Hellion,
I am not native Spanish, but I will try to tackle this question.
Pasar (along with suceder and occurrir), when used to mean “to happen,” is one of those verbs (in this case, a special type of impersonal verb) that requires an indirect object pronoun — even when the object is stated in noun or pronoun form after ‘a.’ Here, ‘les’ is in agreement with “a los demás.” It’s the same “person.” Many native Spanish speakers will explain that this “connects” the sentence. The use of both objects in the same sentence is not considered redundant in Spanish, as it is in English.
The following seemingly over-redundant sentence demonstrates this:
Eso que nos pasa a nosotros los hombres no nos pasa más que a nosotros, los hombres.
What happens to us men, only happens to us men.
Here’s another example I pulled from Twitter:
— ¿Qué te pasa en los dientes?
— What’s wrong with your teeth? [in the photo, the person has two prominent pieces of metal bridgework in their front teeth and gums]
— El otro día que fue al machón a pescar, y mira donde acabó el anzuelo.
— The other day I went fishing at the pier and look where the hook ended up. [this of course is a joke]
— Esto no nos pasa más que a los de Rincón (que somos mucho valientes y vamos al machón, y anzuelo entre los dientes).
— This kind of thing only happens to us people from Rincón (who are very brave and go to the pier and fishhook our teeth).
(Here, it’s the opposite sentiment to the headline. This kind of thing only happens to us; not to other people).
So, the headline is not such a basic sentence as you might think. There’s a lot of grammatical information going on in that sentence.
I am guessing that the news story is about someone famous? Or it could be about someone who is not famous, but something very lucky (or unlucky) happened to them. In any event . . .
Eso no les pasa más que a los demás
los demás = otros
literally “the rest” or “others” but it’s like saying “them” or “those people” (famous people; lucky people; unlucky people; only certain people, i.e. not us; not regular people)
no . . . más (que) = sólo
not . . . but = only
What the headline is saying is:
Literally: That doesn’t happen but to them
In other words: That kind of thing only happens to them (famous people, etc; i.e. it doesn’t happen to us; to regular people.)
Such a headline is supposed to draw you in; to get you wondering who and what the article is about.
That kind of thing only happens to Charlie Sheen? Lindsey Lohan? Was it another crazy thing that happened?
That kind of thing only happens to one in a million people? Was it something lucky (or unlucky) that happened to someone?
If you ask a native Spanish speaker how to say, “That only happens to them” in Spanish, a typical answer will be:
Eso sólo le sucede a los demás.
or less formally:
Eso sólo le pasa a los demás.
It’s also handy to know that there are at least three ways of forming this sentence:
Eso sólo le sucede a los demás.
A los demás sólo le sucede eso.
Sólo a los demás le sucede eso.
I hope this helps! Any corrections from native Spanish speakers to my explanations or translations are more than welcome!