Rio Tinto breaks ground at Madison copper-gold project in Montana www.mining.com

Rio Tinto’s (ASX, LON: RIO) subsidiary Kennecott Exploration has kicked off its drilling campaign at Broadway Gold Mining’s Madison copper-gold project, located in the Butte region of Montana, US.

#Pray4Dulguun: Mongolian basketball player in coma in USA www.news.mn

Top player of the Mongolian National Basketball Team, O.Dulguun is in a serious condition at the UCSF Medical Center after having been infected with the varicella virus. According to one source, O.Dulguun was diagnosed with a liver coma and B Hepatitis. He urgently needs a liver transplant which costs USD 300,000-350,000. Family members have started a campaign for donation and have collected MNT 150 million. In addition, Mongolians has started #hashtag (#Pray4Dulguun) campaign on social media to get funding from World Health Organization (WHO).

Bank of Mongolia drives digital transformation vision with Intellect Quantum Central Banking www.equitybulls.com

Intellect Design Arena, a global leader in financial technology for banking, insurance, and other financial services announces a prestigious engagement with the Bank of Mongolia, the Central Bank of Mongolia. In partnership with IT Zone LLC of Mongolia, Intellect will implement its award-winning Quantum Central Banking Solution. The solution is well poised to accelerate the Bank of Mongolia's digital transformation initiatives under the Payment System Modernization project funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB).

As per ADB's Asian Development Outlook (ADO) report of April 2019, Mongolia's economic growth is expected to remain solid in the next two years. The Bank of Mongolia's digital transformation agenda funded by the ADB will drive the nation's vision creating a sound and stable financial system and further strengthening the country's economic performance.

Intellect's Central Banking Solution is the world's most comprehensive & robust solution which comprises integrated functional modules such as Enterprise General Ledger, Banking Services, Government Services, Monetary Policies, Credits and Collateral Management, Currency life cycle management, Trade Finance, Banking Services Portal, Bullion Management, Treasury, Reserve Management, Budget Management, and Procurement Management. IT Zone adds to this powerful digital transformation arsenal with a modern HRMS solution.

Trusted by many Central Banks including those of Sweden, Armenia, Indonesia, Ethiopia and India, Intellect's Quantum Central Banking Solution will accelerate the Bank of Mongolia's vision of becoming a role model Central Bank institution and the best in the region.

The deal announced at a grand ceremony held at the Central Bank of Mongolia was attended by leaders from the Bank of Mongolia, Intellect Design Arena, IT Zone as well as prominent bankers.

Speaking on this partnership, Hon'ble Governor, Bank of Mongolia, Mr. Bayartsaikhan Nadmid said, "Upgrading the Central Bank's Core banking system is a big step toward the transformation of the national economy. As the result of the tender process, we selected the Intellect Quantum Central Banking Solution for Intellect's experience in implementing core banking systems in Central Banks across the world, and its comprehensive range of banking operations and services to meet Bank of Mongolia's the requirements".

Mr. K Srinivasan, President - APAC, South Asia, Middle East and Africa, Intellect Design Arena said, "Winning a Central Banking engagement is always a special feeling. We now have the honour of partnering with Bank of Mongolia on their nation-building agenda. We are uniquely positioned with a contemporary technical architecture to reduce the complexity in such a large scale transformation. Quantum Central Banking Solution comes with a Real-Time Enterprise GL to fuel executive decision making, risk management and operational control in real-time".

Shares of Intellect Design Arena Ltd was last trading in BSE at Rs.265.35 as compared to the previous close of Rs. 265.3. The total number of shares traded during the day was 13953 in over 337 trades.

The stock hit an intraday high of Rs. 269.3 and intraday low of 262.9. The net turnover during the day was Rs. 3721433.

Mongolia: World Bank Report Underscores Importance of Strong Fiscal Foundation, Spending on Health and Education www.worldbank.org

Mongolia, Uzbekistan vow to expand cooperation in agriculture www.akipress.com

Deputy Minister of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry Janimhan Saule received delegates led by Director of State Committee for Veterinary and Livestock Development of Uzbekistan Norkobilov Bahrom Turayevich on June 21, Montsame reported.

China Meat Imports Hit Record as Pork Prices Jump on Swine Fever www.bloomberg.com

China, the world’s top pork consumer, imported a record volume of meat in May in a bid to mitigate the impact of African swine fever as domestic pork prices rebound.

The diesel scandal just destroyed profit growth at Daimler, maker of Mercedes-Benz www.cnn.com

New York (CNN Business)Daimler, the German auto company that makes Mercedes-Benz, has slashed its 2019 profit expectations by hundreds of millions of euros. The financial downgrade, announced Sunday, is the latest fallout from the diesel emissions scandal that has rocked the German auto industry.

Climate change: Cashing in on CO2 www.bbc.com

Scientists from round the world are meeting in Germany to improve ways of making money from carbon dioxide.

They want to transform some of the CO2 that’s overheating the planet into products to benefit humanity.

They don’t claim the technology will solve climate change, but they say it will help.

Carbon dioxide is already being used in novel ways to create fuels, polymers, fertilisers, proteins, foams and building blocks.

Until recently, it was assumed that energy-intensive firms burning gas to fuel their processes would need eventually to capture the resulting carbon emissions and bury them underground.

This option is inefficient and costly, so the prospect of utilising some of the CO2 as a valuable raw material is exciting for business.

Katy Armstrong, manager of the Carbon Utilisation Centre at Sheffield University, put it this way: “We need products for the way we live - and everything we do has an impact.

“We need to manufacture our products without increasing CO2 emissions, and if we can use waste CO2 to help make them, so much the better.”

Many of the young carbon usage firms are actually carbon-negative: that means they take in more CO2 than they put out.

We visited three pioneering businesses in the UK which are already making money out of CO2.

Here are their recipes for success (or at least, the ones they will share with us).

Three success stories
CO2 to fertiliser: CCm Technologies, Swindon

Recipe: Put cow dung and maize into a bio-digester, where bacteria break them down and produce biogas to heat our homes.

Mix the left-over sludge with nutrient-rich wastes from the fertiliser industry, sewage plants, farms or the food industry.

Pump in CO2, which helps the nutrients bind to the sludge.

Product: High-grade fertiliser pellets that have soaked up more CO2 than they produced. The technology has already won export orders.

CO2 to beer bubbles: Strutt and Parker Farms, Suffolk

Recipe: Take horse muck and straw from Newmarket races. Put the smelly mess through a bio-digester (as above).

Extract biogas and CO2. Using advanced membranes, separate out food grade CO2.

Product: Clean CO2 that’s sold to a local brewery to put the fizz into lemonade and lager.

CO2 to building blocks: Carbon 8 Aggregates, Leeds

Recipe: Take ash from the chimney of a waste incinerator plant.

Mix in water and CO2 - then stand back… this procedure gets very hot.

The CO2 is permanently captured within the waste ash to form artificial limestone for building blocks and other purposes.

The process has the additional benefit of treating the ash that would otherwise be sent to landfill.

Product: blocks that have locked up CO2, whilst also reducing the need for carbon-intensive cement. The technology is winning exports.

These firms are pioneers in what’s known as the Circular Economy, in which wastes are turned into raw materials. The EU is trying to prompt all industry to adopt this principle.

How much CO2 can products absorb?
The big question is how much of the approximately 37 gigatonnes of CO2 emitted annually from our homes, cars, planes, offices and industries can be utilised by industry.

One report projected that seven gigatonnes a year of CO2 could be locked up into new products.

Katy Armstrong described this figure as hugely optimistic. But she said: “Every tonne that’s captured is a tonne that doesn't heat the atmosphere, so let’s hope the industry thrives.”

World Bank: One in three people remain poor in Mongolia www.zgm.mn

The poverty rate in Mongolia, which was 29.6 percent in 2016, lowered to 28.4 percent in 2018, declining 1.2 percentage point. The National Statistical Office (NSO) biannually conducts the poverty indicators of Mongolia in cooperation with the World Bank. The two organizations have collaborated on poverty assessments through the Household Income and Expenditure Survey and the Living Standard Measurement Survey since 2002.

China, Russia, Mongolia meet to reinforce trilateral tourism ties www.chinadaily.com.cn

With the aim of deepening trilateral cooperation in the tourism sector, the Fourth Tourism Ministerial Conference of China, Russia and Mongolia was held on Sunday in Ulaanqab, a city in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Attending the event were Luo Shugang, China's minister of culture and tourism; Alexey Konyushkov, deputy head of the Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation; and Ts. Tsengel, state secretary at the Ministry of Nature, Environment and Tourism of Mongolia. They were joined by hundreds of representatives from the tourism, culture, academic and media sectors from the three countries.

Luo, who delivered the keynote speech, pointed out that tourism cooperation is such a vital part of the trilateral relationship that it plays an irreplaceable role in deepening friendship and understanding among the people of China, Russia and Mongolia.

According to Luo, the most noteworthy development in tourism since 2016, when the first ministerial conference was held, is that the number of mutual visits among the three countries is steadily rising.

In 2018, over 2.4 million Russian tourists visited China, a 3 percent year-on-year increase. The number of visitors from Mongolia to China rose 2.8 percent to over 1.9 million; the number of Chinese visitors visiting Russia hit 2 million, an increase of 21 percent from the previous year; and nearly 200,000 Chinese visitors were received by Mongolia, a 19 percent growth.

The statistics show the growing appeal of Russia and Mongolia as tourist destinations for Chinese travelers. They are also an indicator that tourism plays a pivotal role in trilateral friendship, Luo said.

Luo proposed five suggestions for future cooperation: deepening the integration of culture and tourism and crafting quality cross-border travel products; using tourism as an engine to boost the intensive development of other related industries such as transportation, catering and entertainment; upgrading travel services to make them convenient and more comfortable for tourists; strengthening surveillance of the tourism market to build a safe and civilized environment; and enhancing the reputation of the "Tea Road" as a travel brand.

Konyushkov said that Russia, China and Mongolia are important partners in the field of tourism. Time-honored friendships and geographic proximity have created a favorable environment for the three countries to develop crossborder tourism.

He mentioned that the largest number of inbound visitors to Russia comes from China, and the number of Russian visitors to China is also growing. The tourism ministerial conference serves as an effective platform to facilitate trilateral tourism cooperation, Konyushkov said.

Tsengel said Mongolia will improve its infrastructure for international visitors. Specific measures include opening rail routes to connect with Siberia, increasing the number of air routes and flights, and launching favorable visa policies to attract more travelers.

The Minutes of the Fourth Tourism Ministerial Conference of China, Russia and Mongolia were signed at the event, establishing another milestone in the history of the trilateral partnership in crossborder tourism.

Initiated by China, the first ministerial conference was held in Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia. The second was held in Russia's Buryatia and the third was in Mongolia's Ulaanbaatar last year.

The Tea Road Cultural and Tourism Expo was also unveiled on Sunday as part of the event.

Covering a total length of over 13,000 kilometers, the Tea Road served as an important international commercial road in the history of Eurasia.

Since the establishment of the Tea Road International Tourism Alliance in 2016, a wide range of related travel products have been jointly developed by China, Russia and Mongolia, including an international self-driving tour, a special train, a summer camp and more, making the cross-border tourism scene diversified and vibrant.