ULAANBAATAR (Reuters) - Mongolia has extended school winter holidays in the world's coldest capital and many families have sent children to live with relatives in the vast, windswept grasslands to escape choking smog and respiratory diseases such as pneumonia.
The temperature is expected to drop to minus 32 degrees Celsius (minus 26F) in Ulaanbaatar on Monday night, as residents burn coal and trash to try to keep warm and concentrations of smog particles known as PM2.5 routinely exceed 500 mg per cubic metre, 50 times the level considered safe by the WHO.