Chinese coal imports from North Korea plummet www.mining.com

According to Chinese customs data released on Tuesday, the country imported 512,000 tonnes of coal – mainly the steelmaking variety – from North Korea in September. Volumes were down 71.6% from the same month last year as Beijing institutes the latest round of UN sanctions on the rogue regime.

National currency rate strengthened slightly www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Rate of Mongolian national currency against US dollar has been strengthened slightly. As of today, 1USD equals to MNT2455.42, while it equaled to MNT2455.84 on September 20, weakening by MNT11.42. Exchange rate of US dollar, which rose considerably in January, now has been relatively stabilized. As of today, Khan Bank bought 1USD at MNT2455, sold at MNT2460, while buying rate of USD was MNT2454 and selling rate was MNT2458 at noon.

October 24, 2017 trading report www.mse.mn

On October 24, 2017, 282,143 shares of 23 firms listed as Tier I, II, and III were traded. 9 firms’ shares increased in price, 12 decreased and 2 remained unchanged. Mongol Savhi JSC /UYN/ was the top performer, increasing 14.73 percent, whereas Darkhan Hotel JSC /DZG/ was the worst performer, decreasing 7.14 percent.

Putin wants to tax bitcoin, cryptocurrency mining & regulate initial coin offerings www.rt.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the government to create laws governing the status of bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, mining, ICOs, as well as defining everything that relates to digital money by July 2018, according to the Kremlin.

Twitter promises more ad transparency www.bbc.com

Twitter has pledged to make advertising more transparent as it attempts to fend off proposed new regulations.

It said it would be clearer about who funded ads and to what end, especially those pushing a political agenda.
The company, like several tech firms, is keen to show it can self-regulate after it was found that Russian-backed groups were exploiting its ad platform.
Several key senators, from both sides of the US political divide, have backed measures clamping down on online ads.
The Honest Ads Act would regulate ad sales on social networks, search engines, websites or apps that have more than 50 million US visitors each month for the majority of months in a year.
The rules would bring it closer in line with restrictions and disclosures required when placing political messages on TV or radio stations.
'Good first step'
Twitter hopes its own measures, announced on Tuesday, will be at least partly enough to convince senators it is capable of tackling the problem itself.
Senator Mark Warner described the changes as “a good first step”, adding: “Online political ads need more transparency and disclosure.”
Twitter’s new measures include:
An Advertising Transparency Center that will allow users to view what advertising campaigns are currently active on the site
A special label for ads funded by political campaigns, including details on who the ad was targeted at
Unspecified penalties for marketing firms that push political ads without being transparent about their origin
More shared information about how long an ad campaign has been running
A blog post outlining the changes added: "People can also report inappropriate ads or give negative feedback (i.e. “I don’t like this ad”) for every ad running on Twitter, whether the ad targets you or not.
"This feedback will help us more quickly remove inappropriate ads from Twitter, and show you more relevant ads in your timeline.”
From Russia with tweets
Twitter, Facebook and Google face a Senate hearing next week in which they will be expected to describe and explain the extent in which Kremlin-backed accounts abused the sites’ advertising platforms.
At a hearing held last month, Twitter was criticised for not doing enough research into the matter. Senator Warner, who sits on the committee investigating Russian interference in last year’s presidential election, said Twitter’s appearance was “deeply disappointing”, and consistently mainly of information already divulged by Facebook.
That information included details about more than 400 Facebook profiles that the company found were likely being run by so-called “trolling farms” in Russia.
These farms would employ people to trawl the internet to post inflammatory comments - often focusing on a particular issue, like race or immigration, rather than a specific candidate.
Analysis of the activity has suggested the efforts were targeted at US swing states, i.e. areas where the election race is tight.
Google has said it discovered a small amount of ad buy - $4,700 - linked to Russian government groups. However, that does not include advertising and accounts on YouTube, something Google is still investigating, it said.

October 23, 2017 trading report www.mse.mn

On October 23, 2017, 199,097 shares of 24 firms listed as Tier I, II, and III were traded. 7 firms’ shares increased in price, 13 decreased and 3 remained unchanged. Mongol Savhi JSC /UYN/ was the top performer, increasing 14.26 percent, whereas Mogoin Gol JSC /BDL/ was the worst performer, decreasing 14.48 percent.

Xi's China a boon for mining www.mining.com

Most analysis of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has focused on how President Xi Jinping is consolidating his already considerable power acquired through a purge of opponents in a corruption crackdown that shows no sign of slowing down.

Despite its three-and-a-half hour running time Xi's speech (referred to as the Report) in front of the 2,300-delegates assembled in the Great Hall of the People, paid relatively short shrift to the direction of the world's second largest economy.

In a research note, Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics found that Xi used the word economy (经 济) 70 times during the speech giving it considerably less prominence than his predecessors. And that's going back all the way to Hu Yaobang's 1982 address which talked about the economy 104 times.

The word market (市 场) received less of an airing than it did in 1992 (19 vs 58 times) while Xi mentioned competition (竞争) only six times, giving the term the least prominence in 30 years.

Xi's emphasis fell on the party (331 times), the military (86) and politics (91). The 36 times Xi's talked about a "new era" for China, he presumably wasn't talking about the country's economy.

Evans-Pritchard says the Chinese leader is prioritizing politics over market reforms:

Xi’s comment that “housing is for living in, not speculation” has drawn attention but is consistent with current policy. The only concrete new measure we could find is a pledge to extend rural land rights by 30 years.

Xi did mention a need to focus on the quality of growth rather than the speed. But he also re-iterated an earlier pledge to build a “moderately prosperous society” by 2020 which effectively means sticking with aggressive growth targets for the next few years.

Most noteworthy was Xi’s unambiguous call to “make state firms strong and big” and to “guard against the loss of state assets”. This should dash any remaining hopes that a market-led shake-up of the state sector may occur in Xi’s second term.
Evans-Pritchard, the London-HQ research firm's China economist, concluded that Xi speech "suggests that many of China’s structural problems that are, in our view, caused by the state’s outsized role in the economy, will remain unresolved."

However, Xi and the communist party's strategy for strong state-owned firms and economic growth should be, at least in the medium term, a boon for the mining industry.

China's government-led investment in infrastructure and the housing market set off the commodity supercycle in the early 2000s. Xi's promise to "support state capital in becoming stronger" should mean more of the same.

And Xi's enormous power also means his pet projects should receive the full backing of the state.

The One Belt One Road initiative to recreate the Old Silk Road connecting Asia with Europe was mentioned five times during the speech. (Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping received four mentions each)

Another mega-undertaking, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration, which includes the Xiongan New Area, Xi mentioned twice.

And even if the party's priorities are shifting away from market-orientated reforms, Beijing's transformation of its heavy industries coupled with programs to fight pollution has already benefitted mining.

For instance, eliminating overcapacity has boosted profitability in the domestic steel industry and in the process steelmaking raw material prices have been dragged higher. At the end of last year consensus forecast for the iron ore price was $57 a tonne during 2017. Year-to-date it's averaging $71.

Copper's trajectory this year is similar. Beijing's focus on infrastructure, transportation and housing has seen the bellwether metal top $7,000 a tonne for the first time in three years. The consensus forecast in December last year? Below $5,000.

Amazon receives 238 proposals for its second headquarters www.reuters.com

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc has received 238 proposals from cities and regions across North America vying to host the company’s second headquarters, it said on Monday.

Mongolian children return home after medical treatment in China www.china.org.cn

BEIJING, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- China has provided free medical treatment for 12 Mongolian children with congenital heart diseases, the Chinese Red Cross Foundation (CRCF) announced Monday.

Mongolian microfossils point to the rise of animals on Earth www.news.yale.edu

A Yale-led research team has discovered a cache of embryo-like microfossils in northern Mongolia that may shed light on questions about the long-ago shift from microbes to animals on Earth.