News Headlines - 15 August 2020

VJ Day: UK commemorates 75th anniversary as royals lead tributes - BBC News

The Royal Family has led the UK's commemorations on the 75th anniversary of VJ Day - the day World War Two ended with Japan's surrender.
The Prince of Wales led a two-minute silence at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, as part of a service of remembrance.
Later, in a TV address, his elder son Prince William urged the public "to learn the lessons of the past".
And a message from the Queen thanked those "who fought so valiantly".

4 members of Abe’s Cabinet visit Yasukuni on war anniversary : The Asahi Shimbun

Four Cabinet ministers visited Tokyo's war-related Yasukuni Shrine on Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II, in a move that is bound to raise heckles in China and South Korea... The ministers who visited are: Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, often touted as a future prime minister; Koichi Hagiuda, the education minister; Seiichi Eto, the state minister in charge of Okinawa and Northern Territories affairs; and Sanae Takaichi, the internal affairs minister.
The last time a Cabinet minister visited Yasukuni Shrine on Aug. 15 was in 2016 when Takaichi and Tamayo Marukawa, the state minister in charge of the Tokyo Olympics, did so.

South Korea’s Conservatives Outpoll Moon’s Party for First Time - Bloomberg

The popularity of South Korea’s main opposition party exceeded the ruling party’s ratings for the first time in a major poll since President Moon Jae-in took office in 2017, amid soaring real estate prices in Seoul.
The approval rate for the conservative United Future Party rose to 36.5%, up from 34.6% a week ago, a weekly Realmeter poll released Thursday showed. Moon’s ruling Democratic Party fell to 33.4% from 35.1% a week ago, it said.

Doctor deaths from Covid-19 in India have reached 'alarming' levels, Indian Medical Association says

The Indian Medical Association has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing the "rising concerns of safety of doctors during this Covid crisis," saying that almost 200 doctors have died across the country because of the virus... According to the IMA, 196 doctors across India have died because of the coronavirus as of August 7.

The True Coronavirus Toll in the U.S. Has Already Surpassed 200,000 - The New York Times

Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus... That suggests that the official death counts may be substantially underestimating the overall effects of the virus, as people die from the virus as well as by other causes linked to the pandemic.