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Mongolia has closed from Monday until Mar. 2 all universities and educational institutes to contain the spread of a deadly coronavirus sweeping China, state media Montsame said, citing a cabinet meeting. It has also closed border crossings for auto vehicles and pedestrian traffic, from Monday, and called for all public gatherings to be cancelled.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will review allegations that Donald Trump Jr., may have illegally killed a rare sheep during a recent trip to Mongolia and imported parts of the animal back to the U.S.

A case of misplaced blame. All those blaming Columbus for sailing west must turn one chapter back in the history books to find that it was actually Islamic jihad disrupting the land routes from Europe to India and China that resulted in Columbus looking for a sea route. Nearly two centuries before Columbus, the 17-years-old Marco Polo left Venice for India and China with his father, Niccolo Polo, and uncle, Matteo Polo, in 1271. Together they traveled 5,600 miles to the east to meet Kublai Khan, the grandson of Ghengis Khan. Kublai Khan was Emperor of China, Korea, North India,...

Gorny, 93 miles north of the border with Mongolia. Two of those killed were officers and the others were enlisted men. The two wounded soldiers reportedly were in serious condition. Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had opened a murder case against the suspect, whom it identified as 20-year-old Ramil Shamsutdinov. The Defense Ministry said the soldier apparently opened fire in a “nervous breakdown over personal problems unrelated to his military duties.”

Repairing the engine, replacing the oil cooler, intercooler and rear shock absorber plus other minor miscellanea came out to an astronomical sum. The only official Land Rover dealer in all of Mongolia, a company by the name of Wagner, charged me five times the cost of the tools needed to assemble the engine. This was no mistake: the owner of a Land Rover vehicle is expected to not only pay but to significantly overpay for things he doesn’t even need. They just forget to mention that in the ads.... (click the links:Part 1Part 2 for more)

But the black rectangle, which measures about 7 inches (18 centimeters) long and around 4 inches (9 cm) wide, is no electronics accessory; it's an ancient belt buckle made of jet — a gemstone made from pressurized wood — inlaid with small beads of mother-of-pearl, carnelian and turquoise, The Siberian Times reported. Scientists with the Institute for the History of Material Culture at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) found the object in a woman's grave, where it lay upon the skeleton's pelvis. The researchers nicknamed the woman "Natasha" and dubbed the artifact "Natasha's iPhone," according to The Siberian Times....

Stone tools uncovered in Mongolia by an international team of archaeologists indicate that modern humans traveled across the Eurasian steppe about 45,000 years ago, according to a new University of California, Davis, study. The date is about 10,000 years earlier than archaeologists previously believed.

John Bolton, President Donald Trump's famously hawkish national security adviser, could not have been enthusiastic when his boss crossed into North Korean territory last weekend to make a bit of history with the leader of the Pyongyang regime, Kim Jong Un. For years, Bolton has warned against conciliatory gestures or negotiations with North Korea. Two months before he took his current job, Bolton argued in an op-ed for a preemptive strike on North Korea based on what he called an "imminent" threat. Now Trump's latest diplomatic gambit with North Korea has raised fresh questions about the influence of his national...

Hats off to whoever thought of sending John Bolton to Mongolia while President Donald Trump flew to the G-20 in Japan and met shortly after with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. If the dispatcher is as witty as I think he or she might be, it’s a clear sign that Bolton’s days as national security adviser are numbered. Surely Bolton, who knows history, gets the reference. He no doubt recalls that, in 1957, as part of his campaign to rid his inner circle of Stalinist remnants, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev banished the longtime foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov—executioner of some of...

'Extinct' wild horse roams again By Charles Clover (Filed: 19/12/2005) The wild horse has been saved from extinction after a successful programme to reintroduce captive-bred horses to their natural habitat in Mongolia. A working group of scientists at London Zoo has now recommended that Przewalski's horse, previously characterised as "extinct" in the wild, should now be listed as "endangered". It is a rare case of a species climbing away from extinction. If the new status is accepted by IUCN, the World Conservation Union, scientists say it will be a milestone for large mammal conservation. In 1945, there were only 31...

* China is grappling with a widespread African swine flu (ASF) epidemic, a disease fatal to pigs but harmless to humans. * ASF's effects on pigs are gruesome. Symptoms include diarrhea, depression, and miscarriages. * The government is urging farmers to cull infected pigs to prevent the spread of the disease, which is in turn dramatically decreasing the country's pork production. * Dutch bank Rabobank estimates that the country will kill 150 million to 200 million pigs — or one third of the country's supply — this year. * China is the world's largest pork producer and consumer. The steep...

A Mongolian couple has died of the bubonic plague after eating raw marmot kidney, triggering a quarantine that left tourists stranded in a remote region for days, officials said Monday. The ethnic Kazakh couple died on May 1 in Nogoonnuur soum, in Mongolia's westernmost province of Bayan-Ulgii, which borders Russia and China. A six-day quarantine was declared for people in the region, preventing nine tourists from Russia, Germany and Switzerland from leaving. The quarantine was lifted on May 6 after no other cases of the plague were reported. Authorities have warned people against eating raw marmot meat because it can...

A new oviraptorosaur species from the Late Cretaceous was discovered in Mongolia... Oviraptorosaurs were a diverse group of feathered, bird-like dinosaurs from the Cretaceous of Asia and North America. Despite the abundance of nearly complete oviraptorosaur skeletons discovered in southern China and Mongolia, the diet and feeding strategies of these toothless dinosaurs are still unclear. In this study, Lee and colleagues described an incomplete skeleton of an oviraptorosaur found in the Nemegt Formation of the Gobi desert of Mongolia. The new species, named Gobiraptor minutus, can be distinguished from other oviraptorosaurs in having unusual thickened jaws. This unique morphology suggests...

Lee Oui-ryuk was on the verge of dying of starvation when he stole a block of tofu in a market in North Korea at the height of a nationwide famine. Too weak to run away after he swiped the food, Lee continued eating as the seller cried and beat him with a metal rod, staining the white tofu red with his blood. At nine years old he knew the theft would end in violence, but in his head he repeated over and over: “Even if you are beaten, keep eating.” He eventually passed out and when he awoke, took a...

You are so precious to Me I wait in The Garden for you excited at the first glimpse of our friendship about to be renewed afresh for you have captured My Heart and I am swooned and overtaken by your love for me each and every time we meet and you understand that I even come to you in the form of others dressed in My Righteousness ; True worshippers , God chasers, My True Beloved ones for all they desire is more of me however I decide to appear. So now as you receive me in this way I...

China’s military will for the first time participate with Russia in massive joint exercises that are expected to be the largest war games since the fall of the Soviet Union as the U.S. rivals look to showcase their deepening ties. The annual Vostok military drills will kick off late this month and run through mid-September, the Chinese Defense Ministry announced Monday. Military forces from the two countries will hold joint exercises at the Tsugol training range in Russia’s Trans-Baikal region, near where the borders of Russia, China and eastern Mongolia meet, from Sept. 11 to 15, the ministry added.

Mukhorshibirsky District, Russia - In the south of Buryatia, near the present-day border with Mongolia, there is a mountain-sized rock outcropping known locally as the Merkit Fortress, which looks out over the arid, rolling steppe that gradually fades into the Gobi Desert a few hundred miles away. According to legend, this formidable natural fortification was stormed more than 800 years ago by the forces of a young Mongol warlord who claimed his bride had been stolen by the Merkit tribe, which had made its home base here. He seized the rock, and went on to unite most of the nomadic...

Investigators are looking into possible human trafficking at a licensed marijuana grow site south of Salinas after finding 10 foreign nationals living in a shipping container. The alleged victims, from Laos and Mongolia, didn't show any obvious signs of abuse and are being cared for after Monterey County Sheriff's deputies and District Attorney investigators responded to the 2200 block of Alisal Road, said sheriff's Cmdr. John Thornburg. "These people are not in the county jail. They are victims of human trafficking and are being treated as such," he said.

"It was suspected that a harsh drought from about 2000 to 2010 that killed tens of thousands of livestock was unprecedented in the region’s history and primarily the result of human-caused climate change. But the tree ring data show that the dry spell, while rare in its severity, was not outside the realm of natural climate variability, researchers report online March 14 in Science Advances."

A story almost beyond belief whose conclusion came about last May, four years after “Lil” aborted her child in the 35th week. In 2013, Lil was 18, the Daily Mail’s Sophie Williams tells us, when the young woman from inner Mongolia found out she was pregnant. She did not tell anyone until the 35th week when evidently she told her brother who then accompanied her to an unnamed abortion clinic where she “successfully” aborted. Or, so she thought. Incredibly three days later police told Lil that her baby had been saved by the maternity nurse! According to Williams Liang Xiaohua...