Olam profit soars but Muddy Waters keeps sell rating

SINGAPORE: Farm commodities supplier Olam reported a near 20 percent jump in quarterly net profit but US-based short-seller Muddy Waters on Friday maintained its "strong sell" rating on the Singapore company.

Olam said net profit for the October-December period soared 19.9 percent from a year earlier to S$154.14 million ($124.30 million), shrugging off recent claims by Muddy Waters that the company faced a high risk of insolvency.

But the short-seller was unimpressed with the results, keeping its "strong sell" rating on Olam shares while noting that some of the firm's debt-to-earnings indicators remained "dangerously high".

For the six months to December, Olam's net profit jumped 21.3 percent to S$197.32 million on revenue of S$9.60 billion, up 24.3 percent, the company said late Thursday.

Analysts from Malaysian bank CIMB said in a research note that "Olam delivered a decent set of results despite the distraction" by Muddy Waters which warned last year that the company faced a high risk of collapse.

"We are pleased with the overall results of the company," Olam chief executive Sunny Verghese said in a statement.

"We continue to see healthy growth rates in the food category and a recovery in the cotton business within the industrial raw materials segment."

Olam's shares were trading at S$1.655 on Friday afternoon, up 1.22 percent from the previous day's close, but still 4.9 percent down from levels before Muddy Waters' allegations were made.

Muddy Waters said it maintained its original thesis, first expressed in November, that Olam risked becoming insolvent because of high debt exposure and questionable accounting practices.

"Olam's main problems worsened in Q2 (second quarter)," Muddy Waters said.

"With Olam's bonds yielding approximately 7.0 percent to 8.0 percent -- which we feel is too low -- Olam's interest burden is not sustainable."

Muddy Waters last year likened Olam to US energy giant Enron, whose dramatic collapse in 2001 was triggered by US government probes into its accounting practices.

Olam angrily denied the allegations and hit back with a defamation suit while getting full support from its second-biggest shareholder, Singapore's investment firm Temasek Holdings.

Olam sources 44 products -- including cocoa, coffee, cashew, sesame, rice, and cotton -- from 65 countries and supplies them to more than 11,600 customers.

- AFP/xq

Read More..

Sri Lankan president's visit to India: Karunanidhi leads protest, Vaiko courts arrest

NEW DELHI/CHENNAI: Protests have broken out in Chennai and New Delhi against the visit of Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa to India. Tamil groups have taken to the street demanding that the Sri Lanka president return to his country.

In Delhi, MDMK chief Vaiko has courted arrest after leading a protest opposing Rajapaksa's visit. In Chennai, DMK chief Karunanidhi is spearheading the agitation.

Rajapaksa is in India for a two-day personal visit during which he will offer prayers at Bodh Gaya and Tirupathi but will not engage with Indian leaders, PTI reported. Andhra Pradesh police have imposed tight security.

He would visit Bodh Gaya and Tirupathi and the visit was of a personal nature, the presidential officials said here.

Rajapaksa would not be visiting New Delhi, officials asserted, dismissing notions that the Sri Lankan president might engage some of the Indian leaders with a view to seek New Delhi's support on the US moved resolution against Sri Lanka at the next UN Human Rights Council sessions in March.

Sri Lankan forces had crushed Tamil rebels in May 2009 after nearly three decades of brutal fighting. The conflict claimed up to 1,00,000 lives, according to UN estimates, and both sides are accused of war crimes.

Sri Lanka while formulating an action plan for implementation maintained that most of the recommendations were already put in to effect.

At the UN Human Rights Council session last year the India-backed US sponsored resolution urged the Sri Lankan government to show progress on reconciliation.

Despite the private nature of the visit the Indian authorities have extended full security cooperation for the Sri Lankan President's visit, Prasad Kariyawasam, Sri Lanka's High Commissioner in India said.

"The president would be given full protection by the Indian authorities", Kariyawasam said.

Some groups in Chennai have been opposing the Rajapaksa visit and had urged the Indian government to cancel it.

(Inputs from PTI)

Read More..

Asteroid to Make Closest Flyby in History

Talk about too close for comfort. In a rare cosmic encounter, an asteroid will barnstorm Earth next week, missing our planet by a mere 17,200 miles (27,700 kilometers).

Designated 2012 DA14, the space rock is approximately 150 feet (45 meters) across, and astronomers are certain it will zip harmlessly past our planet on February 15—but not before making history. It will pass within the orbits of many communications satellites, making it the closest flyby on record. (Read about one of the largest asteroids to fly by Earth.)

"This is indeed a remarkably close approach for an asteroid this size," said Paul Chodas, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near Earth Object (NEO) program office in Pasadena, California.

"We estimate that an asteroid of this size passes this close to the Earth only once every few decades."

The giant rock—half a football field wide—was first spotted by observers at the La Sagra Observatory in southern Spain a year ago, soon after it had just finished making a much more distant pass of the Earth at 2.6 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) away.

This time around however, on February15 at 2:24 pm EST, the asteroid will be passing uncomfortably close—ten times closer than the orbit of the moon—flying over the eastern Indian Ocean near Sumatra (map). (Watch: "Moon 101.")

Future Impact?

Chodas and his team have been keeping a close eye on the cosmic intruder, and orbital calculations of its trajectory show that there is no chance for impact.

But the researchers have not yet ruled out future chances of a collision. This is because asteroids of this size are too faint to be detected until they come quite close to the Earth, said Chodas.

"There is still a tiny chance that it might hit us on some future passage by the Earth; for example there is [a] 1-in-200,000 chance that it could hit us in the year 2080," he said.

"But even that tiny chance will probably go away within the week, as the asteroid's orbit gets tracked with greater and greater accuracy and we can eliminate that possibility."

Earth collision with an object of this size is expected to occur every 1,200 years on average, said Donald Yeomans, NEO program manager, at a NASA news conference this week.

DA14 has been getting closer and closer to Earth for quite a while—but this is the asteroid's closest approach in the past hundred years. And it probably won't get this close again for at least another century, added Yeomans.

While no Earth impact is possible next week, DA14 will pass 5,000 miles inside the ring of orbiting geosynchronous weather and communications satellites; so all eyes are watching the space rock's exact trajectory. (Learn about the history of satellites.)

"It's highly unlikely they will be threatened, but NASA is working with satellite providers, making them aware of the asteroid's pass," said Yeomans.

Packing a Punch

Experts say an impact from an object this size would have the explosive power of a few megatons of TNT, causing localized destruction—similar to what occurred in Siberia in 1908.

In what's known as the "Tunguska event," an asteroid is thought to have created an airburst explosion which flattened about 750 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of a remote forested region in what is now northern Russia (map).

In comparison, an impact from an asteroid with a diameter of about half a mile (one kilometer) could temporarily change global climate and kill millions of people if it hit a populated area.

Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center at Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that while small objects like DA14 could hit Earth once a millennia or so, the largest and most destructive impacts have already been catalogued.

"Objects of the size that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs have all been discovered," said Spahr. (Learn about what really happened to the dinosaurs.)

A survey of nearly 9,500 near-Earth objects half a mile (one kilometer) in diameter is nearly complete. Asteroid hunters expect to complete nearly half of a survey of asteroids several hundred feet in diameter in the coming years.

"With the existing assets we have, discovering asteroids rapidly and routinely, I continue to expect the world to be safe from impacts in the future," added Spahr.

Read More..

Cop Shooting Rampage: Manhunt on Mountain

The truck owned and driven by suspected cop killer Christopher Dorner during his alleged rampage through the Los Angeles area was found deserted and in flames on the side of Bear Mountain, Calif., this afternoon -- with tracks in the snow leading away from the vehicle.

The San Bernadino Sheriff's Department confirmed the truck was Dorner's, but said at a news conference this evening that the tracks around the truck did not lead to him.

Personnel from several departments and teams of dogs continued to search the area near Big Bear Lake, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles, including door-to-door searches of cabins located there, officials said.

Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer and Navy reservist, remained on the loose.

"He could be anywhere, at this point, and that's why we're searching door to door," San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said.

He added that the search would continue as long as it was possible. However, a snowstorm was forecast for the area.

Dorner was believed to have killed one police officer and injured two others early this morning in Riverside, Calif. He was also accused of killing two civilians on Sunday. And he allegedly released an angry "manifesto" airing grievances against police and warning of coming violence toward cops.

Read More About Chris Dorner's Allegations Against the LAPD

Heavily armed officers spent much of Thursday searching for signs of Dorner, investigating multiple false leads into his whereabouts and broadcasting his license plate and vehicle description across the California Highway System.

Christopher Dorner: Ex-Cop Wanted in Killing Spree Watch Video

Engaged California Couple Found Dead in Car Watch Video

Missing Ohio Mother: Manhunt for Ex-Boyfriend Watch Video

Around 12:45 p.m. PT, police responded to Bear Mountain, where two fires were reported, and set up a staging area in the parking lot of a ski resort. They did not immediately investigate the fires, but heavily armed SWAT team members eventually descended onto Bear Mountain from a helicopter manned with snipers to investigate and reached the truck.

Also today, CNN's Anderson Cooper said Dorner had sent him a package at his New York office that arrived on Feb. 1, though Cooper said he never knew about the package until today. It contained a DVD of court testimony, with a Post-It note signed by Dorner claiming, "I never lied! Here is my vindication."

It also contained a keepsake coin bearing the name of former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton that came wrapped in duct tape, Cooper said. The duct tape bore the note, "Thanks, but no thanks Will Bratton."

Bratton told Cooper on his program, "Anderson Cooper 360," that he believed he gave Dorner the coin as he was headed overseas for the Navy, Bratton's practice when officers got deployed abroad. Though a picture has surfaced of Bratton, in uniform, and Dorner, in fatigues, shaking hands, Bratton told Cooper he didn't recall Dorner or the meeting.

PHOTOS: Former LAPD Officer Suspected in Shootings

Police officers across Southern California were on the defensive today, scaling back their public exposure, no longer responding to "barking-dog calls" and donning tactical gear outdoors.

Police departments have stationed officers in tactical gear outside police departments, stopped answering low-level calls and pulled motorcycle patrols off the road in order to protect officers who might be targets of Dorner's alleged rampage.

"We've made certain modifications of our deployments, our deviations today, and I want to leave it at that, and also to our responses," said Chief Sergio Diaz of the police department in Riverside, Calif., where the officers were shot. "We are concentrating on calls for service that are of a high priority, threats to public safety, we're not going to go on barking dog calls today."

Sgt. Rudy Lopez of the Los Angeles Police Department said Dorner is "believed to be armed and extremely dangerous."

Early Thursday morning, before they believe he shot at any police officers, Dorner allegedly went to a yacht club near San Diego, where police say he attempted to steal a boat and flee to Mexico.

He aborted the attempted theft when the boat's propeller became entangled in a rope, law enforcement officials said. It was then that he is believed to have headed to Riverside, where he allegedly shot two police officers.

"He pointed a handgun at the victim [at the yacht club] and demanded the boat," said Lt. David Rohowits of the San Diego Police Department.

Police say the rifle marksman shot at four officers in two incidents overnight, hitting three of them: one in Corona, Calif., and the two in Riverside, Calif.

Read More..

In the Loop: Interior pick could watch, but not deliver, a State of the Union address

The nomination announcement Wednesday afternoon of Sally Jewell, chief executive of outdoor company REI, to be secretary of the interior would put her eighth in the line of presidential succession should anything happen to President Obama, Vice President Biden, House and Senate leaders and the top four Cabinet officials at State, Treasury, Defense and Justice.

Except for one problem: She was born in England — came here when she was 3 — and thus doesn’t qualify. She would hardly be the first Cabinet member in this situation.

Others affected by this in recent years include Bush II Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, born in Taiwan, and Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, born in Prague. Ditto Nixon’s German-born secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.

What this means is that, if confirmed, Jewell will be forced to attend every State of the Union address, because she’ll never be the “designated successor.”

On another note, if she gets the job, she’ll be overseeing some places with a history of sweatshops that could compete with REI. REI says that it manufactures gear and apparel around the world, including China, Taiwan and El Salvador, but that it prides itself as being quite scrupulous in monitoring working conditions at its suppliers.

But as head of the Interior Department, Jewell would have jurisdiction over a few U.S. territories — especially the Northern Marianas — that were criticized for years as havens for immigrant smuggling, prostitution and sweatshops. (Because they’re U.S. territories, the clothing made there can be labeled “Made in U.S.A.” and come in duty-free.)

An Interior official assured us, however, that congressionally mandated minimum-wage increases and “new global trade rules embraced by the U.S.” have taken care of the problem.

So, no sweat.

Straying pols, beware

Philandering politicos around town, start quaking in your wingtips. And maybe call your lawyer.

Fair warning:L.A.-based
Gloria Allred
, attorney to many a woman involved in a high-profile controversy, was sworn in this week as a member of the D.C. bar. Which means . . . well, not much, for the moment.

Allred tells us that she’s not working on any particular case that would bring her to our fair city. But she frequently does business here, she says, and rather than operate on a “pro hac vice” basis (meaning each time she comes before a D.C. judge, she gets a one-time waiver), she decided to go all in.

She didn’t have to take the D.C. bar exam but instead used a waiver process designed for lawyers already practicing in other states.

Allred cheered the fact that there were three women on the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where she was sworn in during a Monday ceremony, along with plenty of fellow female lawyers. “That’s something you wouldn’t have seen when I was sworn in to the California bar 38 years ago,” she said.

Allred’s storied career has included going up against powerful men on behalf of the women who say they’ve been wronged. Clients have included
Sharon Bialek
, who accused former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain of sexual harassment, and
Natalie Khawam
, the sister of the woman who blew the whistle on CIA Director David Petraeus’s affair.

Should ne’er-do-well men around town worry now that Allred is poised to take on a local case at a moment’s notice? The typically bombastic lawyer’s unusually coy reply: “I’ll leave that to them to decide.”

Friendly fire

Seems no one is playing their position these days. On Wednesday, Sen. Ron Wyden
hinted that he might, maybe, possibly filibuster the nomination of White House counterterrorism adviser
John Brennan
to be CIA director for Wyden’s pal President Obama.

Apparently the Oregon Democrat is mighty upset about a new white paper from the Justice Department and wants more information about the legal justification for drone strikes against U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism. He’s promised to “pull out all the stops” to get what he’s looking for, Roll Call reports.

And for days there’s been will-they-or-won’t-they speculation that Republicans could potentially, perhaps filibuster the nomination of one of their own, former senator Chuck Hagel (Neb.) to be secretary of defense.

Which puts us in the topsy-turvy position of having a Democrat threaten a Democratic president’s nominee with filibuster, while Republicans warn they could do the same to a fellow Republican.

Never mind that it’s all posturing — filibusters of Cabinet nominees on either side are unlikely, or at least they’re unprecedented.

Which is good to remember before you pop something to relieve the vertigo.

With Emily Heil

The blog: washingtonpost.com/
intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.

Read More..

Google boosts mobile ad campaigns

SAN FRANCISCO: Google began letting businesses target mobile ads based on how close smartphone users might be to shops or what they might be craving at certain times of day.

Google began upgrading its AdWords service with "enhanced campaigns" for advertisers trying to better connect with people accessing the Internet on the move with smartphones or tablet computers.

"People are constantly connected and moving from one device to another to communicate, shop and stay entertained," Google senior vice president of engineering Sridhar Ramaswamy said in a blog post.

"Enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads, based on their context like location, time of day and device type."

For example, a breakfast cafe interested in reaching people searching for "coffee" on smartphones could arrange to bid higher for people within close distance and less for queries made after noon.

AdWords uses a bidding process to determine which advertisements are posted along with results for specified query terms. Modern smartphones and tablets are built with location-sensing technology that users can activate.

Ads shown to smartphone users could be customized with one-touch calling options or map directions, while the same merchant would provide a shopping website link to people browsing online from a desktop computer.

AdWords also lets merchants track how often ads lead to telephone calls.

The upgrade comes as modern lifestyles increasingly revolve around staying connected to the Internet with smartphones or tablet computers.

- AFP/al

Read More..

Suryanelli gang-rape case rocks Kerala assembly again, House adjourned

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The CPM-led LDF opposition forced the adjournment of the Kerala assembly on Thursday over alleged police excess against women MLAs demanding re-investigation of charges against Rajya Sabha deputy chairman PJ Kurien in the Suryanelli gang-rape case.

Though chief minister Oommen Chandy announced that the government was prepared for a judicial inquiry into the police action on CPI MLAs ES Bijimol and Geetha Gopi on Wednesday, opposition leader VS Achuthanandan insisted on immediate suspension of the "erring" police personnel.

Chandy, quoting ADGP's report and video visuals on the incident, said though nothing could be found in them to take instant action against police officials, considering the seriousness of the incident government was ready for a judicial probe.

After heated exchanges during the zero hour, rejecting the government's stand slogan-shouting opposition members, including women MLAs, rushed to the well of the House. Four of the women MLAs even scaled the speaker's podium and kept on chanting "we want justice and protection."

Speaker G Karthikeyan then rushed through the rest of the business and adjourned the House hours ahead of the day's schedule.

This was the third day that the LDF was disrupting proceedings in connection with the alleged involvement of Kurien in the Suryanelli case.The opposition has been pressing for a further investigation in the case in the wake of the victim sticking to her charge against Kurien.

Kurien has all along rejected the charge and the demand for his resignation, saying it was a matter which had already been cleared by the Supreme Court.

The Leftist women outfits on Wednesday held a protest over the issue in front of the assembly and some agitators, including Bijimol and Geetha Gopi, were allegedly roughed up by police. The two MLAs have been hospitalised.

Read More..

Humans Swap DNA More Readily Than They Swap Stories

Jane J. Lee

Once upon a time, someone in 14th-century Europe told a tale of two girls—a kind one who was rewarded for her manners and willingness to work hard, and an unkind girl who was punished for her greed and selfishness.

This version was part of a long line of variations that eventually spread throughout Europe, finding their way into the Brothers Grimm fairytales as Frau Holle, and even into Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. (Watch a video of the Frau Holle fairytale.)

In a new study, evolutionary psychologist Quentin Atkinson is using the popular tale of the kind and unkind girls to study how human culture differs within and between groups, and how easily the story moved from one group to another.

Atkinson, of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and his co-authors employed tools normally used to study genetic variation within a species, such as people, to look at variations in this folktale throughout Europe.

The researchers found that there were significant differences in the folktale between ethnolinguistic groups—or groups bound together by language and ethnicity. From this, the scientists concluded that it's much harder for cultural information to move between groups than it is for genes.

The study, published February 5 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that about 9 percent of the variation in the tale of the two girls occurred between ethnolinguistic groups. Previous studies looking at the genetic diversity across groups in Europe found levels of variation less than one percent.

For example, there's a part of the story in which the girls meet a witch who asks them to perform some chores. In different renditions of the tale, the meeting took place by a river, at the bottom of a well, or in a cave. Other versions had the girls meeting with three old men or the Virgin Mary, said Atkinson.

Conformity

Researchers have viewed human culture through the lens of genetics for decades, said Atkinson. "It's a fair comparison in the sense that it's just variation across human groups."

But unlike genes, which move into a population relatively easily and can propagate randomly, it's harder for new ideas to take hold in a group, he said. Even if a tale can bridge the "ethnolinguistic boundary," there are still forces that might work against a new cultural variation that wouldn't necessarily affect genes.

"Humans don't copy the ideas they hear randomly," Atkinson said. "We don't just choose ... the first story we hear and pass it on.

"We show what's called a conformist bias—we'll tend to aggregate across what we think everyone else in the population is doing," he explained. If someone comes along and tells a story a little differently, most likely, people will ignore those differences and tell the story like everyone else is telling it.

"That makes it more difficult for new ideas to come in," Atkinson said.

Cultural Boundaries

Atkinson and his colleagues found that if two versions of the folktale were found only six miles (ten kilometers) away from each other but came from different ethnolinguistic groups, such as the French and the Germans, then those versions were as different from each other as two versions taken from within the same group—say just the Germans—located 62 miles (100 kilometers) away from each other.

"To me, the take-home message is that cultural groups strongly constrain the flow of information, and this enables them to develop highly local cultural traditions and norms," said Mark Pagel, of the University of Reading in the U.K., who wasn't involved in the new study.

Pagel, who studies the evolution of human behavior, said by email that he views cultural groups almost like biological species. But these groups, which he calls "cultural survival vehicles," are more powerful in some ways than our genes.

That's because when immigrants from a particular cultural group move into a new one, they bring genetic diversity that, if the immigrants have children, get mixed around, changing the new population's gene pool. But the new population's culture doesn't necessarily change.

Atkinson plans to keep using the tools of the population-genetics trade to see if the patterns he found in the variations of the kind and unkind girls hold true for other folktale variants in Europe and around the world.

Humans do a lot of interesting things, Atkinson said. "[And] the most interesting things aren't coded in our DNA."

Read More..

Armstrong May Testify Under Oath on Doping

Facing a federal criminal investigation and a deadline that originally was tonight to tell all under oath to anti-doping authorities or lose his last chance at reducing his lifetime sporting ban, Lance Armstrong now may cooperate.

His apparent 11th-hour about-face, according to the U.S. Anti Doping Agency (USADA), suggests he might testify under oath and give full details to USADA of how he cheated for so long.

"We have been in communication with Mr. Armstrong and his representatives and we understand that he does want to be part of the solution and assist in the effort to clean up the sport of cycling," USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart said in a written statement this evening. "We have agreed to his request for an additional two weeks to work on details to hopefully allow for this to happen."

Neither Armstrong nor his attorney responded to emails seeking comment on the USADA announcement.

The news of Armstrong's possible and unexpected cooperation came a day after ABC News reported he was in the crosshairs of federal criminal investigators. According to a high-level source, "agents are actively investigating Armstrong for obstruction, witness tampering and intimidation" for allegedly threatening people who dared tell the truth about his cheating.

Lance Armstrong Under Criminal Investigation Watch Video

Lance Armstrong Breaks Down: Question Pushes Cyclist to Brink Watch Video

Lance Armstrong Shows His Emotional Side With Oprah Winfrey Watch Video

The case was re-ignited by Armstrong's confession last month to Oprah Winfrey that he doped his way to all seven of his Tour de France titles, telling Winfrey he used performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career and then lied about it. He made the confession after years of vehement denials that he cheated.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

READ MORE: Lance Armstrong May Have Lied to Winfrey: Investigators

WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape

If charges are ultimately filed, the consequences of "serious potential crimes" could be severe, ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams said -- including "possible sentences up to five, 10 years."

Investigators are not concerned with the drug use, but Armstrong's behavior in trying to maintain his secret by allegedly threatening and interfering with potential witnesses.

Armstrong was previously under a separate federal investigation that reportedly looked at drug distribution, conspiracy and fraud allegations -- but that case was dropped without explanation a year ago. Sources at the time said that agents had recommended an indictment and could not understand why the case was suddenly dropped.

"There were plenty of people, even within federal law enforcement, who felt like he was getting preferential treatment," said T.J. Quinn, an investigative reporter with ESPN.

The pressures against Armstrong today are immense and include civil claims that could cost him tens of millions of dollars.

Armstrong is currently serving a lifetime ban in sport handed down by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and today was the deadline he was given to cooperate under oath if he ever wanted the ban lifted.

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present

PHOTOS: Tour de France 2012

ABC News' Michael S. James contributed to this report.

Read More..

Strengthening security at the nation’s airports

Most people think of airport security as their walk through the metal detector and the eyeballing by transportation security officers (TSOs). Dan Liddell, whose job it is to protect the flying public at seven airports in central New York, instead sees 17 zones of worker responsibility and hundreds of different tasks.

In pursuit of safeguarding the public, Liddell, a federal security director based in Syracuse, has written a book that is now used to train TSOs. It’s called the “National Standardization Guide to Improving Security Effectiveness.” Tasks at each duty area have been inventoried and cataloged, and the “knowledge, values and skills” associated with the airport security jobs have been identified under what Liddell describes as a systems approach to training.

As important as it is to use X-ray machines and explosive trace-detection equipment and to have the correct rules and procedures in place, Liddell said transportation security relies on the skills of the people responsible for it.

“People performance is the cornerstone,” he said. “When I set out to improve things, I look at the people. I look at their proficiency, their skill in doing something and how well they’re doing that job.”

Even when people have the skills to do their jobs, they don’t necessarily do them well each time, especially when conditions can vary with each day and every passenger. To keep performance high, TSOs are tested covertly at unexpected times. A banned item will be sent through a checkpoint and the reaction and activities that take place are monitored.

Whether or not TSOs spot contraband, everyone at that checkpoint during the test participates in an “after-action” review. “It’s the learning experience that’s relevant,” Liddell said. “We’re doing a review of actual performance and you can always improve.”

Liddell is sensitive to the pressure that airport security personnel face. TSOs have the tough of performing multiple tasks under constant camera surveillance and public scrutiny, often interacting with tired or irritated travelers. The testing and training helps them continually up their game.

Thirty airports around the country that helped test the training system and now use a version of it. Paul Armes, federal security director at Nashville International Airport, was interested in creating such a system with a colleague when they both worked in Arizona, but it “never got traction.”

When he learned about what Liddell was doing, he was eager to participate. “Typical of Dan, he built it himself and practiced it so he had hard metric results, and then he started reaching out to some of us, working with his counterparts around the country to get a good representative sample,” Armes said. “He sees things others don’t see sometimes and he has the capability to drill down into the details.”

Liddell began the “pretty long process” of analyzing how people were performing at checkpoints in 2009. He sat down with subject-matter experts to produce the task inventory he now uses. In 2010, he improved the review and reporting process that occurs after covert tests events and instituted the security practices he refined at the other New York airports he oversees, including Greater Binghamton, Ithaca and four others. “I love breaking it down,” he said. “I’ve got a quest for improvement.”

In a less sneaky version of the television show, “Undercover Boss,” Liddell went through the new-hire training program for his employees to understand as much as he could about the jobs and the training provided for them, he said.

If pursuing knowledge is in Liddell’s genes, it may be because his parents were both in education. His father was a high school principal and his mother was a fifth-grade teacher. His teaching manifested itself instead in the training realm, where he strives to educate security employees as effectively as possible, inside the classroom and out.

“It’s always a challenge to meet that right balance of really great effectiveness and really great efficiency,” he said. “There are always challenges. It’s what gets me up in the morning, trying to improve.”

This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference.

Read More..