Life Is Short; Enjoy Every Sandwich

In a former life, I sometimes counseled small business owners who were going through a difficult time in their business. The circumstances would be so desperate and the prognosis so dire that the person on whom this business's buck stopped would be close to being unable to function.

Having been there myself and calling upon what I had learned about what really matters, I would begin a visit with, "How are your children?"

To which they would ask, incredulously, "What?!"

When I asked the same question again, they would invariably respond, "They're fine. I'm about to lose my business. Why are you asking me about my family?"

To which I would respond, "Does anything else REALLY matter?"

The late 20th century rock star and malcontent, Warren Zevon, succumbed to lung cancer at 52. If poets were punctuation, Zevon was a great, big, bold, in-your-face exclamation point in a world with too many pedestrian periods. 

He was also a small business owner.

Having penned songs like my favorite, "Werewolves of London," and the now ironic, "Life'll Kill Ya," Zevon was an independent artist working without a net, passionately creating products in hopes of finding customers who would appreciate and pay for his wares. And we did.

In preparing for death, Zevon had one very important thing to say, especially to small business owners. In an interview with David Letterman, both knowing Zevon's days were numbered, Letterman asked what he had learned about life: Looking straight through the camera lens into every soul watching, Zevon said, "Enjoy every sandwich!"

Zevon didn't mean life is short; go get more sales.  The man whose life's work was the definition of sardonic was saying, "This just in: You're not going to get out of this alive!!"

We sometimes get so wrapped up in our business that we risk losing our grip on the things that really matter:  health, happiness and those who love us. "Enjoy every sandwich" was Zevonese for "Slow down to the speed of life! Listen to a bird! Smell a rose! Hug your kids!"

Surviving these tough economic times is important, but not at the expense of love. Financial security is a good thing, but it's not more important than health. And all the credentials in the world can't begin to move the scales when weighed against having joy in your life.

Jim Blasingame  is one of the world's leading experts on small business and entrepreneurship. He is the creator and award-winning host of the nationally syndicated radio program, The Small Business Advocate ® Show.  In addition to his weekly columns, Jim is the author of two books; Small Business  is like a Bunch of Bananas and Three Minutes to Success .

Life insurance premium income down 1.5% in 2011-12

Premium income in the life insurance sector declined 1.57 per cent at Rs 2.87 lakh crore in 2011-12 compared with Rs 2.91 lakh crore the previous year.

According to the Annual Report of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority for 2011-12, released recently, while private sector insurers registered a 4.52 per cent fall, Life Insurance Corporation posted a mere 0.29 per cent decline.

It was the growth in renewal premiums that saved the industry. These were up 4.77 per cent even as first-year premiums dipped 9.85 per cent, IRDA said.

Another divergent trend between the private and public sectors was the contribution of single-premium products.

Though they continued to be major drivers of LIC’s total premium growth, their contribution to the private life business declined during the period under review.

UNIT-LINKED PRODUCTS

Unit-linked insurance products (ULIPs) suffered a sharp slide of 36 per cent, because of a new set of regulations brought into force by IRDA over two years ago. Their share in total premiums came down to 24.2 per cent (37 per cent). The premium from traditional products showed a corresponding growth.

During 2011-12, life insurers issued 442 lakh new policies, of which LIC’s share was 358 lakh.

The decline in business was also reflected in a decrease in the number of agents. Their number had come down to 23.59 lakh from 26.39 lakh. Private life insurers were hit by a higher dip in agent force. The state insurer still had the highest number of individual agents, at 12.78 lakh.

ATTRITION RATE

“One major concern that emerges from the data on agents’ numbers is the high percentage of attrition,” the report said.

While private insurers appointed 3.68 lakh agents, 5.89 lakh were terminated.

There was also a perceptible shift away from the individual agency channel, the report said.

Reliance Life launches career agency distribution channel

Reliance Life Insurance Company (RLIC) has announced the launch of ‘Career Agency’, a new distribution format aimed at enhancing the company’s reach and footprints across the country.

This is the third new distribution channel introduced by the private life insurer this year. The earlier launched two new distribution formats were ‘Life Plaza’ and ‘Face-to-Face’.

The ‘career agency’ format offers a fixed stipend structure to prospective advisors , looking at insurance as a long-term professional career, during the training period.

With this move, RLIC has adapted to the Indian market the highly successful Sales Advisor model of Nippon Life Insurance in Japan. Nippon Life currently has 26 per cent stake in RLIC.

‘Career Agency’ is a first-of-its-kind distribution channel based on stipend and variable commission pay-out structure by any private insurer in the domestic insurance Industry, according to a RLIC statement.

Malay Ghosh, President and Executive Director, Reliance Life Insurance, announced the launch of the new distribution format today.

‘’The main aim of Career Agency distribution format is to support new recruits during the learning phase so that they can concentrate on training and learning the ropes rather than being under the pressure of generating business to earn commission from the very first instance.

We will help them devote the requisite time and effort to develop a good understanding of the industry and look at it as a long-term career option,’’ Ghosh said.

Under the new distribution channel, Reliance Life Insurance will hire 5,500 career agents across 220 branches by the end of 2012-13, with a view to expanding and strengthening its existing distribution network.

RLIC has already recruited around 2,500 career agents and deputed them in over 150 branches across the country and will hire about 3,000 career agents in the next three months.

In the career agency distribution model, the recruits called ‘sales trainees’ will be given a fixed stipend for the first six months, which is also the training period.

Once the advisor completes this training period and passes the licensing exam, he/she becomes a ‘career agent’ and moves to a variable commission-based pay-out structure.

RLIC will focus on Tier III and Tier IV cities and towns for the recruitment of prospective career agents.

Great-West Life close to buying state-rescued Irish Life-source

Canada Life, a unit of Canadian life insurer Great-West Lifeco, is close to a deal for state-rescued insurer Irish Life, a source familiar with the negotiations said on Sunday.

"It's at an advanced stage," the source said, requesting anonymity because he is not authorised to speak about the talks.

A spokesman for Irish Life declined to comment.
Irish Life, formerly the life insurance arm of bailed out Irish Life & Permanent, was taken over by the state after a planned sale of the unit was suspended last year. A source at that time told Reuters that Canada Life was the lead candidate to buy the group.

The Sunday Times newspaper reported that a deal would be agreed in the first quarter of next year.
Executives at Irish Life said in September that the company would need a period of sustained calm in the euro zone before the sale process would resume.

Ireland (OTC BB: IRLD - news) 's government, which had already poured 2.7 billion euros ($3.6 billion) into IL&P to recapitalise its banking division, forked out 1.3 billion euros for Irish Life after a real estate and credit bubble burst, undermining the country's banking system and eventually forcing the government to seek a bailout.

The Perils of the Frontlines of War

Do you want to know what it’s like to stare in horror, and fascination, at a human head so thoroughly perforated by bullets that it’s folded in on itself like a melon rotted in the field? Or to watch, helpless, as refugee babies die of dehydration, their mouths opening and closing like fish gasping in the air? Maybe you’re interested in the taste of sweat and dirt when you’re under fire and trying to get low on the ground, and lower, impossibly low, with your face crushed against the earth.

Probably you did not want to know any of these things. Not really. And neither did I. And I don’t much like to remember them now. But in more than a quarter century as a Newsweek correspondent, writing about a few wars that people remember and many that they’ve forgotten, I have learned, inevitably, a lot about the way death comes, and sometimes some of the reasons why.

A wise war correspondent tries to stay out of the action. Bullets and bombs don’t tell stories—people do. But at times you have to go looking for the action to get a clear picture of what’s really going on and, often enough, it catches up with you anyway.

After spending years with The Washington Post covering guerrilla wars in Central America and terror attacks in the Middle East, I joined Newsweek in 1986. My basic assignment was to look at how American foreign policy played out on the ground, which often meant going to a place that the United States was about to attack, and watching that happen.

In 1987, the United States sent its big guns to the Persian Gulf, using a variety of pretenses to deploy a fleet bolstering Saddam Hussein in his epic fight against Iran. To get a closer look at the fight on the water, a TV colleague from Britain and I chartered a work boat that could take us into the war zone. It’s hard to imagine a dumber, more dangerous move. We set our course through seas full of naval mines dropped almost at random by the Iranians. Day and night, we watched for the protruding prongs of the floating bombs. But all we saw were dead sheep thrown overboard by livestock haulers. Bloated and round, their little legs sticking up in the air, they looked very much like mines, but didn’t blow. We saw a lot of warships and burning oil platforms. And we were lucky enough to live to tell the tale.

The following year, an American guided missile cruiser shot an Iranian airliner out of the sky in the confusion of a skirmish on the water with Iranian gunboats. All 290 people on the plane died. At a makeshift morgue, Iranian guards handed me paper tissues to block some of the smell. Many of the bodies pulled from the sea were mutilated by the blast, but one very little girl, I remember, still wore a tidy blue dress, white socks, shiny black shoes, and tiny gold bangles on her wrist. On a slab nearby, a young mother continued to clutch her baby as she had done at the moment they died. I remember afterward hearing an Iranian Air Force general asked a leading question by a British reporter who wanted him to say the Americans meant to shoot down the plane. But the Iranian officer’s answer was more subtle than that. The Americans “did not care enough to be careful enough not to shoot it down,” he said.

At the end of that decade, the war I had lived with all my life—the Cold War—came to an end. I flew into Berlin in November 1989 as one of many Newsweek correspondents covering the fall of The Wall. I roamed, sleepless and exhilarated, through the city in those first uncertain hours after all the East German guards abandoned their fearsome barrier. Beneath an impossibly bright moon, men and women and children picked and chiseled away at the concrete as if digging for diamonds. The world had changed, for sure. A new era of peace seemed at hand. But of course that was not to be.

"It's a Wonderful Life" is top Christmas film with critics

When it comes to Christmas films, "It's a Wonderful Life" can still melt critics' hearts nearly 70 years after it was released, according to a survey of the best-reviewed Christmas films.

The survey, to be released on Friday by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, found that the 1946 redemption story starring Jimmy Stewart edged out the 1942 Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire musical "Holiday Inn" and Tim Burton's 1993 stop-motion fantasy "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

World War Two drama "Stalag 17," released in 1953, and 1947's "Miracle on 34th Street" round out the top five.

"It's a Wonderful Life" vaulted to the top spot from No. 5 in 2009, when the list was last compiled, bumping "The Nightmare Before Christmas" from its best-reviewed status.

Films that use the holiday as a backdrop for the plot such as 1988's "Die Hard," which was No. 6 on the list, and 1983's "Trading Places" at No. 9, were also eligible, the website said.

Rotten Tomatoes, which analyzes film reviews and assigns a score based on total critical reception, applied that same formula to Christmas films for the list, Matt Atchity, the website's editor in chief, told Reuters.

"You look at the list and it's all the classics ... the cream floats to the top," Atchity said, adding that the rankings were weighted to reflect the amount of reviews a film received, which could artificially boost or decline a score.

Films from the 1960s and 1970s were notably absent from the list. Atchity said studios were more focused at that time on work by big-name directors than on seasonal films.

Readers respond as Aesha's surgery and life progresses

The evolving life, face and story of Aesha, disfigured by the Taliban and featured on the August 2010 cover of Time magazine, has captivated audiences around the world.

CNN has been following her for close to two years and, earlier this week, updated readers on how she is doing both physically and emotionally. We shared exclusive photographs of what she looked like before her latest surgery.

Monday's procedure, the fourth in a series to reconstruct her nose, lasted about 9½ hours and went smoothly, said Mati Arsala, who's become a father figure to Aesha Mohammadzai. Doctors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where she's being treated, will not discuss her case.

The reactions to the latest story about Aesha poured in -- both in the story's comments section and by way of e-mail -- even as the world's eyes remained trained on Friday's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

"This girl has more courage than all the fanatics that hurt her will ever have," wrote akmac61.
"Aesha you are a beautiful woman, wishing you the best! A whole new great life is ahead just for you, better things are coming," said tr0j4n.

"I am speechless, no words can express the depth of my feeling for this beautiful lady. I salute your courage in the face of illiteracy and extremism," added ProsNCons.

Some readers wrote with special offerings for Aesha and the family caring for her. An e-learning company in Canada wants to help with her education. The owner of a bed and breakfast in West Virginia would like to treat them to a weekend getaway. A woman in Texas encouraged Aesha to open a Web-store, perhaps on Etsy, to sell her jewelry. Many others wrote with promises of prayers and extensions of love.

As is so often the case when CNN mentions Afghanistan or simply the Muslim world, there were inevitably readers who took this opportunity to attack that faith. But more readers pushed back, perhaps hinting at decreased tolerance for such prejudices. There was also a fresh perspective brought on by the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut.

"I guess in the Taliban, everybody with a twisted opinion gets to play God," wrote onaturalia.
"and unfortunately some in the US," responded are122.

"Exactly, and they are not all Muslims," said Rollins.
Further down in the comments, Tina Mantooth added, "I agree 100%. Islam doesn't teach hate."
"Then why do Muslims do so many inhumane things?" asked swarm4.

"Was Adam Lanza a Muslim? No," answered Elhaba Wackadoodle. "Inhumane things are inherent in all humans. Some just act on them while the rest of us don't."

Some, who wrote to me directly, shared that the story about Aesha was a salve for the sadness that had befallen the country.

"It was especially nice to read after the horrors of Newtown," wrote one person.
"It did my soul some good to read such a hopeful story and to learn about the Arsalas' kindness and good will at a time like this, when everything seems pretty dark in the U.S.," wrote another.

"In a time filled with tragedy and sorrow, thank you for an uplifting and positive article," wrote a third.

A couple of readers seemed bent on offending Aesha, those who care for her and pretty much everyone else, by making comments directed at her looks -- as if she had any control over them.

But plenty of readers stood up for her, including lxNay, who wrote, "She will be beautiful again. The surgery will repair her mutilations, but nothing can repair the ugliness displayed by some posters here. Stupid can't be fixed."

 Saving Aesha: Life after Taliban attack
Some readers wondered why the country would help her instead of others.

"Who is paying for the surgery? Don't you think there are enough disfugured (sic) citizens in this country who needs (sic) more attention?" asked Jayjay.

In response, iPostEyeAm wrote, "You misspelled 'I need a heart implant.'"

A handful of readers latched onto information in the story about how Jamila Rasouli-Arsala, Aesha's mother figure and a former OB-GYN in Germany, is struggling to find her way in America's medical community. If she wants to practice medicine here, she must start over in a residency program -- and so far she's had no luck getting into one. If she can't, the whole family, Aesha included, may end up moving to Germany.
"Concerning Jamila's plight, one has to ask what is going on in the U.S. concerning attracting and keeping good doctors," wrote bob. "From what I am hearing, the U.S. doesn't sound like a land of opportunity but instead a country representing endless bureaucratic roadblocks, dogma and special interests."

Answered FBreen: "Until there is an international standard for medical education and training, I am happy that such requirements exist."

There were lessons that readers from across the globe took away from the piece. A reader in Poland, who previously had not felt connected to Aesha's story, wrote, "It is the right thing to shout it to the world, to make clear there is no acceptance to barbarism and abuse."

Added a writer from Nigeria: "Am very happy the way you Americans are helping people all over the world."
And then there was this one, from a young woman who saw in Aesha's story something she knows too well.
"This is Anika from miles away, Bangladesh. I read your story on Aesha early this morning on the CNN website and it overwhelmed me with emotions I usually try to bury. I am 22 too like her and part of a society that may not bruise my body but wounds my soul and self confidence everyday. Stories like Aesha's inspire us, girls, struggling to live a normal and deserved life."

Whether she knows it or not, whether she means to or not, Aesha is making a difference.

Acquisition doubles size of Life Choice Hospice

Life Choice Hospice, of Dresher, has expanded from three to 12 states and more than doubled its size with the $85 million purchase this month of SolAmor Hospice Corp. from Genesis Healthcare Corp.

Genesis, a national nursing home and rehabilitation company in Kennett Square, retained a one-third stake in Life Choice, which was founded in 2003 in Philadelphia and sold in 2009 to investors counting on increased demand for hospice services as the U.S. population ages.

Despite the turmoil in the health-care sector and broad efforts to reduce spending, prospects for hospice care remain strong, Life Choice chief executive David Glick said Tuesday.

"I think hospice is seen as the lowest-cost end-of-life care," said Glick, who is based in Life Choice's River Edge, N.J., office, in New York's suburbs.

At the end of 2009, when investors, including Formation Capital, which also controls Genesis, bought Life Choice, the company was caring for 125 patients a day on average, Glick said.

That number had climbed to 700 patients - with much of the growth from internal expansion rather than acquisitions - before the purchase of SolAmor on Dec. 3. With that deal, the average stands at 1,750, Glick said.

The hospice industry overall has been growing rapidly.

The number of Medicare-certified hospice organizations climbed 53 percent between 2000 and 2010, with for-profit providers accounting for almost all of the increase, according to a March report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

Over the same period, Medicare spending on hospice services for people with no more than six months to live more than quadrupled to $13 billion, as more people chose hospice care and the length of time spent in hospice care increased for some, the congressional advisory group reported.

In 2010, 44 percent of the Medicare beneficiaries who died received hospice care, up from 22.9 percent of those who died in 2000, the group said.

Medicare's payment this year for routine hospice care at home is $151 a day.

The growth has attracted investors. The number of acquisitions in the hospice industry soared from about a dozen in 2007 to more than 40 in 2011, according to the Braff Group, a Pittsburgh mergers-and-acquisition advisory firm specializing in health-care services.

Investors "see in the hospice space, and I would say correctly so, an escalating demand for hospice services as a function of demographics and an embracing of the hospice paradigm," said Steven Braff, managing director at the Braff Group.

Moreover, the federal government has left reimbursement levels for hospice care unscathed compared with those for hospitals, nursing homes, and home health-care providers, Braff said.

Life Choice founder Doug Kosmin remains president and will oversee operations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

"Doug had a good product to begin with, and we did our best to improve it," Glick said.

SCOR Global Life Americas and StoneRiver, Inc. Offer New Solution to Accelerate Underwriting Cases for Simplified Issue Life

SCOR Global Life Americas, a leading life reinsurer in the U.S. market, and StoneRiver, Inc. have teamed up to offer an innovative solution for the rapid underwriting of simplified issue life insurance products.
The solution integrates Velogica®, SCOR’s automated underwriting engine, and LifeSuite® Results Manager, StoneRiver’s case management solution.

Velogica’s underwriting algorithm interprets details from multiple sources – MVR, MIB reports and prescription drug histories – and correlates the data with information collected on the application. Velogica’s complex algorithm enables an underwriting recommendation in real time. In 95 percent of all cases, Velogica has made an underwriting recommendation without the involvement of an underwriter, and 90 percent of the time, it delivered the result in under a minute.

LifeSuite Results Manager provides an array of capabilities including the electronic capture of application data, submission of application data to Velogica and the presentation of underwriting evidence and results in an easy-to-use dashboard.

By combining Velogica and LifeSuite Results Manager, carriers can now quickly implement a single, cost effective and comprehensive solution for middle market life insurance business.

SCOR and StoneRiver already have an established relationship. “We have worked together for a number of years creating customized term life programs for carriers in the fully underwritten life market,” said Dave Dorans, Senior Vice President of SCOR’s Value Added Services. “Besides being the consummate technical experts, the StoneRiver team understands how life insurance is sold and administered – and that makes all the difference. We are highly optimistic about what we can do together.”

Jim Woodward, Senior Vice President of StoneRiver Life Carrier Solutions, said, “Understanding the industry’s attention and focus on reaching the middle market is what drew StoneRiver and SCOR together. In looking at the automated underwriting engines available, we quickly concluded that Velogica provides the most comprehensive and sophisticated solution.” Woodward added that with almost one million applications processed to date, “their experience is unmatched in the marketplace.”

While companies still can purchase Velogica and the LifeSuite Underwriting System independently, the collaborative solution can lower costs and integration efforts for life insurers who want to enter or expand their participation in the middle market.

Report: Smoking Takes 5 Hours Off Life Expectancy Per Day

Every so often, a scientific report will come out that warns of the life-shortening dangers of smoking, eating red meat, sitting too long, or of drinking too much alcohol. But until now, no researchers have tried to quantify the day-to-day hazards of bad habits.

British statistician David Spiegelhalter, in a report published Monday in British Medical Journal, attempts to quantify which habits have a greater impact on life expectancy: Is drinking heavily worse than living a sedentary lifestyle?

To do this, he created a unit of measure called a "microlife," which corresponds to 30 minutes of life expectancy. Using other studies, he determined that for each day of heavy smoking, a person could be shaving about five hours off his life; someone who watches TV for two hours a day loses about 30 minutes for each day they take part in that activity.

"I'm taking lifelong habits and looking at how they affect people on average, convert it to a daily rate," Spiegelhalter says. "The whole idea is to make a comparison about healthy activities and bad activities. Crudely, drinking two cups of coffee will cancel out eating a burger."

Spiegelhalter says when people hear about life expectancy studies, they assume they'll lose a couple years off the end of their lives. Instead, he says, they should consider it as "aging faster" — a smoker could be hurtling faster towards lung cancer, for instance, than a nonsmoker.

"If you're a smoker, it's like you're moving at your death as if you were living 29 hours a day, it's accelerated aging," he says. "It's a bit of a metaphor — you're getting older quicker rather than living just a bit less."

Fatal Rollover Takes Life of Young Man

Montana Highway Patrol Trooper O'Neil says it happened at 3:30 this morning. The 20-year-old driver was heading southbound on 64th Street West in Billings. He approached a 90 degree curve and failed to make that turn.

O’Neil says he was going too fast, crossed the ditch and hit the other side of the embankment. The driver was the only occupant of the vehicle. Speed and alcohol are factors and he was not wearing a seatbelt. The victim’s name has not yet been released.

Menopause quality of life unchanged by soy supplements

Menopausal women who took soy supplements during a two-year trial reported no differences in quality of life compared to their counterparts taking placebo pills, U.S. researchers report.

It's possible that soy could still offer women some benefits through menopause, said the study's lead author Dr. Paula Amato, from Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, "but I think if you are similar to the subjects in the study, then probably taking supplements isn't going to make a huge impact on your quality of life."

In light of health concerns attached to taking hormones, soy has been seen as an attractive alternative for relieving menopausal symptoms. But research on the effectiveness of soy extracts for hot flashes and other bothersome symptoms has yielded conflicting results so far.

In the new report, published in the medical journal Menopause, Amato and her colleagues looked not just at specific symptoms but overall quality of life measures among healthy women, mostly in their 50s and six years or more into menopause on average.

Several hundred women were asked to take supplement pills three times a day for two years. Among them, 126 took a fake supplement that contained no soy extract, while 135 women took tablets containing a total of 80 milligrams a day of soy protein and another 123 women took 120 mg each day.

At the start of the study and again one and two years into it, the women filled out a quality of life survey that asked about mental, physical and sexual health as well as about hot flashes.

In each of the surveys, the women in all three groups scored similarly on the main measures in the questionnaire.

"From our study and the good amount of the literature to date it appears that taking soy supplements after menopause does not improve quality of life," said Amato. "We can't really recommend it to our patients."
Mark Messina, president Nutrition Matters and an adjunct professor at Loma Linda University in California, cautioned against concluding that the key ingredients in soy supplements, known as isoflavones, don't have any effect on hot flashes, however.

"Unfortunately, because of the severe limitations of this study, very little if anything can be learned about isoflavones and hot flashes," Messina wrote in an email to Reuters Health.

For one, he said, the levels of a particular type of isoflavone - called genistein - were lower than in other studies that have found benefits from soy extracts.

Additionally, the researchers originally set out to look at the effects of soy extracts on bone health, and did not recruit women specifically with hot flash or quality of life concerns in mind.

"So in my opinion, no useful information about isoflavones and hot flashes is provided by this study," said Messina, who regularly consults for companies that make or sell soy foods and supplements.

Isoflavone companies market the supplements, sold for about $17 for 90 50-mg pills, as "potentially" easing the changes associated with menopause.

Amato agreed that the study has some limitations, and that the findings can't be generalized to all forms of soy in all types of women.

For instance, "taking supplements just might not be the same as eating a high soy content diet your entire life," she told Reuters Health.

But "if you look at this specific supplement for this particular group of women for this reason, quality of life, I'm convinced by this study it's not terribly helpful," she added.

Pacific Life Earns DALBAR Financial Intermediary Premier Service Award

DALBAR announced today the 2012 winners of its annual Financial Intermediary Premier Service Award. Pacific Life is the only firm to achieve excellence in the premier service provided to financial professionals in 2012.

For over two decades, DALBAR has conducted rigorous testing of service and each year identifies those firms that were found to be above their peers in service to financial professionals after a full year of comprehensive evaluation.

Pacific Life has made an institutional commitment to ensure the needs of financial professionals are met with the utmost professionalism. When financial professionals contact the Pacific Life Premier service center, they are met with a consistently high level of respect and recognition of the relationship they have with the organization.

"Pacific Life has demonstrated a keen awareness of the linkage between the high level of service customers receive and the economic success of their business" said Kathleen Whalen, Managing Director at DALBAR. She added, "Pacific Life recognizes that, all things being equal, service can provide the competitive advantage."

The Financial Intermediary Premier Service Award is based on systematic testing of customer service throughout the year. DALBAR conducts thousands of tests to measure how financial companies respond to the need for service from their customers. Companies that exceed a variety of industry benchmarks after one year of testing earn the DALBAR Service Award.

DALBAR, Inc., the nation's leading financial services market research and consulting firm, is committed to raising the standards of excellence in the financial services industry. With offices in both the US and Canada, DALBAR develops standards for, and provides research, ratings, and rankings of intangible factors to the mutual fund, broker/dealer, life insurance, property and casualty, and managed account industries. Measurements include investor behavior, customer satisfaction, service quality, communications, Internet services, and financial professional ratings.

Conning -- Life Insurer Investments Under Pressure

Analysis of life insurers' assets and investments as reported at year-end 2011 reveals an industry pressured by the continued lowest interest rates seen since the 1950s, according to "Life Insurance Industry Investments: Under Pressure in 2011," a new study by Conning.

"Our analysis of life insurers' investment profile through 2011 and into 2012 indicates that insurers are continuing to respond to the long term low interest rate environment," said Mary Pat Campbell, analyst at Conning. "While most of the negative impacts of the financial crisis faded in 2011, the continued policy of low interest rates from the Federal Reserve took its toll on fixed income yield, and is now being recognized and responded to as a longer term challenge."

The Conning Research study, "Life Insurance Industry Investments: Under Pressure in 2011," analyzes life industry investments for the period 2007-2011 for the industry as a whole and for four underwriting market peer groups. Further, the study also provides detail regarding the industry's position at the start of 2012 and analyzes how the prolonged low interest rate environment and other challenges may influence insurers' strategic investment decisions in the future.

"On a positive note, insurers have worked hard in the aftermath of the crisis to rebuild capital positions and improve leverage," said Stephan Christiansen, director of research at Conning. "Additionally, many have repositioned their product portfolios to reduce risks in their liabilities going forward. Consequently, they have some room to take additional risk in pursuit of yield."

Accenture Selected by Generali France to Manage Individual Life Insurance Policies

Accenture (ACN) has signed a ten-year contract with Generali France, the second largest general insurer in France, to manage a portfolio of more than 100,000 individual life insurance policies that Generali France no longer underwrites, markets or promotes. Generali France is one of the main foreign subsidiaries of the Generali Group, Europe’s largest life insurer.

The agreement, signed in February 2012, is designed to maintain superior customer service on behalf of Generali France while lowering operating cost. Accenture will reengineer the insurer’s policy management processes and increase automation through the newly enhanced Accenture Life Insurance Platform, Accenture’s industry-leading life and annuity insurance policy administration software, resulting in enhanced levels of service and greater productivity. The platform has been adapted to the French individual life insurance market, including the French tax regime.

“To maintain profitable growth, insurers will have to increase customer loyalty and reduce operating costs,” said Daniele Presutti, managing director of Accenture Life Insurance Services. “The agreement will enable Generali France to focus on client relationship and product development while reducing costs and operational risks and increasing productivity by standardizing and automating its policy management processes.”

“We are pleased to have Generali using the Accenture Life Insurance Platform to manage individual life insurance policies,” said Francois Metzler, head of Accenture Software for life insurance in Europe, Africa and Latin America. “The agreement demonstrates that our investment in enhancing our life software platform to meet the needs of the French individual life insurance market is paying off. We have high expectations for growing our business in France and look forward to delivering software solutions to other French companies in the future.”

Accenture Life Insurance Services, a business service within Accenture’s Financial Services operating group, serves more than 60 life insurance, annuity and pension clients worldwide.

The Accenture Life Insurance Platform, used by more than 40 leading insurers worldwide, is a robust, configurable and scalable software platform that offers life insurance and annuity carriers of all sizes with the ability to automate operational support across the full policy lifecycle. The platform can be implemented out-of-the-box with limited integration efforts or leveraged for more significant transformation projects.

Who Was Jenni Rivera? A Look Back At The Life Of The Late Latina Superstar

Jenni Rivera's music was a celebration, but her personal life was filled with turmoil. And now, Access Hollywood looks back on the ups and downs of the singer, whose life ended far too soon.
She was called the "Diana Ross of Mexican Music," had sold 20 million albums and was a multiple Grammy nominee, making Rivera larger than life. She was also famous for her marathon performances, some lasting over five hours.

PLAY IT NOW: Jenni Rivera: Remembering Her Life & Career (1969-2012)
"Jenni Rivera was a legitimate superstar and that phrase gets thrown out a lot, but in this case she really was," People magazine's Deputy Managing Editor Peter Castro told Access Hollywood in a new interview on Monday, following the star's death over the weekend in a plane crash. "She sold out the Staples Center - the only Mexican-American woman ever to do that. And she had a huge, huge following."
Now bad for a woman who started out in real estate, and didn't record her first album until the age of 34.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Stars We Lost In 2012
"Jenni Rivera: The Mom, wants her kids to be happy. That's what my life is about," she said on her Mun2 reality show, "I Love Jenni."

Her family was like a Latino version of the Kardashian family. Known as a tough negotiator, Rivera had a business empire that included her own clothing line, cosmetic line, a weekly radio show, four different reality shows - one, "I Love Jenni" - focusing on her chaotic life and her family.

"It's really a reality show - the camera following me into things I'm doing now, which is just being myself," Rivera told Billboard in an interview earlier this year.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Hollywood’s Hottest Latino Stars!
Hollywood talent agency CAA snatched up the modest star, and she told Billboard she was overwhelmed by the attention.

"Knowing that such a huge company would be interested in me, makes me very proud of myself," she told the music publication. "At the same time I'm in disbelief that they would want someone like Jenni Rivera. I guess now I see the world in a different way. There are so many things I can do that are offered to me now."

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Sudden Endings: Stars Who Died Too Soon
Beginning with a move into film, Rivera made her screen debut this year at Sundance as the jailed mother of a hip-hop artist in "Filly Brown."

According to Castro, Rivera was also poised to launch into sitcom television.
"It was a terrible irony. She was about to crossover into mainstream America on an ABC comedy... very much like 'The George Lopez Show," he told Access . "It was based on her life and she wanted to do this because even though she loved her fans and loved singing, and loved concerts, she was kinda getting tired of the grind, wanted to fly less. She also expressed, at some point in her life, that she understood that flying around a lot was a dangerous thing and wanted to stop that."

But Rivera's music was fueled by a troubled past that included marriage and pregnancy at 16.

"Jenni Rivera's life was really like a soap opera," Castro said, noting Jenni was married three times.
And on Saturday night, after her show in Monterey, Mexico, she spoke out about her recent separation from her third husband, Esteban Loaiza, a professional baseball player.

"I can't focus on the negative, because that will defeat you," she said at a news conference after the show, per the Los Angeles Times. "That will destroy you.... The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up."

Copyright 2012 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

New York Life Announces Executive Promotions in the Agency Department

New York Life announced today that John O’Gara and Richard Simonetti have each been elected senior vice president in the company’s Agency Department, reporting to Executive Vice President and Head of Agency Mark Pfaff.

Mr. O’Gara is responsible for New York Life’s wholesaling operations across all product lines within the Agency distribution channel including life insurance, annuities, investments and long-term care insurance. He also oversees New York Life’s Dallas-based Advanced Planning Group, a team of experienced attorneys, certified public accountants and other professionals with whom New York Life agents can exclusively work when serving affluent clients.

Mr. O’Gara joined New York Life in 1984 and has held sales and marketing positions across various business operations. Mr. O’Gara is a graduate of Iona College with a major in business and finance. He resides in New Fairfield, Connecticut with his wife and three children.

Mr. Simonetti is responsible for agent and manager recruitment, training and development. This includes growing the company’s field force and sales among New York Life’s key markets, including women, cultural markets, the LGBT community and young professionals.

Mr. Simonetti joined New York Life as an agent in the Long Island General Office in July 1996. Since then, he has held several positions with increasing managerial responsibility, including serving as sales manager in that office from 1998 to 2002, managing partner of New York Life’s Vermont office from 2002 to 2005, and managing partner of the Greater Detroit office from 2005 to 2008. Mr. Simonetti earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is an active member of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA), the Association of Advanced Life Underwriting (AALU) and the General Agents and Managers Association (GAMA). Mr. Simonetti lives in Westchester, New York with his wife and their three children.

New York Life Insurance Company, a Fortune 100 company founded in 1845, is the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States* and one of the largest life insurers in the world. New York Life has the highest financial strength ratings currently awarded to any life insurer by all four of the major credit rating agencies.** Headquartered in New York City, New York Life’s family of companies offers life insurance, retirement income, investments and long-term care insurance. New York Life Investments*** provides institutional asset management and retirement plan services. Other New York Life affiliates provide an array of securities products and services, as well as institutional and retail mutual funds. Please visit New York Life’s Web site at www.newyorklife.com for more information.

***New York Life Investments is a service mark used by New York Life Investment Management Holdings LLC and its subsidiary, New York Life Investment Management LLC.

Life insurance: Not such a weird gift idea

Life insurance policies under the Christmas tree may not leave eyes all aglow in quite the same way as a shiny new bicycle or the latest electronic gadget.

But unlike most presents, life insurance never will go out of fashion, says Kevin Lynch, assistant professor of insurance at The American College in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

"There are all kinds of ways it can be a very practical gift," Lynch says. "Will it have the punch or pizzazz of an iPad? No. But when you are a 25-year-old college graduate who can't find a job and you find out your grandparent funded a life insurance policy that has $35,000 in cash value, you may rethink the value of this gift."

As long as you keep up the premiums, a life insurance policy can provide financial security for decades to come, says Lynch. The most common ways to give a gift of life insurance are to make someone the beneficiary of your own policy -- so that they're protected in case something happens to you -- or to take out a permanent policy on the recipient's life and include a cash value component, similar to a savings account.

Taking the shine off Christmas?
There are risks with giving such a serious gift, however, warns Elizabeth Lombardo, a psychologist in Wexford, Pa. Some may find life insurance to be a disturbing reminder of their own mortality. In most people's minds "it has to do with death," she explains.

Brian Ashe, the treasurer of the nonprofit Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education, or LIFE, says your gift might be misunderstood, particularly if you're taking out a policy on the life of a loved one. Your wife "might take a couple of minutes to sniff the rum cake you are giving her at the Christmas celebration," Ashe says.

Insurance companies won't let you take out a policy on just anyone's life, he adds. Generally, it has to be someone in whom you have an insurable interest, such as a relative, a business associate or a domestic partner.

Term or permanent?
You'll need to choose between term and permanent life insurance when you select your gift.
Term life provides coverage for a certain number of years. Note that if you take out term life on yourself as a thoughtful gift to your family, you could outlive the term of your policy, meaning your loved ones would receive no benefits upon your death.

Term life insurance policy premiums are based on a variety of factors, including the age, health and lifestyle of the insured. The premium for a 10-year $500,000 policy for a 40-year-old man in good health who doesn't smoke could vary from $27 to $90 per month, depending on the insurer, says Douglas Grills, an independent insurance broker in the San Diego area.

A permanent policy provides coverage for a person's entire life, as long as the premiums are paid. It can build up a cash value gradually, and the policy eventually can be surrendered for that amount, or you can borrow against it. The downside is that costs are higher than for term life.

Appropriate gift for a kid?
Some experts question the idea of buying life insurance policies for children. It's wiser for parents and grandparents to make sure their own lives are adequately insured, says Jack Hungelmann, Bankrate's Insurance Adviser and the author of "Insurance for Dummies."

But Lynch insists that buying a permanent life policy for a healthy child makes good economic sense. The cost, which is based on the risk of death, usually is very low.

You could set up a trust, the proceeds of which could pay the policy indefinitely, Lynch says. "When the child reaches age 25 or 35, the policy can vest into the name of the child and they become the owner. All of the cash value now becomes available to the child."

A typical permanent, $250,000 cash-value policy on the life of a 1-year-old grandchild would cost in the neighborhood of $3 to $4 per $1,000 of coverage, says Ashe. "So if I had a $250,000 permanent life policy and the rate was approximately $4 for each $1,000 of coverage, the (annual) premium would be $1,000."

How to gift life insurance
You can go online to buy a life insurance policy for a grandchild or other young family member, but Ashe recommends doing it the old-fashioned way: by talking to an agent. With personal contact "you have the added value of the agent's experience on the type of policy, what the taxation issues are and the proper beneficiary designations."

When you take out life insurance on someone else, or name someone as a beneficiary on a policy for yourself, the application will require that person's name, date of birth, information on how you're related, and often a Social Security number, says Ashe. You also will need to provide health information on the insured, even children.

"There is a nonmedical questionnaire where they ask, 'How tall is the child? What does the child weigh?'" Ashe explains. "For people who are older, medical examinations can be required, based on their age and the amount of the policy."
There may be a few hoops, but just keep in mind that a life insurance policy is the only financial product that guarantees a certain sum of money will be paid on a date that's uncertain, says Lynch. "That is why it is such a good gift."

New York Life Capital Partners Renames Firm GoldPoint Partners

New York Life Capital Partners a wholly-owned investment boutique of New York Life that manages approximately $9 billion of private equity assets, including equity co-investment, mezzanine, fund of funds programs and separate accounts, today announced that the firm has renamed itself GoldPoint Partners.
Thomas Haubenstricker, Chief Executive Officer of the newly renamed GoldPoint said, “We determined that the timing was right to create a distinct identity that differentiates the firm while maintaining a close link to the iconic New York Life brand. While our name has changed, it’s important to underscore our firm continues to operate under the same ownership, with the same talented team, the same strategy and the same level of support from New York Life. Furthermore, we remain as committed as ever to our "Core Partner" strategy that seeks to create a focused portfolio of investments with top-performing private equity sponsor relationships.”

GoldPoint Partners continues to see strong opportunities in the middle market where the firm has been focused for over 20 years. The firm successfully closed its third mezzanine fund early this year with strong support from its diverse, global investor base that includes public and private pension funds, financial institutions, insurance companies, family offices, high net worth individuals and sovereign pools of capital.

“The firm has evolved significantly during the past 20 years, from a small team largely managing alternative assets for New York Life, to a multi-product boutique managing more than $9 billion of private equity and debt assets, with the majority of new capital coming from outside institutional investors,” said John Schumacher, Chairman.

The “GoldPoint” name was inspired by the most prominent feature of the landmark New York Life building at 51 Madison Avenue in New York City – the distinctive, six-story golden pinnacle completed in 1928. The firm’s new logo includes a gold pinnacle, which will appear on a redesigned website (www.goldpointpartners.com) and all corporate materials.

Steven Benevento, Chief Investment Officer, said “It’s the best of both worlds. We continue to operate independently, maintaining the same investment philosophy that has guided us since our founding, while having the security of being part of New York Life.”

New Meaning and Drive in Life After Cancer

When people hear the words “You have cancer,” life is suddenly divided into distinct parts. There was their life before cancer, and then there is life after cancer.

The number of people in that second category continues to grow. In June, the National Cancer Institute reported that an estimated 13.7 million living Americans are cancer survivors, and the number will increase to almost 18 million over the next decade. More than half are younger than 70.

A new book, “Picture Your Life After Cancer,” (American Cancer Society) focuses on the living that goes on after a cancer diagnosis. It’s based on a multimedia project by The New York Times that asked readers to submit photos and their personal stories. So far, nearly 1,500 people have shared their experiences — the good, the bad, the challenging and the inspirational — creating a dramatic photo essay of the varied lives people live in the years after diagnosis.

For Susan Schwalb, a 68-year-old artist from Manhattan, a diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer at the age of 62 led to a lumpectomy, followed by a mastectomy and then failed reconstruction surgery. She discovered that cancer was not only a physical challenge but a mental one as well, and she turned to friends and support groups to cope with the emotional strain. When she saw the “Picture Your Life” project, she submitted a photo of herself wearing a paint-splattered artist’s apron.

“What cancer made me do in my own professional life is to pedal faster,” Ms. Schwalb said in an interview. “I’ve encountered some people who decide to enjoy life, retire, work in a garden. I decided I had to have more of what I wanted in life, and I better move fast because maybe I don’t have the long life I imagined I would have.”

Indeed, a common theme of the “Picture Your Life” project is that cancer spurs people to take long-delayed trips, seek out adventure and spend time with their families. Photos of mountain climbs, a ride on a camel, scuba diving excursions and bicycle trips are now part of the online collage.

Dr. David Posner, associate program director of pulmonary medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, says a diagnosis of metastatic colon cancer at the age of 47 has helped him relate to his own patients with cancer. The past decade has included nine operations, six recurrences and three rounds of chemotherapy, but Dr. Posner said he never missed more than three weeks of work.

“My salvation has been my family and my work,” he said. “When I was at work I wasn’t thinking about myself, and it was very therapeutic. I see my share of cancer patients, and I motivate them and they motivate me.”

Dr. Posner said he decided to be part of “Picture Your Life” because he wants to get the word out that a cancer diagnosis — even a dire one like his — doesn’t have to define your life.

“I think about someone asking me, ‘So how was your last decade — was it wasted or was it a life filled with a lot of happiness and joy?’ ” he said. “The cancer thing was a pain, but for the most part I’ve had a pretty good time.”

The “Picture Your Life” collage includes photo after photo of survivors with their pets. Sandra Elliott, 59, of Claremont, Calif., submitted a picture of herself with her two golden retrievers, Buddy and Molly. They were just puppies when she received a diagnosis of Stage 2 breast cancer in 2003. During her recovery from surgery and chemotherapy treatments, she took the dogs to romp on the Pomona College campus, near her home, and one day a professional photographer snapped the picture.

“No matter how bad I felt that day, no matter how many chemo treatments or doctors appointments, those two little puppies with these big black eyes would look at me with their tails wagging as if to say, ‘It’s time. It’s time. It’s time to go out!’  ” Ms. Elliott recalled.

“I felt so physically horrible, and I’d look at them and the pure joy on their faces and in their bodies for just being out in nature and being able to smell the air, smell the trees, chase a squirrel — that sheer in-the-moment love of life they showed me really lifted my spirit on a daily basis.”

Ms. Elliott still lives with chronic pain as a result of nerve damage from her cancer treatment, and she can relate to others in the “Picture Your Life” project who worry that their cancer will recur or that they’ll never feel completely normal again. But she says a stronger theme runs through all the pictures and stories.

“We have all been forced to find the joy in the smallest things,” she said. “I’m sitting here looking at a geranium about to bloom. These things are out there — we just have to be reminded to look at them. And cancer is a big reminder.”

Signs Of Life On Mars? Not Exactly

The director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said last week that preliminary data showed the possibility that the agency's Mars Science Laboratory – the six-wheeled rover that landed on Mars in August — had found signs of carbon-containing molecules.

According to a JPL news release, however, there will be no major announcements Monday, when scientists take part in a news conference at the annual meeting of American Geophysical Union. The science team is continuing to try and verify what the rover has found.

So why are the scientists being so careful with their findings and why are these carbon-containing molecules of such great interest?

"It's a substance that's consistent with biological materials," says John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, the chief scientist on the rover team.

Now don't start thinking that because some carbon-containing compounds are associated with biological materials he's talking about life on Mars. Grotzinger says it doesn't have to be biological materials; there are plenty of carbon-containing compounds that have nothing to do with life.

But finding certain of these carbon molecules would be exciting because of what it might say about the Martian environment where the rover is sitting at the bottom of Gale crater.

If one kind of carbon can survive there, it might just be a place where carbon molecules that are related to living organisms could also survive as a kind of chemical fossil.

"There wouldn't be a field of paleontology unless you found the hot spots where things get preserved," Grotzinger says.

Grotzinger says the rover is looking for those hot spots; places where carbon-containing chemicals consistent with life might have been preserved and still exist.

"[But] even if they have nothing to do with life, at least it tells us that this is the kind of environment that might have been favorable for preservation of something that could be a biological material," he says.

Even the possibility of finding carbon compounds on Mars causes excitement, which certainly is not true for every planet. In the current issue of the journal Science, researchers reported they were virtually certain that had found large deposits of organic compounds on the planet Mercury, and that wasn't front page news.

"I can tell you anytime when you find anything with Mars, it's a frenzy," says Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the Mercury researchers who also works on Mars.

Tour DaVita Raises $900,000 for Bridge of Life—DaVita Medical Missions

DaVita®, a division of DaVita HealthCare Partners, Inc. (DVA) and a leading provider of kidney care services announced that its annual charity bike ride, Tour DaVita®, raised $900,000 to support Bridge of Life—DaVita Medical MissionsTM in 2012.

The proceeds from Tour DaVita will help fund nine medical missions taking place in 2013 where Bridge of Life volunteers will be able to install or repair 112 dialysis machines. Through these missions, Bridge of Life will bring dialysis treatment to more than 600 people in communities that otherwise would not have access to this life-sustaining care.

“Tour DaVita participants collectively rode 70,000 miles, which means that for every four miles a rider completed Bridge of Life can provide a dialysis treatment to someone at one of our partnering clinics – someone’s loved one will receive a second chance at life,” said Lori Vaclavik, executive director for Bridge of Life—DaVita Medical Missions. “We are proud of all the riders and sponsors who made this gift possible. Because of them, people will live.”

More than 470 participants each pedaled approximately 250 miles over the course of three days in Iowa Sept. 16-18. The ride kicked off in scenic Wilder Park in Allison, Iowa, continuing on through the rolling hills of the American Heartland – all in the effort to raise awareness and funds in the fight against CKD.
Since it started in 2007, Tour DaVita has helped raise nearly $5 million in the fight against kidney disease. Participants have collectively ridden 420,000 miles over the years, challenging themselves and their fellow riders to go as far as possible.

DaVita thanks the sponsors who made this gift of life possible, including ASD Healthcare, Cigna, Baxter, NxStage, Office Depot, Golden Construction, Henry Schein, Promotional Images, KPMG, Pentec Health, and Tata Consultancy Services.

Life-saving dialysis is not available in most of the developing world. Currently there are 112 countries that do not have resources for dialysis or kidney transplants, which directly results in the death of more than one million people a year from kidney failure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognize CKD as a major public health problem that not only reduces the quality and length of life, but is also expensive to treat.

Bridge of Life—DaVita Medical Missions an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization working to reach people who are disproportionately affected by CKD and live in developing countries abroad and disadvantaged communities in the U.S. Kidney disease is reaching epidemic proportions not only in the United States, but worldwide.

For more information about the 2012 Tour DaVita, please visit www.tourdavita.org.
For more information about Bridge of Life—DaVita Medical Missions, please visit www.bridgeoflifemm.org.
DaVita and Tour DaVita are registered trademarks of DaVita Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Life Technologies Launches QuantStudio Dx in Europe with Quidel C. Diff Assay

Life Technologies has received CE IVD marking for its Applied Biosystems QuantStudio Dx platform and launched the instrument in Europe.

In addition, Life Tech is introducing for use on the platform a CE marked Clostridium difficile assay, developed with partner Quidel, and said that the companies plan to introduce assays for several other infectious diseases in 2013.

The QuantStudio Dx is an in vitro diagnostic version of Life Tech's QuantStudio 12K Flex instrument, which the company launched for research use only in October 2011 (PCR Insider, 10/31/2011).

The two platforms have more similarities than differences, but the QuantStudio Dx has several distinct features that make it more amenable to developing and running in vitro diagnostic tests based on real-time PCR.

"In brief, the RUO model offers maximum flexibility that researchers want, whereas the Dx model is focused to the specific needs of diagnostic laboratories," a Life Tech spokesperson told PCR Insider in an email.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the systems is that the QuantStudio 12K Flex is capable of running real-time PCR in nearly any consumable format, including digital PCR. The Flex accepts five interchangeable blocks, from 96-well plates to the OpenArray format with about 12,000 data points per run.

The QuantStudio Dx, on the other hand, accommodates 96- or 384-well plates, "which are typical for diagnostic runs," as well as qPCR microfluidic cards, which can perform 48 tests on eight samples simultaneously, the company said.

In addition, the Dx version has several features to make it easier to use, including touch screen operation, reagent and sample tracking, and LIMS interface; and "sample loading options were simplified and optimized for the clinical lab customer," the spokesperson said.

Two software options are available: QuantStudio Dx software, which runs IVD tests in a secure mode with pre-set run and analysis parameters; and QuantStudio Test Development software, which enables the development of custom tests and supports clinical research projects.

Life Tech noted that customers can use its 8-by-48 microfluidic cards to design and implement custom molecular diagnostic assays, and that Life Tech is currently using the format to develop diagnostic tests in house.

In general, the platform can perform a variety of diagnostic applications, including pathogen detection, gene expression analysis, SNP genotyping, copy number analysis, mutation detection, microRNA and other non-coding RNA analysis, and high-resolution melt analysis.

"We recognize that clinical laboratories have multiple needs," Ronnie Andrews, president of medical sciences at Life Tech, said in a statement. "Accuracy and reliability are paramount when running diagnostic tests for physician reporting. In addition, medical research labs need instrumentation that supports experimental work. The QuantStudio Dx instrument addresses both these needs."

News of the QuantStudio Dx's development first leaked in July, with the company advertising that it would offer a preview of the platform to attendees of July's American Association of Clinical Chemistry in Los Angeles (PCR Insider, 7/26/2012).

Around that time, clinical diagnostics firm Quidel disclosed in an earnings call that it had signed an agreement with Life Tech to develop and commercialize real-time PCR assays for the QuantStudio Dx. The companies already had an agreement in place under which Life Tech is marketing Quidel's PCR-based assays for use on the ABI 7500 system in Europe.

Life Tech said this week that the QuantStudio Dx platform would launch in Europe with the Quidel Molecular Assay for C. difficile, with Life Tech serving as distributor of the test.

More Quidel tests for the QuantStudio Dx are currently under development and will be available in 2013. These include assays for influenza A and B, human metapneumovirus and respiratory syncytial virus, herpes simplex virus 1 and 2, and varicella zoster virus.

Life Tech said that it plans to submit the QuantStudio Dx for 510(k) clearance to the US Food and Drug Administration in December.

Discovered in Antarctica: Ancient life under 60 feet of ice

Lake Vida is devoid of light and oxygen. That hasn't stopped life from finding a way
Lake Vida, a salty lake buried under a 60-foot-thick sheet of ice in Antarctica, has renewed scientists' hopes of finding alien life in space, even in the most inhospitable places. The lake, which has been completely sealed off from the rest of the world for thousands of years, is surprisingly teeming with microbial life. "By seeing what the boundaries of life are on Earth, that helps us when we go out and look for examples elsewhere," says Peter T Doran, a professor at the University of Illinois’ Earth and Environmental Science department. Here, a guide to this mysterious lake:

Where exactly is Lake Vida?
Victoria Valley in Antarctica. The lake is covered year-round by the thickest non-glacial ice on earth, measuring at least 60 feet deep. This layer of ice has isolated the lake from the surface for 2,800 years, and as a result, the water contains no oxygen or light. It is seven times saltier than average sea water, which keeps the lake water from freezing completely despite its extremely cold temperature of roughly 8 degrees Fahrenheit.

But scientists discovered life there?
They sure did. After taking samples from the core of the ice, researchers were surprised to find previously unknown species of bacteria. The lake contains about one-tenth the amount of microbial life found in freshwater lakes.

How could this bacteria possibly survive in this lake?
Researchers aren't completely sure, but they suspect a chemical reaction between the salt water and the rocks below is producing hydrogen, which could serve as a fuel source. Whatever the answer, "the fact that things are alive in Lake Vida at all further extends the idea that where there is water, there is life," says Colin Schultz at Smithsonian. 

What does this have to do with alien life?
If life can survive in Lake Vida's harsh conditions, imagine what that means in the hunt for life elsewhere in our solar system. "This provides us with new boundary conditions on the limits for life," says Doran.

New York Life Promotes Michael Del Secolo to Senior Vice President

New York Life announced today that Michael Del Secolo has been promoted to senior vice president and chief technology officer, reporting to Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Sue Ericksen.

Mr. Del Secolo now serves as chief technology officer and has oversight of technology strategy. He is responsible for guiding the development of the company’s technical strategy, research and innovation. Mr. Del Secolo joined New York Life in 2010 as vice president of architecture. In 2011 he added responsibility for engineering, leading the management of IT architecture and engineering for the company.

Prior to joining New York Life, Mr. Del Secolo worked at Automatic Data Processing (ADP), where he held positions of increasing responsibility including vice president of IT engineering, vice president of Internet and network services, and vice president and chief information security officer, where he was responsible for designing and implementing infrastructures for ADP’s Web hosting and Software as a Service (SaaS) initiative. Before that, he held progressively more responsible roles at Sea-Land Service, Inc., Salomon Brothers, Inc., and RAV Communications.

Mr. Del Secolo is a graduate of Pratt Institute with a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree. He resides in Marlboro, New Jersey, with his wife and son.

New York Life Insurance Company, a Fortune 100 company founded in 1845, is the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States* and one of the largest life insurers in the world. New York Life has the highest financial strength ratings currently awarded to any life insurer by all four of the major credit rating agencies.** Headquartered in New York City, New York Life’s family of companies offers life insurance, retirement income, investments and long-term care insurance. New York Life Investments*** provides institutional asset management and retirement plan services. Other New York Life affiliates provide an array of securities products and services, as well as institutional and retail mutual funds.

Allergy-Friendly Help From Enjoy Life Foods Provided to Victims of Hurricane Sandy

Enjoy Life Foods, a leading manufacturer of gluten-free and allergy-friendly products in North America, and one of the few companies that produces its products in a dedicated nut and gluten-free facility, has donated product that will feed close to 6000 families whose lives have been upended due to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.

After the recent devastation caused by the violent and deadly Hurricane Sandy, thousands of people were left without shelter and food. Although donations have already been made by many organizations and individuals, families with food allergies and intolerances, or those requiring gluten-free foods have continued to struggle, as most food donations made thus far have not taken their special needs into consideration. In an effort to alleviate some of their struggles, Enjoy Life Foods has donated product that will help serve this need. The donations will be divided among various food banks throughout New York and New Jersey, to ensure that all victims requiring special diets are able to access the foods.

“Our hearts go out to all the victims of the hurricane and the resulting floods,” said Joel Warady, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of Enjoy Life Foods. “In particular, we understand the challenges facing those people in the community who live their everyday life with food intolerances, and hope this donation offers some relief as they deal with the aftermath.”

Life imprisonment means jail term for entire life: SC

Life imprisonment implies a jail term for the convict’s entire life, the Supreme Court has held, clearing a misconception on this sentence.

The apex court also said that its Constitution bench’s landmark judgement of 1980 on criterion for imposing death penalty needs a “fresh look” as there has been “no uniformity” in following its principles on what constitutes “the rarest of rare” cases.

“It appears to us there is a misconception that a prisoner serving a life sentence has an indefeasible right to be released on completion of either fourteen years or twenty years imprisonment. The prisoner has no such right.

“A convict undergoing life imprisonment is expected to remain in custody till the end of his life, subject to any remission granted by the appropriate government,” a bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Madan B. Lokur said.

The bench, however, clarified that under remission the appropriate government cannot reduce the period of sentence less than 14 years for a life convict.

“In the case of a convict undergoing life imprisonment, he will be in custody for an indeterminate period. Therefore, remissions earned by or awarded to such a life convict are only notional. In his case, to reduce the period of incarceration, a specific order under Section 432 of the CrPC will have to be passed by the appropriate government. However, the reduced period cannot be less than 14 years as per Section 433-A of the CrPC,” the apex court said.

The apex court order also seeks to put an end to the practice of en-masse release of the convicts by various governments on “festive” occasions and said each release requires a case-by-case basis scrutiny.

As Prison Life Deteriorates in Portugal, Some Stay

Life inside Portugal’s prisons has become intolerable, as budgets cuts render them overcrowded, short of necessities and rife with abuse — and that is the view of the prison guards. So it was a surprise to Júlio Rebelo, the president of one of the guards’ unions, that some prisoners did not seem to want to leave.

“We’re in a situation of such austerity that many prisoners don’t even apply for prison leave because at least their meals are paid inside,” Mr. Rebelo said. “It’s the first time I’ve seen this, but it seems families just don’t have the means to welcome prisoners back at home.”

Indeed, much of the reason for the deteriorating conditions inside Portugal’s prisons is the deteriorating conditions outside. Government cuts and mounting hardship have added dangerous new burdens to a system that guards and prisoners alike warn is already stretched beyond its limits. Things are so bad, Mr. Rebelo said, “We have to bring our own toilet paper to work these days.”

Approaching its fifth year of economic crisis, Portugal is increasingly feeling the bite but perhaps nowhere more sharply than in its prisons. The crisis has sent petty crime soaring. Thefts in the second quarter this year rose almost 14 percent, and were up 22 percent from the same time in 2008.

So hard pressed are many Portuguese that they can no longer afford to pay fines even for drunk driving or traffic violations and instead spend three or six months in prison, helping swell the population 10 percent beyond capacity.

Let alone toilet paper, budget cuts have coincided with the new burdens to leave the system wanting everything from guards to cells to more prisons, which have been put on hold as the government chops away at spending to meet the targets set by its international creditors.

Before Portugal was forced to request a €78 billion, or $102 billion, international bailout last year, the government had planned to build 10 new prisons, at a cost of €750 million. Now the government is building just one, in the Azores.

The surge of prisoners has made life “completely chaotic for the inmates and for those who work there,” said Jorge Alves, the president of another guards’ union.

Portugal’s prison authorities would not grant a reporter and photographer access to one of its prisons, and the justice ministry declined a request for an interview. But early this year, Portugal’s justice minister, Paula Teixeira da Cruz, recognized that conditions inside some prisons had become “shameful” and promised a €31 million overhaul of the system.

Prison guards, social workers and lawyers say those plans have fallen far short of what is needed, adding room by 2015 for just 1,137 more prisoners — less than the overpopulation of prisons in Portugal as of June. Portugal’s most recent official statistics indicate that its prisons had an occupancy rate of 110 percent, amounting to a surplus of 1,413 prisoners. The total number of inmates rose to 12,344 at the end of June from 11,099 in 2009.

In terms of overcrowding, Portugal ranks 13 out of 56 countries in greater Europe, including central Asian states like Azerbaijan, according to a study by the U.K.-based International Center for Prison Studies.

For his part, Mr. Alves works at the Custóias prison, which is built for 700 inmates. In the two months to mid-October, the number of prisoners there rose from 800 to 1,034, he said.

Mr. Rebelo, the other union leader, accused the government of manipulating statistics to play down the overcrowding problem. In Mr. Rebelo’s prison, Sintra, the number of inmates is set to rise to 753 from 630 under a plan to add bunk beds. Sintra, one of Portugal’s newest prisons, was built in 2004 to hold 600 inmates.

“They’ve changed their calculations for available space from square to cubic meters, so that bodies can basically be piled up while keeping ratios officially unchanged,” he said.

 The one thing the guards and the inmates can agree on is that conditions are terrible. “Guards are now working under the worst conditions that I’ve seen — so I’ve got some sympathy for that — but the real problem is that when guards are in such a bad state of mind, their response is unfortunately to pile on the abuses and violence,” said Carlos Santos, a former inmate.

Mr. Santos knows Portugal’s prison system only too well. He was released this year after 18 years in jail, spent in five different prisons for crimes that included homicide, drug trafficking and theft.

Mr. Santos said he spent his last year sharing a two-person cell with five other inmates. In September, inmates staged a strike to denounce beatings by guards, as well as worsening food and sanitary conditions, including having to share cells with inmates diagnosed with infectious diseases.

Former inmates claim basic items like shampoo and detergents, previously distributed for free, must now be bought, with guards in turn overcharging inmates and pocketing the difference. “In a crisis, corruption takes whatever little money is available out of the system,” Mr. Santos said.

Portugal’s prison guards insist the country’s economic crisis has made their situation even more intolerable than that of the inmates. They complain of crumbling infrastructure and delays of six months to replace damaged security cameras. Meanwhile, the maintenance company that handles the prison fleet is refusing to repair any more vehicles until it gets paid for previous work.

After the guards already went on strike for several days last November, the government agreed to hire 240 new guards. The guards, however, say that 800 new recruits are needed to maintain order in overcrowded jails. “It would be a big mistake to underestimate what prison guards can do when they are put under intolerable pressure,” Mr. Rebelo said.

While prisoners are complaining about more physical abuse by guards, Mr. Rebelo claimed that the number of assaults against guards had climbed as much as 200 percent in the past three years, in part because of the overcrowding.

The prospects for those who leave jail are gloomier as well. After spending 15 years in jail, Jorge Montero, 35, was released in 2009, just as joblessness started to rise. Unemployment is now almost 16 percent.

Unable to find work in Portugal, he said he had managed to avoid sinking into poverty only by traveling regularly to Switzerland, where he has family, and working there as a carpenter on short-term contracts.

“If you come out of jail in Portugal now, you’ve got almost zero chance of not going straight back in,” he said, “because there’s just nothing for you to do except sit around and stay poor and depressed.”

Life in the Gaza Strip

After eight days of conflict between Israel and the Hamas movement in Gaza in which five Israelis and over 150 Palestinians died, a ceasefire is taking hold and some semblance of normal life is returning.

Home to 1.6 million people, Gaza is just 40km (25 miles) long and 10km wide, an enclave bounded by the Mediterranean Sea, Israel and Egypt.

Originally administered by Egypt which retains control of Gaza's southern border, the area was captured by the Israelis in 1967 during the Six Day War.

In 2005, after 38 years during which Israeli settlements were a constant source of tension, Israel withdrew its troops and settlers.

A year later the Islamist militant group Hamas won elections in Gaza. In June 2007, Hamas took complete control of the strip, ousting the more moderate rival Fatah faction of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas which runs parts of the West Bank.

The Israelis swiftly tightened a blockade on Gaza, restricting the transit of goods and people into and out of the territory.

With Israel's blockade choking off opportunities to trade with the outside world, Gaza is largely dependent on external aid and the shadow 'tunnel' economy.

Gazans are, on average, worse off than in the 1990s. Unemployment is around a 30% climbing to 58% for those aged between 20 and 24 years.

Farming has an important but limited role due to lack of access to water and the buffer zones imposed by Israel along the border.

Fishing for Gaza's 3,000 fishermen is also restricted. Ten years ago, they could fish out to 12 nautical miles from the coast. That is now limited to three nautical miles.

The only part of the economy that could be said to be booming is the tunnel economy. Hundreds of these have been built under the border with Egypt, allowing the movement of goods in and out of the territory. The tunnels are also used to bring weapons into Gaza.

Iyad Tah is a software engineer, who graduated about three months ago. He is currently working as a youth volunteer.

"There is no work. Unemployment rates are very high here in Gaza," he told BBC online.

Despite this, he says his family can afford their basic needs.

"We are very happy when everything is safe and we are living a normal life...I had the opportunity to move abroad a long time ago but every time I come back, because this is where I belong," he said.

Gaza's school system is under pressure. The UN which runs many of the territory's schools says an additional 440 schools are needed by 2020 to cope with the expected growth in the population. More than half the population in Gaza under the age of 18

As it is a majority operate a double shift system to accommodate all its pupils. Classes are large, anywhere between 40 to 50 in each. This means shorter school days and enrolment is lower in the secondary system. Training and vocational opportunities are few and far between.

That said, official figures for literacy are high; 93% for women, 98% for men.

Najla is an aid worker in Gaza. She says there is a shortage of schools and not enough space to build any new ones. There are some limited work creation programmes, but even the funding for these has dried up recently.

Najla said: "There are colleges and universities in Gaza, there are about five or six, but it's so limited because there are so many graduates without jobs so the market is over-saturated."

Gaza's population is expected to grow from the current 1.64 million to 2.13 million by the end of the decade.

This will also result in an increase in the population density which is already one of the highest in the world. On average, some 4,505 people live on every square kilometre in Gaza. That's expected to rise to 5,835 people per square kilometre by 2020.

The ratio of young people between the ages of 15 and 29 to the total over-15 population is exceptionally high, at 53%. This leads to a high dependency rate.

Should the economy pick up there will be plenty of young people of working age, but if not, there is the potential for social tension, violence and extremism, according to the UN.

Director Ang Lee takes on the 'unfilmable' 'Life of Pi'

Published in 2001, Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel “Life of Pi” was instantly deemed unfilmable. And so, like that other “unfilmable” novel, “Cloud Atlas,” it has, of course, been turned into a movie – with rather happier results.

The reason for the trepidation is obvious: Much of the action takes place on a 27-foot lifeboat inhabited by a teenage Indian boy and a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Since, as one of the film’s producers has put it, they didn’t want their leading man eaten during production, a team of CGI wizards have fashioned what must be the most realistic computer-generated animal ever seen.

Ang Lee, directing from a script by David Magee, is extraordinarily versatile. “The Ice Storm,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “The Hulk,” “Brokeback Mountain” – the only common linkages here are Lee’s contemplative sensibility. In that sense, the 3-D “Life of Pi” isn’t all that much of a leap for Lee, except technologically.

The 50 best movies of all time

There’s plenty of downtime aboard that raft in which to dramatize the meaning of life, not to mention how to avoid becoming tiger bait.

Piscine, or Pi, as he dubs himself, grows up in India in the paradisiacal former French colony of Pondicherry, where his father operates a zoo. When hard times hit, the decision is made to decamp to Canada and sell the animals, but a violent storm upturns the cargo ship en route and all are lost – animals, family – save Pi (played as a teenager by newcomer Suraj Sharma) and an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena, and that tiger, to whom Pi gives the name Richard Parker.

Life of Pi: 5 reasons it's an enormously risky film

The spiritual epic has a no-name cast, cost $120 million to produce, and implausibly promises to reveal the existence of God.

Life of Pi, which opens in theaters Wednesday, tells the fantastic (and, of course, fictional) story of a shipwrecked young man forced to journey across the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. The movie is earning very strong reviews, but even its most fervent supporters concede that the film is a hard sell. "It's the biggest gamble I've ever taken," says Elizabeth Gilbert, the 20th Century Fox executive who oversaw the film's production. (Watch the trailer for Life of Pi below.) On the eve of Life of Pi's release, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about its chances at the box office. Here are five:

1. It cost $120 million to make
Much of the buzz surrounding Life of Pi's troubled production came down to its enormous $120 million budget — an expense that almost got the film canceled before filming could begin in 2010. (Director Ang Lee finally convinced executives to trust his vision for the film.) Much of the budget went to computer-generating the film's animals, which include a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and a tiger. The production crew also built a 1.7-million-gallon water tank in Taiwan to replicate Pacific storms in a controlled environment.

2. It's extremely difficult to market
Unlike most of Hollywood's biggest contemporary releases, Life of Pi isn't a sequel and isn't based on a comic book, video game, or other franchise property. Though Yann Martel's 2001 novel sold 9 million copies worldwide and won the Man Booker Prize for fiction, its unusual, surreal narrative is difficult to explain to the uninitiated in a 2-minute film trailer — and all but impossible to break down in a 30-second commercial spot.

3. Its story is overtly spiritual
Life of Pi begins with the promise that Pi's story will reveal the existence of God — an unusual conceit for a Hollywood blockbuster, which only becomes more complicated when the young Pi embraces Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam simultaneously. By setting such a lofty philosophical and spiritual goal, Life of Pi threatens to alienate a large portion of its audience and makes a promise difficult for even the greatest of films to fulfill.

4. It has no movie stars in its cast
Hollywood wisdom holds that it takes a famous name on a marquee to sell most films — particularly a film as idiosyncratic as Life of Pi. But Life of Pi stars Suraj Sharma, a 17-year-old first-time actor, who anchors an international cast of unknowns. At one point in its production, the cast included Spider-Man's Tobey Maguire, who was set to play the writer interviewing the film's protagonist, but Ang Lee opted to recast the role after deciding that Maguire was "too jarringly recognizable."

5. It faces fierce competition from other movies
This week's new releases include Silver Linings Playbook, a crowd-pleasing romantic comedy and early Oscar favorite; Hitchcock, a drama aimed squarely at adults; and Rise of the Guardians, an animated movie sure to draw families. Each of those new films takes a bite out of Life of Pi's potential audience, and with upcoming competition including films like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Les Miserables, competition will only get fiercer.

New York Life Continues Strong Sales Growth Through Third Quarter Led by 11% Growth of Whole Life Insurance

New York Life, America’s largest mutual life insurer, today announced very strong third quarter gains in sales of life insurance, annuities and mutual funds, as well as a solid increase in agent new hires in the first nine months of 2012. New York Life agents recorded an increase of 11% in sales of recurring premium whole life insurance over the third quarter of 2011.

The company also announced that its dividend payout to participating policyholders will increase by $100 million in 2013, an 8% rise over the 2012 payout. Even in the face of unprecedented low interest rates, the company had strong operating performance and was able to enhance both its surplus and dividend through the divestiture of certain international businesses. The company also has had better than expected persistency as policyholders maintain their policies in force despite the challenging economy, which speaks to New York Life’s top ratings for financial strength.

“The continued strength of whole life insurance sales speaks to the value that Americans put on safety and security when it comes planning for their loved ones. During these times of economic unsteadiness, the company’s financial strength and stability offers the peace of mind many are seeking,” said Executive Vice President Mark Pfaff.

In addition to growth in life insurance, the company’s annuity sales increased 16% and mutual fund sales increased 10% compared with the third quarter 2011. Annuity sales in the quarter were driven by income annuity sales, which are up 17%, and variable annuity sales, up 5% compared with the same period a year ago. Mutual fund sales are being driven by consistent investment performance from the company’s investment boutiques in both income oriented and capital appreciation funds, which remain in high demand from customers.

New York Life has recorded a 4% increase in agent recruitment over the same period in 2011, with 2,396 new agents hired through September 30, 2012. The full year 2012 goal for agent recruitment is 3,700. In addition, 79% of the new agent hires in 2012 have been either women or individuals representing cultural markets.

“As our country’s population changes, so does New York Life’s career agent force, with more women and minorities representing New York Life today than at any time in our history,” Mr. Pfaff said.

New York Life Insurance Company, a Fortune 100 company founded in 1845, is the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States* and one of the largest life insurers in the world. New York Life has the highest possible financial strength ratings currently awarded to any life insurer from all four of the major credit rating agencies: A.M. Best (A++), Fitch (AAA), Moody’s Investors Service (Aaa), Standard & Poor’s. Headquartered in New York City, New York Life's family of companies offers life insurance, retirement income, investments and long-term care insurance. New York Life Investments*** provides institutional asset management and retirement plan services. Other New York Life affiliates provide an array of securities products and services, as well as retail mutual funds. Please visit New York Life’s Web site at www.newyorklife.com for more information.

Life returns to service sector

The service sector breathed back into life during October, according to the BNZ - BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index (PSI).

The PSI for September was 57.4. This was up 7.5 points from September, and the highest result since November 2011 (A PSI reading above 50.0 indicates that the service sector is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining).

Compared to previous October results, the 2012 value was the second highest recorded since 2007.
BusinessNZ chief executive Phil O’Reilly said that there were certainly some notable reasons to raise a glass for the current results.

"Both activity/sales and new orders/business were either struggling or heading in the wrong direction in recent months, so a strong turnaround for both to lift the overall result has come at the right time. Comments from respondents also provide a telling story. In September, only 47% of comments were positive, which rose to 62% in October.

"Last month we asked whether the Xmas/seasonal effect would help steer the sector back into positive territory. Looking at those who provided positive comments, this seems to be the case, along with various growth stories outlined citing a larger customer base, improving business efficiency and winning tenders."
BNZ economist Doug Steel said, "In the context of some horrible economic indicators for the third quarter, the big bounce in the October PSI is very welcome. While one needs more than one month’s data to be sure of genuine bounce in activity, it is a first step to suggesting a reasonable rebound from a soft patch earlier in the year."

The seasonally adjusted BNZ - BusinessNZ Performance of Composite Index or PCI (which combines the PMI and PSI) for October showed the two options for measuring the PCI back in healthly expansion. The GDP-Weighted Index (56.9) increased 7.7 points from September, with its highest result since March 2010. The Free-Weighted Index (54.9) also showed a pick-up, rising 5.9 points from September. The major influence for both indices was the strong service sector result.

All five main sub-indices were in expansion during October. Activity/sales (64.2) led the way with its highest result since the survey began in 2007.

Likewise, new orders/business (62.7) recorded its highest value since November 2007, although almost on par with its result in May this year. Employment (52.1) returned to activity levels last seen in July, while supplier deliveries (54.7) also bounced back from three months in contraction. Finished stocks (51.0) was the only sub-index to experience a fall in expansion levels during October, although consistent with results over the last six months.

Three of the four regions were in expansion during October. In the North Island, the Northern region (60.7) continued its upwards momentum, with its highest value since November 2007. In contrast, the Central region (48.8) showed almost no change from the previous month. In the South Island, the Canterbury/Westland region (56.0) displayed its highest result since June, while the Otago/Southland region (55.6) managed to break the shackles of five consecutive months of contraction to show growth in October.

Life Insurance Costs for UK Women Likely to be 15% Higher by the End of 2012

Not all the decisions made by the EU have a tangible impact on consumers here in the UK, but the recent changes made to the rules in terms of gender neutral insurance surely will. Many of the experts are advising that those in search of life insurance act fast in order to avoid bearing the brunt of the amendments made in Europe.

A gender neutral approach to insurance premiums will come into effect across the entire industry from 21st December 2012. This is a key date for consumers because it is likely to bring with it a rise in premiums, particularly for women who were previously given a better deal on insurance products, including car insurance and life insurance.

The team at Lifebroker is keen to stress that those searching for suitable life insurance cover will continue to see the benefits of individually-tailored policies until that date arrives. This means that women on the lookout for an appropriate life insurance policy may be able to seek out a better deal for the next few weeks only.

After the 21st December, women will be subject to the same rules as men when it comes to life insurance. This means that they will no longer receive favourable premiums and any quotes given after the all-important date are likely to be around 15% higher than those given out beforehand.

Many in the industry are advising proactivity. Consumers are encouraged to learn about what gender neutral premiums mean for them and to do so quickly if they have designs upon securing a policy at a favourable rate. The team at Lifebroker has already seen a high number of inquiries from consumers in recent weeks and months concerned about the premiums they may be subject to after the EU rule change comes into effect.
Those interested in speaking to an expert about obtaining the right cover quickly can visit the Lifebroker where they will have access to specialist advice and guidance.

The new rules are expected to affect policies for men as well as women, which is why consumers eager to explore their life insurance options are urged to take the matter up with the professionals as soon as possible.

Aptitude Life to Introduce Healthy Kids Beverage in December

Aptitude Life Ltd (OTC Pinksheets: SUNB), an energy and health drink company based in the UK, plans to introduce a healthy kids beverage to the market this December. The company has identified the growth of the healthy beverage market as a significant opportunity, and the kids drink rollout will be shipping in time for the holiday season.

Aptitude Life Ltd's, Mr. David Foote, a spokesman for Aptitude Life commented, "Aptitude Kids was created to be a healthy and refreshing beverage for children without being laden with fructose corn syrup and other unhealthy ingredients.  We believe that there is a real opportunity in the beverage industry for healthy kid's drinks that don't contain high sugar content but still taste great and have widespread appeal for consumers.  We developed a kid-friendly refreshing beverage offering a healthy alternative to more commonplace sugary beverages that neglect the nutritional requirements of active, growing children."
According to Mr. Foote, the tasty kid-friendly Aptitude Kids blend is a healthy "go-to" solution for parents who are perplexed about what to provide their children to quench their thirst with a taste that kids will crave. The Kids blend is created with 100% natural ingredients and doesn't contain one single drop of sugar or fructose corn syrup. He thinks kids will love its naturally refreshing flavor.

Aptitude Life plans to aggressively roll out their new brand of health and energy products to the North American Market, which has been growing by nearly 20% annually for the past 5 years.  The company believes that the high margin and growth in the healthy beverage market is a significant opportunity, as consumers seek out healthier drinks over conventional soft drinks.