Cabinet sets maximum number of alternative military personnel www.zgm.mn

The Cabinet approved the maximum number of personnel to serve in the alternative military service in 2020. Governors of rural areas and Ulaanbaatar city were obliged to organize military recruitment activities in each of their regions pursuant to the relevant rules and regulations of the alternative military service in accordance with the Law on Military Service. Alternative military service enlistment is organized every year with a view to ensure proper implementation of the defense legislation and provide military training and education to the Mongolian citizens.

Russian President to visit Mongolia www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ President of the Russian Federation V.V.Putin is to arrive in Mongolia on September 2. President Kh.Battulga will welcome him on September 3 at the Central Square.

Mongolia to be involved in Child Protection Compact Partnership www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Director General of the Consulate Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs L.Munkhtushig and Deputy Director of MFA’s Department for Americas, Africa and Middle-East D.Ganbold yesterday met with delegates led by Ms. Jane Sigmon, Senior Advisor to the Director of the U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Very early snow expected in Mongolia www.news.mn

Early snow is expected in the mountainous areas of Mongolia later this month. For most parts of Mongolia, rain has been forecast for 28-31 August.

Russia to build €2bn bridge as part of route linking Europe & Western China www.rt.com

Authorities in Russia’s Samara Region are ready to begin construction of a 4km-long (2.5 miles) bridge across the Volga; it is the first part of an ambitious international traffic corridor linking Europe with Western China.
The bridge will cost 120.8 billion rubles (€1.6 billion or $1.8 billion), according to the latest version of the construction agreement.

President attends AmCham monthly meeting www.zgm.mn

The President of Mongolia Battulga Khaltmaa delivered the keynote speech for the August monthly meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Mongolia. The President stated that parliamentary elections can pose unstable political conditions, which negatively affect entrepreneurs and investors.

MSE holds open event to demonstrate capital market knowledge www.zgm.mn

In order to improve capital market knowledge of rural citizens, Mongolian Stock Exchange (MSE) JSC organized ‘Capital Markets Open Day’ event in Arkhangai and Khuvsgul provinces on August 19-24, 2019 in cooperation with Mongolian Central Securities Depository, Erdenes Tavantolgoi JSC and Goodsec LLC.

Total revenue of top companies raises www.zgm.mn

The total net profit of the top 12 largest companies which lead the top 20 Index by trading volume and activity reached MNT 52 billion. For example, LendMN NBFI JSC’s net profit doubled and totaled MNT 2.5 billion. As of August, 80 of 200 MSE-listed companies have announced their financial results for the first half of 2019.

Mid-term assessment on ‘Whole Liver-Mongolia’ national program ongoing www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. The mid-term assessment of the national program, ‘Whole Liver-Mongolia’, is jointly being done by the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization. In the framework of the assessment, corresponding officials of the ministry, WHO and the National Center for Noncommunicable Diseases worked at the National Blood Center, and did assessments on three issues: ‘Safety of blood and blood products, storage, infection control, sterilization and disinfection, and waste’, ‘Laboratory operations’, and ‘Immunization, prevention after infection, donor training and promotion’.

Facial recognition specialist Megvii plans share sale www.bbc.com

A leading Chinese facial recognition provider has filed papers for a listing on Hong Kong's stock exchange.

Megvii - the maker of the Face++ system - is one of the country's best known artificial intelligence (AI) companies.

Earlier this year, a Western study suggested its face-checking tech was more accurate than rival systems from Amazon and IBM.

But it comes at a time when campaigners are voicing concerns about facial recognition's use for surveillance.

There have also been reports that the White House has considered adding Megvii to a trade blacklist that would prevent it making use of US-origin software and components.

Face maps
Face++ has been used in consumer-focused hardware, including:

smartphones made by Huawei, Xiaomi and Vivo
laptops made by Lenovo
Didi Chuxing's ride-hailing app to let passengers check the driver's identity
"smile-to-pay" terminals tested within KFC restaurants by Alibaba
the Chinese dating website Jiayuan, which offered a way to automatically find faces a user was likely to be attracted to based on their preferences
But it says that most of its current revenue comes from "smart city" applications, which include facial recognition and other "security management" tasks at workplaces, educational institutions and major events.

It has also been reported that the Beijing-based firm's tech has been used to help make thousands of arrests in China, and has been pitched to police departments in other countries.

The technology works by first detecting human faces in an image.

Then it creates a pattern determined by where a person's eyes, lips, chin and up to 1,000 other key features are located.

It can then check whether the pattern matches that of a device's owner, or cross-reference it against a wider database containing facial maps for an "unlimited" number of people provided by the client in order to identify a subject or flag if they appear similar to someone on a watch list.

In addition to being able to carry out face searches, the firm says its technology can also be used to detect emotions, provide beauty scores, track eye-gaze and body gestures, and evaluate the health status of a person's skin.

Most recently the company announced a tie-up with an Austrian firm, Ams, to start offering 3D-depth sensing facial recognition.

In addition, it has released Hetu - an operating system for warehouse robots - which it says is already being used by Alibaba's Tmall subsidiary.

The firm has said that part of the proceeds of the stock sale would be used to fund further research.

It booked a 3.35bn yuan ($468m; £383m) loss in its last financial year, and a further 5.2bn yuan loss for the first six months of this year.

But its area of expertise makes it a flag-bearer for the Chinese government's ambition to overtake the US and become the leading AI innovator by 2030.

It was valued as being worth about $4bn in May.

Toppled lamppost
Megvii has not publicly disclosed how much it intends to raise, but the Reuters news agency reported that the flotation was aimed at raising between $500m to $1bn (£410m to £820m).

The firm's Chinese-language prospectus does, however, spell out a long list of possible risk factors including:

further US-China tariffs or even an all-out "trade war"
the possibility of the US imposing "severe restrictions" on its business partners, in a similar manner to those already faced by Huawei
the "uncertainty of the Chinese legal system", which can make it difficult to be sure of being in compliance with the country's rules
Furthermore it adds that it could be damaged by "rumours" about the abuse of its AI technology.

This has been interpreted by some to reference the fact that earlier this year, Human Rights Watch claimed to have evidence that Face++ was being used as part of efforts to repress Uighur Muslims in China. The campaign rights group subsequently retracted the allegation and issued a correction.

Megvii also faces the fact that facial recognition is becoming an increasingly controversial subject.

In Hong Kong itself, protesters have demanded the removal of so-called smart lampposts over fears they could be used to carry out facial ID checks. Last weekend, footage was shared on social media of one such structure being cut down with an electric saw.

The Financial Times has reported that the EU plans new regulations to restrict use of facial recognition and make sure citizens are notified when it has been deployed, despite the fact the topic was already addressed in the recently-introduced General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

And in the US, three cities have banned federal agencies from using the tech, while politicians in the Senate and Congress are considering new laws to curtail its use by government and commercial bodies.