The week in pictures: December 29th, 2014 – January 5th, 2015

2015 is only a week old and already there's been a whole slew of big stories to hit the headlines so lets take a few moments to remind ourselves of some of the biggest from around the world

Prince Andrew has been named in US court documents that allege he had sex with an underage girl several times during his friendship with disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein. This left Buckingham Palace issuing urgent and strongly worded denials of any “impropriety with underage minors” involving the Prince but with rumors circulating that there were hidden cameras at some parties the Prince attended, the press feeding frenzy was almost unstoppable.

The spiraling deterioration in the relationship between New York and its police force seemed equally unstoppable as anti-police protests continue in the wake of numerous unarmed black suspects being killed whilst in custody or during arrest, and two New York Policemen gunned down by a mental case seeking revenge. Mayor de Blasio hasn't helped by being sympathetic to the protestors and officers showed their distaste by turning their backs on him at the funerals of the fallen officers.

Air crash investigators continued to search for the black boxes from the AirAsia airbus that crashed in the Java Sea south of Kalinmantan last week. The flight that had been carrying 162 people disappeared from radar in bad weather during its flight from Surabaya to Singapore and a wide ranging searched involving numerous nations turned up but a few pieces of wreckage and some thirty five bodies. The search, investigation and recovery operation were all hampered by severe weather in the region.

In sport Chelsea and Manchester United both expressed an interest in signing the Real Madrid defender Raphael Varane but have been told it'll cost them over 20 million GBP and Manchester City want Julian Draxler from Schalke but the Germans want 25 million GBP for the midfielder. Will any of these clubs stump up these vast fortunes for new players? You'll have to read our daily news pages to find out but in the meantime lets look at some of the stories that snatched our headlines last week

1. While Minnesota has allowed online line lottery sales that benefit the state, Colorado legislators just passed a bill prohibiting their state lottery from going online and Maryland says they will review online lottery sales possibility in a year’s time.

2. Caesars Entertainment Corp hopes that merger and restructuring will allow the entity to become a financially corporate structure.

3. November, 2014 in Delaware: online poker and igaming revenues are showing a whopping 42% increase over the previous month.

4. Battered casino industry to be heavily taxed next year in Sweeney's bid to save Atlantic City in 2015.

5. Battered casino industry to be heavily taxed next year in Sweeney's bid to save Atlantic City in 2015.

6. Lebron is probably missing Miami now that he’s back in Cleveland, the “mistake on the lake.” GamingZion thinks things will look better next season, however.

7. GamingZion's weekly look at your starsigns and what the heavens have in store for you in the week ahead.