Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni has announced that he will not negotiate with the United States if it keeps trying to denuclearize his country.

We have at least 1.9 million metric tons of not-so-rare rare earth minerals, the second largest deposit in the world. It could even be double that. Refining it could release us from China’s stranglehold. We need rare earth minerals for modern technologies, including electronics, renewable energy, and military applications China, which has bought up 70% […] The post US Has The 2nd Largest Reserves of Rare Earth Minerals in the World appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Casino Obsessed Songs in the US – 80s Edition(Image from Pixabay)American pop culture did not simply soundtrack casinos in the 1980s; it rebuilt their ambience. Atlantic City’s late 70s legal shift set the boardwalk up as a true foil to Las Vegas, and by the early 80s, the two markets shaped how artists wrote about risk. Showrooms kept their shine. Floors learned a steadier pulse that mixed heartland guitars with country-pop hooks and a dose of metal’s adrenaline.This feature repurposes modern round-ups of casino-obsessed tracks as a doorway, then narrows the focus to the U.S. in the 80s, when the industry’s sound moved from croon to chorus and from showroom to speaker array.Method Lens: The Gambling.com StudyThe recent study by Gambling.com, circulated by music features, starts with a simple filter: On Spotify, collect songs that include the word casino in the title, then count each use of casino in the lyrics and divide by song length to get mentions per minute. The approach yields a clean leaderboard and a useful clue for an '80s brief:Tucker Wetmore’s Casino sits first at 3.04 mentions per minute. Then Radium Dolls at 2.79, Niels at 2.52, Ambush Buzzworl at 2.17, and Houndmouth at 1.13. Arctic Monkeys and Wilco appear further down.The pattern is the point. Explicit titles skew modern. But in the 80s, artists leaned on place, metaphor, and mood…From Boardwalk Noir to Desert ShineNew Jersey’s decision in the late 70s, with the first Atlantic City property opening in 1978, gave writers a lived-in location. Springsteen leaned into that reality in 1982 with Atlantic City, framing debt and hope in a space that already felt cinematic.Meanwhile, Las Vegas scaled production. A typical night could move from torch songs to sequenced pop without losing the thread. Both cities framed gambling with sound, different textures, and one intention.Case study: Atlantic City and the art of restraintSpringsteen’s track remains a clear example of a casino portrayed as a character. No neon sales pitch. Just a room that makes choices feel expensive. Because the arrangement is spare, the details carry weight, and the boardwalk reads as both location and metaphor.The song’s power comes from what it leaves unsaid. It trusts the listener to hear slot lights in the background while the lyric stays focused on survival.Hooks and Hands: country-pop’s card tableJuice Newton’s Queen of Hearts, a 1981 staple, turns card language into relationship grammar. It works on radio, whether or not you ever step onto a gaming floor, yet the imagery feels like green felt under your palms.That is why modern curators can stitch these 80s tracks next to new slot games for online players without breaking the mood. The vocabulary of chance travels cleanly from chorus to reel.Programming the Floor: What changed in the 80sBy mid-decade, casinos were programming energy as much as artists. Showrooms preserved crooner lineage, now upgraded with gated snares and synth bass. On the floor, curators favored steady tempos, bright choruses, and familiar hooks that lengthened dwell time without exhausting guests.Laboratory findings later underlined the practice. Lower tempos correlate with longer sessions. Higher tempos nudge faster betting. The industry learned to glide between the two, using music as a dial rather than a spotlight.Listening list, framed by an 80s briefAtlantic City, Bruce Springsteen, 1982. Narrative focus, economic context, and a room you can picture without a camera. Queen of Hearts, Juice Newton, 1981. Three minutes of card grammar in friendly pop.Add heartland rock that talks about luck without naming the table, then one high-octane cut for attitude. Program these against contemporary additions, and the transitions feel natural because the DNA matches.Modern Casino Title Leaderboard by Gambling.comRank                    Artist                        Song                                            Mentions per minute1                          Tucker Wetmore      Casino                                         3.042                          Radium Dolls           Casino                                         2.793                          Niels                        Casino                                         2.524                          Ambush Buzzworl    Casino                                         2.175                          Houndmouth            Casino (Bad Things)                   1.13Tucket Wetmore’s “Casino”: the modern, on-the-nose counterpointTucker Wetmore’s “Casino”: the modern, on-the-nose counterpointTucker Wetmore’s “Casino” lands at the top of Gambling.com’s leaderboard for “most casino-obsessed” tracks because it literally packs the word into the lyric eight times in just over two and a half minutes, which works out to 3.04 mentions per minute. That scoring comes from a simple method. Pull songs with “casino” in the title from Spotify, count in-lyric uses, then normalize by song length. It is tidy, it is measurable, and it explains why Wetmore’s 2025 single sits at No. 1 in the study’s Top 10.What makes it interesting for an '80s feature is the contrast in how the theme is handled. Wetmore treats “casino” as the focal word and a recurring hook, so the track sells its metaphor openly. The lyric reads like a straight shot of risk, relapse, and attraction to the table, and the country polish brings it to radio with no guesswork. Compare that with 80s staples that circled the room rather than naming it. Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” turns the city into a character and lets the casino hum in the background. Juice Newton’s “Queen of Hearts” bakes card play into relationship grammar without needing to say “casino” once. The decade leaned on place names, blue-collar economy, and card imagery to do the heavy lifting, which is why those songs feel like the floor even when they never say the word.There is a production gap, too. Wetmore’s cut rides a contemporary country mix that treats clarity and chorus lift as the engine, a style designed for playlists and quick recognition in a crowded feed. The 80s approach lived across two spaces at once. Showrooms kept the crooner lineage while the gaming floor moved toward steady BPMs, gated snares, and synth gloss to nudge dwell time. The songs of that era often worked as atmosphere first, narrative second. Wetmore flips the order. He makes “casino” the message and the medium, a neon sign inside the chorus, where many 80s hits kept the neon just outside the frame.Final ThoughtsThe 80s did not crown a single casino anthem. They normalized a language of chance. Between Atlantic City’s reboot and the Strip’s scale-up, Americans learned to hear risk as rhythm.If the decade has a signature, it is the click of a coin aligning with a snare on two and four. That timing still holds, which is why the old tracks remain useful and the modern leaderboard feels intuitive.

TOKYO — Conservative Sanae Takaichi was elected Japan’s first female prime minister on Tuesday, shattering a political glass ceiling for women and setting the country up for a decisive turn to the Right. An acolyte of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and an admirer of Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Takaichi is expected to return to Abe-style government stimulus as she attempts to jumpstart an economy struggling with slow growth and rising prices. Her victory marks a pivotal shift in a country where men hold overwhelming sway, yet she named just two women to her cabinet. Takaichi is likely to make a sharp turn to the Right on immigration and defense, reflecting the broader rightward shift in global politics. In her first press conference, she promised to work tirelessly to restore Japan’s economic might, and deepen the relationship with the United States under President Donald Trump. “I am determined to deliver results for the nation, to build a strong Japan and to never give up,” she said. “I also plan to meet President Trump at an early date to elevate the Japan-U.S. relationship to new heights,” she said. Her victory was secured after her Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for most of postwar history, agreed on Monday to form a coalition with the right-wing Japan Innovation Party, known as Ishin. Together, the parties are two seats short of a majority in the lower house. For Takaichi to be successful, she will need to find ways to cooperate with opposition lawmakers, said Tadashi Mori, a professor of politics at Aichi Gakuin University. “The two parties do not command a majority in either chamber and to ensure a stable government and gain control of key parliamentary committees, they will need to secure more than half the seats,” he said. Takaichi named just two women to her cabinet: Fellow Abe disciple Satsuki Katayama becomes the country’s first female finance minister, while Kimi Onoda becomes economic security minister. In her leadership campaign, she promised to boost the number of women in the cabinet to match socially progressive Nordic countries. But while the percentage of female ministers in Nordic governments ranges from Denmark’s 36% to Finland’s 61%, under Takaichi, women will make up only 16% of Japan’s cabinet, including her. Takaichi takes over when Japanese politics appears more fractured than at almost any other time in recent memory, thanks in part to the rise of the smaller, hard-right Sanseito Party, which has siphoned voters away from the LDP. Sanseito chief Sohei Kamiya said that both national politics and the LDP had been on a leftward drift since the assassination of former premier Abe in 2022. Takaichi, he told broadcaster NHK, could possibly reverse that. “While we won’t hesitate to oppose her when necessary, we intend to maintain a friendly working relationship,” he said. The LDP’s former coalition partner, the more moderate Komeito, broke up their 26-year-old alliance this month after the LDP chose the right-wing Takaichi as new leader. Takaichi’s endorsement of Abe-style fiscal stimulus has prompted a so-called “Takaichi trade” in the stock market, sending the Nikkei share average to record highs, the most recent hit on Tuesday. However, it has also caused investor unease about the government’s ability to pay for increased spending when the debt load exceeds annual output. Both the yen and bond prices have weakened as a result. Some analysts say Ishin, which has advocated for budget cuts, could restrain some of Takaichi’s spending ambitions. Takaichi has said defense and national security would be core pillars of any administration she led. A frequent visitor to the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo, which some Asian neighbours view as a symbol of wartime aggression, Takaichi has also called for a revision of Japan’s postwar pacifist constitution to recognize the existence of the nation’s military forces. Rising political star Shinjiro Koizumi will serve as defense minister, while veteran lawmaker Toshimitsu Motegi will be foreign minister. Takaichi was sworn in as Japan’s 104th prime minister on Tuesday evening, succeeding Shigeru Ishiba, who last month announced his resignation to take responsibility for election losses. (Reporting by Mariko Katsumura, Tim Kelly, Kantaro Komiya, Yoshifumi Takemoto, Satoshi Sugiyama and Kentaro Okasaka; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Kate Mayberry and Hugh Lawson)

A Christian woman was punished after refusing to escort a prominent transgender-identifying male “political figure” to a female locker room at a spa operated by the iconic Hershey Entertainment and Resorts, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.  The suit says that Jeriah Sellers, a devout Christian, was told to leave her faith at the door after she informed her supervisor that she was uncomfortable bringing a male into the female locker room at the Melt Spa by Hershey in Pennsylvania. As a result of her request not to be forced to bring males into female spaces, Sellers says that she was suspended without pay for a shift and slapped on the wrist by the company’s HR department.  “Hershey wants you to leave your personal, religious, and political beliefs at the door,” Sellers was told by a company HR representative, the lawsuit alleges. The suit accuses the spa of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits religious discrimination and requires employers to accommodate workers’ religious practices.   Sellers is being represented by lawyers Andrea Shaw and Jeremy Samek, a lawyer with the Independence Law Center, a Pennsylvania-based public interest law firm. The suit was filed in the federal court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.  “This is really, I think, a  case where the corporate mentality on the transgender issue is that employees can’t be accommodated and that they’re justified in punishing religious beliefs on this issue,” Shaw told The Daily Wire. “And that’s what needs to change. The corporate can have their policy, but they need to accommodate their employees with their religious beliefs.”  Hershey Entertainment and Resorts was founded in 1927 by chocolate baron Milton S. Hershey, more than 30 years after he founded the famed Hershey Chocolate company. While the two are separate business entities, they both partner with the Milton Hershey School.  The controversy began on May 28, 2025, when Sellers says her supervisor told her that a transgender-identifying male who was a “well-known political figure” was coming to the spa and would be using the female locker room. After she was told of the upcoming visit, Sellers told her supervisor that she would be unable to bring the male to the locker room because of her Christian religious beliefs. It is unclear who the figure visiting the spa was.  Her supervisor responded by saying that it was not a problem and offered to bring the guest to the locker room, according to the suit. A few days after this conversation, Sellers and her supervisor discussed a potential religious accommodation.  “[Sellers] explained that as a Christian, she wanted to figure out how best to respond to this situation in a positive way for everyone, but that she was not comfortable escorting a biological male into the Women’s Locker Room because it went against her religious beliefs, which also included her concern for other female guests who may be uncomfortable having a biological male present in the designated female locker room facility,” a copy of the suit obtained by The Daily Wire said.  The supervisor indicated that the accommodation was reasonable but that it would need approval from the HR department, the suit says. During a meeting on June 4, 2025, with the HR department, Sellers says that she was told that she would be disciplined by having her shift for the day suspended without pay and receiving a write-up by HR. That was when she was allegedly told to leave her “personal, religious, and political beliefs at the door.” She was also given a copy of the company’s transgender policies, which require employees to guide customers to their facilities based on if they mark male, female, or “non-binary,” according to the suit.  An exhibit included in the suit viewed by The Daily Wire reveals a document called “Spa Transgender Policies” dated September 2021 that says that “guests are welcome to use the locker room that corresponds with their gender identity. Bathroom and shower stalls are also located within the locker rooms for privacy.”  Sellers said that she had never seen the document outlining the spa’s transgender policies before.  “Despite Jeriah’s request for a reasonable accommodation based on her deeply held religious beliefs, and in spite of both her supervisor’s and manager’s recognition that she easily could be accommodated, Defendant disciplined Jeriah, placed her under threat of future discipline and instructed her to leave her religious beliefs at the door.” Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to DailyWire.com/Subscribe to join now. On July 21, 2025, Sellers filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Two days later, the EEOC issued a right-to-sue letter indicating that it would not be able to resolve the complaint quickly.  As a Christian, Sellers believes that God created only two sexes, male and female, and believes it would be deceitful to purposely bring a male into a female space.  Additionally, her “Christian faith dictates her belief in modesty and privacy,” the suit said. “Therefore, it is a violation of Plaintiff’s religious beliefs to be present where males might change or to encourage, aid, or facilitate the entry of a biological male into a designated space where females undress without their consent, thereby subjecting those women to a sexually harassing environment where their privacy will be compromised.” The suit requests that a court rule that Hershey Entertainment and Resorts violated Sellers’ civil rights and ensure that she has an accommodation for the future.  Sellers first began working at Melt Spa in August 2023 and was required to give female guests a tour of the female locker room while only having to escort male guests to the door of the male locker room.

'up to their same old tricks'

'Public service isn’t a political weapon'