 percent of Gaza’s factories have closed and more than 68,000 Palestinian workers have been laid off as a result, he said.
“Unless the crossings are open for imports and exports, the downward economic spiral will lead to extensive hardship for an already impoverished Gaza Strip,” Williams told the U.N. Security Council in his regular monthly briefing on the Middle East.
Since Hamas took over Gaza in mid-June, Israel has only permitted shipments of food and basic supplies into Gaza through two smaller passages.
