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Shooter who killed 23 in Texas will avoid the death penalty

(Reuters) — Prosecutors said on Tuesday they have withdrawn the death penalty for the man who shot dead 23 people and wounded 22 others in an attack aimed at Latinos at a Texas Walmart in 2019, enabling him to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence.

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Instead of facing death by lethal injection, shooter Patrick Crusius can agree to a life sentence without the possibility of parole in a hearing scheduled for April 21.

Texas has executed 593 prisoners since 1982, the most of any state, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Crusius, now 26, had previously pleaded guilty to a 90-count federal indictment for hate crimes and weapon offenses in relation to the assault on August 3, 2019, at a Walmart in the border city of El Paso. He was sentenced to 90 consecutive life terms.

Crusius admitted he targeted people because of their Hispanic origin and that he intended to kill everyone he shot, federal prosecutors said. A defense lawyer told the federal court he was driven to the shooting by mental illness.

Ecuador SOTE pipeline rupture spilled 25,116 barrels of oil

QUITO (Reuters) — The rupture of Ecuador’s SOTE crude pipeline earlier this month spilled over 25,000 barrels of oil, the country’s national disaster management agency said in a statement, affecting three rivers, wildlife and at least 5,300 people.

Petroecuador confirmed the spill magnitude in a separate statement on Tuesday and said that it collected 30,257 barrels of crude oil mixed with water, prior to a separation process.

The rupture, which was caused by a landslide and shut the pipeline for six days, forced state oil company Petroecuador to declare force majeure. The company has resumed exports of Oriente crude but has not lifted the declaration.

The spill affected three rivers, nine beaches and at least 294 hectares of agricultural land in the coastal province of Esmeraldas, according to the report.

Sudan military bombing kills dozens in Darfur market

(NYT) — An airstrike by Sudan’s military ripped through a crowded market in the country’s western region of Darfur, killing at least 54 people and wounding dozens more, according to local monitoring groups that called the attack a likely war crime.

The attack on Monday came as Sudan’s military continued to make gains in the capital, Khartoum, where it seized the presidential palace Friday. The military is now trying to drive its foe, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, entirely out of the city.

The reported atrocity in Darfur, though, was a grim reminder of the brutal toll of Sudan’s war, the largest in Africa, as it approaches two full years. Videos and photographs from the aftermath of the strike in Toura, a small town in North Darfur, showed dozens of charred bodies and partial human remains strewed across a smoldering expanse in a town market.

The exact toll was unclear. One Sudanese monitoring group said dozens had been killed. The American international advocacy group Avaaz, citing local groups, put it at more than 200 dead. A handwritten list of fatalities provided by activists in Darfur had 54 names.