Mongolia | featured news

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday held up Mongolia's sometimes messy politics as a democratic model for Asia, and implicitly criticized political restrictions in China.

A Chinese space capsule with three astronauts aboard returned to Earth on Friday from a 13-day mission to an orbiting module that is a prototype for a future permanent station. The crew of the Shenzhou 9 parachuted to a landing on the grasslands of the country's sprawling Inner Mongolia region at about 10 a.m. (0200 GMT). China declared the mission to the Tiangong 1 module a major stride ahead for the country's ambitious space program.

NY judge: Feds can seize disputed dinosaur skeleton sold through Dallas-based Heritage Auctions... Heritage Auctions auctioned off the nearly complete Tyrannosaurus bataar in New York City on May 20. An unnamed buyer submitted the winning bid of $1,052,500... “The skeletal remains are of tremendous cultural and historic significance to the people of Mongolia, and provide a connection to the country’s prehistoric past,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a news release. “When the skeleton was allegedly looted, a piece of the country’s natural history was stolen with it, and we look forward to returning it to its rightful place.”

Anyone worried about an erosion of America's global status might consider this modest fact: Facebook is the dominant social network in Mongolia. Along with its pervasive social media, the United States leads in myriad other ways - from the allure of its movies and music to the reach of its military. It's tough to match a nation that deploys troops to Australia and central Africa, propels Beyonce to global stardom, and produced the Twitter-style technologies that abetted the Arab Spring.

These are the first photos of some of the countless treasures found in the extraordinary 298-million-year-old forest discovered under coal mine in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, China.

A claw sticking out of a cliff face in Mongolia, China, turned out to be the tip of the dinosaur -- the skeleton of a 6-foot-long agile predator that preyed on its own kind.