Buddhist monks in northeast Thailand, joined by throngs of mourners, burned candles, prayed and chanted Sunday for the victims of the country’s worst mass shooting.A soldier angered over a financial dispute gunned down pedestrians and bystanders as he sped down a street in an army Humvee Saturday in Nakhon Ratchasima, leaving 29 dead and nearly 60 wounded in his wake. Security forces shot and killed the soldier after a 12-hour standoff inside a shopping mall Sunday.The victims included a 13-year-old boy riding his motorbike and a young mother driving with her son.Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha said he hopes the shooting “is the only one and the last incident, and that it never happens again. No one wants this to happen.” He called such bloodshed in Thailand “unprecedented.”Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha visits an injured man in a hospital following a shooting rampage involving a Thai soldier, in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, Feb. 9, 2020.Officials identified the gunman as Sergeant Major Jakrapanth Thomma. Prayut and police say he was in the middle of a financial dispute with a relative of his commanding officer at an army camp involving the sale of a house.Jakrapanth gunned down the officer and his relative, stole a load of guns from the camp, and took off in a Humvee, shooting his victims as he sped to the mall, where he continued to fire at people inside and outside the shopping center.Jakrapanth holed himself up in the Terminal 21 Korat shopping center, an airport-themed mall filled with colorful Lego sculptures, a merry-go-round and huge replicas of landmarks from around the world.Armed commando soldiers move a person out of Terminal 21 Korat mall in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, Feb. 9, 2020.After most mall employees and shoppers were evacuated, a joint police and military team swept the shopping center for Jakrapanth and killed him.
Officials say Jakrapanth was a trained sharpshooter who took special army classes on ambushing the enemy.Hours before his bloody attack, Jakrapanth went on Facebook to tear into those he called greedy people, saying they cannot spend money in hell and adding that death is inevitable for everyone.Facebook shut down his page almost immediately.The death toll surpassed Thailand’s last major attack on civilians, a 2015 bombing at Bangkok’s Erawan Shrine that killed 20.Nakhon Ratchasima 
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Democratic presidential contenders jabbed at each Sunday two days ahead of the crucial New Hampshire party primary, attempting to undercut each others’ credentials to take on Republican President Donald Trump in the November national election.Both former Vice President Joe Biden, now in a fight for his political life, and ex-South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg both claimed on ABC News’ “This Week” show that the race against Trump will be more difficult to win if Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of the leading Democratic contenders, is the Democratic nominee because he is a self-declared democratic socialist.New day-to-day tracking polling in the rural northeastern state showed Sanders leading Buttigieg in a top pairing, with Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in a clear second tier standing and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota trailing further in fifth.Tuesday’s vote comes a week after Buttigieg edged Sanders in the farm state of Iowa at Democratic caucuses in the race for eventual delegates to the party’s July national presidential nominating convention, with the other three candidates trailing well behind.Democratic presidential candidate former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Feb. 7, 2020.Buttigieg claimed that “it’ll be a lot harder” for Democrats to oust Trump from the White House after a single term with Sanders heading the ticket if they are forced to democratic socialism to voters.Still, Buttigieg said, “I’d be the most progressive president we’ve had in a half century.”Biden said that a Sanders-led ticket would be “a bigger uphill climb” to defeat Trump.With the Democrats continuing their fight among themselves for the right to take on Trump, the president on Sunday basked again in his acquittal last week on two impeachment charges, retweeting praise from supporters and criticizing Democrats.”The Dems are crazed, they will do anything. Honesty & truth don’t matter to them. They are badly wounded. Iowa vote count was a disaster for them!,” Trump said.Biden, Sanders and Warren all attacked Buttigieg, who a year ago was an unknown political figure throughout the country. Until recently he was the mayor of  a city of 100,000 people, the fourth largest in the Midwest state of Indiana. With his Iowa win, he will be the first openly gay presidential candidate to win delegates for the national party nomination.Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden is surrounded at a campaign event, Feb. 5, 2020, in Somersworth, N.H.Biden, citing his long experience in Washington as his calling card to take on Trump, belittled Buttigieg’s South Bend mayoral experience and said he “hasn’t been able to unify the black community” in the city. In the U.S., African-Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democratic presidential candidates, but in 2016 a lower than expected black turnout hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances against Trump.Buttigieg said that on his first day in the White House if he is elected, he would initiate “a systemic plan” to curb racism in the country.Buttigieg has collected campaign funds from billionaires, saying he needed the donations in order to build a national political operation, but both Warren and Sanders, who have relied on smaller donations, attacked Buttigieg for the practice.“The coalition of billionaires is not exactly what’s going to carry us over the top,” Warren said on ABC. “The way I see it now right now is that we have a government that works great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top. That’s been true for decades and it’s gotten worse and worse and worse.”She said that the national government is run by billionaires “that make big campaign contributions or reach in their own pockets like Michael Bloomberg does. If it’s going taking sucking up to billionaires or being a billionaire to get the Democratic nomination to run for president, then all I can say is, ‘Buckle up America,’ because our government is going to work even better for billionaires and even worse for everyone else.”Her reference to Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York, comes as he has spent a reported $250 million of his own money to campaign first for the Democratic nomination in the 14 states that are voting in party contests on March 3, while skipping the four Democratic elections in February, including New Hampshire.Sanders assailed Buttigieg’s fundraising on the “Fox News Sunday” show, saying, “Here’s the problem, everybody knows this, whether you’re a conservative or progressive: It is the billionaires and the  big money interests that control what goes on what goes on politically, what goes on legislatively in this country.””And if you do as Mayor Buttigieg does, take huge amounts of contributions from the CEOs of the pharmaceutical industry, from financiers in fossil fuel industry, from the insurance companies, from Wall Street, does anybody seriously believe you’re going to stand up to the powerful interests and represent working people?” Sanders said.He said he is “enormously proud of the fact that my campaign today, as of today, has received more campaign contributions from more people, averaging all of $18.50 than any candidate in the history of the United States of America. We are a campaign of the working class, by the working class, and for the working class.”Sanders asked rhetorically, “Do you think when the CEOs of major pharmaceutical companies contribute to your campaign that you are really going to take them on? I think common sense suggests that when you take money and you are dependent on billionaires, you’re not going to stand up to them and you’re not going to effectively represent working families.”
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A man carrying a knife was arrested outside the White House after he told a U.S. Secret Service officer that he was there to kill the president, police said.Roger Hedgpeth, 25, was arrested Saturday afternoon on a charge of making threats to do bodily harm, the Metropolitan Police Department said.Hedgpeth approached a Secret Service officer who was patrolling outside the White House and said he was there to “assassinate” President Donald Trump and “I have a knife to do it with,” according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press.Police found a 3 1/2-inch knife in a sheath on his left hip, and Hedgpeth also had an empty pistol holster on his right hip, authorities said.Hedgpeth was taken into custody and brought to a hospital for a mental health evaluation, police said. Officers also impounded his vehicle.A telephone number listed for Hedgpeth in public records rang unanswered on Sunday. It wasn’t immediately clear where he lives or whether he had an lawyer who could comment on his behalf.
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У Києві з 10 лютого обмежать рух крайніми правими смугами мосту Патона, а також заборонять його перетинати вантажному транспорту, у зв’язку з проведенням обстеження конструкції, заявив заступник голови Київської міської адміністрації Микола Поворозник.

За його словами, фахівці ТОВ «Український інститут сталевих конструкцій ім. В. М. Шимановського» визначать залишковий ресурс споруди та складуть рекомендації стосовно подальшої експлуатації мосту.

«Проте для того, щоб почати реконструкцію мосту, необхідно зняти з нього охоронний статус та виключити з переліку об’єктів культурної спадщини місцевого значення. Саме над цим зараз активно працюємо і маємо позитивні зрушення», – цитують Поворозника на сайті КМДА.

Міст Патона збудовано у 1953 році. Це перший у світі суцільнозварений великогабаритний автодорожній міст. Його загальна довжина 1543 м. Ширина проїжджої частини між бордюрами – 21 метр, а тротуарів для пішоходів – 3 метри.
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The World Health Organization reports progress is being made in combating the Ebola epidemic in the conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.  The latest number of reported cases stands at 3,429, including 2,251 deaths — a fatality rate of 66%. FILE – Burial workers dressed in protective gear carry the remains of an Ebola victim in Beni, DRC, July 14, 2019.The global fixation on the evolution of the novel coronavirus has knocked the DRC’s Ebola epidemic out of the media’s spotlight.  However, health officials working in the shadows have been making steady progress in slowing the transmission of this deadly virus.WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, tells VOA the situation in the country is very different now than it was a few months ago.“What I can say with a great deal of hope and optimism is that … we are seeing, for example, in a week something like five cases.  So, the number of cases per day is very much reduced than they were a few weeks ago, soon after we had some violent attacks and had to stop essentially the interventions in the hotspots in the DRC,” said Moeti. More than 100 armed groups reportedly are active in North Kivu and Ituri provinces.  The United Nations has recorded more than 300 attacks on Ebola health workers last year, killing six people and wounding 70, some of them patients.Moeti acknowledges that instability in the region and pockets of local resistance toward international efforts to contain the spread of the virus continue to cause problems.  She notes, though, that the atmosphere has greatly improved.  People understand the gravity of the disease and cooperate more.  She says new infections are being detected and treated earlier.Moeti says WHO has also modified its strategy and is working through local people and capacities more.  Judging from recent trend, she says this new strategy appears to be paying off.  FILE – A health worker dressed in a protective suit talks to medical staff at the newly constructed MSF (Doctors Without Borders) Ebola treatment center in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Aug. 4, 2019.“We are cautiously optimistic that we are reaching the end of this Ebola outbreak.  What is very important really is the security aspect.  That we have stable security support and that hopefully, as well … violent attacks be addressed, so that they do not continue to be a hindrance to finishing this outbreak,” said Moeti. This Ebola outbreak has been going on since August 2018.  It is the 10th to hit the DRC since 1976, and the second-largest ever recorded, after the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.   By the time that epidemic had ended in 2016, the virus had infected nearly 30,000 people and killed more than 11,000 in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.  
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Switzerland on Sunday voted strongly in favor of a new law against homophobia in a referendum despite opposition from the populist right wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), according to a projection.The projection published by GFS Bern polling and research group found that 62 percent had voted in favor of the reform, with a margin of error of three percent.The new law will widen existing legislation against discrimination or incitement to hatred on ethnic or religious grounds to include sexual orientation.”This is a historic day,” Mathias Reynard, a lawmaker from the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland who initiated the reform, told Swiss channel RTS 1.”It gives a signal which is magnificent for everyone and for anyone who has been a victim of discrimination,” he said.The change was passed by the Swiss parliament in 2018 but critics, who believe it will end up censoring free speech, had forced a referendum on the issue.Eric Bertinat, an SVP local lawmaker in Geneva, told AFP before the vote that he believed the law was “part of an LGBT plan to slowly move towards same-sex marriage and medically assisted reproduction” for gay couples.Marc Frueh, head of the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland (EDU), a small party based on Christian values, said after the projection: “I accept defeat.””We will keep a close eye on how the law is implemented by the courts,” he told RTS 1.All of Switzerland’s major parties except the SVP, the biggest political force in parliament, support the law.Rights campaigner Jean-Pierre Sigrist, founder of an association of gay teachers, had said before the referendum that the new law might have stopped him getting beaten up outside a bar in Geneva four decades ago.”And maybe I would not have been laughed at when I went to the police,” the 71-year-old told AFP, adding that he hoped the reform would help to counter a resurgence of intolerance against gay people.Sigrist said he supported freedom of expression, “but not the freedom to say anything at all.”‘No to Special Rights!’Under the new law, homophobic comments made in a family setting or among friends would not be criminalized.But publicly denigrating or discriminating against someone for being gay or inciting hatred against that person in text, speech, images or gestures, would be banned.The government has said it will still be possible to have opinionated debates on issues such as same-sex marriage, and the new law does not ban jokes — however off-color.”Incitement to hatred needs to reach a certain level of intensity in order to be considered criminal in Switzerland,” Alexandre Curchod, a media lawyer, told AFP.But he admitted that there could be exceptions “if it can be shown that, under the cover of artistic production or joking, someone is in fact engaging in incitement.”Gay rights campaigners were divided over the legislation.A group called “No to Special Rights!” is opposed, arguing that the gay community does not need special protection. 
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Прем’єр-міністр Олексій Гончарук заявив під час селекторної наради з керівниками облдержадмінстрацій про наміри розпочати з березня реалізацію програми «Велике будівництво». Він назвав 2020-й роком інфраструктурної модернізації України.

«Ми починаємо масштабне будівництво та капітальний ремонт шкіл, дитячих садків, приймальних відділень лікарень, стадіонів та доріг по всій країні. З боку уряду ми забезпечимо регіони всім необхідним, щоб будівництво почалось вчасно. Головна задача керівників ОДА – це вчасна координація діяльності з профільними міністерствами та відомствами та координація роботи на містах», – цитують слова Гончарука на сайті уряду.

За словами прем’єра, до наступного тижня у кожного керівника ОДА має бути конкретний план області з переліком всіх об’єктів та доріг до них, ці плани кожен голова облдержадміністрації буде презентувати наступного тижня в Києві під час засідання уряду.
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