Prime Minister S.Batbold was in Khovd province on Thursday as part of his extended tour of the western provinces. At a meeting with citizens, he gave information on the progress of exploiting mineral deposits, developing small and medium industries, and on agriculture, and reforms in education and business sectors.     

The people offered several proposals for the Government’s consideration. They included one on tackling the financial problem blocking construction of the Seniors" Palace, and others on granting remote regions special allowances, reducing tuition fees on universities and institutes, providing insurance cover for traders and herdsmen, increasing salaries of doctors and medical workers, repairing the province’s thermal power station, improving roads, regulating bank loan interests etc.

The Prime Minister announced that the 21.3 km paved road in Khovd city would be extended to 32 km by 2012 and that 80 new programs will be taken up in the aimag. The government would support all big construction work, provided it is taken up in an open and fair manner.  

Mongolia-focused oil explorer Petro Matad has said that analysis carried out on the drilling results of its first well in Eastern Mongolia confirmed that oil was present, sending its shares soaring. The company has  said that its Davsan-Tolgoi-1 (DT-1) exploration well encountered a 12-meter zone of oil, having said earlier in July that the well had seen oil shows and elevated mud gas as it neared its total depth of 1,220 meters.

"The completion of the wireline testing of DT-1 confirms that good reservoir quality should be expected along the length of the Davsan Tolgoi trend," said chief executive Douglas McGay in a statement. “We are very happy with the initial results from our first well to date, and look forward to the completion of the analysis.” The DT-1 well was the first of Petro Matad"s planned three-well drilling campaign. The rig will now be moved to drill its second well.

by Rick Rozoff "With its vast expanse (over 600,000 square miles) and its sparse population (less than 3 million people with almost 40 percent living in the capital), Mongolia is the optimal location for U.S. military surveillance (ground, air and satellite) to monitor China and Russia simultaneously. The nation's new U.S.-educated head of state is not likely to deny Washington's requests in that regard." Because of its history, its location and the nations which surround it, Mongolia would seem the last country in the world to host annual Pentagon-led military exercises and to be the third Asian country to offer NATO troops for the war in Afghanistan. From the early 1920s until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 Mongolia was the former's nation's longest-standing and in many ways closest political and military ally, its armed forces fighting alongside those of the USSR against the Japanese in World War II. It was not a member of the Warsaw Pact as that alliance was formed in Europe six years after and in response to the creation of NATO in 1949, but Mongolia was a military buffer between the Soviet Union and the Japanese army in China in the Second World War and between it and China during the years of the Sino-Soviet conflict.

After last weekend’s rotational election to party units in provinces and districts, the DP is now forming a new National Representative Bureau. On Thursday, March 11, 2010, Ch.Enkhtaivan, president of White Falcon Holding, was appointed to the DP’s Executive Council from Khentii province. The Executive Council is the most important party forum after the National Representative Bureau. It has 21 members. Three of the nine members of Khentii province are elected by rotation and this year’s winners include UB Deputy Mayor Da.Ganbold and A.Enkh-Amgalan, both of whom were elected unopposed, and  Khuderbaatar who defeated B.Batbileg, son of MP Batj.Batbayar.