Mongolia halts uranium exploration in Dundgobi www.news.mn

Mongolia has halted uranium explorations in three soums (districts) of the Dundgobi Province after the Gurvansaikhan Company failed an inspection conducted by a working group from the Metropolitan Professional Inspection Department and nuclear and radiation experts. It was discovered that the company had not completed safety standards for preventing against nuclear and radiation leaks. Therefore, the mining company has lost three uranium exploration licenses in the Ulziit, Bayanjargalan, Gurvansaikhan, and Undurshil soums of the province.

The Fall of a Titan www.news.mn

Young Mongolian wrestler E.Oyunbold from the eastern Khentii province has been banned from competitions for two years following a doping scandal. Therefore, his victory in the traditional wrestling at last Naadam festival was cancelled and his title of Titan was revoked. Today (17 June) Ulaanbaatar City Primary Court finally held the trial over E.Oyunbold’s doping case.

John Bolton: Trump sought Xi's help with re-election www.bbc.com

US President Donald Trump tried to get China's Xi Jinping to help him secure re-election, ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton's new book says.

Mr Bolton says Mr Trump wanted China to buy agricultural produce from US farmers, according to details of the forthcoming book previewed by US media.

He also says Mr Trump "remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House".

The Trump administration is trying to block the book from hitting shelves.

But on Wednesday night, the Department of Justice sought an emergency order from a judge to stop the book's release.

The publisher, Simon & Schuster, said in a statement: "Tonight's filing by the government is a frivolous, politically motivated exercise in futility."

It said hundreds of thousands of copies of the book have already been distributed around the world and the injunction would accomplish nothing.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump called in to a Fox News programme and said of Mr Bolton: "He broke the law. This is highly classified information and he did not have approval."

"He was a washed up guy," the president added. "I gave him a chance."

The foreign policy hawk joined the White House in April 2018 and left in September the following year, saying he had decided to quit as national security adviser. President Trump, however, said he had fired Mr Bolton because he disagreed "strongly" with him.

On one hand, the account John Bolton offers in his new book should seem somewhat familiar.

This is hardly the first time a former adviser or anonymous current aide to Donald Trump has offered anecdotes about a president seemingly uninterested in the details of governing and uninformed on basic issues of foreign policy. For nearly three-and-a-half years, there have been plentiful stories about a White House rife with backbiting and internal power struggles.

Mr Bolton's book goes beyond this well-trodden ground, however, in painting a broad portrait of a president willing to bend foreign policy to advance his domestic and personal political agenda. This was the heart of the impeachment case congressional Democrats made against Trump in January.

Mr Bolton confirms their allegations that the president wanted the withholding of military aid to pressure Ukraine to provide damaging information about Democratic rival Joe Biden. Mr Bolton adds that Trump's dealings with China were also done with an eye on his re-election, and that he repeatedly intervened to assist friendly autocrats around the world.

Republicans suggest this is all the work of a disgruntled employee trying to sell books, while Democrats are already growling that Bolton should have volunteered these bombshells during the impeachment proceedings. That ship has sailed, of course, but Bolton's book can still have a bite, distracting a presidential campaign struggling to find its footing less than five months before election day.

What does Bolton allege about the meeting with Xi?
The allegations refer to a meeting between President Trump and President Xi at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, in June last year.

The Chinese president had complained that some US critics of China were calling for a new cold war, Mr Bolton said in an extract from the book published in the New York Times.

"Trump, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election [in 2020], alluding to China's economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he'd win," Mr Bolton said.

"He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome."

When Mr Xi agreed to make discussions on farm products a priority in trade talks, Mr Trump called him "the greatest leader in Chinese history".

Speaking on Wednesday evening, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer disputed Mr Bolton's account, saying the request for help with re-election "never happened".

Mr Bolton also mentions an earlier conversation at the summit's opening dinner, in which they discussed the building of camps in China's western Xinjiang region.

Mr Trump said the construction should go ahead as it was "exactly the right thing to do".

China has detained about a million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the camps for punishment and indoctrination.

The Trump administration has been publicly critical of China's treatment of Uighurs, and on Wednesday the president signed legislation authorising US sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for the repression of Muslims in Xinjiang province.

Mr Trump's Democratic challenger in this November's election, Joe Biden, said in a statement about the book: "If these accounts are true, it's not only morally repugnant, it's a violation of Donald Trump's sacred duty to the American people."

Why has Trump's niece written a damning memoir?
What does Bolton say on Ukraine?
Mr Bolton says the impeachment inquiry into the president might have had a different outcome this year if it had gone beyond Ukraine and investigated other instances of alleged political interference.

In January, President Trump was impeached for withholding military aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into starting a corruption investigation into Mr Biden and his son Hunter.

The president denied the wrongdoing and was acquitted after a two-week trial in the Republican-controlled Senate in February, which did not include any witnesses.

Mr Bolton - who was criticised by Democrats for declining to testify to the hearings - does not discuss in the book whether he thinks that Mr Trump's actions on Ukraine were impeachable.

The publication contains a number of other explosive allegations:

'Oh, are you a nuclear power?'
Among other things, Mr Trump is alleged to have been unaware that the UK was a nuclear power.

Britain's atomic deterrent came up during a meeting with Theresa May in 2018, when it was mentioned by one of the then-prime minister's officials.

According to the book, Mr Trump said: "Oh, are you a nuclear power?" Mr Bolton said he could tell it "was not intended as a joke".

Mr Trump also once asked his former chief-of-staff John Kelly if Finland was part of Russia, writes Mr Bolton.

Invading Venezuela would be 'cool'
Mr Trump said invading Venezuela would be "cool", according to the book, and that the South American nation was "really part of the United States".

But he was less enthusiastic about another invasion. Of the Afghanistan conflict, Mr Trump is quoted in the book as saying: "This was done by a stupid person named George Bush."

Mr Bolton writes that in a May 2019 phone call Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled off a "brilliant display of Soviet-style propaganda" by likening Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, which "largely persuaded Trump".

Mr Putin's objective was to defend his ally, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Mr Bolton writes. In 2018, Mr Trump labelled the leftist Mr Maduro a dictator and imposed sanctions, but he clung to power.

In an interview with ABC News to be broadcast in full this Sunday, Mr Bolton says of Mr Trump: "I think Putin thinks he can play him like a fiddle."

'This is a bad place'
Mr Bolton writes that many of the president's closest aides privately disparaged him.

When he arrived at the White House, Mr Bolton said Mr Kelly warned him: "You can't imagine how desperate I am to get out of here. This is a bad place to work, as you will find out."

During Mr Trump's 2018 meeting with North Korea's leader, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo passed Mr Bolton a note about the president that said: "He is so full of shit."

He writes that Mr Pompeo, often described as a Trump loyalist, was among aides who considered resigning in disgust in frustration at working for the president.

Mr Bolton writes that the president "saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government."

Journalists should be 'executed'
According to Bolton's account, during a 2019 meeting in New Jersey Mr Trump said reporters - some of whose organisations he often describes as fake news - should have to disclose their sources or face imprisonment.

"These people should be executed. They are scumbags," Trump is quoted as saying.

Australia pension giant pressing Rio over heritage site blasts www.bloomberg.com

Australia’s biggest pension fund said it is pressing Rio Tinto Group on the destruction of a 40,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site, though isn’t yet contemplating selling down its stake in the world’s second-biggest miner.

New sports field opens in Bayanzurkh district www.montsame.mn

Governor of the Capital City and the Mayor of Ulaanbaatar S.Amarsaikhan made a decision to build a football field in each district and it is being successfully implemented. The construction of a football field and sports facilities, covering 1.8 hectares of land near the General Authority for Border Protection in the 4th khoroo of Bayanzurkh district has been completed and opened today.

The construction of the field was implemented by “Mongol Management Center” LLC. Within this framework, a 4.4-meter-wide, four-lane 450-meter jogging track, a 5,500-square-meter football field, an 880-square-meter basketball and volleyball court, an 84-meter-long 1.2-meter-wide walkway, and 1,155 square meters of sidewalks have been built. In addition, the sports field was built with spectator seats, shade, children's playgrounds, parking lots and restrooms, adding one more place for children and youth to visit.

The opening ceremony was attended by Governor of the Capital City and the Mayor of Ulaanbaatar S.Amarsaikhan Member of the Parliament B.Saranchimeg, Deputy Minister of Education, Culture, Science and Sports G.Ganbayar, General Manager of Ulaanbaatar and Head of the Mayor's Office T.Gantumur and athletes of the national football team.

Mayor S.Amarsaikhan first visited the site on May 9, 2019 which is more than a year ago and got acquainted with the situation and instructed relevant organizations including the Mayor's Office of Ulaanbaatar, the Land Management Department of the capital city, the City Planning and Development Department, and the Investment Department to urgently develop a design for the sports field, provide the necessary funds and start the construction work. Accordingly, the construction of a sports field was intensified since last autumn.

Mayor S.Amarsaikhan said, “As part of our people-centered policy, we have been building public parks, sports fields, bicycle paths etc. in stages by revoking the licenses for the land lots which have not been used properly, polluted the environment and most importantly, posed a risk to human life, health and property. Today, the construction work to transform this 1.8 hectares of area into a comprehensive sports field that meets international standards is being inaugurated. In the past, we have built parks in Chingeltei and Bayanzurkh districts and Central square. Currently, a park covering 3.8 hectares of land is being built at the foot of Bayankhoshuu Mountain, and green areas and winter sports arenas are under construction in Takhilt, Tsagdaa Tolgoi and Khan-Uul district. There are also plans to build more green areas and children’s playground in every corner of Ulaanbaatar. I would like to inform you that the park in the central square will be opened soon. In the past year, a total of 158 land lots have been reclaimed by the city for public use.”

Residents of the 4th khoroo of Bayanzurkh district expressed their gratitude to the Mayor and other officials for the construction of the football field and asked for more such places to be established in the future.

Mongolia reports 413 negative tests for COVID-19, 1 more recovery www.xinhuanet.com

June 16 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia conducted 413 tests for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours and the results were all negative, the country's National Center for Communicable Disease (NCCD) said Tuesday.

Former Prime Minister J.Erdenebat imprisoned amidst protests www.news.mn

Former Mongolian Prime Minister J.Erdenebat was imprisoned (16 June) after failed to pay the hefty MNT 10 billion bail issued by the Sukhbaatar District Court of Ulaanbaatar. His trail has been postponed until 22 June, two days before election. This comes after J.Erdenebat dismissed his lawyer. He is accused of abuse of power for illegally owning protected areas with special licenses in Tost, in the Tosonbulba Mountain Range in the South Gobi Province under his name when he was working as Prime Minister.

World Bank Group supports Mongolia’s efforts to improve investment climate, inspire investor confidence www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and the National Development Agency (NDA) are launching an institutional platform to help the government resolve investor grievances efficiently and transparently, thereby improving investor confidence in Mongolia.

The platform — the Systemic Investor Response Mechanism (SIRM) — will enable investors to register and track resolution of grievances at an early stage. In addition, the IFC and NDA partnership will build a national database of investment climate issues that investors face as well as cases of breaching investment protection guarantees.

“The government recognizes the need for a robust and transparent investment climate that is conducive to Mongolia’s economic growth,” said B. Bayarsaikhan, Chairman of the National Development Agency. “Our collaboration with the World Bank Group will help create a more favorable business environment for investors, retaining and expanding existing FDI as well as domestic investment in Mongolia.”

“Political and policy instability is one of the main challenges for Mongolia in terms of attracting and sustaining foreign direct investments (FDI). Effective cooperation and coordination between the public and private sectors are important to tackle this issue and much needs to be done in this respect. An online system to track and resolve investors’ grievances launched today is crucial to address issues faced by investors,” said Amartuvshin, President of the National Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Rufat Alimardanov, IFC’s Resident Representative for Mongolia, said, “At a time when economies across the world are impacted by COVID-19, it is even more important to develop innovative ways to attract and retain investment, and protect jobs.”

“More predictable investment policies and consistent government action could help emerging markets like Mongolia attract more investment flows, thereby supporting financial stability and creating the conditions for a robust economic rebound. The new SIRM platform affirms the government of Mongolia’s efforts towards investment climate reforms and restoring investor confidence,” he said.

The launch was attended by foreign embassies in Ulaanbaatar and representatives from business associations and chambers. Officials from government agencies involved in investor protection, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NDA, and the Ministry of Agriculture, also attended the event.

IFC — in partnership with the government of Japan and Hungary — has been supporting Mongolia’s investment reforms through its Investment Policy and Agriculture Promotion advisory project since 2014. The project aims to help the government improve its investment policies, promote economic diversification, enhance investor protection, and further attract and retain private investments.

As part of its efforts to improve accessibility, transparency, and efficiency of public services in Mongolia, the World Bank is helping the government to set up an online one-stop service center for investors under the Smart Government Project. The SIRM platform will be linked to this center.

IFC—a sister organization of the World Bank and member of the World Bank Group—is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets. We work in more than 100 countries, using our capital, expertise, and influence to create markets and opportunities in developing countries. In fiscal year 2019, we invested more than $19 billion in private companies and financial institutions in developing countries, leveraging the power of the private sector to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity. For more information, visit www.ifc.org.

Source: World Bank Group

Coronavirus: Dexamethasone proves first life-saving drug www.bbc.com

A cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives of patients seriously ill with coronavirus.

The low-dose steroid treatment dexamethasone is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus, UK experts say.

The drug is part of the world's biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus.

It cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators. For those on oxygen, it cut deaths by a fifth.

Had the drug had been used to treat patients in the UK from the start of the pandemic, up to 5,000 lives could have been saved, researchers say.

And it could be of huge benefit in poorer countries with high numbers of Covid-19 patients.

Latest coronavirus updates
About 19 out of 20 patients with coronavirus recover without being admitted to hospital. Of those who are admitted to hospital, most also recover, but some may need oxygen or mechanical ventilation. These are the high-risk patients whom dexamethasone appears to help.

The drug is already used to reduce inflammation in a range of other conditions, and it appears that it helps stop some of the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive as it tries to fight off coronavirus.

The body's over-reaction is called a cytokine storm and it can be deadly.

In the trial, led by a team from Oxford University, around 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and were compared with more than 4,000 who did not receive the drug.

For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.

Chief investigator Prof Peter Horby said: "This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality - and it reduces it significantly. It's a major breakthrough."

Lead researcher Prof Martin Landray says the findings suggest that for every eight patients treated on ventilators, you could save one life.

For those patients treated with oxygen, you save one life for approximately every 20-25 treated with the drug.

"There is a clear, clear benefit. The treatment is up to 10 days of dexamethasone and it costs about £5 per patient. So essentially it costs £35 to save a life. This is a drug that is globally available."

Prof Landray said, when appropriate, hospital patients should now be given it without delay, but people should not go out and buy it to take at home.

Dexamethasone does not appear to help people with milder symptoms of coronavirus - those who don't need help with their breathing.

The Recovery Trial has been running since March. It included the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine which has subsequently been ditched amid concerns that it increases fatalities and heart problems.

Another drug called remdesivir, an antiviral treatment that appears to shorten recovery time for people with coronavirus, is already being made available on the NHS.

The first drug proven to cut deaths from Covid-19 is not some new, expensive medicine but an old, cheap-as-chips steroid.

That is something to celebrate because it means patients across the world could benefit immediately. That's why the top-line results of this trial have been rushed out - because the implications are so huge globally.

Dexamethasone has been used since the early 1960s to treat a wide range of conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and asthma. Half of all Covid patients who require a ventilator do not survive, so cutting that risk by a third would have a huge impact.

The drug is given intravenously in intensive care, and in tablet form for less seriously ill patients. So far, the only other drug proven to benefit Covid patients is remdesivir, an antiviral treatment which has been used for Ebola.

That has been shown to reduce the duration of coronavirus symptoms from 15 days to 11, but the evidence was not strong enough to show whether it reduced mortality. Unlike dexamethasone, remdesivir is a new drug with limited supplies and a price has yet to be announced.

Hannes Takacs new head of EBRD in Mongolia www.ebrd.com

Hannes Takacs has been appointed to lead the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in Mongolia. He will start his new role as head of office on 14 July and move to Ulaanbaatar as soon as conditions allow.