Tag: mongolia

Queues build up at Mongolian border as people flee Russia call-up

  Altanbulag, Mongolia (AFP) Long lines of vehicles were seen at a border crossing between Mongolia and Russia on Sunday as people fled the Kremlin’s call-up of hundreds of thousands of reservists for the war in Ukraine. The head of a checkpoint in the town of Altanbulag told AFP that more than 3,000 Russians had entered Mongolia via the crossing since Wednesday, most of them men. Queues of people holding Russian passports were also seen […]

Rio Tinto begins underground work at vast Mongolia copper mine: state media

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AFP) – Underground operations have finally begun at a copper mine in Mongolia, official media has reported, ending years of delays for Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto. The massive Oyu Tolgoi gold-copper mine has been mired in controversy for years and disrupted by protests from locals worried about environmental damage and foreign influence. While it started production from an open-pit mine several years after Mongolian authorities inked a deal in 2009, Rio Tinto secured […]

Mongolian doctors trek to remote areas to give herders jabs

by Khaliun Bayartsogt Agence France-Presse DUNDGOBI, Mongolia (AFP) – Nurse Sodkhuu Galbadrakh clutches a box of Covid-19 vaccines on his lap as he journeys along a bumpy track through a remote region of the Mongolian steppe, going home-to-home to offer booster doses to herders. The country of three million has taken some of the world’s toughest and most enduring measures against the coronavirus pandemic, shutting schools for much of the last two years and closing […]

Isolated and unpaid, Mongolian coal drivers queue at Chinese border

by Khaliun Bayartsogt Agence France-Presse TSAGAAN KHAD, Mongolia (AFP) – Snaking across the barren Mongolian desert, a convoy crawls along the once-busy highway to the Chinese border — its truckers desperate to finally deliver their cargo of coal after months of brutal Covid-19 delays and no pay. Pre-pandemic, the route was packed with drivers delivering the vital fuel to China — the world’s biggest coal importer — currently grappling with widespread power cuts threatening its […]

Acting US Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf resigns

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, resigned Monday amid rising worries over the possibility of more violence during President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next week, a DHS official said. “The acting secretary is stepping down effective 11:59 tonight,” the official told AFP. He gave no reason for the resignation but said that Pete Gaynor, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, would take over. © […]

Strong quake hits Mongolia-Russia border: USGS

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck early Tuesday in northern Mongolia not far from the border with Russia, the US Geological Survey said. The epicenter of the quake, which struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers (six miles), was located 33 kilometers south-southwest of Turt, US seismologists said. The epicenter appeared to be located under Lake Khovsgol, the largest fresh water lake in Mongolia by volume. It was located about […]

Pompeo to cut short Asia visit amid Trump hospitalization

  WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will cut short his trip to Asia this week, a department spokeswoman said Saturday, visiting Japan but skipping planned stops to South Korea and Mongolia. The schedule change comes as President Donald Trump is hospitalized near Washington after testing positive for Covid-19. The US top diplomat will be in Tokyo from Sunday to Tuesday, spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement, where he […]

Man dies of bubonic plague in Mongolia

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AFP) — Bubonic plague has killed a man in western Mongolia, the country’s health ministry said Wednesday, the latest in a handful of cases to emerge there and in neighbouring China this year. At least one person dies of the plague every year in the landlocked Asian country, where the rare bacterial disease is usually spread by fleas clinging to the hair of the marmots native to the region. The government has responded […]

Teenage boy dies of plague in Mongolia

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AFP) — A 15-year-old boy has died from the bubonic plague in Mongolia, health authorities said Tuesday, one of a handful of cases that recently emerged in the country and neighbouring China. The boy, who lived in the remote southwest province of Gobi-Altai, caught the rare bacterial illness after hunting and eating a marmot, according to the health ministry. “We quarantined the first 15 people who came into contact with the deceased and […]

Russia urges against marmot hunt over plague fears

MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russian authorities have warned residents of regions near Mongolia against hunting marmots but stressed there was no risk of bubonic plague spreading across the country. Russian public health authorities appealed to residents of the mountainous Tuva and Altai regions following last week’s confirmation of two bubonic plague cases in Mongolia. The cases involve brothers who had eaten marmot meat. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization said it was also monitoring a […]

Part of China’s Great Wall not built for war: study

JERUSALEM, Undefined (AFP) — The northern segment of the Great Wall of China was built not to block invading armies but rather to monitor civilian movement, an Israeli archaeologist said Tuesday. When researchers fully mapped the Great Wall’s 740-kilometre (460-mile) Northern Line for the first time, their findings challenged previous assumptions. “Prior to our research, most people thought the wall’s purpose was to stop Genghis Khan’s army,” said Gideon Shelach-Lavi from Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, who led […]

Mongolia locks down cities after reporting first virus case

  ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AFP) — Mongolia on Tuesday barred anyone from entering or leaving its cities for six days after the country reported its first coronavirus case — a French energy company employee who flew in from Moscow. Mongolia had already sealed its border with neighbouring China and banned flights from South Korea in an effort to keep the deadly virus out of the landlocked country of three million people. “The capital Ulaanbaatar and all […]