Deported man is suspect in deadly California beatings

LOS ANGELES — A man who was deported from the United States six times was expected in court Wednesday to face charges after police say he killed three people and injured four in attacks targeting sleeping homeless men in California.

Investigators believe Ramon Escobar, 47, began attacking the men at random on Sept. 8, shortly after he arrived in California from Houston, where he’s considered a person of interest in the disappearance of his uncle and aunt.

Escobar, who was believed homeless himself, likely targeted victims to rob them, Los Angeles police Capt. William Hayes told reporters Tuesday.

Detectives have seized a wooden baseball bat and bolt cutters that they believe were used to bludgeon men as they lay sleeping on the beach or on the street in Los Angeles and suburban Santa Monica, police said. All but one of the men was homeless.

Escobar was arrested Monday and was expected to be charged with murder and attempted murder as early as Wednesday, followed by his arraignment.

It wasn’t immediately known whether Escobar had an attorney who could speak for him.

Escobar was being held without bail but U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials have filed a detainer seeking to take him into custody if he is released, the agency said.

Escobar was first ordered removed from the country in 1988 and was deported to his native El Salvador six times between 1997 and 2011, ICE said in a statement Tuesday night.

He was released from ICE custody last year after successfully appealing his latest immigration case, ICE said. The agency didn’t indicate his current legal status.

However, Escobar has six felony convictions for burglary and illegal reentry, ICE said.

Escobar spent five years in prison for robbery starting in the mid-1990s, Hayes said. Records in Texas show Escobar has had arrests for vehicle burglary, trespassing, failure to stop, public intoxication and two assaults, most recently in November 2017. That case was described as a misdemeanour.

Texas authorities also want to talk to Escobar about the disappearances late last month of 60-year-old Dina Escobar and her brother, 65-year-old Rogelio Escobar, Houston police said in a statement.

Dina Escobar’s burned van was found in Galveston, Texas, a few days after she went looking for her brother. She was last seen Aug. 28, two days after her brother vanished, the statement said.

Dina Escobar’s daughter, Ligia Salamanca, told KTRK-TV in Houston earlier Tuesday that her cousin, Ramon Escobar, had never come across as violent and wasn’t a source of trouble for the family.

“She loved him as she would a son,” Salamanca said of her mother’s devotion to Ramon Escobar.

Salamanca said he had been looking for work and needed a place to stay, so he was taken in by his uncle, who went missing days later.

Investigators believe Escobar was the man who used a baseball bat to bash the heads of three homeless men sleeping on downtown Los Angeles streets before dawn on Sept. 16, police said in a statement. Two died.

Escobar is believed to be the man captured on surveillance video ransacking the pockets and belongings of some downtown Los Angeles victims.

Two homeless men sleeping on the beach were bludgeoned in the head early on Sept. 8 and Sept. 10, leaving one in critical condition, officials said.

Another man who apparently was sleeping on the beach was found dead under the Santa Monica Pier on Sept. 20. Steven Ray Cruze Jr., 39, of San Gabriel, had been beaten to death.

Authorities at first described him as homeless, but family and friends said the father of two, who loved to fish at the pier, worked boats in neighbouring Marina del Rey and sometimes camped out under the pier to avoid the long commute home.

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Follow Weber at https://twitter.com/WeberCM .

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Associated Press journalists Robert Jablon and John Antczak in Los Angeles, David Warren in Dallas and researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.

Christopher Weber, The Associated Press

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Oil and gas in the global economy through 2050

Published on March 28, 2024

Todayville

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Ven Venkatachalam

The world will continue to rely on oil and gas for decades to come, according to the International Energy Agency

Recent global conflicts, which have been partly responsible for a global spike in energy prices, have cast their shadow on energy markets around the world. Added to this uncertainty is the ongoing debate among policymakers and public institutions in various jurisdictions about the role of traditional forms of energy in the global economy.

One widely quoted study influencing the debate is the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook, the most recent edition of which, World Energy Outlook 2023 (or WEO 2023), was released recently (IEA 2023).

In this CEC Fact Sheet, we examine projections for oil and natural gas production, demand, and investment drawn from the World Energy Outlook 2023 Extended Dataset, using the IEA’s modelled scenario STEPS, or the Stated Policies Scenario. The Extended Dataset provides more detailed data at the global, regional, and country level than that found in the main report.

The IEA’s World Energy Outlook and the various scenarios

Every year the IEA releases its annual energy outlook. The report looks at recent energy supply and demand, and projects the investment outlook for oil and gas over the next three decades. The World Energy Outlook makes use of a scenario approach to examine future energy trends. WEO 2023 models three scenarios: the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE), the Announced Pledges Scenario (APS), and the Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS).

STEPS appears to be the most plausible scenario because it is based on the world’s current trajectory, rather than the other scenarios set out in the WEO 2023, including the APS and the NZE. According to the IEA:

The Stated Policies Scenario is based on current policy settings and also considers the implications of industrial policies that support clean energy supply chains as well as measures related to energy and climate. (2023, p. 79; emphasis by author)

and

STEPS looks in detail at what [governments] are actually doing to reach their targets and objectives across the energy economy. Outcomes in the STEPS reflect a detailed sector-by-sector review of the policies and measures that are actually in place or that have been announced; aspirational energy or climate targets are not automatically assumed to be met. (2023, p. 92)

Key results

The key results of STEPS, drawn from the IEA’s Extended Dataset, indicate that the oil and gas industry is not going into decline over the next decade—neither worldwide generally, nor in Canada specifically. In fact, the demand for oil and gas in emerging and developing economies under STEPS will remain robust through 2050.

Oil and natural gas production projections under STEPS

World oil production is projected to increase from 94.8 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2022 to 97.2 mb/d in 2035, before falling slightly to 94.5 mb/d in 2050 (see Figure 1).