After several long, long days, Joe Biden has finally won the US election and is set to become the next president of the United States.

Major networks, including the Associated Press and the BBC, forecast that Biden has won Pennsylvania, taking him over the 270 electoral college votes needed to win.

So what will that mean for Mongolia?

The short answer is, not much.

US relations with Mongolia will likely continue on their current trajectory. The US will continue to be a part of Mongolia’s Third Neighbour policy, and the Third Neighbour Trade Act, which would allow tax-free imports of Mongolian cashmere and textiles, is still in play. It’s impossible to forecast whether a Biden administration will make the act more likely to jump the remaining hurdles, although Biden appears more open to expanding trade relations than Trump. He’s also visited Mongolia, unlike Trump.

One of the main questions is what Biden will do about China. Experts seem to agree that he can’t (and won’t) return to the gentler relations of the Obama years: the US is now firmly locked into a competition with China across all the different arms of state power. But no matter what he chooses to do, there are open questions about whether America has the energy or willpower to contain China’s rise. So regardless of who sits in the White House, Mongolia will need to strengthen relations with other countries like Japan and India to ensure its own security.

One of the biggest differences between Biden and Trump is their approach to climate change. Biden is more likely to put more pressure on coal-exporting countries to lower their emissions. He’s pledged to re-join the Paris agreement ‘on day one’ of his presidency and has previously referred to Mongolia’s coal as the ‘dirtiest in the world’ in a reference to Chinese trade practices that he said he would confront.

If his administration does pressure Mongolia over its coal exports to China, it should quickly pass the Third Neighbour act and invest money into alternative projects in Mongolia, particularly renewable energy, to help diversify the Mongolian economy. This would also present a massive opportunity for companies with experience in this market - Mongolia is estimated to have enough renewable energy potential to power all of northeast Asia.

We also have to keep an eye on the bigger picture here. Mongolia’s average temperature has already climbed more than 2 degrees since 1940. This is killing off grasslands, causing Mongolian livestock to get thinner and thinner, and making dzuds worse and more frequent. A Biden presidency will work towards limiting the planet’s rising temperatures, which is the most significant issue facing Mongolia over the coming decades.

There's something else happening too. Trump is still refusing to accept the results of the election and hand over power. If he continues on this path, he could end up being physically removed from the White House.

This could set a dangerous example for Mongolia. Surveys have shown that Mongolians strongly support Trump, favour strongman rule and believe that the country is at the crossroads of democracy and dictatorship.

So if Trump tries to take the US towards dictatorship, we’re left with an even bigger question: will Mongolian politicians follow his lead?

by: Ewen Levick | Editor

China plans to further increase oil and gas exploration and accelerate the construction of more oil and gas storage infrastructure, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Last week, China’s Communist Party adopted the principles of the five-year development plan 2021-2025.

China will also aim to build more oil and gas pipelines, according to its authorities.

China has been looking to increase its energy security in recent years, including by increasing domestic oil and gas production and expanding its storage facilities.

Over the past decade, China’s oil production has been falling while its oil demand has been soaring, increasing Beijing’s dependence on sourcing oil from abroad.

China’s dependence on crude oil imports has been growing in recent years as its domestic production has faltered, and the world’s top oil importer covered 73.4 percent of its oil demand with imported oil in the first half of 2020.

In the first half of 2020, China’s crude oil production did increase, by 1.7 percent year on year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China. The growth in production between January and June, however, was 0.7 percentage point slower than that of the first quarter, the bureau said.

Higher domestic production, however, will not be able to cover the rise in China’s oil and gas demand, so China will continue to be a key player on the global oil and gas markets and a critical gauge of oil and gas demand growth.

Meanwhile, China is set to increase its natural gas imports from Russia as Russian gas giant Gazprom has started constructing the extension of its gas pipeline to China, Upstream reported on Tuesday. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2022 and is estimated to cost $3.5 billion (280 billion Russian rubles), according to the Russian gas giant.

New York (CNN Business)Bitcoin soared more than 7% Thursday and was trading above $15,000 — its highest level in nearly three years — as mainstream interest in the cryptocurrency builds and the US dollar weakens.

The value of one bitcoin has more than doubled in 2020. The gains have been particularly dramatic in the past few weeks, with bitcoin rising 40% since early October.

If bitcoin continues to surge, it may not be long before the cryptocurrency finally tops the all-time high of just under $20,000, reached in December 2017.

In addition to the dollar weakening, bitcoin has benefited from more mainstream companies like PayPal (PYPL)and Square (SQ) embracing cryptocurrencies as a viable payments options and investments.

"Nothing is stopping it from going to the 2017 high," said Bill Noble, chief technical analyst with research firm Token Metrics, in an email to CNN Business. "Everybody is afraid to miss out, and that drives the price."

Lingering uncertainty about the outcome of the presidential election may also be fueling the recent bitcoin spike, Noble added. Investors may be fleeing the dollar and buying bitcoin.

The US Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback versus the euro, yen and several other major currencies, is down about 1.5% so far this week.

Inflation hedge and beneficiary of weaker dollar

Bitcoin, along with gold, may remain momentum bets for investors looking to take advantage of continued dollar weakness. Gold prices, which hit a record high above $2,000 an ounce earlier this year, are up about 30% in 2020.

"The bitcoin and gold rally has been happening all year along with dollar weakness. It's a longer-term trend," said Jeff Mortimer, director of investment strategy for BNY Mellon Wealth Management, in an interview.

With all this in mind, Alex Mashinsky, CEO of cryptocurrency lending firm Celsius Network, is even more bullish on bitcoin.

"Not only is $15,000 going to happen, but I stand by my predictions from the beginning of the year that [bitcoin] will see all new highs before 2021," Mashinsky said in an e-mail.

Here's why platinum may now be a better bet than gold

Here's why platinum may now be a better bet than gold

The rise in bitcoin this year is all the more remarkable when you consider that prices plunged below $5,000 in mid-March during the height of Covid-19 pandemic worries in mid-March.

"Bitcoin comes out stronger after each challenge," said Michael Sonnenshein, managing director of Grayscale Investments, a digital currency asset management firm. "People are looking at bitcoin as a store of value and inflation hedge."

Coronavirus is only making bitcoin even more popular as an investment option.

According to a survey of 1,000 US consumers during the summer by a market research firm on behalf of Grayscale, nearly 40% said that the Covid-19 crisis made bitcoin more appealing as an investment.

Sonnenshein said the realization that bitcoin is probably better as an investment than as an actual form of payment is key to its continued success.

"There used to be a prevalent narrative that because bitcoin is not something you'd go to the store to buy a latte with, it's failed. That's no longer the case," Sonnenshein said.

Mongolia on Thursday confirmed one more imported COVID-19 case, bringing the nationwide count to 353, according to the country's Health Ministry.

The latest confirmed case is a Mongolian citizen who has recently returned home from India on a chartered flight, the ministry said in a statement.

All the confirmed cases in the landlocked country are imported ones, and among them, 314 people have recovered.

Three of the remaining 39 COVID-19 patients being treated at the country's National Center for Communicable Diseases are now in serious condition, the ministry said.

No COVID-19-related deaths have been reported in the country so far. Enditem

Until now, the only accounts of the Xiongnu came from their enemies. Chinese records from 2200 years ago describe how these fierce mounted archers from the wide-open steppes of today’s Mongolia clashed with armies in what is now northwestern China. Their onslaughts spurred the Chinese to build what would become known as the Great Wall of China on their northern border, as protection against the mounted nomads. They also started to raise cavalry armies of their own.

The equestrian empire of the Xiongnu left no written records. But biology is now filling out their story, and those of other Central Asian cultures in antiquity. Two studies—a sweeping survey of ancient DNA from more than 200 individuals across 6000 years and an analysis of horse skeletons from just before the rise of the Xiongnu—trace population movements across Central Asia and the key role played by horsemanship. The results “show the horse was probably the driver of some of the ancestry shifts we see in the human population,” says Ludovic Orlando of Paul Sabatier University, who was not involved in the paper. “The horse provided new range in patterns of human mobility and allowed people to travel long distance faster.”

Horses were probably domesticated by the Botai culture around 3500 B.C.E. near what is modern Kazakhstan. Horses may have been mainly used for meat and milk at first, and later began to pull wheeled chariots.

To learn more about human migration across Central Asia, a team led by Choongwon Jeong of Seoul National University and Harvard University’s Christina Warinner sampled and sequenced DNA from human remains found in Mongolia. The results, which they report today in Cell, span the period from 5000 B.C.E. all the way to the heyday of another horse-riding culture—that of Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire, around 1000 C.E.

Genetic studies of Western European populations have shown that around 3000 B.C.E., the Yamnaya—mobile herders of cattle, sheep, and goats—pushed west from the steppes of what is today Russia and Ukraine and triggered a dramatic genetic turnover in Europe. Skeletons from Bronze Age Mongolia had shown the Yamnaya also moved east and introduced their dairy-oriented pastoralist lifestyle there. But they left no lasting genetic traces in Mongolia, the oldest samples in the new study show.

The ancient DNA does show that 1000 years later, another group from the steppes, called the Sintashta, left a lasting imprint. They also brought fateful cultural changes to Mongolia’s grasslands, as earlier archaeological studies had shown. Starting in about 1200 B.C.E., equestrian innovations including selective breeding for size and endurance, plus bridle bits, riding pants, and even early saddles, appeared in the record, says archaeologist William Taylor of the University of Colorado, Boulder, a co-author on both papers.

Mongolians of the time were obviously riding horses, as vividly confirmed by the second paper, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors, Chinese and U.S. archaeologists, report that horse skeletons buried around 350 B.C.E. in the Tian Shan mountains, now part of China’s Xinjiang province, show bone abnormalities from riding, including spinal damage from the weight of a rider and changes to the bones of the mouth from bits and bridles. “Put the lower back pathologies together with evidence for a bridle, and it all suggests horses were being ridden,” says Sandra Olsen, an archaeologist at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, who was not part of either study.

Not long after, the Xiongnu emerged. They translated their skills on horseback into a sophisticated means of waging war and organizing an empire over vast distances. Starting in about 200 B.C.E., the Xiongnu marshaled nomadic tribes from across Eurasia into a formidable force, turning the steppes into a political center rivaling neighboring China. “The Xiongnu have been a source of constant worry and harm to China,” one contemporary Chinese historian wrote. “They move about in search of water and pasture and have no walled cities or fixed dwellings, nor do they engage in any kind of agriculture.”

Jeong’s study of DNA from 60 human skeletons from the Xiongnu’s 300-year-run shows how the region was transformed into a multiethnic empire. After more than 1000 years in which three distinct, stable human populations lived side by side on the Mongolian steppe, genetic diversity rose sharply around 200 B.C.E. Populations from western and eastern Mongolia mixed with each other and with people carrying genes from as far away as present-day Iran and Central Asia. Such wide-ranging mixing has “never been seen before at that scale,” Jeong says. “You can see the entire Eurasian genetic profile in the Xiongnu people.”

The results suggest mastery of the horse made possible stunning long-distance voyages on Central Asia’s sea of grass. Archaeological finds in the graves of Xiongnu elites, such as Roman glass, Persian textiles, and Greek silver, had suggested distant connections. But the genetic evidence suggests something more than trade. Eleven Xiongnu-period skeletons showed genetic signatures similar to those of the Sarmatians, nomad warriors who dominated the region north of the Black Sea, 2000 kilometers across the open steppe from Mongolia.

“There’s no written evidence of [Xiongnu] contact with Sarmatians, and it’s not well-attested archaeologically. It’s really surprising they’re mixing over these long distances,” says Tsagaan Turbat, an archaeologist at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Archaeology. “This kind of information is really a game changer.”

In the future, researchers hope the genomes will help reveal how the mysterious nomad empire worked. The Xiongnu are “doing the things that empires do—forcing or enticing people to move,” says University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, archaeologist Bryan Miller. “Are people sent out to rule, or are local elites allowed to continue?” he asks. “Only genetics could answer that.”

On Nov. 5, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) signed a loan agreement with the Government of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar to provide a Japanese ODA loan of up to 25 billion yen for the COVID-19 Crisis Response Emergency Support Loan.

The objective of the program is to contain COVID-19 and mitigate its adverse socioeconomic impacts in Mongolia, implementing emergency response measures for the health, economic and social sector, by extending budget support to the Government of Mongolia and thereby contributing to promoting the economic stabilization and development efforts of Mongolia. This program will contribute to the achievement of SDGs Goals 1, 3 and 8 among others.

(CNN)What may have seemed like a ridiculously high prediction weeks ago has turned into reality -- and much faster than health experts expected.

"I was predicting just a week or two ago we'd hit 100,000 (new cases a day). I didn't imagine it would be already there," said William Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School professor and chair of ACCESS Health International, a global health think tank.

The United States reported its highest number of new coronavirus infections in a single day -- 102,831 on Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

And it's not just due to more testing. New cases have increased 21% over the past week, according to Johns Hopkins. But testing has only increased 4.52% over the past week, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

More states are seeing record-high numbers of daily Covid-19 cases. On Thursday, the Pennsylvania Department of Health reported a new record of 2,900 cases in one day.

"The department has seen significant increases in the number of COVID-19 cases among younger age groups, particularly 19 to 24-year-olds," the health department said.

Also on Thursday, Illinois reported 9,935 new infections -- up from its previous daily record of 7,899 on October 31. And another 97 deaths were reported Thursday, bringing Illinois' coronavirus death toll to over 10,000.

As hospitalizations and deaths surge nationwide, some officials are enacting new rules to try to control the virus' spread.

16 states set new records for hospitalizations

Covid-19 hospitalizations reached all-time highs in 16 states Wednesday, according to the Covid Tracking Project: Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

"Our number of hospitalized people goes up every day. These are a lot of Kentuckians who are fighting for their lives," Gov. Andy Beshear said Wednesday. "There's a lot of pain out there and it's hitting everybody."

The state's health commissioner, Dr. Steven Stack, said he's concerned "not that we will first run out of bed space but that we may not have enough health care workers to staff all those beds."

Kansas is suffering another "very difficult week for virus spread" -- especially with rising hospitalizations, Gov. Laura Kelly said Wednesday.

Last week, the closest available ICU bed to one rural hospital was about a six-hour drive away, Kelly said.

Across the US, more than 52,000 people were hospitalized Wednesday with coronavirus, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

And at least 1,097 new Covid-19 deaths were reported Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins. That's a 23.71% increase from four weeks ago, when the US averaged 696 coronavirus deaths per day.

In just 10 months, more than 9.5 million people in the US have been infected with coronavirus, and more than 234,000 have died.

The battle over a shutdown

El Paso, Texas, reached a record-high number of hospitalizations Wednesday, with at least 1,041 Covid-19 patients hospitalized in the city.

Coronavirus is spreading so rampantly in El Paso County that a fourth mobile morgue was headed to the area this week.

County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, the top government official in the county, ordered a two-week shutdown of all nonessential services last week. Without such measures, he said, "we will see unprecedented levels of deaths."

But the Texas attorney general said his office has filed a motion for a temporary injunction to stop the judge's "unlawful lockdown order, which flies in the face of Gov. Greg Abbott's executive orders on COVID-19."

Abbott said Samaniego "illegally" shut down businesses. He said the county judge "made it clear that he had not been enforcing existing protocols allowed under law" that could help curb the virus "while allowing businesses to safely open."

From curfews to mask mandates to crowd control, other state and local officials are scrambling to control Covid-19 during what doctors say will be the worst surge yet.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announced a stay-at-home advisory earlier this week that will be going into effect from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Baker also announced new restrictions around gatherings and a new closing time for indoor facilities, theaters and other venues.

Connecticut announced new capacity limits on restaurants, religious ceremonies and indoor event spaces.

Gov. Ned Lamont also recommended residents stay home between 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. to limit the spread through social gatherings -- a primary source of infection during this fall surge.

Those who can't work from home may be at higher risk of getting Covid-19

Employed adults who tested positive for Covid-19 were almost twice as likely to report regularly going to a workplace than those who tested negative, according to research published Thursday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

A CDC-led team looked at 314 US adults: 153 were symptomatic and had positive Covid-19 PCR tests and 161 were symptomatic people with negative test results.

Of 248 participants who reported their telework status in the two weeks before illness onset, those who had positive Covid-19 test results were more likely to report going exclusively to a workplace.

The findings highlight socioeconomic differences among participants who did and did not telework, the authors wrote. Non-White employees and those who earned less had less opportunity to telework.

"Allowing and encouraging the option to work from home or telework, when possible, is an important consideration for reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission," the authors wrote.

When teleworking isn't possible, worker safety measures should be scaled up, they said.

CNN's Naomi Thomas, Amanda Watts, Kay Jones, Brad Parks, Gregory Lemos, Claudia Dominguez and Joe Sutton contributed to this report.

Canada’s Turquoise Hill Resources (TSX, NYSE: TRQ) is taking Rio Tinto (ASX, LON, NYSE: RIO) to arbitration over the mining giant’s role and obligations to support the company in securing additional funding for the vast Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold-silver mine in Mongolia.

Turquoise Hill said a special committee of its board, which approved the arbitration, concluded that Rio’s approach to the financing of the mine expansion was “incompatible with the company’s announced strategy to maximize debt and/or hybrid financing for the Oyu Tolgoi project so as to minimize the size, and defer the timing, of an equity rights offering (if any)”.

The Rio Tinto-controlled company and mine operator had expected the underground expansion to cost $5.3 billion when it was approved in 2015. Last year, however, Turquoise Hill flagged stability risks associated with the original project design, adding that amendments to it could increase costs by as much as an additional $1.9 billion.

Turquoise Hill also warned at the time of further delays of up to two and a half years, with first sustainable production from Oyu Tolgoi’s underground expansion expected between May 2022 and June 2023.

Rio Tinto had said in September it planned to raise up to $500 million through additional lending to develop the giant copper mine. The move, Rio said, would reduce the remaining funding requirement of the expansion to up to $1.4 billion.

By reprofiling, the parties sought more time to repay their debt, knowing that the principal of the extended debt, or in some cases even the interest rate on it, are not reduced.

Any remaining funding for the underground mine, Rio vowed, was to be met through a Turquoise Hill equity offering.

The Vancouver-based miner said late on Wednesday that the proceeding, which was started in British Columbia, followed recent discussions with Rio Tinto relating to the reprofiling.

It also said it would be between three and five months before the parties hear the results of the arbitration, which Turquoise Hill expects to be a binding decision.

BMO Metals and Mining analyst Edward Sterck criticized Turquoise Hill’s move. “It appears that Turquoise Hill wants Rio Tinto to backstop additional debt or a streaming agreement, which in our view is not in Rio Tinto’s best interests,” he wrote on Thursday.

The expert said both options would leave Rio carrying all the risk at a capital cost likely higher than a direct equity funding option.

Mulling options

Turquoise is simultaneously advancing its evaluation of financing options for Oyu Tolgoi. Such alternatives include additional debt from banks or international financial institutions, an offering of global medium-term notes and a gold streaming transaction, it said.

The company had previously disclosed it was facing a funding shortfall for Oyu’s expansion of up to $4 billion, including balance sheet servicing costs.

BMO Capital Markets expects Turquoise Hill to be short between $1.5 and $2 billion, even before the $500 million the miner and Rio Tinto are hoping to secure.

The miner noted it would present Rio with details of the preferred funding options for its consideration before the end of the year.

Once completed, the underground section of Oyu Tolgoi will lift production from 125,000–150,000 tonnes in 2019 to 560,000 tonnes at peak output, which is now expected by 2025 at the earliest. This would make it the biggest new copper mine to come on stream in several years.

Oyu Tolgoi, located in the South Gobi desert near the border with China, produced 35,203 tonnes of copper and 26,154 ounces of gold in the first three months of this year.

Rio Tinto owns the mine through its majority stake in Turquoise Hill, which has a 66% interest in Oyu Tolgoi. The Mongolian state has the remaining 34% of the operation.

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ “Export Mongolia 2020”, an international virtual forum and exhibition is to be co-organized by the Government of Mongolia, international donor organizations and development projects on November 19-20 at Corporate Convention Centre, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

The virtual forum will bring together top level government officials, experts, professionals, investors, manufactures, importers and exporters to discuss and exchange the views and ideas, to explore and identify the investment and trade opportunities through interactive panel discussions.

This exhibition aims to promote Mongolian brand products and services to the international market, to open up investment and export opportunities, to matchmake buyers with investors through the online platform.

Online Business to Business (B2B) meetings will give the opportunity to explore more about the Mongolian prospective investment seeking projects of non-mining sectors to the investors. Business to Government (B2G) meetings will discuss government related challenges encountered by the national producers and entrepreneurs to bring up the best solutions for both businesses and policy makers.

www.exportmongolia.org will be the international online platform for the linkages and matchmaking of the Mongolian national producers and entrepreneurs to the world through virtual forum, exhibition, webinars and B2B meetings.

Registration to the event is free – Please take this opportunity to connect to Mongolian brand products and services.

The first 4,000 sheep donated by Mongolia recently arrived at the border city of Ereenhot in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and were put under quarantine in selected areas.

It is the first group of the 30,000 sheep that Mongolia offered to donate to China when Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga visited this February.

The subsidiary of China Certification & Inspection Group (CCIC) in Inner Mongolia, will provide free quarantine inspection and disinfection for the sheep. Related sites like the sheep cots, transport passages and transport vehicles will also be disinfected. The disinfection service will be carried out on Oct 13, 16 and 19.

When the quarantine is done, the company will carry out further disinfection of the quarantine site.

So far, the remaining 26,000 sheep are under quarantine in the border town of Zamyn-Uud in Mongolia.

CCIC will disinfect the Chinese quarantine sites in advance according to the date of entry of the sheep.