1 PRIME MINISTER OYUN-ERDENE VISITS EGIIN GOL HYDROPOWER PLANT PROJECT SITE WWW.MONTSAME.MN PUBLISHED:2025/04/30      2 ‘I FELT CAUGHT BETWEEN CULTURES’: MONGOLIAN MUSICIAN ENJI ON HER BEGUILING, BORDER-CROSSING MUSIC WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM PUBLISHED:2025/04/30      3 POWER OF SIBERIA 2: ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY OR GEOPOLITICAL RISK FOR MONGOLIA? WWW.THEDIPLOMAT.COM PUBLISHED:2025/04/29      4 UNITED AIRLINES TO LAUNCH FLIGHTS TO MONGOLIA IN MAY WWW.MONTSAME.MN PUBLISHED:2025/04/29      5 SIGNATURE OF OIL SALES AGREEMENT FOR BLOCK XX PRODUCTION WWW.RESEARCH-TREE.COM  PUBLISHED:2025/04/29      6 MONGOLIA ISSUES E-VISAS TO 11,575 FOREIGNERS IN Q1 WWW.XINHUANET.COM PUBLISHED:2025/04/29      7 KOREA AN IDEAL PARTNER TO HELP MONGOLIA GROW, SEOUL'S ENVOY SAYS WWW.KOREAJOONGANGDAILY.JOINS.COM  PUBLISHED:2025/04/29      8 MONGOLIA TO HOST THE 30TH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF ASIA SECURITIES FORUM WWW.MONTSAME.MN PUBLISHED:2025/04/29      9 BAGAKHANGAI-KHUSHIG VALLEY RAILWAY PROJECT LAUNCHES WWW.UBPOST.MN PUBLISHED:2025/04/29      10 THE MONGOLIAN BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT AND FDI: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITY WWW.MELVILLEDALAI.COM  PUBLISHED:2025/04/28      849 ТЭРБУМЫН ӨРТӨГТЭЙ "ГАШУУНСУХАЙТ-ГАНЦМОД" БООМТЫН ТЭЗҮ-Д ТУРШЛАГАГҮЙ, МОНГОЛ 2 КОМПАНИ ҮНИЙН САНАЛ ИРҮҮЛЭВ WWW.EGUUR.MN НИЙТЭЛСЭН:2025/04/30     ХУУЛЬ БУСААР АШИГЛАЖ БАЙСАН "БОГД УУЛ" СУВИЛЛЫГ НИЙСЛЭЛ ӨМЧЛӨЛДӨӨ БУЦААВ WWW.NEWS.MN НИЙТЭЛСЭН:2025/04/30     МЕТРО БАРИХ ТӨСЛИЙГ ГҮЙЦЭТГЭХЭЭР САНАЛАА ӨГСӨН МОНГОЛЫН ГУРВАН КОМПАНИ WWW.EAGLE.MN НИЙТЭЛСЭН:2025/04/30     "UPC RENEWABLES" КОМПАНИТАЙ ХАМТРАН 2400 МВТ-ЫН ХҮЧИН ЧАДАЛТАЙ САЛХИН ЦАХИЛГААН СТАНЦ БАРИХААР БОЛОВ WWW.EAGLE.MN НИЙТЭЛСЭН:2025/04/30     ОРОСЫН МОНГОЛ УЛС ДАХЬ ТОМООХОН ТӨСЛҮҮД ДЭЭР “ГАР БАРИХ” СОНИРХОЛ БА АМБИЦ WWW.EGUUR.MN НИЙТЭЛСЭН:2025/04/30     МОНГОЛ, АНУ-ЫН ХООРОНД ТАВДУГААР САРЫН 1-НЭЭС НИСЛЭГ ҮЙЛДЭНЭ WWW.MONTSAME.MN НИЙТЭЛСЭН:2025/04/29     ЕРӨНХИЙ САЙД Л.ОЮУН-ЭРДЭНЭ ЭГИЙН ГОЛЫН УЦС-ЫН ТӨСЛИЙН ТАЛБАЙД АЖИЛЛАЖ БАЙНА WWW.MONTSAME.MN НИЙТЭЛСЭН:2025/04/29     Ц.ТОД-ЭРДЭНЭ: БИЧИГТ БООМТЫН ЕРӨНХИЙ ТӨЛӨВЛӨГӨӨ БАТЛАГДВАЛ БУСАД БҮТЭЭН БАЙГУУЛАЛТЫН АЖЛУУД ЭХЛЭХ БОЛОМЖ БҮРДЭНЭ WWW.MONTSAME.MN НИЙТЭЛСЭН:2025/04/29     MCS-ИЙН ХОЁР ДАХЬ “УХАА ХУДАГ”: БНХАУ, АВСТРАЛИТАЙ ХАМТРАН ЭЗЭМШДЭГ БАРУУН НАРАНГИЙН ХАЙГУУЛЫГ УЛСЫН ТӨСВӨӨР ХИЙЖЭЭ WWW.EGUUR.MN НИЙТЭЛСЭН:2025/04/29     АМ.ДОЛЛАРЫН ХАНШ ТОГТВОРЖИЖ 3595 ТӨГРӨГ БАЙНА WWW.EGUUR.MN НИЙТЭЛСЭН:2025/04/29    

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MBCC “Doing Business with Mongolia seminar and Christmas Receptiom” Dec 10. 2024 London UK MBCCI London UK Goodman LLC

NEWS

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Russia ready to trial combined AstraZeneca, Sputnik V vaccine in Ukraine www.reuters.com

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is ready to conduct clinical trials in Ukraine of a COVID-19 vaccine combining its Sputnik V with a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca together with Oxford University, the head of Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said on Saturday.
Russia’s sovereign RDIF, which is marketing the Sputnik V vaccine abroad, announced in December trials to test a combination of the AstraZeneca vaccine with the Sputnik V shot to see if this can boost the efficacy of the British drugmaker’s vaccine.
Reporting by Polina Ivanova and Andrey Ostroukh; editing by David Evans
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A frigid air mass in Mongolia may have just crushed a world record for surface air pressure www.washingtonpost.com

A brutally cold dome of high pressure across eastern Asia has produced what may be the highest barometric pressure readings ever documented on planet Earth — with an important qualifier.
At 7 a.m. local time on Tuesday, the mean sea-level pressure at Tsetsen-Uul, Mongolia, rose to 1,094.3 millibars, or 32.31 inches. The high pressure was accompanied by a bone-chilling temperature of minus-49.9 degrees (minus-45.5 Celsius).
The pressure reading at Tsetsen-Uul tops the 1,089.4 millibars observed at Tosontsengel, also in Mongolia, on Dec. 30, 2004, judged by the World Meteorological Organization to be the world pressure record for elevations above 2,461 feet (750 meters). Tosontsengel is located at an altitude of 5,658 feet (1,725 meters), and Tsetsen-Uul is at 6,325 feet (1,928 meters).
Several other stations near Tsetsen-Uul reported extremely high pressure values, including 1,091.9 millibars at Tosontsengel.
Pressure is a measurement of the weight of the air over a given area. High pressure promotes sinking air and calm weather, whereas low pressure is generally associated with rising air and stormy conditions.
The World Meteorological Organization maintains two altitude categories for high-pressure records, because there is inherent uncertainty in the formulas used to convert air pressure measured at high-altitude stations to a sea-level equivalent.
Air pressure normally drops as you climb in altitude. To produce weather maps that reflect the ebb and flow of weather features, rather than this elevation effect, locally observed readings are routinely converted to mean sea-level pressure values.
For elevations below 2,461 feet, the current titleholder is Agata, Russia, where a pressure of 1,083.8 millibars was recorded at the center of a huge dome of high pressure on Dec. 31, 1968. The Siberian hamlet sits at an elevation of 856 feet (261 meters).
The highest pressures on record for most U.S. cities are between 1,045 and 1,060 millibars, according to a website maintained by David Roth of the National Weather Service. The contiguous-U.S. record is 1,064 millibars, recorded on Christmas Eve 1983 in Miles City, Mont., during a historic cold wave that engulfed most of the nation.
AD
The full-U.S. record is 1,078.8 millibars, set in Northway, Alaska, on Jan. 31, 1989, as another historic cold wave entered North America. Canada set the North American record two days later, on Feb. 2, with 1,079.6 millibars at Dawson City, Yukon.
The most intense surface domes of high pressure occur in winter, with cold, dense air pooling near the surface. Clear skies and calm winds, especially when assisted by snow cover, can allow temperatures to dip much colder near ground level than just a few hundred feet higher, a condition known as an inversion.
Assessing the potential record
Randy Cerveny, a professor at Arizona State University who coordinates the World Meteorological Society’s evaluation of climate extremes, told Capital Weather Gang in an email that the agency will investigate the potential record from Mongolia.
The crucial factor, according to Cerveny, will be the technique used to convert the barometric reading to mean sea-level pressure. The inherent challenge is the need to assume how warm or cold the “real” atmosphere would have been in an imaginary layer between the station and sea level.
At least 15 different methods have been used around the world, and there is no global standard. The surface temperature of minus-49.9 degrees at Tsetsen-Uul was close to the reading of minus-48.6 (minus-44.8 Celsius) associated with the 2004 record at Tosontsengel. That similarity means a record is at least plausible.
“A comparison of the 2020 and 2004 events is at least like with like,” climatologist Blair Trewin of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said in an email.
However, Trewin pointed out, the kind of intense inversions observed at high-altitude sites like Tsetsen-Uul and Tosontsengel only reflect conditions very close to the surface, rather than the actual atmosphere above the inversion or the imaginary atmosphere going down to sea level. So in principle, Trewin is dubious about high-altitude pressure records as currently calculated.
“I assume you would get even more spectacular [mean sea-level pressure] values if similar methods were applied in Antarctica,” he said.
A group of experts acknowledged this dilemma in a paper on the World Meteorological Organization’s validation of the current high-altitude record from 2004 at Tosontsengel. The paper noted that “strong surface inversions and extreme cold surface temperatures can occur in many parts of the world. Do those conditions therefore invalidate all [sea-level pressure] calculations under those conditions?”
Another spectacular pressure record was set this year, at midnight on Jan. 19-20, when the pressure at Heathrow Airport near London reached 1,049.6 millibars — the highest official value for the London area in more than 300 years of record-keeping. Because Heathrow sits less than 100 feet above sea level, there is only a minor elevation effect on its pressure readings.
Bob Henson is a meteorologist and journalist based in Boulder, Colo. His books include “The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change” and “Weather on the Air: A History of Broadcast Meteorology.”
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Kincora announces gold-base metals target in Mongolia www.kincoracopper.com

Vancouver, BC - December 30th, 2020 - Kincora Copper Ltd. (the “Company”, “Kincora”) (TSXV:KCC) is pleased to provide an update following field season activities in Mongolia post the issuance of a mining license for the eastern portion of the Bronze Fox Intrusive Complex (“BFIC”). The primary focus of exploration was on the margin of an adjacent second large porphyry system, the Tourmaline Hills Intrusive Complex (“THIC”), at a newly identified gold-base metals target within the West Fox prospect.
Field activities have identified three new target zones and returned generally higher-grade gold and copper assay results than previous Ivanhoe Mining (“IMMI”) activities – refer to Figure 2. Other underexplored regions prospective for intermediate sulfidation epithermal targets on the margin of the THIC and BFIC have been identified for field reconnaissance.
Sam Spring, President & CEO, commented, “The previous focus of limited drilling, geophysics and surface reconnaissance by Kincora within and around the margins of the Tourmaline Hills Intrusive Complex was testing the potential for large concealed porphyry targets.
This year’s field activities at Tourmaline Hills benefitted from Kincora’s activities in the Macquarie Arc, Australia. We applied a new conceptual target model similar to the Cowal gold-base metal project (flagship project of Evolution Mining, with a 9Moz gold resource inventory) and the target of the Company’s neighbouring Fairholme project, which we are planning on drilling in 2021, located less than 15km from Cowal.
We are encouraged by the results and new targets at West Fox, and scope for further similar targets on the margins of the two large intrusions at the Bronze Fox project. We feel these results also highlight the larger picture upside to Kincora from the recently announced agreement with Resilience Mining to realise the inherent value of our Mongolian portfolio and their complementary Mongolia strategy, as we focus on our core Australian operations.”
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Cashmere, Wool, Fur & Leather 2020 online expo/face to face meetings are completed www.mongolianbusinessdatabase.com

MBD is successfully completing its first ever international online expo/face to face meeting arrangements with 16 participants from Moscow and 7 from Stavropol, Russian Federation, Mongolia and Scotland of UK.
The event was originally scheduled between Dec 05-15 but it demanded to extend till Dec 29 because of its number of face to face meeting bookings (61) and the actual arrangements among the business people. The organizers are pleased to see and estimate appx 10 business deals and cooperation will be potentially developed from the initial meetings.
Mongolian Business Database is going to host its second international online event "Agriculture, Food & Beverage" in mid of Feb 2021 and the registration will start soon.
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EU-China investment deal likely this week: officials www.reuters.com

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - China and the European Union are likely to clinch a deal this week that would give EU firms better access to the Chinese market, improve competition conditions and protect EU investment in China, European officials said on Monday.
Talks on the investment deal began in 2014, but were stuck for years as the EU said China was failing to make good on promises to lift curbs on EU investment despite a pledge to open up the world’s second largest economy.
But tensions in trade relations between the United States and China may have helped change the Chinese position and bring about a deal between Beijing and Brussels, officials said.
“The talks are about to be concluded. It’s looking good. There are only some minor details left which need to be hammered out,” an EU official with knowledge of the talks told Reuters.
“As things stand now, the political agreement between the EU and China will be sealed on Wednesday.”
Other officials close to the talks said that under the deal China would open up its manufacturing sector to EU companies, as well as construction, advertising, air transport, maritime services, telecoms and, to some extent, cloud computing.
“We get much better market access and the protection of our investments in China. Better market access is something we have been working for for many years, and the Chinese have made quite a big step towards us,” a senior EU official said.
Talks on investment protection, however, are likely to continue next year and be concluded later, according to an agreed timeline.
If there is political agreement on the deal on Wednesday, its transposition into legal texts could take several months. Together with the ratification process, that could mean it will be about year before it is implemented, officials said.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular news briefing on Tuesday that talks had made huge progress and that China hopes a deal can come to fruition “at an early date”.
The negotiations have been conducted by the European Commission, which handles all external trade issues for the 27-nation bloc, with the aim of getting the same access for EU firms that Chinese companies already have to the EU market.
The investment agreement also prohibits forced transfer of technologies by EU firms that establish themselves in China, and contains measures to discipline Chinese state-owned companies when it comes to competition on the Chinese market and rules on the transparency of state subsidies to Chinese enterprises.
Under the agreement, China will also pledge to subscribe to the International Labour Organisation’s rules on forced labour.
China wanted access to the EU’s energy market, but given sensitivities over national security, the Commission offered Beijing access to only a small part of the renewable energy sector, and only on a reciprocal basis, the officials said.
Ambassadors of EU governments in Brussels discussed the agreement on Monday, and no country had any major problems with it, the officials said.
Poland suggested the EU should wait to discuss the deal with the new U.S. administration of President-elect Joe Biden, they added, but other countries did not share this view.
Additional reporting by Michael Nienaber in Berlin and Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Jan Harvey
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Mongolia reports 38 more COVID-19 cases www.xinhuanet.com

Mongolia reported 38 more COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, raising its national tally to 1,175, the country's National Center for Communicable Diseases said Tuesday.
Thirty-seven of the latest cases were locally transmitted, including two in health workers, said Amarjargal Ambaselmaa, the center's head of the surveillance department, at a daily press conference.
One imported case is a Mongolian citizen who recently returned home from Europe on a chartered flight, Ambaselmaa said.
To date, 730 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases have been reported across the country, and over 60 of them are health workers, according to the official.
A total of 745 patients have recovered so far with no deaths reported. Enditem
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Banks fulfilled mortgage payment deferral requests from 57,456 borrowers www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. With a view to alleviate financial hardship posed by COVID-19 pandemic on businesses and individuals, who have been falling behind their loan due, the government of Mongolia together with the Bank of Mongolia and commercial banks decided to make deferrals on consumer and mortgage loan repayment and their interests from April 2020 until October 2020 and then again from November 2020 to July 2021.
The Bank of Mongolia has reported that between April 2020 and December 25, 2020, commercial banks have received payment deferral requests from 58,328 borrowers with total amount of mortgage loans MNT 3.2 trillion. Out of them, the banks have allowed to postpone mortgage repayments of 57,456 borrowers or 99 percent of all requests.
Those who obtained loan payment deferral are not required to make regular payments on their loans, including principal and interests, until July 01, 2021. The central bank sees that the loan payment deferral measures have helped each borrowing household to save approximately MNT 7.7 million amid the ongoing nationwide heightened state of readiness and lockdown measures in Ulaanbaatar as a prevention of COVID-19 transmission.
Upon the decision to make deferrals on loan repayment and their interests, the Bank of Mongolia has made temporary changes to regulations followed by commercial banks on their asset classifications and requirements for their operations, allowing the banks not to change their borrowers’ credit ratings caused by failures on loan repayment.
Beginning from October 1, 2020, mortgage loan annual interest rate, which was previously set at 8 percent, has been lowered to 6 percent with the aim of better reaching the target groups, those leaving in the Ger district areas, and reduce loan burdens.
The Bank of Mongolia reported that commercial banks issued 8-percent mortgage loans totaling MNT 290 billion to around 4,000 borrowers in the first 9 months of this year, and 6-percent mortgage loans amounting to MNT 120 billion have been granted to 1,800 borrowers since October 2020.
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U.S. to provide USD 3 million for Mongolia’s green house industry www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. On December 28, Minister of Foreign Affairs N.Enkhtaivan received U.S. Ambassador to Mongolia Michael S. Klecheski and discussed about bilateral relations and cooperation between Mongolia and the U.S..
Both sides emphasized that some important events took place in 2020 that are helpful for strengthening the Mongolia-U.S. strategic partnership, including political and economic policy consultations.
While noting that the US House of Representatives has recently passed a resolution to elevate bilateral ties to a strategic partnership level, Foreign Minister Enkhtaivan expressed gratitude to the U.S. side for its support to Mongolia’s COVID-19 response and removal from the Financial Action Task Force’s list of countries with strategic deficiencies or so-called ‘Grey List’.
For his part, Ambassador Michael S. Klecheski informed that the U.S. is to provide USD 3 million assistance for the development of Mongolia’s green house industry through United States Agency for International Development – USAID.
At the meeting, Mongolia and U.S. sides also stressed the importance of seeking ways to increase economic partnership and ensuring timely and successful launch of Millennium Challenge Corporation’s USD 350-million Water Compact in Mongolia.
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Munkhtuya Rentsenbat appointed Khan Bank’s new CEO www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Khan Bank has announced the appointment of Munkhtuya Rentsenbat as the Bank's new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective December 28, 2020.
Munkhtuya succeeds John Bell, who has been the CEO of Khan Bank since 2016.
Working in the finance industry for 26 years, Munkhtuya began her professional journey at Khan Bank as Chief Accountant in 2000, advanced to Director of Finance in 2005, Deputy CEO in 2008, and Vice President of Corporate Banking in 2010. As an accomplished banking professional with extensive experience, she held the positions of First Deputy CEO and Deputy CEO of the Bank from 2012 to 2020.
She is a graduate of University of Finance and Economics of Mongolia and holds a master's degree in economics and banking from National University of Mongolia. She earned an MBA from Handong Global University in South Korea.
The Board of Directors, Management Committee members, and colleagues at Khan Bank emphasize that her breadth of knowledge and experience has been instrumental to the organization. She has made valuable contributions to bringing Khan Bank to its present position as one of the nation's leading financial institutions, being an integral part of the Bank’s leadership during a time when it made significant and rapid advances in the business and financial sector.
Former CEO John Bell, whose dedication and efforts have strengthened Khan Bank position as a leading bank, will remain with the Bank in an advisory capacity, press release says.
Khan Bank, with over 550 branches nationwide, has created the nation’s largest digital banking network and ranked 4th among the Top 100 Entities of Mongolia, selected by the Government of Mongolia and Mongolian National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, for the fourth consecutive year.
As of September 30, 2020, having met all the prudential ratios set by the Bank of Mongolia, Khan Bank reached MNT 1.2 trillion in total equity and MNT 11.1 trillion in total assets, making up 31.5 percent of the banking industry and affirming Khan Bank’s leading position in the market.
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Zoom, Amazon, ransomware: Tech’s big winners and losers of 2020 www.aljazeera.com

We streamed, we Zoomed, we ordered groceries and houseplants online, we created virtual villages while navigating laptop shortages to work and learn from home.
When it comes to technology, 2020 was a year like no other — and as the world was forced to adapt to the coronavirus pandemic, some tech companies won big while others lost out.
Losers
Virtual Reality
As the world adjusted to a new stuck-at-home reality, the pandemic could have been virtual reality’s chance to offer an escape. With the use of special headsets and accoutrements like gloves, the technology lets people interact with a 360-degree view of a three-dimensional environment, seemingly a good fit for people stuck indoors.
But people turned to easier-to-use software and games that they already had. Few rushed to spend hundreds of dollars on a clunky new headset or tried to learn the ropes of virtual reality meeting software. And no VR games broke into the mainstream. So virtual reality, on the verge of success for decades, missed its moment, again.
Social media election labels
It was the year of labels on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even TikTok. Ahead of the November 3 US presidential vote, the companies promised to clamp down on election misinformation, including baseless charges of fraud and candidates’ premature declarations of victory. And the most visible part of this was the bevvy of labels applied to tweets, posts, photos and videos.
“Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process,” read one typical label applied to a tweet by President Donald Trump.
But many experts said that while the labels made it appear that the companies were taking action, ”at the end of the day it proved to be pretty ineffective,” as Jennifer Grygiel a professor at Syracuse University and social media expert, put it.
Quibi
Less than a year ago, Quibi launched a splashy Super Bowl advertisement that posed the question “What’s a Quibi?” People may still be scratching their heads.
Quibi, short for “quick bites,” raised $1.75bn from investors including major Hollywood players Disney, NBCUniversal and Viacom.
But the service struggled to reach viewers, as short videos abound on the internet and the coronavirus pandemic kept many people at home. It announced it was shutting down in October, just months after its April launch.
Uber and Lyft
Fresh off of their initial public offerings the year before and still struggling to show they can be profitable, the ride-hailing services were clobbered by the pandemic in 2020, as people stopped taking cars and huddled down at home.
In May, Uber laid off 3,700 people, or about 14 percent of its workforce. Lyft also announced job cuts.
But there are some signs of hope. After significantly reducing costs by restructuring in the second quarter, Lyft said last month it expects to have its first profitable quarter at the end of 2021.
And the companies scored a major victory in California, where voters passed Proposition 22, granting them an others an exception to a law that sought to classify their drivers as employees, an expense that analysts thought would have pummeled their business in the nation’s most populous state.
US TikTok ban
While India outlawed the popular video-sharing app, in the US, TikTok appears close to riding out Donald Trump’s term without the president succeeding in his efforts to ban it.
Earlier this month, a federal judge blocked a potential ban. It was the latest legal defeat for the administration in its efforts to wrest the app from its Chinese owners. In October, another federal judge postponed a shutdown scheduled for November.
Meanwhile, a government deadline for TikTok’s parent, ByteDance to complete a deal that would have Oracle and Walmart invest in TikTok has also passed, with the status of the deal unclear.
While President-elect Joe Biden has said TikTok is a concern, it’s not clear what his administration will carry on the Trump administration’s attempts at a ban.
Winners
Nintendo Switch
Even in a year heralding splashy new consoles from Xbox and PlayStation, the Nintendo Switch was the console that could. Launched in 2017, the Switch became a fast seller. That was helped by the launch of the handled Switch Lite in September 2019.
In March, it became hard to find a Switch as people searched for ways to be entertained inside their homes. Boosting its popularity was the release of the island-simulation game “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” which debuted March 20 and has now sold a cumulative 26 million units globally, according to Nintendo.
According to the NPD Group, during the first 11 months of 2020, Nintendo Switch sold 6.92 million units in the US. It has been the best-selling console in units sold for 24 consecutive months — a record.
Zoom
All video conferencing software — from Microsoft Teams to WebEx — thrived during the abrupt shift of tens of millions of people to remote working and schooling during a pandemic. But only one became a verb.
Zoom Video Communications was a relatively-unheralded company before the pandemic hit, but its ease of use let to wide adoption during the pandemic.
There were some growing pains, including lax security that lead to “Zoom bombing” breaches early on. The company revamped its security and remains one of the popular platforms to host remote meetings and classes.
Ransomware purveyors
The ransomware scourge — in which criminals hold data hostage by scrambling it until victims pay up — reached epic dimensions in 2020, dovetailing terribly with the COVID-19 plague. In Germany, a patient turned away from the emergency room of a hospital whose IT system was paralyzed by an attack died on the way to another hospital.
In the US, the number of attacks on healthcare facilities was on track to nearly double from 50 in 2019. Attacks on state and local governments were up about 50 percent to more than 150. Even grammar schools have been hit — shutting down remote learning for students from Baltimore to Las Vegas.
Cybersecurity firm Emsisoft estimates the cost of US ransomware attacks in the US alone this year at more than $9bn between ransoms paid and downtime/recovery.
Computer makers
After beginning the year grappling with exasperating delays in their supply chains, the personal computer industry found itself scrambling to keep up with surging demand for machines that became indispensable during a pandemic that kept millions of workers and students at home.
The outbreak initially stymied production because computer makers weren’t able to get the parts they needed from overseas factories that shut down during the early stages of the health crisis.
Those closures contributed to a steep decline in sales during the first three months of the year. But it has been boom times ever since.
The July-September period was particularly robust, with computer shipments in the US surging 11 percent from the same time in 2019 — the industry’s biggest quarterly sales increase in a decade, according to the research firm Gartner.
E-commerce
The biggest of the bunch, Amazon, is one of the few companies that has thrived during the coronavirus outbreak. People have turned to it to order groceries, supplies and other items online, helping the company bring in record revenue and profits between April and June. That came even though it had to spend $4bn on cleaning supplies and to pay workers overtime and bonuses.
But it’s not just Amazon. The pandemic is accelerating the move to online shopping, a trend experts expect to say even after vaccines allow the world to resume normal lives.
And thanks in part to shoppers consciously supporting small businesses, Adobe Analytics says online sales at smaller US retailers were up 349 percent on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
At the more than 1 million businesses that use Shopify to build their websites, sales rose 75 percent from a year ago to $2.4bn on Black Friday, according to Shopify.
Jury’s out
Big Tech
Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google did well financially, with each company’s stock price and profit up considerably since the start of the year. They gained users, rolled out new products and features and kept on hiring even as other companies and industries faced significant cuts.
But not all is well in the world of Big Tech. Regulators are breathing down each company’s neck and that’s unlikely to ease up in 2021. Google faces an antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice. And Facebook has been hit by one from the Federal Trade Commission along with nearly every US state that seeks to split it off from WhatsApp and Instagram.
More cases could follow. Congressional investigators spent months digging into the actions of Apple and Amazon in addition to Facebook and Google and called the CEOs of all four companies to testify.
SOURCE : AP
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