#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.

How one woman took on Mongolia’s mining industry to save the snow leopards www.scmp.com

Bayarjargal Agvaantseren roused local communities and politicians to prevent mines destroying the magnificent mountain cat’s habitat
Her work saw the creation of a 1.8-million-acre natural park, home to a population of snow leopards that is the world’s second largest after China

There are fewer than 7,000 snow leopards in the wild today, and those numbers are decreasing, according to the likes of global conservation body WWF. Photo: ShutterstockThere are fewer than 7,000 snow leopards in the wild today, and those numbers are decreasing, according to the likes of global conservation body WWF. Photo: Shutterstock
There are fewer than 7,000 snow leopards in the wild today, and those numbers are decreasing, according to the likes of global conservation body WWF. Photo: Shutterstock
The fight to save snow leopards in Mongolia was never going to be easy – not when it involved taking on mining companies, the backbone of the country’s most powerful industry. It was a long road, one that saw a suspicious death, efforts to convince rural communities that the snow leopard was not their enemy, and the creation of a massive new national park, but Bayarjargal Agvaantseren got there in the end.
The snow leopard is as renowned for its beauty as for its scarcity. It lives at altitudes of more than 10,000 feet, and has evolved to camouflage itself in the snowy landscapes in which it makes its home – but the outlook for the magnificent mountain cat is grim. Habitat fragmentation, poaching, retaliatory killings by farmers who have lost livestock, and the current climate crisis – which could result in a loss of up to 30 per cent of the snow leopard’s habitat in the Himalayas alone – are threatening its survival.

Today, there are fewer than 7,000 snow leopards in the wild; according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which considers it a vulnerable species, the population of mature animals is estimated to be less than 3,400. The IUCN and the global conservation body WWF both believe those numbers are decreasing.
At the beginning we didn’t know what to do, because people were worried about the economy and nobody cared about snow leopards

Mongolia is home to some 1,000 snow leopards, the second-largest population after China – but the country’s booming mining industry is a grave threat to their habitat. Thanks to the efforts of Agvaantseren, however, the government created the 1.8 million-acre Tost Tosonbumba Nature Reserve in April 2016 – the culmination of her seven-year fight against the influential sector.
“We learned in 2009 that the entire Tost Tosonbumba mountain range was being given away to the mining industry, which was quite shocking news to us because South Gobi is the region where 20 per cent to 25 per cent of all Mongolian snow leopards live,” says Agvaantseren, executive director of the Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation and Mongolia Programme Director at the United States-based Snow Leopard Trust. “It was not easy,” recalls the 50-year-old. “In the beginning we didn’t know what to do, because people were worried about the economy and nobody cared about snow leopards.”

At the end of the 2000s, mining was regarded as Mongolia’s economic saviour, and the government started to give prospecting and extraction licences to companies from all over the world. It worked a treat; in 2011, the country’s economy completed a remarkable turnaround, recording the highest GDP growth in the world at an astonishing 17.3 per cent.
The price of this, however, was the 37 exploratory licences granted to exploit natural resources in the Tost mountains, which Agvaantseren worried could be the final nail in the snow leopard’s coffin.
Mongolia’s toxic air tears families apart as children are evacuated
“A study had just showed that the area was one of the most important for the species, because it had the highest concentration of snow leopards in the world, and it’s located between the Great Gobi National Park and the Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park, becoming a corridor linking both,” she says. “So we thought it was time to do something about it.”
Agvaantseren knew the road ahead would be challenging, not just over mining’s economic importance but because it takes a parliamentary majority to secure a national park designation. But she did not shy away from the conflict.
“In the beginning, we thought local protection would be enough. But we were wrong,” Agvaantseren says. “The mining companies were not going to give up, and corruption was rife among local politicians, so licences were granted even though communities were not giving their approval as required by the law. We had no choice but to give the national level a shot.
“We were committed to do all it takes.”
First, however, Agvaantseren had to get the local people on board. The mining companies’ plans would also mean a notable degradation of pastureland for the 200 nomadic herder families in the area. Although some had been promised better-paying jobs in the mines and had hopes for the region’s development, she received unconditional support from the community.
“They understood this was also a fight to protect their land and lifestyle, and many were also aware that the mines already in operation close to the border with China didn’t fulfil people’s expectations,” Agvaantseren explains. “Even the local governors acknowledged that even if they encouraged mining companies to hire local people, the lack of skills would make that unfeasible. So they would end up bringing in Chinese labour.”

Politicians were not so easy to convince, however. Lobbying legislators for support took time, and while the mining companies were willing to come to the table for discussions, tragedy would soon strike.
People suspected that mining companies were behind his sudden death. We realised we should continue fighting as a tribute to Sumbee

Agvaantseren is not keen to talk about it, but on November 11, 2015, a young colleague of hers, Lkhagvasumberel Tumursukh – also known as Sumbee – was found dead in Lake Khovsgol, almost 2,000km from where he was supposed to be, in Gobi. The autopsy showed he had drowned and the police ruled it a suicide, but few believe this to be the truth. “It was shocking for us. People suspected that mining companies were behind his sudden death. We realised we should continue fighting as a tribute to Sumbee,” Agvaantseren said at the time.

The Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation helped draft the petition and launched a media campaign to gather more support, both among the country’s upper echelon of power and at the grass roots level.
“I think this was also a victory for Mongolian women, because we were the most involved,” says Agvaantseren, with pride. “We finally got the national park approved in 2016, but it wasn’t until July 2018 that all mining licences were revoked,” says the activist, who won the Goldman Environmental Prize this year for her conservation work. As a result of her efforts, the government has cancelled all 37 mining licences within the Tost Tosonbumba Nature Reserve, and all mining operations there are illegal.
Mongolian herders moved to the capital city but now intense pollution is forcing to reconsider
When Agvaantseren spent 1998 working as a language teacher in the Mongolian city of Erdenet, little did she know her life would soon be forever changed. “On a summer break, I had the opportunity to do some translation work for a snow leopard biologist in Gobi-Altai [province], and that’s how I learned what the situation of the species was,” Agvaantseren says. Inspired, she decided to act before it was too late.
From the beginning, Agvaantseren was certain nothing would change for good if the local community wasn’t committed and the human-wildlife conflict wasn’t properly addressed.
“The first thing I did was to set up a programme called Snow Leopard Enterprises. It offered income-generation opportunities for rural herders who share the mountains with snow leopards. This has been running for two decades now, and it has been successful in linking the production of handicrafts with conservation,” she says.

“Rural communities sign a conservation contract with us and also with the national parks. It’s a commitment to stay away from poaching and from retaliatory killing. In return, they can sell handicrafts to us and, if they keep their promise and harm no animal, they receive a bonus at the end of the year on top of that income.”
The Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation buys the merchandise – mostly Mongolian-themed handicrafts made of sheep and camel wool – directly from these communities, and distributes them at various outlets for tourists across the country. Because Mongolia receives too few visitors to make this business sustainable on its own, the Snow Leopard Trust imports items to the US and markets them at zoos that have snow leopards in captivity, and at pet shops.
But when a herder killed one of the cats in her study, claiming it had killed 26 of his goats, Agvaantseren decided to meet the community to discuss how to prevent these retaliatory killings. “They told us that the damage snow leopards induce in their economy was huge and that they needed proper compensation. They didn’t care that snow leopards are protected under the Mongolian law, because there is no compensation scheme and staying put could mean going hungry.”
To address the issue, in 2009 the foundation looked to India and adopted a version of its livestock insurance programme. It has not looked back since.

“Once local people’s losses were compensated, their attitude changed. They stopped seeing the snow leopard as an enemy,” says Agvaantseren, who has also been awarded such distinctions as the 2009 Rabinovitz-Kaplan Prize for the Next Generation, Mongolia’s Leading Environmental Worker in 2010 and the 2017 Polar Star medal.
Her work has not just made snow leopards safer, it has also helped their prey – including ibex and gazelles – flourish. However, Agvaantseren criticises the IUCN’s decision to downgrade the snow leopard’s status from endangered to vulnerable. “It’s a controversial move because researchers believe there is no ground for it. The population is already very small and it’s still decreasing,” she says.
Agvaantseren believes her work is not over. “The park is brand new, so we still need to work on its management. This is just another beginning. My goal is to make a national park system run by local people.”
She points out that snow leopards are still under serious threat, especially from China. “They are very precious for their bones because they are turned into traditional medicine. Leopard skin rugs are also very expensive and used by some Chinese as a symbol of status. Even keeping them as pets is now fashionable! So poaching and illegal trade are still a concern.”
Interestingly, she has never seen a snow leopard in the wild. “But I’ve been close – always arriving at the place of a sighting one day ahead or after,” she says, with a shrug and a smile.