The United States will significantly increase its anti-ship missile capabilities in Japan as part of a broader effort to deter China, three U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

Although the total number of U.S. troops in Japan will not change, the new deployments could be the first in a series of announcements this year on military forces in Asia aimed at making Beijing think twice before initiating any conflict.

The agreement between Japan and the United States, which follows nearly a year of talks, will be announced Wednesday after a meeting in Washington between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their Japanese counterparts.

Austin will meet Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada on Thursday at the Pentagon, followed by a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday.

The move comes after Japan last month unveiled its biggest military build-up since World War Two – a sweeping, five-year plan that was once unthinkable in the pacifist country but is fueled by concerns about Chinese actions in the region.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday that the Japan-U.S. alliance should be sure to “not harm the interests of third parties, and regional peace and stability.”

The anti-ship missiles would arrive in Japan under a revamped Marine Corps regiment of 2,000 troops that will focus on advanced intelligence, surveillance and transportation, the officials said. The move is expected to be completed by 2025.

The officials added that a separate U.S. Army company of about 300 soldiers and 13 vessels would be deployed by this spring to help transport U.S. and Japanese troops and equipment, allowing for the rapid dispersal of forces.

Japan has watched with growing concern China’s belligerence toward Taiwan as Beijing seeks to assert its sovereignty claims over the island.

Although Japan and Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China claims as its own, do not have formal diplomatic ties, they have close unofficial relations and share concerns about China’s increased military activities.

China staged military drills near Taiwan in August after a visit to Taipei by then-U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, including launching five missiles into the sea close to Okinawa, within Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Japan hosts 18,000 U.S. Marines, the biggest concentration outside the United States. Most of them are in bases on the main Okinawan island, which is part of a chain that stretches along the edge of the East China Sea to within about 100 km (62 miles) of Taiwan.

The large U.S. military presence has fueled local resentment, with Okinawa’s government asking other parts of Japan to host some of the force. In total, there are about 54,000 U.S. troops in Japan.

Chinese display maker BOE Technology Group Co Ltd (000725.SZ), a supplier of both Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS), plans to invest a substantial sum to build two factories in Vietnam, two people familiar with the matter said.

The investment may total up to $400 million, one of them said.

The plan underscores efforts by technology firms led by U.S. iPhone maker Apple and Taiwanese device assembler Foxconn to lower supply chain exposure to China amid trade and geopolitical tension between Beijing and Washington and production disruption caused by China’s COVID-19 containment measures.

BOE is in talks to rent dozens of hectares of land in north Vietnam to add to its relatively small plant in the south that supplies mostly television screens to South Korea’s Samsung and LG Electronics Inc (066570.KS), the people said, declining to be identified as negotiations were confidential.

BOE declined to comment.

Northern Vietnam has in recent years attracted significant investment from electronics giants, becoming a major hub for the production of smartphones, computers and cameras, including flagship goods from Apple and Samsung.

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (Foxconn) (2317.TW) and China’s Luxshare Precision Industry (002475.SZ) also make or plan to assemble a number of Apple products in the area such as laptop and tablet computers.

BOE plans to rent up to 100 hectares and use 20% for a plant making remote control systems at a cost of $150 million, one of the people said.

The rest would be for displays, with BOE spending $250 million to build a plant on 50 hectares while suppliers would use the remaining 30 hectares, all by 2025, the person said.

BOE plans to make the more sophisticated organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) screens at the site rather than liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), the person said.

Apple, which included BOE in its 2021 list of manufacturing partners, uses OLED screens for its latest iPhone smartphones.

China’s biggest display maker by output is set to become the largest supplier of displays for new iPhones by 2024, analyst Kuo Ming-chi at TF International Securities forecast last week.

The U.S. tech giant, however, plans to start making mobile screens in-house by next year, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

Apple declined to comment.

BOE’s Vietnam plan is not specifically aimed at supplying Apple, the person said.

Customer Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone maker, produces half of its handsets in Vietnam while LG has a large operation in the country and is planning new investment.

Young “Elvis” star Austin Butler and veteran actress Michelle Yeoh took home top movie awards at the Golden Globes ceremony on Tuesday as Hollywood returned and embraced a show that had been knocked off television by a diversity and ethics scandal.

Butler, 31, was named best actor in a movie drama for playing rock music legend Elvis Presley, and seemed overwhelmed to accept the honor in front of many of the top names in show business.

“I’m in this room with all my heroes,” Butler said. “I can’t believe I’m here.

“Brad (Pitt), I love you. Quentin (Tarantino), I printed out the script of ‘Pulp Fiction’ when I was 12 years old.”

Yeoh, honored for her leading role in dimension-hopping action movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” took the stage after her name was called and said she was “just going to stand here and take this all in.”

“Hollywood was a dream come true until I came here,” the Malaysian actress of Chinese descent added, noting that she was called a “minority” and asked if she could speak English early in her career.

Forty years later, “it’s been an amazing journey and incredible fight to be here today, but I think it’s been worth it,” she said.

Colin Farrell won lead actor in a movie musical or comedy for portraying Padraic Suilleabhain, a man trying to repair a soured friendship, in the dark Irish comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin.”

Farrell thanked his fellow cast members, including “Jenny the Donkey.”

Celebrities and broadcaster NBC abandoned the 2022 Globes because of ethical lapses at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the group that hands out the awards.

A larger, more diverse membership and other changes by the HFPA persuaded many of the biggest movie and TV stars to support this year’s ceremony, which provides publicity for winners and nominees and often boosts their chances at the Oscars.

The show unfolded largely as it had in years past, except for a biting monologue from comedian and host Jerrod Carmichael who opened the show joking, “I’m here because I’m black.”

“One day you’re making mint tea at home. The next day you’re invited to be the Black face of an embattled white organization,” he said at the ceremony, which was broadcast live on Comcast Corp’s (CMCSA.O) NBC network and streamed on Peacock.

Other honorees included “Black Panther” actress Angela Bassett, who won a supporting actress award for playing Queen Ramonda in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

“We showed the world what Black unity, leadership and love looks like beyond, behind and in front of the camera,” Bassett said as she held her trophy.

The flashy “Elvis” biopic and sci-fi blockbuster “Avatar: The Way of Water” were vying for the top honor of best drama film against Steven Spielberg’s coming-of-age movie “The Fabelmans” and “Tar,” starring Cate Blanchett as a conniving orchestra conductor.

“Top Gun: Maverick” also was in the mix, though the military action film’s chances were likely hurt by star Tom Cruise returning his Globe statues in protest in 2021, awards experts said.

Cruise was reacting to a Los Angeles Times investigation that revealed the HFPA had no Black journalists in its ranks and accused members of soliciting favors from celebrities and movie studios.

In TV categories, “Abbott Elementary” creator and star Quinta Brunson was honored as best actress in a musical or comedy.

Roughly 200 journalists and others from the international film industry voted on this year’s Globes. Among those voters, nearly 52% are racially and ethnically diverse, including 10% who are Black, according to the HFPA.

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I’m not sure why but I’ve never liked the color red. I tend to associate it with war, with anger, with velocity. Did you know red cars are pulled over more than cars of any other color? It’s true. That may be because they are bright and easily garner more attention on the road than vehicles of different colors.

A crimson sky, on the other hand, can be breathtaking — sometimes. When the sun sets, one can often see a collage of colors painting the sky, including crimson. And on Sunday, January 8, in the country of Brazil, the sky was crimson alright — and very, very ugly. “It’s happening again.” Those words were said all over Twitter as scores of people stormed Brazil’s Capitol over the weekend, unwilling to accept the results of their election.

Sound familiar, my friends? Far right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had many supporters, just as Donald Trump did. And apparently, those supporters, just like Trump’s, thought nothing of storming their country’s Capitol. This is because they did not like the fact that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office on January 1. His politics are leftist and quite different than the man he was replacing.

And so there they were — the same sorts of people we had dealt with. They were angry, they were strident, and they were dangerous. They smashed furniture. They destroyed artwork. On and on, the insanity went, turning the skies crimson with rage just like ours were that horrible day of January 6.

At the end of it all, many were taken into custody. More than 1,000 people were detained. Those detained had stormed the court of Brazil and the Presidential palace demanding their guy be reinstated. Sound familiar?

My friends, this is the legacy that Donald Trump has left us with. It is no surprise. While many ask how this could have happened, I believe the better question is, how could it NOT have?

Dysfunctional behavior spurs dysfunctional behavior. Group-think is alive and well and living freely in this world, always ready to swoop down on angry people and push them to turn our skies crimson.’

What happened should not be a surprise. And yes, part of the blame needs to go to republicans who legitimized this type of behavior, allowing it to spread unfettered like mass disease into the souls of many.

The post Sound familiar? appeared first on Palmer Report.

LIMA (Reuters) -Peru’s top prosecutor’s office on Tuesday said it launched an inquiry into new President Dina Boluarte and members of her cabinet over violent clashes that have seen at least 40 killed and hundreds injured since early December.

The inquiry comes after 17 civilians were killed in the country’s southern Puno region on Monday – the most lethal day of protests since former President Pedro Castillo was ousted and detained last month. The violence continued on Tuesday with a police officer dying after his car was torched.

The attorney general’s office said it was investigating Boluarte along with Prime Minister Alberto Otarola, Defense Minister Jorge Chavez and Interior Minister Victor Rojas on charges of “genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries.”

Human rights groups have accused authorities of using firearms on protesters and dropping smoke bombs from helicopters. The army says protesters have used weapons and homemade explosives.

The president and ministers’ offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The ouster of Castillo, which came after he illegally attempted to dissolve Congress, has ignited a wave of protests across the country. Protesters are demanding the resignation of Boluarte, the dissolution of Congress, changes to the constitution and Castillo’s release.

Lawmakers on Tuesday were set to cast their ballots in a vote of confidence in Boluarte’s cabinet, which is needed to lead a new government.

Prime Minister Alberto Otarola has blamed organized attackers financed by “dark” money for those killed on Monday. Another 68 civilians and 75 police officers were reported injured, according to the ombudsman.

Otarola also announced a three-day overnight curfew in Puno, aimed at quelling the violence. Footage from local media showed looting of Puno businesses on Monday night, while Juliaca’s airport remained shut on Tuesday after 9,000 people were said to have attempted to invade the premises.

In a statement on Tuesday, Peru’s ombudsman office urged peaceful protests as well as for prosecutors to fully investigate the deaths.

The office noted the “extreme violence” of the policeman’s death, claiming he was tortured before he died, while also condemning an arson attack on a Puno congressman’s residence in the city of Ilave with family members still inside.

Following are reactions to the death of Australian Cardinal George Pell, a leading Roman Catholic conservative and former top Vatican official who in 2020 was acquitted of sexual abuse allegations.

“For many people, particularly of the Catholic faith, this will be a difficult day and I express my condolences to all those who are mourning today.

“This will come as a shock to many. This was a hip operation and the consequences of it, unfortunately, have been that Cardinal Pell has lost his life.”

“Australia has lost a great son and the Church has lost a great leader with the passing of George Pell.

“His incarceration on charges that the High Court ultimately scathingly dismissed was a modern form of crucifixion; reputationally at least a kind of living death.

“His prison journals should become a classic: a fine man wrestling with a cruel fate and trying to make sense of the unfairness of suffering.”

“Cardinal Pell was a very significant and influential Church leader, both in Australia and internationally, deeply committed to Christian discipleship.

“Cardinal Pell led the local Church of Melbourne from 1996 to 2001 with strong leadership in the Catholic faith and with good governance, before being transferred to Sydney and then to Rome.

“May eternal light shine upon him, and may he now rest in peace and rise to glory in the Lord.”

“This news comes as a great shock to all of us. Please pray for the repose of the soul of Cardinal Pell, for comfort and consolation for his family and for all of those who loved him and are grieving him at this time.”

“Cardinal Pell provided strong and clear leadership within the Catholic Church in Australia … for more than 25 years.”

“His many strengths were widely recognised, both in Australia and around the world, as his Vatican appointments as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy and as a member of the Council of Cardinals, an advisory group to Pope Francis, testify.”

“Cardinal Pell’s impact on the life of the Church in Australia and around the world will continue to be felt for many years.”

“For many survivors of clerical abuse, particularly here in Australia, George Pell was a symbol of a system that repeatedly put the interests of the Catholic Church above the interest and safety of individuals.

“As a result of this news, we anticipate a spike in individuals coming forward to disclose their experiences of institutional abuse for the first time.”

The latest Pacific storm unleashed torrential downpours and damaging winds in California on Tuesday, knocking out power and turning city streets into rivers as mudslides cut off highways and entire communities faced evacuation orders.

More than 33 million Californians were threatened by severe weather throughout the day as “heavy to excessive” rainfall was expected across the state, especially in southern California, as wind gusts were clocked at more than 40 miles (64 km) an hour in many places, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

The high winds wreaked havoc on the power grid, knocking out electricity to 180,000 homes and businesses as of midday Tuesday, according to data from Poweroutage.us.

The storms have killed at least 17 people since the start of the year, California Governor Gavin Newsom said.

“This storm was different from the standpoint that it was here much longer. It was more intense because of the prior storm, the ground was much more saturated, which led to a lot more flooding and a lot more rescues because of the ground saturation,” said Barry Parker, division chief of the Ventura County Fire Department.

Experts say the growing frequency and intensity of such storms, interspersed with extreme heat and dry spells, are symptoms of climate change. Though the rain and snow will help replenish reservoirs and aquifers, a mere two weeks of precipitation will not solve two decades of drought.

Meanwhile, terrain denuded by past wildfires has created an increased risk of flash floods and mudslides.

The torrential rains, along with heavy snow in mountain areas, follow yet another “atmospheric river” of dense moisture funneled into California from the tropical Pacific.

Six atmospheric rivers have hit California in the past 17 days, dumping as much as 30 inches (76 cm) of rain in some areas, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with NWS’s Weather Prediction Center. At least two more were coming, starting Wednesday morning, Taylor said.

“We’re in the middle of a three-year megadrought in the entire west coast of the United States … And now here we are talking about historic floods and atmospheric rivers. Now stacking six with three more on the way,” Newsom told The Weather Channel in an interview.

“If you don’t believe in climate change, come to California. We’re living it,” Newsom said.

Much of the damage has been concentrated around the city of Santa Barbara, about 100 miles (160 km) northwest of Los Angeles, where the steep foothills slope toward the Pacific Ocean.

In the Rancho Oso area of the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara, mud and debris across the roadway isolated about 400 people and 70 horses, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department said on Twitter, posting a photo of a vehicle stuck in the mud.

Near the coast, the California Highway Patrol closed U.S. 101, the main highway connecting northern and southern California, with no estimated time on reopening.

“Please stay home and do not drive today if at all possible,” the highway patrol advised on Twitter, posting pictures of mudslides and fallen rock that blocked the highway.

Many communities were flooded including Goleta, where a man rode his paddleboard through the streets.

On Monday, officials ordered the evacuation of some 25,000 people, including the entire affluent enclave of Montecito near Santa Barbara, due to heightened flood and mudslide risks. But evacuation orders throughout Santa Barbara County were lifted on Tuesday afternoon, the county sheriff’s department announced.

Further south in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Chatsworth, two vehicles fell into a sinkhole that opened beneath a road.

Floodwaters invaded the train station in downtown Los Angeles, submerging a pedestrian walkway.

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It could be mere coincidence, or a level of coordination that we don’t know about, or a sign that it’s just simply time. Regardless of the reason, over the past week it’s been revealed that DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis are now each likely within mere weeks of bringing indictments in their separate criminal investigations into Donald Trump.

Here’s what got me thinking. These probes are both investigating aspects of the same overall Trump crime spree, from the same stretch of time. They’ve each progressed through grand jury stages and testimony stages at a roughly similar pace. And now they’re each entering their indictment phase.

So why is it that the DOJ probe is widely considered to have been slow moving, heel dragging, and cowardly, even as such words have rarely if at all been spoken about the Fulton County DA probe. After all, these two probes have basically had the same timeframe, pace, and endpoint. Yet we’re constantly hearing about how Merrick Garland’s DOJ waited way too long to do anything, supposedly still isn’t doing anything, and has allegedly dragged its heels so badly that no one has any remaining hope that the DOJ is even going to do anything. If this is true of the DOJ probe, wouldn’t it also be true of the Fulton Country probe?

And that brings us to the only real difference here: the manner in which the media and pundit class has framed these two probes. From the very start, not a single day has gone by in which some media pundit, either on TV or Twitter, hasn’t tried to score cheap points by attacking Merrick Garland. For as long as he’s had the job, the daily media narrative about Garland has been that he’s hiding under his desk, trying to avoid doing his job, in way over his head, and – we hear this phrase over and over and over ad nauseum – doing nothing.

It doesn’t matter that it’s never been true. It doesn’t matter that these same major news outlets have all periodically reported scoops about major grand jury breakthroughs. It doesn’t even seem to matter that the DOJ had the FBI raid Trump’s home and seize evidence. When these things happen they get covered for a day or a week, before getting pushed aside in favor of the more outrage-inducing (and thus ratings-friendly) narrative that Garland and the DOJ are “doing nothing.”

But if all the activity we’ve seen from Garland and the DOJ has indeed been so dissatisfactory and outrage inducing, then why hasn’t the Fulton County DA’s exact same pace also been dissatisfactory and outrage inducing? The answer is simple: the media just hasn’t gone there when it comes to the Fulton County probe. The media knows it can gin up ratings on any slow news day simply by kicking the U.S. Attorney General. But the media also knows that the Fulton County DA is seen as something of an underdog, a local District Attorney trying to take on a former U.S. President, so the media doesn’t dare try to stir up outrage against the DA for ratings.

Come to think of it, there is a potential argument to be made that the DOJ, with its broader resources, should be able to move more quickly than a local District Attorney. In reality, the reason why the DOJ and the DA have taken roughly the same amount of time to complete their Trump probes is that they’re each beholden to the same glacially slow American court system.

But even among the loudest Garland bashers, you never hear that argument presented that the DOJ should have been able to move more quickly than a District Attorney. Instead the angry rant you hear is always that no prosecutor should ever take as long as the DOJ has taken to indict Trump, under any circumstances. And yet it doesn’t even seem to register for them that the District Attorney has taken the same exact amount of time.

The reality is that the slow pace of both these criminal cases against Trump hasn’t really mattered. Trump, a politically crippled has-been, hasn’t done anything since leaving office beyond running his mouth. Even when he announced his long-hyped 2024 campaign, it elicited mostly laughs.

The average American doesn’t have any opinion on how long it’s taken to indict Trump, and when he is indicted, they’ll simply say “Oh wow okay, that happened, no surprise, that guy was a crook.” It’s only those who have made a point of sitting around every day, working themselves into a tizzy over the fact that Trump hasn’t been indicted yet, and inventing doomsday scenarios in their head about how we’re all doomed unless Trump falls through a trap door right this minute, who seem to have a problem with the amount of time that Trump’s indictment is taking. It’s also a reminder that most Americans don’t spend every day of their lives actively consuming political news.

But when it comes to those who do spend every day consuming political news, there’s a rather disturbing pattern here. Simply by near-unanimously repeating the same ratings-driven narratives every day, the mainstream media and pundit class has conditioned audiences to believe that the DOJ’s Trump probe has taken far longer than any probe ever should, while simultaneously being fine with the other big Trump probe having taken the exact same amount of time.

There’s a real danger to how the mainstream media and pundit class is able to get audiences to hold completely paradoxical beliefs, simply by unanimously repeating the same ratings-driven narratives over and over until those narratives “feel true.” Media outlets can report the latest progress in the DOJ’s Trump probe at the top of the hour, and then spend the rest of the hour insisting the DOJ is doing nothing regarding Trump, and that somehow doesn’t faze audiences. What’s going on here?

We talk a lot about how obvious it is that Fox News and right wing propagandists use repetition and emotional manipulation to condition their audiences to eagerly believe absurdly false things that deep down even those audience members know can’t be true. We need to be just as careful when it comes to letting the mainstream media use more subtle versions of those same tricks on us. When we’re completely outraged about how long one Trump probe is taking, but it doesn’t even register that the other Trump probe is taking the exact same amount of time, it’s time for us all to start asking questions about the media narratives we’re being fed and the impact those narratives are having on our psychology.

The post What’s going on here? appeared first on Palmer Report.