Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi's visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine has renewed diplomatic tensions with China and South Korea on the 81st anniversary of Japan's surrender in the Second World War.

Koizumi visited the shrine on August 15 to pay respects to Japan's war dead. Economic Security Minister Kimi Onoda also visited, while Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi did not attend personally but sent a ritual offering.

For many Japanese visitors, Yasukuni is a place to remember those who died in war.

For China, South Korea and other countries affected by Imperial Japan's expansion, however, the shrine carries a very different meaning.

It commemorates millions of Japan's war dead, including 14 convicted Class-A war criminals. Visits by senior Japanese political leaders are consequently interpreted by critics as failing to adequately confront the country's wartime aggression.

China lodged a protest over the latest visits, while South Korea expressed regret and again called for Japanese leaders to demonstrate sincere reflection on the country's wartime history.

Prime Minister Takaichi's decision not to visit is itself significant.

Despite her conservative political reputation and previous association with the shrine, her absence has been interpreted as an attempt to avoid unnecessarily damaging relations with Beijing and Seoul.

The episode demonstrates how historical memory continues to influence present-day East Asian diplomacy more than eight decades after the war.

Japan, China and South Korea are major economic powers whose cooperation matters for trade and regional stability. Yet disagreements over wartime history repeatedly complicate those relationships.

Yasukuni remains more than a religious or memorial site—it is a symbol of unresolved historical memory in East Asia. Japan's challenge is balancing domestic remembrance with the reality that actions surrounding the shrine carry diplomatic consequences for neighbouring countries whose experience of the Second World War was profoundly different.

Taiwan's parliament has approved its long-delayed annual government budget while preserving substantial funding for a major military drone programme, as Taipei continues strengthening its defensive capabilities amid persistent pressure from China.

The budget had been delayed by political confrontation between President Lai Ching-te's Democratic Progressive Party government and opposition parties that control the legislature.

Despite reductions to the broader spending proposal, approximately T$63.4 billion allocated to a key drone-defence programme was approved in full.

The decision reflects the increasing importance of unmanned systems in Taiwan's defence strategy.

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that comparatively inexpensive drones can perform reconnaissance, attack military targets and complicate the operations of much larger conventional forces. For Taiwan, such systems could form part of an asymmetric defence strategy intended to make any potential Chinese military operation significantly more difficult and costly.

The budget approval also follows Taiwan's annual Han Kuang military exercises.

The ten-day drills included preparations for responding to a potential Chinese attack, breaking a maritime blockade and managing disruptions to mobile internet services. China condemned the exercises as provocative and accused Taiwan's government of creating unnecessary fear of war.

Beijing considers Taiwan part of Chinese territory and has not renounced the use of force to achieve unification.

Taiwan's government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims and argues that the island's future must be determined by its people.

The military balance therefore remains one of East Asia's most consequential security questions.

Taiwan is also preparing a further increase in defence expenditure, with its cabinet expected to propose a 16% rise in defence spending for 2027.

Taiwan cannot match China's military resources weapon for weapon. Its strategy increasingly depends on making a potential invasion or blockade difficult, expensive and unpredictable. The expanding investment in drones reflects that logic—but deterrence will depend on much more than equipment, including training, infrastructure resilience, international support and Taipei's ability to maintain political consensus around defence.

NATO has shot down a foreign drone after it entered Latvian airspace, in an incident highlighting the growing danger that drones and electronic warfare associated with the Russia-Ukraine conflict could spill across NATO borders.

The alliance scrambled aircraft after Latvian authorities detected the unidentified drone.

Two Italian Eurofighters operating from Lithuania and two Turkish F-16s based in Estonia were sent to intercept the aircraft. An Italian Eurofighter subsequently identified and shot down the drone.

NATO has launched an investigation into the incident, and the precise origin of the aircraft has not been conclusively established publicly.

That uncertainty matters.

Latvian authorities have indicated that Russian electronic-warfare activity connected to the war in Ukraine may have contributed to the drone entering Latvian airspace, but investigators still need to determine its origin and intended mission.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius has also said that a possible deliberate provocation or false-flag scenario should not automatically be excluded, while acknowledging that there is currently no evidence proving such an explanation.

The incident demonstrates a broader problem confronting NATO.

Modern conflicts increasingly involve large numbers of comparatively inexpensive drones, sophisticated electronic jamming and long-range weapons. Aircraft can malfunction, lose navigation signals or be diverted across international borders.

For NATO, determining whether an intrusion is accidental or deliberate becomes crucial because Latvia is a member of the alliance and protection of its airspace is part of NATO's collective security architecture.

The Latvian incident should not automatically be interpreted as a deliberate attack on NATO because the drone's origin and circumstances remain under investigation. Nevertheless, shooting it down demonstrates how the Ukraine war is creating increasingly complex security risks for neighbouring NATO states, where even a single unidentified aircraft can carry serious escalation potential.

A fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is under severe pressure after Israeli airstrikes killed at least 11 people in southern Lebanon, marking one of the deadliest escalations since the latest truce took effect.

Lebanon's Health Ministry reported that women and children were among those killed in the strikes. Israel said its operations targeted Hezbollah infrastructure and personnel following an attack that seriously wounded three Israeli soldiers.

The escalation is particularly significant because it comes roughly two months into an already precarious ceasefire arrangement intended to reduce fighting along the Israel-Lebanon frontier.

Lebanese officials condemned the Israeli strikes, while Hezbollah accused Israel of escalating the conflict and threatened a response.

Israel argues that Hezbollah continues to maintain military capabilities in southern Lebanon and says it will act when it identifies threats to Israeli forces or territory.

The larger challenge concerns implementation of the ceasefire framework.

The agreement envisages steps towards Hezbollah's disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal from occupied areas of southern Lebanon. But implementation has remained contested, with disagreement over sequencing, security guarantees and the pace of withdrawal.

That creates a dangerous cycle.

A Hezbollah attack can trigger Israeli retaliation; civilian casualties can then increase pressure for another Hezbollah response. Unless the ceasefire mechanism is strong enough to interrupt that sequence, individual incidents can gradually rebuild into sustained conflict.

Lebanon's civilian population carries much of the risk. Communities in southern Lebanon have already endured displacement, damaged infrastructure and repeated periods of conflict.

The latest deaths are more than another exchange of fire. They represent a direct test of whether the Israel-Hezbollah truce has enough political and security support to survive serious violations. Preventing retaliation from becoming another cycle of war will require restraint from both sides and sustained diplomatic pressure from the countries backing the ceasefire.

The confrontation surrounding the Strait of Hormuz is becoming one of the world's most consequential geopolitical and economic crises as tensions between the United States and Iran continue and commercial shipping through the vital waterway remains heavily disrupted.

Iran and the United States have traded increasingly confrontational statements over control and navigation through the strait, while efforts to establish a diplomatic pathway have yet to produce a durable settlement.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran had not yet decided to return to negotiations with the United States, although Iran was working with Oman on possible arrangements concerning shipping.

The crisis is already affecting maritime traffic.

Recent shipping volumes through Hormuz have fallen to a fraction of their pre-conflict levels, while attacks on commercial vessels have intensified concerns among shipping companies and energy markets.

The United Arab Emirates has accused Iran of attacking an ADNOC-operated vessel transiting the strait. No injuries were reported in that incident, but Abu Dhabi described the attack as unacceptable and called for safe navigation to be restored.

The economic importance of Hormuz makes the confrontation far larger than a regional dispute.

Roughly one-fifth of global oil and liquefied-natural-gas flows normally pass through this narrow maritime corridor. Serious or prolonged disruption can therefore affect crude prices, shipping insurance, freight costs and eventually consumer fuel prices across countries far removed from the Middle East.

President Donald Trump has meanwhile warned Americans that higher gasoline prices may need to be tolerated as Washington maintains pressure on Tehran. Iran has responded defiantly, insisting that Washington must change its position.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis demonstrates how quickly a military confrontation can become a global economic problem. The decisive question is no longer simply who claims control of the waterway, but whether diplomacy can restore predictable commercial navigation before prolonged disruption produces wider consequences for energy prices, inflation and the world economy.

Ukraine has launched another major long-range attack deep inside Russian territory, striking industrial and military-linked targets as Kyiv increasingly attempts to weaken Russia's ability to sustain its war from behind the front lines.

Russian authorities reported a large-scale attack on the southwestern Samara region, while Ukraine said domestically produced long-range weapons were used against strategic targets. Among the facilities affected was the Progress industrial complex associated with Russia's space agency Roscosmos.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian-made Flamingo missiles were among the weapons used and presented the strikes as evidence of the country's expanding domestic long-range capabilities.

The development is strategically important because Ukraine has increasingly moved beyond simply defending territory along the front.

Kyiv is attempting to strike oil facilities, military airfields, weapons-related industries and other infrastructure inside Russia that it argues contributes directly to Moscow's war effort. The aim is to impose costs on Russia far from the battlefield and disrupt the logistics and resources supporting Russian forces.

Russia, meanwhile, continues large-scale drone and missile attacks against Ukraine. A Russian drone attack in southeastern Ukraine killed a three-month-old baby and injured others, while Ukrainian ports and other infrastructure also came under attack.

Ukraine's air-defence situation is simultaneously becoming more difficult. A shortage of Patriot interceptor missiles has reportedly reduced Kyiv's ability to defend against Russian ballistic missiles, increasing pressure on Ukraine's Western partners for additional supplies.

The conflict is therefore developing on two parallel tracks: Ukraine is gaining greater ability to strike deeper into Russia, while Russia continues to possess substantial missile and drone capacity against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

Ukraine's expanding long-range capability could alter the economics and geography of the war by forcing Russia to protect strategic facilities much farther from the front. But deep strikes alone are unlikely to determine the conflict. Ukraine's ability to defend its own cities, maintain ammunition supplies and secure continued international support remains equally important.