August 20th on nwsTrail: Gaza's bloody everyday life, Trump's selfish world, the impact of climate change

In Spain, the government is trying to deal with the situation of unaccompanied children living on the streets of Ceuta. The plan is to move about 500 especially vulnerable minors to mainland Spain, where foster families and child-protection services would support them. The children are mainly girls, and 97 girls aged 9 to 17 have already been moved into better conditions while they wait to be transferred to the mainland. When hundreds of children are wandering alone through the streets in unsanitary conditions, solidarity cannot remain a polished phrase in a royal decree. It has to mean a bed, an adult who is responsible, and a system that does not lose the child.

In Israel and Gaza, the bloody routine continues, each time with a new explanation attached. Israeli airstrikes killed at least ten Palestinians in Gaza City and the Nuseirat refugee camp. In Gaza City, a strike hit the municipal police headquarters, nine bodies were brought to the hospital and 15 more people were wounded. The dead included the recently appointed Gaza City police chief, the head of the women’s police unit and several police officers. The bombing took place during a busy time near a park where there were many civilians, including children. Israel said the targets were Hamas commanders, but presented no evidence. Hamas called the strike a war crime and rejected Israel’s justification.

The same Israel and Gaza file also contains the increasingly familiar question of accountability. The Israeli military will not open a criminal investigation into the strike that killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six of her colleagues. Soldiers mistook their vehicles for cars carrying Hamas members, the investigation found serious operational errors, two commanders were demoted and three officers were reprimanded. But no reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct was found. Two other Gaza cases were sent to military police: the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab in January 2024 and the killing of 15 Palestinians in southern Gaza in March 2025. When the system itself decides where a mistake ends and a crime begins, it is no wonder that victims see less justice than a closed circle.

In the Central African Republic, a low-tech artisanal gold mine collapsed in the village of Zamboye in Nana-Mambere prefecture, near the border with Cameroon. The death toll has risen above 100, several survivors were badly injured, and some people are still missing or trapped under the rubble. Disasters like this often reach the world’s attention only when the dead are already too numerous to ignore. Gold tends to move through the world shiny and clean, but its price is often paid by people whose workplaces have almost no safety left in them.

In Australia, Roblox had to give the online safety commissioner a court-enforceable pledge to strengthen child protection. The regulator found that adults could still see children’s accounts and send them connection requests. The platform must now stop adults from contacting unknown children without parental consent, make children’s accounts private by default, improve complaint tools and bring in an independent auditor to assess safety measures. It has three months. A virtual playground is not some harmless side room if children can be groomed, exploited or abused there. If a company builds a world that children enter, it must also be responsible for the doors and locks.

In Syria, the International Atomic Energy Agency found several tonnes of nuclear material at a previously undeclared Assad-era site. The type of material and the location were not disclosed, but agency chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said it could be used for harmful purposes. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani said technical assessments showed the material did not pose a threat, but it will be accounted for and placed under the international safeguards system. Under Assad, Syria was believed to have had a secret nuclear programme, and a site in Deir Ezzor province had long been considered a possible nuclear reactor location. After Assad’s fall in 2024, President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s administration promised inspectors wider access. A secret legacy does not disappear with a regime; it remains underground, in archives and sometimes by the tonne, waiting in storage.

In the United States, it emerged that Donald Trump aide Natalie Harp worked in the White House for more than a year without completing the usual security process. She repeatedly delayed the process until Trump intervened, after which she filled out the necessary paperwork and received a security clearance following an investigation. The concern is not just bureaucracy. Harp’s proximity to Trump and his residence gave her access to more sensitive information than many other senior officials. One source said she also put unvetted material in front of Trump. It is a very familiar pattern from the Trump era: the institutions exist, the forms exist, the rules exist, but what really matters is who is standing closest to the president’s ear.