Records vanished, a mine collapsed

Two documents, two days apart. On August 11 the U.S. Treasury finalized a rule ending the requirement that American companies disclose who actually owns them. On August 13, Reuters reported that federal sex-trafficking charges had fallen to their slowest pace since 2010: 73 people charged through June, about 22 percent below the three-year average.

An artisanal mine collapsed on August 18 in Nana-Mambéré prefecture, close to the Cameroon border. Death tolls still conflict and prosecutors have opened an investigation, but UN investigators had already documented armed groups securing illicit mining and undeclared gold moving through Zamboye.

This year’s theme is “Trapped Behind the Scam”: people recruited with false job offers, moved into controlled compounds and forced to run online fraud. The IOM says victims from more than 80 countries have now been drawn into these operations.