More than a dozen US and European companies have been importing timber from a Brazilian logging firm whose owner is implicated in one of the most brutal Amazonian massacres in recent memory, according to a Greenpeace Brazil investigation.

The first-world buyers allegedly continued trading with Madeireira Cedroarana after police accused its founder, Valdelir João de Souza, of ordering the torture and murder of nine people in Colniza, Mato Grosso, on 19 April, claims the report by the NGO.

The state attorney alleges de Souza organised the assassinations to gain access to the forest where the victims – all smallholders – lived. Since the indictment on 15 May, the suspect has been on the run. During this period, the fugitive’s company allegedly sold products to foreign firms who shipped them to the US, Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada and Japan.(theguardian)…[+]

An abnormal sound detected in the South Atlantic ocean hours after an Argentinian navy submarine sent its last signal last week was “consistent with an explosion,” a navy spokesman said on Thursday.

Captain Enrique Balbi described the blast in the morning of 15 November as “abnormal, singular, short, violent” and “non-nuclear” and said it was detected at 10.31am along the route the ARA San Juan was following when it last made radio contact three hours earlier. The sound has been pinpointed to within a radius of 125km. Six vessels are currently attempting to locate the submarine, in an area that was previously searched. The explosion was detected by US sensors and by international agencies responsible for the detection of nuclear explosions around the world, Balbi said.(theguardian)…[+]

The pier in County Donegal, Republic of Ireland, where five members of the same family drowned last year was the scene of at least three similar incidents in which vehicles lost control, an inquest has heard. Sean McGrotty; his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight; his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, and her 14-year-old sister, Jodie-Lee, died in March 2016 after McGrotty’s Audi Q7 slid off Buncrana pier into Lough Swilly.

The inquest into their deaths, being held at the Lake of Shadows hotel in Buncrana, heard on Thursday that the pier was covered in algae, making the slipway into the lough as “slippery as ice”. John O’Raw, a Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) volunteer said that in his 17 years in the role he could recall three other incidents in which vehicles lost control on Buncrana pier. O’Raw said he reached the sinking Audi about 40 minutes after the emergency services were called, but his attempts to get inside were hampered by a smashed window.(theguardian)…[+]