World roundup: August 6 2025

Stories from Lebanon, Thailand, Ethiopia, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

August 6, 1806: Holy Roman Emperor Francis II abdicates and dissolves the empire as a result of Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Austerlitz and in the War of the Third Coalition. Luckily he landed on his feet—having already styled himself Francis I of the “Austrian Empire” in 1804, he had a very nice golden parachute.

August 6, 1945: The United States drops the first of two atomic bombs on Japan, this one at Hiroshima. The full death toll is difficult to assess because of the nature of radioactive fallout but estimates of over 200,000 are probably within the ballpark.

INTERNATIONAL

On this 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, The Conversation’s Masako Toki discusses the importance of the survivors’ accounts:

Eighty years ago, in August 1945, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated by the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war. By the end of that year, approximately 140,000 people had died in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki.

Those who survived – known as Hibakusha – have carried their suffering as living testimony to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, with one key wish: that no one else will suffer as they have.

Now, in 2025, as the world marks 80 years of remembrance since those bombings, the voices of the Hibakusha offer not only memory, but also moral clarity in an age of growing peril.

As someone who focuses on nuclear disarmament and has heard Hibakusha testimonies in my native Japanese language, I have been enthusiastically promoting disarmament education grounded in their voices and experience. I believe their message is more vital than ever at a time of rising nuclear risk. Nuclear threats have reemerged in global discourse, breaking long-standing taboos against even talking about their use. From Russia and Europe to the Middle East and East Asia, the possibility of nuclear escalation is no longer unthinkable.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Hezbollah issued a statement on Wednesday responding to the Lebanese government’s proposal to “restrict” the possession of weapons to state security forces—or at least to develop a plan for restricting them—by the end of the year. Needless to say it was not especially positive. In short, the group characterized the proposal as a “grave sin” and said that it plans to continue operating “as if it doesn’t exist.” It apparently remains open to discussions about a broad “national security strategy” that could theoretically formalize Hezbollah’s position within the Lebanese security apparatus, but there’s no indication that it’s prepared to disarm—at least not voluntarily. It’s unclear whether Lebanese politicians are prepared to order the army to disarm Hezbollah by force—or try to disarm it, anyway—but that possibility is definitely on the table.