Digital currency exchange NiceHash says bitcoin worth nearly $64 million hacked www.reuters.com

(Reuters) - Cryptocurrency marketplace NiceHash said the contents of its bitcoin wallet had been stolen in a security breach and one executive said nearly $64 million had been lost.

United Nations to implement a herder support project www.mongolia.gogo.mn

Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Light Industry B. Batzorig received United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator and UN Development Program Resident Representative Ms. Beate Trankmann and other officials from UN agencies on December 5.

During the meeting, the Agriculture Minister noted, “When state policy focuses on improving the living conditions of herders and creating jobs in the provinces and soums, there are opportunities for young people to stay in local areas instead of moving to the city.” Ms. Trankmann introduced a 23 million USD grant to fund a project to improve living conditions for rural residents by enhancing their employability and decreasing poverty.

This is the breakthrough company of Mines & Money 2017 www.mining.com

Apart from gold’s big bugbear which some regard with such loathing they cannot bear to call it by name (starts with a b and ends in coin), the buzz at the 2017 Mines & Money conference in London was – unsurprisingly – around battery materials for the booming electric vehicle and energy storage market.

Presentation after presentation featured (often overly) optimistic forecasts about how the nascent industry will fire up already hot commodities like cobalt, lithium, vanadium and manganese, and how it will spur a new supercycle in copper and nickel.

But for your reporter, a company mining an ore for perhaps the most everyday commodity in mining – alumina – stole the show.

Granted, there is a connection with electric vehicles but the Perth-based junior is also addressing even faster growing markets.

What made the presentation of Iggy Tan, MD of Altech Chemicals who’ve also built a lithium company, particularly impactful is its simplicity.

Sapphire is formed naturally from aluminum oxide and is almost as hard as diamond. It is used in LEDs, cellphone and watch displays.

To make synthetic sapphire (its transparent – the gems are blue due to presence of titanium and iron) you need high purity alumina.

The current process to manufacture high purity alumina is inefficient.

Bauxite, the most common alumina ore, is refined to a smelter grade of 99.5% alumina which is then turned into aluminum metal only to be dissolved back into 99.99% (4N) alumina which is of sufficient purity to make sapphire. 4N alumina is also used to make anode/cathode separators in lithium-ion batteries.

ASX-listed Altech owns 100% of a kaolin deposit, a high grade aluminous clay, in Western Australia 130km from Perth’s Fremantle port. The company is bypassing the intermediate steps with plans to ship ore to a plant in Malaysia to produce 4N purity alumina.

Turning kaolin (which also finds application as a whitening agent) into alumina is a process first developed by the US Bureau of Mines in the 1980s.

The price gaps between different powders are stark. The smelter stuff sells for only $400 a tonne. For 99.9% (3N) alumina the price jumps to $7,000.

The 4N product Altech is targeting goes for an eye-watering $28,000 per tonne. And that’s the long-term contract price – spot prices in Japan for this level of purity recently hit $40,000 a tonne. Altech says its production cost is under $10,000.
It’s a small, but rapidly growing market. Global demand for high purity alumina was approximately 25,300 tonnes in 2016. Next year demand will top 34,000 tonnes. It is expected to grow at a rate of 16.7% through 2024 hitting nearly 87,000 tonnes six years from now.

From a 30-year (first phase) 1.2m tonne reserve grading 30% Al2O3 Altech’s ambitions are for a 4,500 tonnes per year alumina operation. That would catapult the company to the top spot compared to current producers led by Sumitomo Chemicals of Japan with just over 3,000 tonnes per annum.

Capital costs are a shade under $300m and Altech hopes to finalize a debt deal with a German bank (Germans are also building its plant in Malaysia with incentives from the government of the Asian country) next week. An off-take agreement with Japan’s Mitsubishi has already been signed.

IJF President and the President of Mongolia exchange awards www.ijf.com

The IJF President Mr. Marius Vizer and Mr. Battulga Khaltmaa, President of the Republic and of the Mongolian Judo Association, exchanged awards in Mongolia during a special visit this week.

Ex Volkswagen executive jailed in US amid diesel scandal www.bbc.com

A former Volkswagen executive has been sentenced to seven years in prison and a $400,000 (£298,778) fine, after admitting he helped the firm evade clean-air laws.
Oliver Schmidt, 48, is the second person to be imprisoned in the US over the diesel emissions scandal.
Volkswagen first admitted in September 2015 that it had used illegal software to cheat US emissions tests.
The scandal has cost it almost $30bn.
US prosecutors say Volkswagen installed special software in certain diesel vehicles that allowed them to perform better during emissions tests than they did under normal driving conditions.

Development bank of Mongolia to introduce standard of anti-bribery management system www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Development Bank of Mongolia signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation with ISO Mongolia LLC on December 5.

Signing of Japanese ODA Loan Agreement with Mongolia: Supporting reforms in Mongolia under an international aid framework with the aim of economic and fiscal reconstruction www.jica.go.jp

On December 5, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) signed a loan agreement with the Government of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city, to provide a Japanese ODA loan of up to 32 billion yen for the Fiscal, Social and Economic Reform Development Policy Loan.

The economy of Mongolia depends heavily on the mineral resource sector, which accounts for 20 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 90 percent of exports, which are primarily coal and copper. Due to a drop in the prices of minerals, which are major exports, a slowdown in the economy of China which purchases 80 percent of the exports from Mongolia, a drop in foreign direct investment caused by restrictive investment policies and other such factors, the GDP growth rate dropped from 17 percent in 2011 to one percent in 2016. Fiscally, the country faces such challenges as increasing domestic infrastructure expenses, and rising social welfare expenditures due to inadequate controls on payees. Such factors pushed the fiscal deficit-to-GDP ratio to 17 percent in 2016 while the public debt-to-GDP ratio grew from 33 percent in 2011 to 88 percent in 2016, making reforms toward economic and fiscal reconstruction priorities.

Given these circumstances, an international aid framework totaling approximately 5.65 billion dollars was created in 2017 by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and others. With the aim of economic and fiscal reconstruction in Mongolia as a part of the international aid framework, the project will support reforms by the Government of Mongolia in three areas: stable macroeconomic management, the promotion of helping the socially vulnerable and enhancing economic growth.

Specifically, the project will support reforms such as those aimed at strengthening fiscal discipline in the area of stable macroeconomic management. In the area of the promotion of helping the socially vulnerable, the project will support reforms directed at targeting subsidies to the socially vulnerable and improving their living environment, and in the area of enhancing economic growth, the project will support the stimulation of foreign direct investment through improvements to the investment environment and reforms aimed at economic diversification.

The project will support mid- to long-term reforms from such a macro perspective, contribute to the short-term reduction in the fiscal burden of Mongolia, and contribute to fiscal, social and economic stability.

Two years have passed since the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all UN member countries, including Japan and Mongolia. This project aims to accomplish the core SDG principle of “leaving no one behind,” through providing support to the socially vulnerable such as the improvement of living conditions in ger (yurt) districts where many poor people live. In addition to strengthening economic growth, the project will, through collaboration with various other projects being carried out in Mongolia, lead to improvements in social welfare and health care systems and address urban environment issues, especially air pollution in Ulaanbaatar. All these comprehensive areas of support cover the three dimensions of sustainable development (economic, environmental and social) that will be put into practice in the project.

A newly discovered duck-like dinosaur had a neck like a goose's and claws like velociraptors' www.businessinsider.com

Birds are the modern incarnation of dinosaurs.

December 06, 2017 trading report www.mse.mn

On December 06, 2017, 974,411 shares of 22 firms listed as Tier I, II, and III were traded. 2 firms’ shares increased in price, 16 decreased and 4 remained unchanged. Gutal JSC /GTL/ was the top performer, increasing 2.05 percent, whereas Ulaansan JSC /UNS/ was the worst performer, decreasing 13.33 percent.

Nestle to buy vitamin maker Atrium Innovations for $2.3 billion www.reuters.com

LONDON (Reuters) - Nestle is buying Canadian vitamin maker Atrium Innovations for $2.3 billion, expanding its presence in consumer healthcare as it seeks to offset weakness in packaged foods.