Service sector growth may hinder 2020 economic outlook www.zgm.mn

International and domestic freight, one of the key drivers for economic growth, totaled 69 million tons in 2019. During the same period, Mongolia received 577,200 tourists, up 10.2 percent from a year earlier. However, the inflow of visitors and service sector revenue might decline in the first quarter of this year as the deadly virus (2019-nCoV) spreads around the world. Growth in the service sector is expected to grow along with the mining industry, according to the official at the central bank. Specifically, freight and retail sector growth have been dominating in the service sector. As of the third quarter of 2019, Mongolia’s economic growth reached 6.3 percent, mainly contributed by the mining, service, and construction sectors. The risk of an expected decrease in the service sector might have a negative effect on the economic outlook of 2020. The Asian Development Bank predicted the country’s economic growth at 6.3 percent this year.

Coronavirus: Whole world 'must take action', warns WHO www.bbc.com

The "whole world needs to be on alert" to fight the coronavirus, the head of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme has said.

Dr Mike Ryan praised China's response to the deadly outbreak, saying: "The challenge is great but the response has been massive."

The WHO will meet on Thursday to discuss whether the virus constitutes a global health emergency.

The Chinese city of Wuhan is the epicentre of the outbreak.

But the virus has spread across China and to at least 16 countries globally, including Thailand, France, the US and Australia.

More than 130 people have died in China and close to 6,000 have been infected.

There is no specific cure or vaccine. A number of people have recovered after treatment, however.

The WHO's Dr Ryan said an international team of experts was being assembled to go to China and work with experts there to learn more about how the disease is transmitted.

"We are at an important juncture in this event. We believe these chains of transmission can still be interrupted," he said.

Scientists in Australia have managed to recreate the new coronavirus outside of China, raising hope that it could be used to develop an early-diagnosis test.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who visited China this week, said most people who contracted the virus were suffering only "milder symptoms", but about 20% had severe effects such as pneumonia and respiratory failure.

He said that China "needs the world's solidarity and support," and that "the world is pulling together to end the outbreak, building on lessons learned from past outbreaks."

The director-general added that the WHO "deeply regrets" referring to the worldwide risk from the virus as "moderate" in three reports last week instead of "high".

He described the person-to-person spread of the illness in Germany, Vietnam and Japan as worrying, and said experts would consider it on Thursday when deciding whether to declare a global emergency.

What's happening in Wuhan?
The city's residents are enduring an isolated, frightening time. Most forms of traffic have been banned, and 11 million people are shut up in their homes, trying to minimise the spread of the virus.

Wuhan people cry out 'stay strong' from windows
Videos have emerged online of neighbours shouting "Wuhan jiayou!" out of their windows - roughly translated to "Stay strong Wuhan!" or "Keep on going Wuhan".

The phrase has been trending on Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media site, with people from around the country posting supportive messages.

"We will get through this. Wuhan jiayou, the whole country is supporting you," read one comment on Weibo.

"This is the first day since the lockdown that I've had to go out," a man in his 50s told the AFP news agency on Wednesday, on a mostly-deserted street.

"I have no choice because I need to buy food."

Analysis - Why don't we know the death rate?
By James Gallagher, BBC health and science correspondent

How deadly is this virus? It is a basic question, but the answer is elusive.

It is far too simplistic to take the 130 deaths and the 6,000 cases and come up with a death rate of 2%.

We're in the middle of the outbreak and thousands of those patients are still being treated.

We don't know if they will live or die, so they can't be used in these calculations.

We also don't know how many mild and undetected cases are out there.

"It is very early to make any statements on what the overall mortality rate may be," the WHO's Maria Van Kerkhove has warned.

Also, the deadliness of the new virus is only one component of its threat.

Flu kills hundreds of thousands of people each year not because it is super-deadly, but because it is able to infect so many people.

Who is being evacuated from Wuhan?
Hundreds of foreign nationals are being evacuated from Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, with Japan, the US and the EU among those repatriating their citizens.

Some 200 Japanese nationals have landed at Tokyo's Haneda airport, and 240 Americans - including workers from the local US consulate - left Wuhan on Wednesday.

The US flight landed at a California military base and was met on the tarmac by emergency vehicles. The defense department said those on board would be monitored and sent to local hospitals if they fell ill.

Wuhan: The London-sized city where the virus began
Britons will not fly home from Wuhan on Thursday
Island quarantine plan as foreigners leave China
Australia plans to quarantine its evacuees on Christmas island, 2,000km (1,200 miles) from the mainland.

Two aircraft to fly EU citizens home have been scheduled, with 250 French nationals leaving on the first flight.

South Korea said some 700 of its citizens would leave on four flights this week. Both Malaysia and the Philippines have also pledged to evacuate their citizens in and around Wuhan.

Canada has chartered a plane to bring home around 160 of its nationals, but said it could take several days to get permission to land near Wuhan.

What's the travel situation?
On Tuesday, Hong Kong announced plans to slash cross-border travel between the city and mainland China.

British Airways has suspended all flights to and from the Chinese mainland, and the UK's Foreign Office warned against "all but essential travel" there.

Several other airlines have taken similar measures. United Airlines and Cathay Pacific are restricting flights, while Lion Air - one of Asia's biggest airlines - is stopping flights to China from Saturday.

Cathay Pacific has also suspended in-flight trolley services, changed some aspects of its meal offer, and stopped giving out hot towels, pillows, blankets and magazines in an effort to prevent the virus spreading.

What every mining CEO needs to know about climate change www.mining.com

A new report by global consultancy McKinsey & Co. looks at three key questions the mining sector needs to address in light of climate change. Entitled Climate risk and decarbonization: What every mining CEO needs to know, the report details the potential physical risk to mining assets, outlines how a low-carbon economy will shift demand for minerals, and looks at how mining companies can reduce emissions at their own operations.

Mongolia approves national program to promote innovation www.xinhuanet.com

Mongolia on Wednesday approved a national program to bolster innovation, according to a statement by the government's press office.

Criteria updated for Oyu Tolgoi Board members to represent Mongolia www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. At its regular session of today, January 29, the Cabinet discussed criteria for members of the Board of Directors of Oyu Tolgoi LLC to represent the interests of the government of Mongolia in the Oyu Tolgoi mining project.

Mongolia approves national program to promote livestock husbandry www.xinhuanet.com

Mongolia on Wednesday approved a national program to promote the development of livestock husbandry, according to a statement issued by the government's press office.

Exploration licenses decline by 20 percent yoy www.zgm.mn

The number of licenses valid in Mongolia declined by 9 percent in 2019 from a year earlier, reaching 2,796. Operational licenses have decreased by three, while exploration licenses have dropped by 20 percent to 1,126, according to the Minerals Resources and Petroleum Authority (MRPAM). Moreover, valid exploration licenses cover 3.8 percent of the whole territory of Mongolia. The industry experts have been criticizing the Government’s decision to halt issuing a new exploration license for one year. Of the operating licenses, 31.8 percent are gold, 17.8 percent are coal, 11.2 percent are fluoride and 4.6 percent are limestone. To note, Mongolia is the third-largest supplier of fluoride in the world after China and Mexico. In the meantime, the number of fluoride projects is increasing as well. The Mineral Resources Council has approved feasibility studies for 53 new mining projects in 2019-2020, of which 22.6 percent or 12 are for fluoride. In terms of the structure of the license owners, 14.5 percent of the total license holders are 100 percent foreign-invested and 6 percent are Mongolian and foreign joint ventures. China, the Virgin Islands, Hong Kong, and Singapore are dominating among foreign-invested companies.

New refined coal factory to commence production in September 2020 www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Cabinet today discussed an issue of building the second factory for refined coal briquettes in Ulaanbaatar city.

China virus toll passes 130 as U.S. weighs flight ban www.reuters.com

BEIJING (Reuters) - The death toll from a new coronavirus in China rose sharply to 132 on Wednesday with nearly 1,500 new cases, heaping pressure on Beijing to control the disease as U.S. officials said the White House was weighing whether to suspend flights to the country.

A nurse takes the temperature of a woman in the reception area of the First People's Hospital in Yueyang, Hunan Province, near the border to Hubei Province, which is under partial lockdown after an outbreak of a new coronavirus, in China January 28, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
The White House is holding daily meetings on the outbreak and monitoring China-U.S. flights as a likely source of infections, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters, though it had decided against suspending air traffic.

A senior Trump administration official said the administration had not asked airlines to suspend flights, after CNBC reported that the White House had told airline executives it was considering such as drastic move.

Fears of the spreading virus have already pushed airlines around the world to reduce flights to China and global companies to restrict employee travel to the country, while sectors from mining to luxury goods have been shaken by concerns for global growth in the event of a worst-case pandemic.

China’s National Health Commission on Wednesday said the total number of deaths from the flu-like virus rose by 26 on Tuesday to 132, almost all in Hubei province which is under virtual lockdown, while the number of confirmed cases rose by 1,459 to a total of 5,974.

Several countries are trying to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan, the city in Hubei at the center of the epidemic. A U.S. government official who declined to be identified told Reuters a U.S. charter plane had departed from Wuhan earlier on Wednesday, without elaborating on the number of passengers on board.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing earlier said a chartered plane would pick up its consular staff on Wednesday.

Australia said it would help some citizens leave Hubei and quarantine them on Christmas Island, a remote speck in the Indian Ocean best known for housing asylum seekers.

New cases were reported around the world including Germany, where four people from the same company were infected after one of them contracted it from a colleague while visiting their workplace in China.

The German cases raise concerns about the human-to-human spread of the virus which can be transmitted in droplets from coughs and sneezes and has an incubation period of up to 14 days.

SCIENTISTS GROW VIRUS
Known as “2019-nCoV”, the newly identified coronavirus has created alarm because it is spreading quickly and there are still important unknowns surrounding it, such as its lethality and whether it is infectious before symptoms show.

It emerged late last year in Wuhan, a major transportation hub and capital of central Hubei province with a population of 11 million people. China has since moved to lock down most of Hubei, with a population around the same as Italy.

Health authorities believe the virus originated from an animal and have pointed to a seafood market in Wuhan where wildlife was traded illegally.

A team of scientists in Australia said on Wednesday they had developed a lab-grown version of the coronavirus, the first to be recreated outside of China, in a breakthrough that could help combat the global spread of the disease.

The researchers at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne said they would share the sample, which was grown from an infected patient, with the World Health Organization and laboratories around the world.

“Having the real virus means we now have the ability to actually validate and verify all test methods, and compare their sensitivities and specificities,” the Doherty Institute’s virus identification laboratory head, Julian Druce, said in a statement.

The virus has spread to more than a dozen countries and cases such as those in Germany show it is spreading through human contact and not only through travelers from China.

“The virus is a devil and we cannot let the devil hide,” state television quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping said during a meeting with World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Beijing on Tuesday.

“China will strengthen international cooperation and welcomes the WHO participation in virus prevention... China is confident of winning the battle against the virus.”

Asian stock markets erased earlier gains on Wednesday with Hong Kong shares tumbling to a seven-week low as the surge in new cases fueled fears about the economic impact of the virus. From France to Japan, governments were organizing evacuations, while Hong Kong - scene of anti-China unrest for months - planned to suspend rail and ferry links with the mainland. United Airlines said it was suspending some flights between the United States and China for a week from Feb. 1 due to a “significant decline in demand.”

The outbreak has forced extensive travel curbs in China, with many local officials trying to identify people who are from or have visited Hubei province, and some communities trying to exclude all outsiders.

Some apartment blocks have forbid delivery drivers from entering, forcing them to drop off their parcels outside building gates.

The European Commission said it would help fund two aircraft to fly EU citizens home, with 250 French nationals leaving on the first flight.

Gold prices surge as global coronavirus fear shakes market confidence www.rt.com

Gold is once again proving its reputation as the traditional safe haven during times of uncertainty. The price of the precious metal has been rising amid continuing worries over the spread of the coronavirus.
Bullion has gained $20 an ounce to reach a 7-year high of $1,585 this week, before easing to around $1,578 per ounce on Tuesday. It has led the rally of other metals, including silver and platinum.