Don’t bet on a Big Apple casino opening any time soon.
State regulators said they won’t decide on new casino licenses in the New York City area until late 2025 — a delay critics say deals the local economy a bad hand.
The footdragging means pushes out the over-under on the earliest a gaming facility could open in the metro area to some time in 2026.
“It’s absurd that it’s going to take 3 years to put shovels in the ground,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said, referring to a timetable laid out by the state Gaming Commission during a public meeting Monday.
The city could use the jobs associated with the licenses to boost the post-COVID-19 recovery, he added.
“We’re trying to rebuild the New York economy. People are looking for good jobs and upward mobility. I hope they have a change of heart.”
Talk about awarding as many as three casino licenses in the downstate region have already been going on for three years.
Gaming industry insiders were left confused over the footdragging.
“People are shaking their heads. What’s taking so long?” a source to one casino bidder said. “There doesn’t seem to be any urgency.”
By comparison, state cannabis regulators have issued 89 licenses for pot dispensaries over roughly the same time period.
But Gaming Commission Executive Director Robert Williams insisted the timetable is “ahead of schedule” because Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature have not anticipated revenues from casinos to help bankroll the MTA until 2026.
A winning bidder must pay an upfront $500 million license fee for the privilege of operating a casino.
Williams noted that the City Council has yet to approve a zoning amendment to make it easier for casinos to find a location in the five boroughs.
The proposed casinos — The Related Companies/Wynn proposal for Hudson Yards, Mets owner Steve Cohen’s bid by Citi Field, the Thor Equities consortium in Coney Island and Bally’s at Ferry Point in The Bronx — would have to first be approved under the city’s lengthy Uniformed Land Use Review Procedure, the commission said.
“I have been informally advised that navigating the [land use] process will extend through the second quarter of 2025,” Williams said.
He said bidders will also have to undergo a separate state environmental scrutiny— under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.
In order for Cohen’s and Bally”s proposals to proceed, they also need approval from the state legislature to redesignate the properties from parkland to commercial use.
These reviews won’t be completed until early 2025, Williams said.
The Community Advisory Committees would then vote to support or reject a casino by late summer of 2025, allowing the state to collect licenses fees “nearly one year prior” to the deadline submission to the state and MTA, Williams said.
The committees, created by law, consist of the mayor, borough presidents and local state and city lawmakers who represent neighborhoods where a casino is proposed.
Resorts World’s slots parlor at Aqueduct race track and the MGM slots parlor at Yonkers raceway have the infrastructure in place to more easily build out and offer card table games in 2026, if they are awarded licenses.
But other bidders would have to build a new casino facility from scratch, meaning their doors are unlikely to open for business until 2027 or later, industry sources estimate.
“You either hold a weapon or you hold a guitar,” says Raji El-Jaru, Gaza’s biggest rockstar.
Months before war broke out last year, hundreds of people packed into a concert hall to hear his band perform their distinct blend of pounding guitar riffs and impassioned lyrics.
“We’ll scream our pain; can you hear the call?” he sang to the rapt crowd. “Knock, knock, are you listening at all?”
Not long after that gig, Israeli airstrikes rained on Gaza City, tearing down buildings and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Focused on survival rather than music, the five members of Osprey V – believed to be Gaza’s first rock band – went from dreaming of gigging in Europe to wondering if they would ever play together again.
Formed back in 2015, the group are all self-taught and cite Metallica and Linkin Park among their influences. Raji, 32, explains that he has always seen rock music as the obvious way to resist oppression. “We are the voice of the voiceless, spreading love instead of hatred and violence.”
“It’s a matter of time now,” Volodymyr says, talking about when his name will be called to join Ukraine’s armed forces.
A DJ who goes by the moniker Lostlojic, before the full-scale invasion in 2022 he was flying around Europe playing his brand of electronic music but now he’s back in Kyiv, his hometown, performing to raise money for his friends on the frontline.
In the early days after the invasion there was discussion about whether club nights should continue, says 35-year-old Volodymyr, but people needed a break from thinking about war – not least the soldiers on leave from the battlefield.
“Many of my friends who are musicians are in the armed forces. They have no time to do their favourite thing. Once every few months they create some tracks, send them to me, and I play them out.”
Last weekend there was a day to celebrate the Ukrainian language, and Volodymyr incorporated samples of Ukrainian speech into his songs to mark it – an assertion of an identity that is under threat.
“Everything is about politics, you can’t be an artist without it.”
“One of the things that music can do is unify people,” says Ruth Daniel. “It’s a way to give people a space to share what they’re going through.”
She is head of In Place Of War, an organisation that helps foster music and creativity in conflict zones. When bombs are falling all around you, she believes, music can act as a form of escapism and creative resistance.
Speaking to Sky News from the recent WOMEX (Worldwide Music Expo) conference in Manchester, she described how smartphones and social media make it easier than ever for those in conflict zones to write tracks and find an audience.
“I’ve seen people making music studios on the edge of checkpoints, making their own instruments, doing hip hop on street corners and making music with car sound systems.”
“It was at a house – they basically turned the kitchen into a club. I remember leaving and there were lines and lines of police and army [soldiers] pointing guns.
“For me, the best music comes out of situations of difficulty. It’s not just art for art’s sake, it’s art with purpose and meaning.”
Mo Aziz once performed to tens of thousands of people in stadiums across Sudan as part of the popular group Igd al-Jalad. But the group’s music criticised the then-government and they were banned from performing amid a crackdown on expression.
He came to the UK as a refugee in 2017, and this year released an album calling for peace in his homeland and hoping to raise the profile of Sudanese music – traditionally a blend of African and Arabic influences.
Since the struggle for power between the army and a large militia group erupted into armed conflict in April 2023, more than 20,000 people have been killed in Sudan. There are firefights on the streets of Khartoum and a humanitarian crisis.
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Mo’s mother and brother fled to Egypt, making a fortnight-long journey to escape the conflict, as the fighting led to millions being displaced.
“I was devastated,” he said. “I lost three friends as a result of the bombing in Khartoum, including one member of Igdal-Jalad.”
This unfolded as Mo was working on his album and master’s degree at Liverpool Hope University.
“I hope to show what’s happening in Sudan as well as uplift Sudanese music and put it on the international scene,” he said. “I will always dedicate my work to peace and human rights.”
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Meanwhile, British-Sudanese folk singer-songwriter Saeed Gadir described the music scene in Khartoum as a “ghost town”.
“It’s really been decimated, there’s no one there. It’s a huge part of my writing,” says Saeed, who’s known as The Halfway Kid and whose new album Myths In Modern Life talks about growing up in a Sudanese migrant family.
And while he doesn’t see himself as always being explicitly political, his music is nonetheless politicised by the stories he tells and feelings he seeks to share with his audiences, he says.
“Even if you’re in London, you might get an insight into what it might feel like if there’s a coup back home.”
Sometimes there is no safe way to explore music in a dangerous place, sometimes the bombs are falling around you even as amps are plugged in and microphones set up.
That was the case in 1994, before the internet gave musicians the power to appear virtually to their fans. Back then, legendary metal singer Bruce Dickinson and his band Skunkworks were smuggled into Sarajevo during the Bosnian War while the city was under siege. The gig they played instantly became historic.
“I’d never seen devastation like it in a modern city. There wasn’t a single building that wasn’t a burnt-out shell,” Dickinson, best known as the lead singer of Iron Maiden, told the 2017 documentary Scream For Me Sarajevo.
The siege of Sarajevo was the longest in modern history, lasting nearly four years. More than 11,000 people, including over 1,000 children, were killed.
“I went out there and was just, like, how can I ever be as big as their lives need me to be for them?” recalled Dickinson.
“You could have given everything and you just felt like it wasn’t ever gonna be enough.”
All over the world, the musical tradition of building community – and resistance – in some of the world’s most dangerous places is thriving, thanks in part to social media and the ability to reach audiences around the world with live streams.
“Especially in places where people can’t get out or people can’t go in,” Ruth says. “And so that becomes the most important way of sharing people’s culture and identities.”
Still unable to return home, Raji has continued his work on Osprey V. A new video, produced in the Gaza Strip, is out soon and he hopes it will be a wakeup call to the West.
“We are normal people just like you,” he says. “We have families, we drink coffee, we wear Adidas. But we are suffering from endless wars.”
An analyst warns that “volatility” could emerge if the US election results are close, but traders will be relieved once it’s over, giving the market “firmer ground.”
Cardi B has said she was not planning to vote in the US election this year, but Kamala Harris taking over as the Democratic nominee changed her mind.
The WAP rapper appeared at a Harris campaign rally on Friday, becoming the latest celebrity to endorse the vice president for Tuesday’s election following the likes of Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Bruce Springsteen and Eminem.
At the rally in Milwaukee in the swing state of Wisconsin, the singer said she would be voting for the Democratic nominee because she is “not delusional”, while branding Republican contender Donald Trump a “bully”.
“She’s passionate, compassionate… and most of all she is not delusional,” Cardi B said about the vice president, who took over as the Democratic presidential candidate after US President Joe Biden dropped out.
Cardi B went on to refer to Mr Trump as a “bully” and said about the Republican presidential candidate: “He said he’s gonna protect women whether they like it or not.
“If his definition of protection is not the freedom of choice… then I don’t want it,” she said.
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0:31
Trump investigated over Liz Cheney comments
Both Mr Trump and Ms Harris have been making the most of their last few days of campaigning, visiting swing states in a bid to get voters on their side in what is set to be a nail-bitingly close race.
The Republican nominee spent his day in Michigan and Wisconsin – calling on voters to “make America great again” by voting him in.
Mr Trump is currently being investigated by Arizona’s top prosecutor over comments he made about Liz Cheney, one of his most vocal Republican critics, when he said on Thursday she would not be a “radical war hawk” if she was in a war herself and had guns “trained on her face”.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Mr Trump said during an event with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
The suburbs of Atlanta could tell us a lot about where the US election is going
In the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, there’s a hugely tight race afoot that could tell us a lot about where this election goes.
As I walk through the leafy streets of Cobb County, I see the signs of change everywhere.
This suburb is home to an exodus from Atlanta – one that’s brought more diversity, more affluence and more nuance.
Four years ago, it delivered a rare win for Joe Biden in a southern state that hadn’t backed a Democrat for president in nearly 30 years.
Georgia turned out to be the biggest swing for the party in 2020. Now, Kamala Harris wants to hold on to that momentum, but it won’t be easy.
During his rally in Michigan last night, Mr Trump also engaged in an exchange with a heckler who shouted something unintelligible, before he stopped speaking and said: “You want to marry me?”
“She wants to marry me what the hell?”
That was met by a whooping before Mr Trump said: “Let me ask the [former] first lady if that would be ok… it’s OK with me but let me get permission”.
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2:06
Georgia voters split on two key issues
Meanwhile in Washington, the state governor has said he is “activating” members of the National Guard to be on standby in case of violence surrounding the upcoming election.
Governor Jay Inslee said he made the decision after he received information and concerns regarding potential violence.
The order is set to go into effect Monday and last until midnight on Thursday.
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