"The decision aims to stabilize inflation around the target rate of 8 percent and maintain macroeconomic stability in the medium term," Ochirkhuu Erdembileg, first deputy president of the Bank of Mongolia, said at a press conference after a council meeting.

Annual inflation was at 8.1 percent in November, Erdembileg said.

The current gradual pace of economic growth is expected to continue next year, he said.

The Bank of Mongolia decided to raise the benchmark interest rate by 1 percentage point to 11 percent in its monetary policy meeting late November, saying it was confident that inflation was near the target of 8 percent.

The appeal of "Death from Smog in Mongolia #HumanRights" was initiated more than 40 hours ago by an Ulan Bator resident who called himself Bat-Enkh. It was put forward on the petition website change.org.

Any petition on the website has to collect at least 50,000 signatures before it can go forward for consideration.

The air pollution in the capital of landlocked Mongolia is among the world's heaviest. The city is home to about half of the country's population of 3.2 million.

In Ulan Bator, more than 800,000 residents burn raw coal and other flammable materials to keep warm and cook meals during the six-month-long winter season, contributing 80 percent of the local air pollution.

Since the early 2000s, the Mongolian government, international donors and development organizations, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, have spent millions of U.S. dollars combating the air pollution in Ulan Bator.

However, the city has yet to see significant improvements. Its air pollution on Jan. 30 this year was more than 130 times the safety level set by the World Health Organization.

Bloomberg economists suggested the need to immediately settle infrastructure issues to boost budget revenue. Within this frame, holding talks with the People’s Republic of China and reaching deals on improving the entry capacity at the border, stimulating transports and establishing the second major border checkpoint.

Economists are predicting coal price to fall by around USD 14 in 2019. Mongolia exported a total of 2.5 million tons of coal in November, which is the lowest amount in the last nine months. This decrease was mainly affected by China’s renovation at the border, causing temporary interruption for coal transport. Additionally, World Bank Group, Bloomberg and Bree released their outlook on coal price in 2019.

As for budget expense, the bloomberg experts highlighted the risk that half of investment expenditure would flow into import. Thus, analysts recommended to take preventive measures on import growth and set the implementation schedules apart to cut budget expense.

There were a total of 33,900 registered crime cases in Mongolia in the January-November period, up from 29,600 cases in the same period last year, the statistics from the country's National Statistical Office showed.

Some cases recorded large increases during the period. The number of fraud cases rose by 83.2 percent, robbery by 37.1 percent and embezzlement by 56.9 percent.

In the first 11 months, a total of 30,600 people became victims of crime, 48.6 percent of whom were children and women.

The crime rate per 10,000 people aged 18 or older was 165 in the period mentioned, up 12.2 percent year-on-year. Enditem

The government says it wants to have 90% of this country’s electricity generated from non-emitting sources. It estimates that carbon pollution from the electricity sector will be cut by 12.8 million tonnes.

Earlier this year, Canada launched a task force for coal power workers and communities to better understand the impacts of the phase-out and how to minimize them, including funding for skills development, economic diversification, and transition centres.

Copies of both regulations were published on Dec. 12 in the Canada Gazette, Part II.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho held a meeting with S.Erdene, president of the Mongolian Basketball Federation to discuss cooperation issues when he visited Ulaanbaatar on 8-9 December.

According to unofficial sources, the American was from the military.

Inner Mongolia not found or discarded in 14 pref
In a joint press announcement after their talks in Tokyo, Abe said, "I received strong support from Prime Minister Khurelsukh to resolve the abduction issue."

The Abe administration has made it one of its top priorities to bring back all Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s.

The two leaders reaffirmed the importance of fully implementing U.N. Security Council resolutions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missile development programs to realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Tokyo expects Ulan Bator to play an intermediary role with Pyongyang. Shortly after a historic U.S.-North Korean summit in June in Singapore, Japanese and North Korean officials met on the sidelines of a security forum in Mongolia.

A top Japanese intelligence official close to Abe secretly made contact with North Korean officials in early October in Mongolia, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Abe and Khurelsukh also agreed to deepen bilateral defense cooperation, with the Japanese Defense Ministry continuing to provide support to the Mongolian armed forces to enhance their capacity building, according to a joint statement released after the meeting.

On the economic front, they agreed on the need to strengthen business relations based on a bilateral free trade agreement that came into force in 2016.

In the press announcement, Khurelsukh promised to launch operations of the new Ulan Bator airport as early as possible, which is being built with Japanese official development assistance.

Khurelsukh is on an official visit to Japan from Dec. 12 to 15 at the invitation of his Japanese counterpart. This is Khurelsukh's third overseas trip since he took office in October 2017. He visited South Korea in January and China in April.

The statement said that Mongolia and Japan agreed to further strengthen the all-round strategic partnership between the two countries.

The two nations vowed to continue enhancing bilateral and multilateral cooperation to benefit the two countries and peoples, and work closely on expanding bilateral cooperation at the regional and international levels.

Khurelsukh expressed his appreciation to Japan for its support and assistance to Mongolia's social and economic development over the past years.

For his part, Abe expressed his appreciation to Mongolia for providing 100,000 U.S. dollars in humanitarian aid to Japan after downpours in July this year triggered massive flooding and hundreds of landslides in western Japan and claimed hundreds of lives.

The two leaders welcomed the successful conclusion of the ninth public-private consultative meeting between the two nations in Tokyo on Wednesday, and expressed their willingness to make more efforts to deepen bilateral economic, trade, and investment cooperation based on the mechanism of the consultative meeting.

In terms of security, the two Asian countries agreed to enhance bilateral defense cooperation to make more contributions to regional and world peace and stability.

The Japanese side expressed its willingness to continue to actively participate in the annual multinational peacekeeping exercise, code-named Khaan Quest.

In addition, the Mongolian and Japanese leaders hailed the recent positive developments on the Korean Peninsula, describing them as an important step in resolving controversial issues in a peaceful way through negotiations.