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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)