Mongolian Foreign Minister D.Tsogtbaatar has held an official meeting with Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. During the meeting, the two sides signed a MoU celebrating the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Mongolia and China as well as a cooperation plan between the two ministries for 2019-2020. Wan Yi noted that two sides are aiming to increase trade volume to USD 10 billion by 2020.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the sole manager of the deal, said in a statement that the two-year bonds had priced to yield 2.251 percent and would settle Aug. 28.

The prototype deal, dubbed a “Bondi” bond - standing for Blockchain Operated New Debt Instrument as well as a reference to Australia’s most famous beach - is being viewed as an initial step in moving bond sales away from manual processes towards faster and cheaper automation.

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“You’re collapsing a traditional bond issuance from a manual bookbuild process and allocation process, an extended settlement then a registrar and a custodian, into something that could happen online instantaneously,” James Wall, executive general manager at CBA told Reuters in an interview earlier this month.

The World Bank, whose bonds carry an AAA rating, regularly uses its borrowing power to help develop new bond markets as well as pioneering new means for selling and trading the securities.

It issues between $50 billion and $60 billion a year of bonds to back economic progress in developing countries.

Australia is a popular test site for market developments because of its well-established financial infrastructure and the familiarity of international investors with the Australian dollar, which is one of the most-traded currencies in the world.

Earlier this year Russia’s MTS, a telecoms operator, and Sberbank claimed a world-first blockchain bond.The deal, for 750 million rubles ($11.20 million) of 182-day paper, was however privately placed, rather than offered for wider auction, as is the norm and the case with the World Bank deal.

While there have been other prototypes or parallel simulation blockchain projects in the market before, CBA said the World Bank bond will be the first time that capital is raised from public investors through a legally valid bond issuance that uses blockchain from start to finish.

CBA set the price for the “kangaroo” deal at 23 basis points above benchmark rates. Kangaroo bonds are bonds issued in Australian dollars by foreign institutions.

The bank’s blockchain push comes as the Australian Securities Exchange plans to switch to using distributed ledger (blockchain) technology to clear and settle equities trades from 2020 to help cut costs.

Reporting by Paulina Duran and Alun John; Editing by Jennifer Hughes and Eric Meijer

Mongolia and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China signed the agreement on transfer of sentenced persons (TSP) in 2016 and the agreement on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters in March, 2018 respectively.

Although the Governments of Mongolia and China already established ‘Intergovernmental Agreement on mutual legal assistance in civil and criminal cases’, ‘Intergovernmental Agreement on transfer of sentenced persons’ and ‘Intergovernmental Agreement on transfer of prisoners’, these agreements are not effective in China’s Special Administrative Regions such as Hong Kong and Macau.

In connection with increasing number of Mongolians traveling to these Special Administrative Regions and Mongolians involved in crimes, it necessitates to establish the agreements between Mongolia and those Special Administrative Regions of China.

The agreement includes 23 articles, which regulate legal assistance, expense, a content of the request, corresponding organizations and grounds of refusal to fulfill a request. Establishment of the agreement will ensure legislative organizations of the two sides to actively cooperate in investigation, judicial proceedings and other prosecutiony.

Moreover, the Cabinet also decided to submit to the Parliament a Bill on ratifying an intergovernmental agreement between Mongolia and Kazakhstan on Transfer of Prisoners.

E.Altanzul

"This is an extremely disappointing result for consumers," the Chinese company said on Twitter. "Huawei is a world leader in 5G."

The announcement follows reports in recent months that Australian national security agencies were concerned about alleged ties between Huawei and the Chinese government.

The Australian government said in a statement Thursday that the involvement of telecom equipment suppliers "who are likely to be subject to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government that conflict with Australian law" could mean the country's wireless carriers are unable "to adequately protect a 5G network from unauthorized access or interference."

The statement didn't mention China or Huawei by name.

Huawei has repeatedly rejected the security concerns, insisting that it is "a private company, owned by our employees with no other shareholders."

Starting Thursday, the US is enforcing a new round of tariffs on $16 billion of Chinese imports. Beijing is responding with a similar amount, including levies on US metals and coal. Coal is an especially important industry for US President Donald Trump, who wants to revive the industry in the country.

The trading house, Shanghai Runhei, will boost purchase of domestic coal to meet demand from clients, the manager said.

“Traders have anticipated yuan depreciation and shored up imports in advance, including cargoes from the United States,” Wang Fei, coal analyst at Huaan Futures told Reuters.

Imports of US coal are hardly crucial for the Chinese industry, the analyst notes.

“Traders can easily shift their supplies to either domestic coal or Australian and Indonesian coal since US imports only account for a tiny share.”

US coal exports have been booming during Trump’s presidency. The US Energy Information Administration data says exports increased by 61 percent in 2017 as exports to Asia more than doubled. India, the largest importer of steam coal from the US, tripled its imports last year, mainly used for growing electricity capacity in the country.

According to data from the International Monetary Fund, quoted by Bloomberg, Moscow bought 26.1 tonnes of gold last month, increasing its reserves to 2,170 tonnes. At today’s prices, they are worth roughly $83.6 billion, though a Russian government website pegs the value at about $77 billion.

Earlier this year, Moscow cut its holdings of US bills, notes and bonds by about four-fifths, but bought more gold, leading to speculation that the nation was dumping American assets to shield itself from the looming tougher sanctions.

Russia gold buying spree ahead of tougher US sanctions
The news comes a day after the Trump administration imposed new sanctions against Russia, — this time for helping North Korea evade international sanctions, as Moscow separately was accused of cyberattacks in the United States said to be aimed at undermining the midterm election in November.

The Kremlin continues to deny that it has engaged in any offensive cyber acts at all.

The number of buses will be increased by 10 percent from 25 August bringing the total to 959 buses and trolleybuses on the city's 88 routes. Currently, ten buses on three routes are operating night shift.

Therefore, we are raising their pay level by one and nurses’ pay level by one to two. In other words, elementary and kindergarten teachers’ wage will increase by 12.3 percent and nurses’ pay will rise 20-30 percent in September.” The Minister also noted that cultural sector workers get paid 12.5 percent lower than public servants; thus, their pay will increase by 14-30 percent. The Cabinet also discussed the Parliament’s 29th resolution, which prevents any pay raise until 2019, and decided to submit a redraft, along with the 2019 budget amendments. Unpleased with the decision, the head of temporary committee for teachers’ salary raise addressed, “We studied the price changes of consumer goods. The eight percent increase is nowhere near enough. We are fighting to increase teachers’ salaries for a whole year. We will not accept the Government’s attempt to brush-off our demand. The authorities said they presented their proposal to the Trade Union of Education. The union informed us that they did not accept the eight percent increase and left the meeting. Our temporary committee will stand firm on our 50 percent pay raise demand. It is safe to presume teachers will intensify their strike.”

The Venta Maersk, owned by Maersk Line, and carrying 3,600 containers, hopes to reach St Petersburg by late September.

That could be up to 14 days faster than the southern route via the Suez Canal.

Maersk will collect data on the Northern Sea Route to see if the melting of Arctic sea ice has made the passage economically viable.

Maersk said: "The trial passage will enable us to explore the operational feasibility of container shipping through the Northern Sea Route and to collect data."

The Venta Maersk, designed as a new "ice-class" container ship, will carry frozen fish and other refrigerated and general cargo.

The route stretches from the Bering Strait in the east between Russia and Alaska to Norway in the west.

However, Maersk added: "Currently, we do not see the Northern Sea Route as a commercial alternative to our existing network, which is defined by our customers' demand, trading patterns and population centres."

Nuclear icebreakers
Until now the the route has required an escort of expensive nuclear icebreakers to accompany any vessel.

But global warming, which has raised temperatures along the route during the summer to over 30C, is changing its viability.

A report from the Copenhagen Business School in 2016 found that shipping through the Northern Sea Route would become economically feasible in about 2040 if the ice cover continued to diminish at its present rate.

It may happen even earlier. The Christophe de Margerie, a 984ft liquefied natural gas tanker built specifically for the journey, became the first ship to sail the route unaided last year, while the Russian gas company Novatek has used the route for specially built tankers this year.

China is also using the Northern Sea Route as part of its One Belt, One Road initiative to build trade routes across Eurasia.

Its state-owned Cosco shipping company sent a multi-purpose cargo ship, the Lian Hua Song, into a Russian port last autumn for the first time via the route, delivering equipment for the construction of a subway and a fertiliser plant.