Spanish police rescued Wednesday three migrants who almost died in the back of a refrigeration truck as they were smuggled into the country via Morocco.

The Committee to Protect Journalists urged Ugandan authorities to investigate and punish individuals who recently attacked seven reporters at two press conferences. The media watchdog noted that attacks against reporters covering politics have become frequent in the country.

The U.K. Home Office released Wednesday its plan to outlaw cold calls that offer any  financial service whatsoever, as part of the government’s anti-fraud strategy to crack down on criminals who con millions of vulnerable citizens every year over the phone.

Three of Spain's top banks have joined forces to develop a platform for exchanging information and data to assist in the fight against and prevention of financial crime.

Spanish authorities have detained 23 suspected members of two organized crime groups that have exploited foreign workers, one in the agricultural sector and the other in construction.

The U.K. government sanctioned Monday six individuals tied to the 25-year sentence of Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British journalist and political activist, who was imprisoned for speaking out against Vladimir Putin’s regime and his invasion of Ukraine.

The French-Polish national, whom Spanish police arrested last month for fraud exceeding US$1 million, was already in 2018 exposed by OCCRP as a con man and a phony arms dealer.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Turkish authorities to release journalist Fırat Can Arslan, who, along with four others, was detained over a tweet about the reassignments of a judge and a prosecutor who are married to each other and are involved in an ongoing trial of journalists.

A major newspaper in Solomon Islands received nearly US$140,000 in funding from the Chinese government in return for pledges to “promote the truth about China’s generosity and its true intentions to help develop” the Pacific Islands country, according to a leaked document and interviews.

The European Union Prosecutor’s Office in Berlin said on Thursday that it has filed an indictment against eight suspects in connection with an 80 million euro (US$88.1 million) VAT fraud scheme involving the trading of luxury automobiles and medical face masks.