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The Royal Thai Police are cracking down on online and on-site gambling, as up to 2,600 arrests have been made since the start of the UEFA European Football Championship.
The Centre for the Prevention and Suppression of Illegal Euro 2024 Football Betting has been active since the tournament began and will cover the full length which runs until July 14.
Officers involved have been working to prevent and suppress illegal gambling activities that have taken place online and in person. While the football remains ongoing, a huge number of people have already been arrested.
The Nation, a Thai publisher, has spoken with the police to get the details. From June 21 to June 27, 784 suspects have been arrested for on-site gambling. This includes 769 bettors, 12 bet collectors, and three bookmakers. The total circulation of this has been 117,440 baht.
When it comes to online gambling, a total of 265 suspects have been arrested and 80 websites have been taken down. This includes 230 bettors and 35 gambling organizers, with more than 400 million baht having been in circulation.
Thailand police give a warning as thousands arrested over gambling
This is just a short snapshot of the tournament so far, with a total of 2,113 suspects having been arrested for on-site gambling from June 14 to June 27. This has included 2,052 bettors, 22 bet collectors, and 39 bookmakers.
From the same timeline, a further 513 suspects have been arrested for online gambling and 142 websites have been taken down. This includes 450 bettors and 63 online gambling organizers.
Pol Lt Gen Akkaradej Phimonsri, assistant national police chief, said: “The Royal Thai Police will continue their stringent efforts to suppress illegal football betting activities.”
He issued a warning to business operators or establishments that allow the public to watch the matches from the Euros to close their services due to legal requirements. He warned that any violations would result in legal action.
As the tournament is far from over, with things just hotting up, more arrests could be made.
Featured Image: Photo by Waranont (Joe) on Unsplash
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Instagram will soon bring AI characters made by creators to the platform, with tests to begin in the U.S.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement initially through a post on his broadcast channel. He said: “Rolling out an early test in the U.S. of our AI studio so you might start seeing AIs from your favorite creators and interest-based AIs in the coming weeks on Instagram.
“These will primarily show up in messaging for now, and will be clearly labeled as AI.
“It’s early days and the first beta version of these AIs, so we’ll keep working on improving them and make them available to more people soon.”
The announcement comes on the same day (June 27) that the startup Character.AI shared the new feature where users can talk with AI avatars over a call.
Zuckerberg said they were working with several creators in the early roll-out stages of the creator-made chatbots. They’ve been working with the meme account Waste and technology creator Don Allen Stevenson, along with a handful of others.
In an interview with Kallaway, the CEO of Facebook and Instagram explained how the beginning stages will be like an experiment to see what works: “I don’t think we know going into this, what is going to be the most engaging and entertaining and trust-building formula for this.
“So we want to give people tools so that you can experiment with this and see what ends up working well.”
AI studio could soon be used by all creators following the initial launch
While it won’t be a full rollout, there’s hope that every creator and small business can create an AI for themselves in due time.
“There needs to be a lot of different APIs that get created to reflect people’s different interests. So a big part of the approach is going to be enabling every creator, and then eventually also every small business on the platform, to create an AI for themselves to help them interact with their community, and their customers if they’re a business.”
Meta will start testing the AI studio with around 50 creators in the US and a small percentage of its users. It could be fully launched by August.
Featured Image: Via Ideogram
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A lot has changed in the world since Sega debuted Crazy Taxi in 1999. The chaotic cab-driving arcade racer landed at the perfect time and its soundtrack by bands such as The Offspring fit the time period perfectly. A year later it came out for the Dreamcast and easily became one of the best-selling games on the format.
But where does a game like Crazy Taxi fit in the gaming landscape today? The original was unashamedly an arcade conversion – short adrenaline hits designed to make you put more coins into the slot. It worked on the Dreamcast because 3D games running at that speed were new, and having a near arcade-perfect conversion was something to shout about.
But other than nostalgia – which, don’t get me wrong, I am a sucker for – what can you do with a modern take on the Crazy Taxi universe?
The original had you screeching around corners to pick up fairs before speeding to their drop-off points a minute or so later – the better you drove, the more cash they gave you. But it wasn’t a game you played for hours on end. It wasn’t meant to be.
Now Sega is recruiting devs for a new Crazy Taxi game and it looks like it is expected to be Open World and multiplayer. This sounds interesting, lots of players all vying for fares, doubtless trying to smash into each other.

The video with the devs above is entirely in Japanese but is interesting to flick through even if you don’t speak the language, for the amount of Crazy Taxi memorabilia in it that shows just what an important franchise it was for Sega.
If Sega can pull off some kind of taxi Battle Royale here this could turn out to be a lot of fun – some kind of Crazy Taxi musical chairs where you are out if you don’t complete a fair in time could be an interesting concept.
The game will be developed by Sega’s Sapporo Studio and had previously been described as a AAA game. Interesting times for classic games.
The post Open world Crazy Taxi? We’re in but hoping that modern inventions such as Uber’s surge pricing aren’t implemented appeared first on ReadWrite.