Police in California arrested on Thursday a Hollywood producer on an indictment that accused him of using his production company to run an international prostitution business and launder the proceeds.

The reverberations from an international media investigation into Israeli spyware firm the NSO Group continue, with Amazon saying it will shut down cloud service infrastructure and accounts linked to the surveillance vendor. As Vice reported Monday, Amazon made the call after a global backlash to the firm’s methods.

Police in Bosnia and Herzegovina arrested on Sunday a Montenegrin man internationally wanted for murder and believed to be a member of one of the two most dangerous criminal clans.

The fallout from an international investigation that exposed how authoritarian governments are using Israeli-made spyware to target journalists and activists rippled around the world on Monday, eliciting shock, anger, and some wry humor.

At the time the United States and European countries had banned or limited export of vaccines against the coronavirus to first deal with the pandemic at home, Russia was willing to share its Sputnik V with countries in need.

Italian police detained 11 suspected members of a Sicilian mafia clan from the village of Torretta, near Palermo. The clan is historically tied to the Cosa Nostra and the New York mafia and the suspects are accused of infiltrating the Sicilian political and economic institutions, as well as being affiliated with organized crime in New York, according to Italian Carabinieri.

Three men accused of laundering millions of dollars on behalf of transnational organized crime and drug traffickers have been arrested and charged in the U.S., the Department of Justice revealed in a statement on Wednesday. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged Brazilian officials and their representatives to refrain from harassing members of the press who cover them and rather encourage free reporting. The appeal came after President Jair Bolsonaro’s personal lawyer sent a lengthy and menacing message to a journalist reporting on alleged government corruption.

An Israeli court sentenced on Wednesday the country’s former deputy minister and senior member of a major right-wing party to 10 yearsin prison for bribery, fraud, money laundering, breach of trust, and tax evasion. She will also have to fork over a fine equivalent to US$274,000.

Peter R. de Vries, a Dutch journalist famous for his independent crime investigations, died in a hospital on Thursday, just over a week after he was fired on five times in Amsterdam. He was 64.