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.

Elixir Energy (EXR) has completed another well at its fully owned Nomgon IX coal-bed methane (CBM) production sharing contract (PSC) in Mongolia.

The Nomgon 5S re-drill appraisal strat-hole well was drilled to a depth of 450 metres, intersecting 47 metres of net coal.

Managing Director Neil Young said the Nomgon 5S well one of several successful wells recently completed in the sub-basin.

"The strong net coal outcome from the Nomgon 5S redrill all means we have now drilled five successful wells in the Nomgon sub-basin in a row," Neil stated.

"This well was a 7.3-metre step-out from the original Nomgon 1 discovery. Data from all the Nomgon wells willow be progressively analysed and integrated, leading firstly to updated prospective resource numbers followed by our maiden contingent resource booking," he continued.

Elixir is also drilling the Hutul 1S exploration well and expects to reach total depth and complete logging within a week.

The company intends to drill two more exploration strat-holes this year.

Shares last traded at 11.5 cents.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Business groups across the United States on Wednesday urged Republican President Donald Trump, his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, the media and all Americans to allow time to count all valid ballots cast in the close 2020 election.

Trump declared victory early Wednesday, made unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, and called for the counting of ballots to be halted, shocking even some fellow Republicans and sending a chill through the U.S. business community.

Biden is leading the electoral college tally based on ballots counted as of Wednesday afternoon but the picture is unclear in Pennsylvania, Georgia and some other states.

The Trump campaign sued Michigan to stop its count and said it would seek a recount in another battleground state, Wisconsin, that was won by Biden.

The leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor federation, the National Association of Evangelicals and the National African-American Clery Network said in a joint statement that violence, intimidation and other tactics would weaken the country.

“A free and fair election is one in which everyone eligible to cast a ballot can, all ballots are counted consistent with the law, and the American people, through their votes, determine the outcome,” the statement said.

Rufus Yerxa, a former U.S. government official who heads the 100-member U.S. National Foreign Trade Council, said concerns about the counting and possible repression of ballots had raised concerns among colleagues in other democracies at a time when Trump’s trade policies had already put many allies on edge.

“I’ve sensed a lot of concern around the world about what is happening here,” he told Reuters. “I’ve told them that our election officials are still honest public servants who are doing their jobs,” he said, adding, “But in my long career, I’ve never seen democracy and the rule of law in such peril.”

Trump has made attacks on the integrity of U.S. elections a campaign theme, stoking concerns about potential fraud involving mail-in ballots whose use increased sharply because of the coronavirus pandemic, although voter fraud is vanishingly rare.

Jason Oxman, CEO of the global Information Technology Industry trade association, underscored the long history of peaceful and fair U.S. elections, and urged all Americans to remain patient until “the votes are all counted.”

Jay Timmons, chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, said manufacturers could help build unity in the deeply divided nation. “Just as we did after every election over the past decade, manufacturers will be part of the solution and move forward in a way that builds us up and leaves no one behind,” he said on Twitter.

Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Grant McCool

Total number of confirmed cases: 352, Recovered: 314, Deaths: 0

(Information current as of 4 November 2020)

The Government of Mongolia extended the partial undertaking of high-alert preparedness through 31 October 2020 and issued precautionary measures.

This entails:

Suspension of all regular passenger flights;

Suspension of international passenger train travel;

Closure of all land borders of Mongolia with China and Russia.

The Mongolian Government continues to organise charter flights to repatriate Mongolian citizens. EU citizens can depart with these charter flights. EU citizens, who hold valid residency permits and visas might be allowed by authorities to enter Mongolia. For further information on return to Mongolia EU citizens are advised to contact Mongolian diplomatic missions abroad.

A negative COVID-19 test is required for entry. All entering travellers must undergo a 21-day quarantine in a government-designated facility, usually a hotel, at their own expense.

In November, charter flights will be organised to:

Frankfurt: 19 November;

Almaty: 6 November;

Tokyo: 11, 25 November;

Seoul: 12, 13, 18, 20, 27 November.

For reservations, prices and other information regarding the flights, EU citizens can directly contact MIAT Mongolian Airlines, tel.: (11) 333999 or Central Tower, tel.: (11) 313385 or Encanto Tower tel.: (11) 322118; or AirTrans ticketing agency City Plaza, tel.: (11)303030.

EU citizens are advised to contact their Embassy or the Embassy representing their country for consular issues in Ulaanbaatar for additional information.