cryptogon.com

Billboards are a different story. For the most part, they are still a relic of old-world media, and the best guesses about viewership numbers come from foot traffic counts or highway reports, neither of which guarantees that the people passing by were really looking at the billboard, or that they were the ones sought out.

Now, some entrepreneurs have introduced technology to solve that problem. They are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by — their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at the billboard. These details are transmitted to a central database.

Behind the technology are small start-ups that say they are not storing actual images of the passers-by, so privacy should not be a concern. The cameras, they say, use software to determine that a person is standing in front of a billboard, then analyze facial features (like cheekbone height and the distance between the nose and the chin) to judge the person’s gender and age. So far the companies are not using race as a parameter, but they say that they can and will soon.

Annual inflation in the eurozone reached 3.6 per cent in May, according to official data released on Friday, up from 3.3 per cent in the previous month. That appeared to rule out any chance of an early cut in interest rates by the European Central Bank, which aims to keep inflation “below but close” to 2 per cent.

Evidence also emerged that higher prices were wreaking economic damage by forcing households to retrench. Germany reported a surprise 1.7 per cent drop in April retail sales, extending a 2.2 per cent fall in March.

This week, the European Commission reported eurozone consumer confidence had plunged in May to its lowest level for almost three years.

Netto, the Danish-owned discount store, has been restricting sales of larger bags of rice to one per person in all stores in recent weeks across the UK.

Mike Hinchcliffe, marketing manager for Netto UK, said: “We’re temporarily limiting our larger 10 kg bags of rice to one per customer because, like most other UK supermarkets, we are having to manage and minimise the impact the global rice shortage is having on our suppliers.

“That’s a scenario where Israel has a lot of experience,” Chertoff said in an interview with Reuters. “I think that it is of interest to us to see if there is any adaptation there.”

Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport, known for its strict security measures, relies heavily on techniques that detect suspicious behaviour among travellers.

Chertoff said such methods, as well as Israeli technologies that detect explosives, are some of the things that may help protect U.S. airports and other public places against attacks.

Chertoff, at a conference in Jerusalem for public and homeland security ministers from around the world, signed an agreement with Israel to share technology and information on methods to improve homeland security.

One of the new systems presented at the conference, developed by the Israeli technology company WeCU, uses behavioural science, together with biometric sensors, to detect sinister intentions among travellers.

The U.S. homeland security chief said that not all methods developed and used in Israel, such as questioning every passenger, are practical in larger U.S. airports.

The report comes a day after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, under pressure from U.S. lawmakers to crack down on speculators they blame for pushing energy prices to record highs, said it would step up market surveillance.

The CFTC announced a nationwide investigation into energy trading last December, but is in fact pursuing several oil investigations, many of which relate to one another, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with enforcement priorities of the agency.

It has expanded its probe into alleged short-term manipulation of crude-oil prices via a widely used price-reporting system run by Platts, a unit of McGraw-Hill Cos, the newspaper reported.

The probes appear to focus on gambits well known by traders in the opaque physical oil market, where trading a small volume of cash crude or gasoline during a short period when benchmark prices are set can yield big profits on derivatives positions.

Oil traders say that these kind of leveraged trading plays — which are generally not illegal — were more common prior to the Enron melt-down and the California power trading scandal that triggered increased scrutiny of world energy markets earlier this decade, but rarely had a lasting effect on prices.

However traders and analysts believe that increased investment from pension and other funds into commodities markets is partly responsible for causing prices to quadruple since 2004, with U.S. crude hitting a record high of $135.09 a barrel last week after rising by more than 40 percent this year alone.

The Journal quoted CFTC enforcement chief Gregory Mocek as saying the agency has about 60 manipulation investigations open in various commodity markets.

On Thursday the CFTC said it would expand its oversight of energy trading by tracking index funds, and had reached an agreement with the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority and ICE Futures Europe to share information.

WINDOW TRADE, STORAGE TANKS

One suspicion, the newspaper said, is that energy companies and traders have at times issued a flood of orders during the trading “window” used by Platts to determine its reported prices for physical oil transactions, then used the potentially distorted prices to make profits in other markets.

According to the Journal, Platts has said its system has safeguards to protect against manipulation. Subpoenas on the matter have gone out in several stages, the report cited people familiar with the cases as saying.

A Platts spokesman was not immediately available to comment.

The Journal cited people familiar with the matter as saying the agency has also been questioning traders about similar activity in the jet-fuel market.

Another area of concern for CFTC regulators is whether the owners of crude-oil storage tanks use their knowledge to make bets on oil-futures markets.

In theory, the owner of a tank could issue misleading information about the tanks being full or empty, leaving the wrong impression about whether oil is in plentiful supply. Then they could make trades to profit on the misunderstanding.

Regulators have long been wary of allowing any one company to gain too much control over storage tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the New York Mercantile Exchange’s light, sweet crude oil contract, the world’s main benchmark.

President Hugo Chavez in 2005 ended cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), saying the agency was spying on him. The United States denied the charge and says Chavez does too little to stop trafficking from neighboring Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine exporter.

Gen. Gabriel Oviedo said the man was acting suspicious when he was detained close to the border with Colombia while bearing Canadian and French passports and a Venezuelan identity card.

“The official at the scene proceeded to interrogate him and he said he was a DEA agent,” Oviedo told state television.

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas said it had no knowledge of the arrest.

Relations have deteriorated since a failed 2002 coup against Chavez that Washington initially welcomed.

Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said it was likely loan-loss provisions and bank failures would rise in coming quarters as the fallout from market turmoil hits the real economy.

“While we may be past the worst of the turmoil in financial markets, we’re still in the early stages of the traditional credit crisis you typically see during an economic downturn,” she said, adding: “What we really need to focus on is the uncertainty surrounding the economy . . . and again it is all about housing.”

Ms Bair spoke as the FDIC released its quarterly banking profile, which showed loan-loss provisions in the first quarter were more than four times higher than last year’s level. That was the main reason bank earnings fell 46 per cent to $19.3bn from the first quarter in 2007 for the commercial banks and savings institutions where the FDIC insures customer deposits.

Following restatements by banks, the FDIC revised the industry’s net income for the fourth quarter of last year from $5.8bn to $646m – the lowest since the end of 1990.

Meanwhile, the FDIC said the number of “problem” banks rose in the first quarter from 76 to 90, with combined assets of $26.3bn. Three US banks have failed this year, compared with three for the whole of last year and none in 2005 and 2006.

Ms Bair said she expected more bank failures but emphasised that the number of problem institutions remained well below the record levels of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s – when one in 10 banks were in that category.

However, she said one worrying trend was the declining “coverage ratio”, which compares bank reserves with the level of loans that are 90 days past due. This ratio fell for the eighth consecutive quarter, to 89 cents in reserves for every $1 of noncurrent loans, the lowest level since the first quarter of 1993.

“This is the kind of thing that gives regulators heartburn,” said Ms Bair. “We also want them to beef up their capital cushions beyond regulatory minimums given uncertainty about the housing markets and the economy . . . It’s only prudent to be building up capital at a time like this.”

Prices have fallen by 2.5% during May, according to its latest monthly survey.

The lender said prices were now 4.4% lower than a year ago, a drop of £8,000, which has taken the average UK house price down to £173,583.

The Nationwide, the UK’s second-largest lender, said price falls were now accelerating and had continued for seven months in a row.

“The pace of house price falls accelerated in May as more weak economic news added to the gathering momentum of negative sentiment about the housing market,” said Fionnuala Earley, the Nationwide’s chief economist.

The company placed a $2 billion order for 667 turbines for the Pampa Wind Project, which will ultimately provide more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity, or enough for more than 1 million homes. The project will be completed in four phases.