Life Time Fitness Announces Preliminary Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2012

Life Time Fitness, Inc. (LTM), The Healthy Way of Life Company, today announced preliminary results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2012.

The Company expects to report revenue in the range of $273.0-275.0 million, net income of $22.0-23.5 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.53-0.56 for 4Q 2012. For the year, expectations include revenue of $1.125-1.127 billion, net income of $110.0-111.5 million and diluted earnings per share of $2.63-2.66. The Company previously provided guidance of $1.127-1.137 billion in revenue, net income of $114.5-116.0 million and diluted earnings per share of $2.73-2.76 for 2012.

Included in the preliminary results is approximately $0.07 of diluted earnings per share impact in the fourth quarter from losses related to the effect of Hurricane Sandy upon operations, other unrelated self-insured expenses, and costs related to the inaugural launch of Commitment Day. Commitment Day is a year-round movement involving events and activities commencing on January 1 and continuing throughout the year, urging people to commit to healthy eating, exercise, personal responsibility, giving and a healthy planet. Additionally, during the fourth quarter, the Company experienced slightly lower year-over-year membership growth than planned, coupled with higher membership acquisition costs. For the year ended 2012, the Company expects dues growth of nearly 10% and memberships to increase by approximately 1%. Finally, during the fourth quarter, the Company also made incremental investments in consumer-facing technology, including scheduling systems and mobile applications.

The Company also announced preliminary 2013 guidance. Three new center openings are planned during the year, including one in the first half and two in the second half of 2013. Expectations include revenue of $1.200-1.220 billion, net income of $120.0-124.0 million and diluted earnings per share of $2.85-2.95 for the year. 2013 revenue and earnings are expected to be driven primarily by price and mix optimization, and growth in in-center and ancillary business revenue. The Company’s preliminary guidance includes the anticipated impact of the timing of 2013 new center openings, pre-sale expenses for centers opening in early 2014 and the investment in growth initiatives.

Bahram Akradi, chairman, president and chief executive officer, Michael Robinson, executive vice president and chief financial officer, and John Heller, senior director, investor relations and treasurer, have provided a webcast message today in connection with these preliminary results. The webcast may be accessed via the Company’s Investor Relations Events section of its website at lifetimefitness.com or via this link.

Life Time Fitness’ fourth quarter and full year financial results remain subject to regular year-end closing processes, including conclusion of the Company’s 2012 financial audit. The Company plans to announce its fourth quarter and full year financial results on Thursday, February 21. Details regarding the conference call will be announced later.

Here's to the Hereafter: Celebrating Life With a Party

At the Three Flames Restaurant in San Jose, Calif., the banquet hall is packed. When they get the cue, 140 people raise their glasses for a toast. A sign in the corner reads "No Tear Zone." With a fully stocked open bar, catered food, and even favors, it looks like a fabulous party—which is exactly what Ursula Stock had in mind.

"She would love what's going on," said Michael Stock, her husband of nearly 47 years. "You look around, and there are people from her second grade class! There are people from management, people from the picket line, and neighbors. She's the reason why."

It's a party Ursula Stock knew she'd never attend. She decided back in the '70s that she wanted a celebration of life instead of a funeral. So she chose everything -- from the music to the guest list, Ursula left Michael with no doubts about her final wishes.

"There was some surprise," said Michael ."The open bar was one. Some of the relatives said, 'Oh, no!' and I said, 'She's not coming back to haunt me on this, OK? That's what she wants, that's what she's going to get."

Boomers Do Funerals Their Way

Faced with aging parents and their own mortality, it's something more and more baby boomers are doing: taking life -- and death -- into their own hands.

Joanne Grady-Savard is one of them. The avid runner and president of a Boston-based staffing company has already planned her final exit.

"After funeral services, they go to my favorite spot from my running route," she said. "We would have a tent. We could have a lobster bake or a clam bake. No high heels, no black dresses; just an opportunity to sit on a bench and be in a beautiful environment."

Grady-Savard plans to have an engraved memorial bench placed at her "favorite spot," which overlooks the Atlantic on Massachusetts' South Shore. She's even developing a book of life lessons to be passed out at her funeral, instead of traditional Mass cards.

"We spend so much time and effort and energy planning our children's weddings and birthdays and anniversary parties," she said, "that this is, in my opinion, one of the most critical pieces of our life. It's something that you have control over; you manage the legacy."

That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer

The other morning, I escaped unscathed from a dangerous situation. No, an armed robber didn’t break into my house, nor did I find myself face to face with a mountain lion during my bird walk. What I survived was my daily shower.

You see, falls are a common cause of death in older people like me. (I’m 75.) Among my wife’s and my circle of close friends over the age of 70, one became crippled for life, one broke a shoulder and one broke a leg in falls on the sidewalk. One fell down the stairs, and another may not survive a recent fall.

“Really!” you may object. “What’s my risk of falling in the shower? One in a thousand?” My answer: Perhaps, but that’s not nearly good enough.

Life expectancy for a healthy American man of my age is about 90. (That’s not to be confused with American male life expectancy at birth, only about 78.) If I’m to achieve my statistical quota of 15 more years of life, that means about 15 times 365, or 5,475, more showers. But if I were so careless that my risk of slipping in the shower each time were as high as 1 in 1,000, I’d die or become crippled about five times before reaching my life expectancy. I have to reduce my risk of shower accidents to much, much less than 1 in 5,475.

This calculation illustrates the biggest single lesson that I’ve learned from 50 years of field work on the island of New Guinea: the importance of being attentive to hazards that carry a low risk each time but are encountered frequently.

I first became aware of the New Guineans’ attitude toward risk on a trip into a forest when I proposed pitching our tents under a tall and beautiful tree. To my surprise, my New Guinea friends absolutely refused. They explained that the tree was dead and might fall on us.

Yes, I had to agree, it was indeed dead. But I objected that it was so solid that it would be standing for many years. The New Guineans were unswayed, opting instead to sleep in the open without a tent.

I thought that their fears were greatly exaggerated, verging on paranoia. In the following years, though, I came to realize that every night that I camped in a New Guinea forest, I heard a tree falling. And when I did a frequency/risk calculation, I understood their point of view.

Consider: If you’re a New Guinean living in the forest, and if you adopt the bad habit of sleeping under dead trees whose odds of falling on you that particular night are only 1 in 1,000, you’ll be dead within a few years. In fact, my wife was nearly killed by a falling tree last year, and I’ve survived numerous nearly fatal situations in New Guinea.

I now think of New Guineans’ hypervigilant attitude toward repeated low risks as “constructive paranoia”: a seeming paranoia that actually makes good sense. Now that I’ve adopted that attitude, it exasperates many of my American and European friends. But three of them who practice constructive paranoia themselves — a pilot of small planes, a river-raft guide and a London bobby who patrols the streets unarmed — learned the attitude, as I did, by witnessing the deaths of careless people.

Traditional New Guineans have to think clearly about dangers because they have no doctors, police officers or 911 dispatchers to bail them out. In contrast, Americans’ thinking about dangers is confused. We obsess about the wrong things, and we fail to watch for real dangers.

Studies have compared Americans’ perceived ranking of dangers with the rankings of real dangers, measured either by actual accident figures or by estimated numbers of averted accidents. It turns out that we exaggerate the risks of events that are beyond our control, that cause many deaths at once or that kill in spectacular ways — crazy gunmen, terrorists, plane crashes, nuclear radiation, genetically modified crops. At the same time, we underestimate the risks of events that we can control (“That would never happen to me — I’m careful”) and of events that kill just one person in a mundane way.

Having learned both from those studies and from my New Guinea friends, I’ve become as constructively paranoid about showers, stepladders, staircases and wet or uneven sidewalks as my New Guinea friends are about dead trees. As I drive, I remain alert to my own possible mistakes (especially at night), and to what incautious other drivers might do.

My hypervigilance doesn’t paralyze me or limit my life: I don’t skip my daily shower, I keep driving, and I keep going back to New Guinea. I enjoy all those dangerous things. But I try to think constantly like a New Guinean, and to keep the risks of accidents far below 1 in 1,000 each time.

Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of the new book “The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?”

Flowers From the Cotton Fields

The most startling moment in “Zinnias: The Life of Clementine Hunter,” a genial new opera conceived, directed and designed by Robert Wilson, comes near the beginning.

A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.

A young woman wearing a boldly patterned dress emerges from a door-shaped opening in a brightly painted curtain. She grins widely. “I’m Clementine Hunter,” she exclaims.

As a “life of” piece, “Zinnias,” which opened on Saturday as part of the Peak Performances series at Montclair State University, is a throwback to Mr. Wilson’s early years. He made his name in the 1960s and ’70s with a series of slow, sprawling abstractions posing as biographies: “The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud,” “The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin,” “Edison” and of course, “Einstein on the Beach,” his epochal collaboration with Philip Glass.

The ostensible subjects of those frequently mystifying pieces would never stoop to something as conventional as introducing themselves. Einstein does a lot of violin playing but says nothing throughout a five-hour opera.

So the forthright enthusiasm of Mr. Wilson’s Clementine Hunter, in real life a black plantation worker in Louisiana who achieved renown as a self-taught painter, comes as something of a shock. Mr. Wilson has made “Zinnias” recognizably his own while working with a sweetly easygoing score by Bernice Johnson Reagon, a founder of the a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Toshi Reagon, her daughter; and a book by Jacqueline Woodson. Its colored-light backdrops, elegant white furniture and angular, repetitive gestures will be familiar to his fans.

Unfamiliar though is the 90-minute opera’s sunny straightforwardness, a clarity that occasionally feels excessive. When a character recited the cloying line, “Clementine, you’ve got to share your colors with the world,” I found myself longing, as I never before had during a Wilson production, for a little more abstraction.

Hunter was born in late 1886 or early 1887 and died on New Year’s Day 1988. The opera skips lightly over this vast span, touching on her early work in Melrose Plantation’s cotton fields and the beginnings of her painting career, encouraged by the plantation’s artistically minded owner.

Turning out prodigious quantities of happily colored, unremittingly nostalgic portraits of plantation life and flowers, especially the zinnias of the title, Hunter gets her first exhibition in a segregated building at Northwestern State University in Louisiana that she is not allowed to enter for the opening. She begins to sell her work and is acclaimed for it, eventually receiving an honorary degree from Northwestern State.

This inspiring story is told through unpretentious, fluent songs that are amalgams of folk, rockabilly and gospel performed with gorgeously full-throated gusto by a talented cast of 10. In one memorable scene just a few performers on a bare stage, armed with the show’s swinging six-person band and Millicent Johnnie’s unassuming yet sharp choreography, conjured the sweaty delirium of a Saturday-night dance.

The show has a firm anchor in Carla Duren’s Clementine, a potent combination of vulnerability and strength in both voice and gesture. She saves her honorary-degree moment from syrupy sentimentality with the fierce focus of her grip on the diploma.

But that sequence, capped with teary repetitions of “thank you,” feels not so much illuminating as routine, like checking off a biographical box, the problem with many of the scenes in “Zinnias.” Too often the show takes on the cheerful didacticism of a children’s book, with pat lines like, “That’s how it is in the segregated South,” offered when Hunter is not permitted to attend her opening. Neither an alluring song about the sinking of the Titanic nor that Saturday dance party advance the story quite so clearly, but they convey the vibrancy of Hunter’s paintings more evocatively.

If artistically “Zinnias” is an amiable blip in Mr. Wilson’s output, it evidently carries personal meaning for him: He met Hunter as a child and collects her work. He has lavished on her story the production’s strangest element, a solemn undertow in the imposing person of Sheryl Sutton.

A veteran of Mr. Wilson’s early works, Ms. Sutton is billed here as the silent Angel, gliding darkly on the edges of scenes. She spends “Zinnias” in a funereal 19th-century-style black dress, much like the one she wore in Mr. Wilson’s 1971 breakthrough, “Deafman Glance.”

Arm slightly raised in an enigmatic gesture, she sits for long minutes in the downstage left corner, the same spot in which she sat, arms slightly raised in an enigmatic gesture, for much of “Einstein on the Beach.” At one point she pours water into a glass until it overflows and runs off a table. I don’t know what that moment means, but it had a terrifying sobriety that contrasted with the jauntiness of the rest of “Zinnias.”

In a recent interview in The New York Times, Mr. Wilson observed of Broadway style, “It’s all in the one-liners — you have to get it and react. This thing” — “Zinnias” — “is different because you can get lost. And it’s O.K. to get lost.”

Contrasting his new work with Broadway productions, Mr. Wilson misses the point. Bright, charming and tuneful, “Zinnias” is perhaps the first of his productions that could be happy there.

March for Life in front of Supreme Court decries landmark 1973 ruling

Abortion opponents from around the country marched on the Supreme Court on Friday protesting the landmark ruling establishing a constitutional right to abortion, and cheered on speakers who vowed to work for more restrictions.

Though some in the crowd were veterans of previous marches held annually since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the majority seemed to be teenagers and young adults, many of whom carried signs identifying themselves as part of a “pro-life generation.”

Buses from around the country, mostly chartered by Catholic schools and organizations, brought groups of people to the Mall for a pre-march rally in which politicians, religious leaders and activists decried the 55 million abortions they said had been performed since the Roe v. Wade decision.

The archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, read a message posted early Friday by Pope Benedict XVI from his personal Twitter account: “I join all those marching for life from afar, and pray that political leaders will protect the unborn and promote a culture of life.”

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) appeared on a giant video screen and vowed to work for passage of a bill banning taxpayer funding for abortions. Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) told the crowd that she would fight for a bill she has introduced that would prohibit family planning grants from going to groups that provide abortions, such as Planned Parenthood. Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), chairman of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, called President Obama, who has stated his commitment to protecting abortion as a constitutional right, the “abortion president.”

“Know this, Mr. President,” Smith said to loud cheers from the crowd of protesters. “We will never quit.”

The March for Life is typically held on Jan. 22, the actual anniversary of Roe v. Wade. This year, it was delayed until Friday to allow for cleanup after Monday’s presidential inauguration and make it easier to travel to the District.

Despite a bitter, Arctic cold that descended over the region, Friday’s crowd was large. Police no longer estimate crowd size, so it is difficult to judge how many people attended. The march permit was for 50,000 people, though organizers said the attendance was several times that number. People at the rally were concentrated on the Mall between Seventh and 12th Streets, and the march up Constitution Avenue stretched for at least five blocks.

The most commonly carried posters simply said “Defend Life” or showed a black and white photograph of a newborn infant, plump and healthy-looking. Posters with graphic images of aborted fetuses were rare.

Jeanne Monahan, the new head of the March for Life, said the movement is making progress in changing laws and attitudes. She noted about 200 pro-life measures introduced in state legislatures, and said Americans are growing more pro-life.

“Pro-life is the new normal in the United States,” she told the crowd.

Many who participated came in groups, identifiable by the banners they carried or the matching scarves they wore. Chartered buses dropped off people several blocks away, and they approached the Mall on foot, often carrying placards, crosses and flags bearing the name of the college, high school or diocese they represented.

A group of 24 eighth graders from Spiritus Sanctus Academy in Plymouth, Mich., spent the past year raising $3,000 for the trip through fish fries, rummage sales, can returns, paper recycling and poinsettia sales. Going to the march has been an eighth-grade tradition at the school for several years, said Sister Maria Guadalupe, 37, who was chaperoning the class.

“From the time they’re in kindergarten, we teach them about the dignity of the human person,” she said.

“It’s kind of, for them, an introduction into what we hope for them,” she added. “Standing up as citizens, standing up as believers. These are our rights as Americans, this is what we do as Catholics.”

Jan Fox, who accompanied 37 students from Cerra Catholic High School in McKeesport, Pa., said she had attended the march virtually every year since she was brought to one when she was an eighth grader in 1998.

“As a committed Catholic, we should always be optimistic,” she said, expressing her hope that abortion will be banned again. “Things can change.”

Many young protesters carried placards saying “Defund Planned Parenthood” on one side, and on the other side “I am the Pro-Life Generation.”
Veronica Estigoy, 16, a junior who is treasurer of the pro-life club at Ladywood High School, a Catholic girls’ school in Livonia, Mich., said more teenagers probably fit that description than are willing to admit it.

“I still feel like we’re struggling,” she said of the pro-life movement among teenagers. Too many teens consider abortion “as a get out of jail card,” she said. “But I have the feeling something’s going to change, there are going to be steps taken so we’re not coming back here in another 40 years.”

Cathy Flowers, who came to the Mall on a bus with about 50 fellow members of St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church in Annandale, said there was something auspicious about Roe v. Wade being 40 years old.

“Forty is a religious number,” she said. “The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert. There were the 40 days and nights of rain for Noah. So I’m hoping maybe it will start getting better.”

Kerry: Climate change a 'life-threatening issue'

Calling global climate change a "life-threatening issue," Secretary of State nominee John Kerry said Thursday that the United States must play a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, said at his confirmation hearing that the U.S. should pursue policies to boost clean energy and energy efficiency. In his state and others, such as California, "the fastest growing sector of our economy is clean energy," Kerry said. "It's a job creator."

Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has made climate change a central focus of his Senate career and led a failed effort in the Senate for a climate change bill in 2010.

Kerry told fellow senators he would be a "passionate advocate" on the issue if confirmed as secretary of state, "not based on ideology but based on facts, based on science. And I hope to sit with all of you and convince you that this $6 trillion (energy) market is worth millions of American jobs and leadership, and we better go after it."

Failing to deal with climate change was more of a risk than addressing it head-on, Kerry said, citing damage caused by Superstorm Sandy, drought and wildfires. Congress is expected to approve more $50 billion in disaster relief for Sandy victims alone. The storm pounded Northeastern states in late October and has been blamed for 140 deaths.

"If we can't see the downside of spending that money" as a short-term fix after a disaster "and risking lives for all the changes that are taking place — to agriculture, to our communities, the ocean and so forth, we're ignoring what science is telling us," Kerry said.

On a related issue, Kerry said he has made no decision about the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. Environmental groups have been pressuring the Obama administration to reject the pipeline, saying it would carry "dirty oil" that contributes to global warming.

Kerry said a review process is well underway at the State Department. The department has jurisdiction over the pipeline because it crosses an international border.

"It will not be long before that comes across my desk," Kerry said. "And at that time, I'll make the appropriate judgments about it."

Sun Life Expands ASEAN Footprint

In an effort to expand its international operations, the Canadian life insurer Sun Life Financial Inc. (SLF) has announced a bancassurance agreement with CIMB Bank located in Malaysia.   

Sun Life Financial Inc. has forged an alliance with Khazanah Nasional Berhad (Khazanah) to jointly acquire 98% of CIMB Aviva Assurance Berhad, the life insurer in Malaysia and CIMB Aviva Takaful Berhad, a takaful company in Malaysia. The acquisition is expected to culminate in the first half of this year.pending regulatory approvals in Canada and Malaysia.

The bancassurance agreement will cover a span of 20 years and will cost C$586 million.

Sun Life Financial as well as Khazanah are each paying RM900 million (C$293 million) for the deal. For the consideration, each of the companies will acquire 49% from Aviva International Holdings Limited and CIMB Group Holdings Berhad (CIMB Group), respectively.  The remaining 2% will be retained by CIMB Group.

With the agreement, Sun Life Financial will obtain instant access to millions of customers of CIMB Bank. Presently the bank has a network of 312 branches and serves approximately 8 million customers. The agreement will give an exclusive right of distributing insurance as well as access to takaful products across Malaysia to Sun Life.  Takaful is a Shariah-compliant alternative to an insurance scheme.

The transaction is a strategic step in the company’s objective to grow internationally. Sun Life is specifically focusing on the emerging economies of Asia, which is expected to provide higher return and growth compared to the North American markets. Historically, the company’s Asian operation represented an average of only 2-3% of the company’s consolidated earnings and premiums. However, management plans to drive 12.5% of consolidated operating earnings from Sun Life Asia by 2015.

TVM Life Science Ventures VII announces first investment: Kaneq Bioscience Ltd.

TVM Life Science Ventures VII today announced an investment into Kaneq Bioscience Ltd. based in Montreal, Quebec. This company is a spin out of Kaneq Pharma Inc., a biotechnology company developing early stage compounds for metabolic diseases and cancer. Kaneq Bioscience Ltd. was specifically created to develop a protein tyrosine phosphatase1B ("PTP-1B") inhibitor for treating type 2 diabetes mellitus.  "Other approaches targeting PTP-1B have shown efficacy in the clinic but oral small molecules have remained elusive. Our compound has promise as an orally active insulin sensitizer that can be paired with existing therapies." stated Dr. Daniel Bouthillier, CEO of Kaneq Pharma Inc., who has joined Kaneq Bioscience Ltd. as Executive Chairman.  Dr. Cynthia Lavoie, General Partner of TVM Capital Life Science and Board Member of Kaneq Bioscience Ltd. adds: "We are pleased to collaborate with Kaneq Pharma to create a company in Montreal which addresses a huge market need for diabetes patients".

This is the first investment for TVM Life Science Ventures VII, a life sciences venture fund domiciled in Montreal QC, which follows a new investment approach to developing pharmaceutical assets to a human proof-of-concept in single asset companies. This approach has proven to be highly capital efficient through a high degree of outsourcing while creating an opportunity for faster exits through a trade sale to a pharmaceutical player looking to build its pipeline without having to take on legacy companies around the products that appeal to them.

Kaneq Bioscience Ltd. will tap into the rich ecosystem of service providers in the area to bring its asset to human proof-of-concept, including expertise provided by Montreal-based Chorus Canada, an offshoot of global-early-phase drug development network Chorus, an autonomous unit of Eli Lilly and Company. The company is also benefitting from the involvement of Kaneq Pharma management, a highly experienced team with complementary skills in pharmaceutical development.

Is Life Technologies a Buy Now?

Life Technologies was one of the hottest stocks last Friday, enjoying a 10.59 percent gain. This was due to rumors that the company was in talks with private equity firms and healthcare companies about a potential sale. Rumors of potential buyers included Danaher Corp. (NYSE:DHR) and General Electric (NYSE:GE). Neither chose to comment on the rumor. General Electric has a policy never to comment on any rumors of this nature, which makes it difficult to tell if there is any real potential. We do know that General Electric is constantly looking to grow in many different areas, and that it wants to be a leader in future technologies. In this case, Life Technologies is attractive because its technology has the ability to create a blueprint of someone’s DNA. This can lead to disease diagnosis, risk identification, and increased accuracy for target medicines. There is no doubt that there is great value here. However, the buyout range being thrown around at the moment is anywhere from $55 per share to $70 per share. Considering the stock is currently trading at $60.79 per share, there is more upside than downside. However, there is still downside potential, and there is a pretty good chance that nothing will happen in the immediate future.

Assuming there is no buyout soon, let’s take a look at Life Technologies as it stands on its own.

The debt-to-equity ratio for Life Technologies is normal, but the balance sheet is in negative territory. Operating cash flow is decent at $872.71 million.

Mars: 'Strongest evidence' planet may have supported life, scientists say

Minerals found underground on Mars are the "strongest evidence yet" that the planet may have supported life, according to new research.

The team, led by the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Aberdeen, said the ingredients for life could have been in a zone up to 5km down for much of the planet's history.

They used data from the US space agency (Nasa) and European Space Agency (Esa).

Nature Geoscience has published the research.
Continue reading the main story   
“Start Quote

    Whether the Martian geologic record contains life or not, analysis of these types of rocks would certainly teach us a tremendous amount about early chemical processes in the solar system”

Joseph Michalski Natural History Museum

The team said the research backed up the existing theory that Mars could have supported life due to micro-organisms hidden beneath the surface.

They said that when meteorites strike the surface of Mars, they act as natural probes, bringing up rocks from far below.

The McLaughlin Crater is described as one such area of interest in the study.

Dr Joseph Michalski, lead author and planetary geologist at the Natural History Museum, said: "We don't know how life on Earth formed but it is conceivable that it originated underground, protected from harsh surface conditions that existed on early Earth.

"However, the early geological record of Earth is poorly preserved so we may never know what processes led to life's origin and early evolution.

"Whether the Martian geologic record contains life or not, analysis of these types of rocks would certainly teach us a tremendous amount about early chemical processes in the solar system.

"In this paper, we present a strong case for exploring the subsurface, as well as the surface.

"But I don't personally think we should try to drill into the subsurface to look for ancient life. Instead, we can study rocks that are naturally brought to the surface by meteor impact and search in deep basins where fluids have come to the surface."
'Be clever'

Co-author Prof John Parnell, geochemist at the University of Aberdeen, added: "This research has demonstrated how studies of Earth and Mars depend on each other.

"It is what we have observed of microbes living below the continents and oceans of Earth. They allow us to speculate on habitats for past life on Mars, which in turn show us how life on the early Earth could have survived.

"We know from Earth's history that planets face traumatic conditions such as meteorite bombardment and ice ages, when the survival of life may depend on being well-below ground.

"So it makes sense to search for evidence of life from that subsurface environment, in the geological records of both Earth and Mars.

"But it's one thing to do that on Earth - we need to be clever in finding a way to do it on Mars."

Life Technologies Gains on Buyout Speculation

Life Technologies Corp. (LIFE), a maker of DNA-sequencing equipment and laboratory materials, rose to its highest-ever value after the hiring of strategic advisers sparked speculation the company may be sold.

Life Technologies jumped 11 percent to $60.79 at 4 p.m. New York time, its highest price since the shares began trading in February 1999. The move was the biggest since April 2009. The Carlsbad, California-based company has increased 29 percent in the past 12 months.

Deutsche Bank AG and Moelis & Co. were retained “to assist in its annual strategic review,” Life said in a statement today. The Financial Post reported the hiring late yesterday, saying the advisers have approached at least four private-equity firms as potential buyers.

“While price talk is apparently in the $65 to $75 range, our initial analysis suggests an LBO transaction valuing Life’s equity in the $50 to $60 range is more realistic in present market conditions,” Jon Wood, an analyst with Jefferies & Co., wrote in a research note today, referring to the potential for a leveraged buyout.

Wood cited the company’s “resilient and predictable revenue profile, highly scalable operating model, and extraordinary capital efficiency” as attractive, while noting “risk appetite to be at present more limited than that observed prior to the 2008/2009 financial crisis.”

Gene-sequencing companies such as Life and San Diego-based Illumina Inc. (ILMN) are attractive takeover targets because their technology can be used to provide a blueprint of a person’s DNA, information that may eventually be used to diagnose disease, identify the risks of certain conditions or better target medicines. Roche Holding AG (ROG), the world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs, failed last year in a hostile bid for Illumina.

Life began a strategic review last fall and hopes to reach a deal by the middle of February, the newspaper said, citing documents it had seen and people familiar with the process. The approached private equity firms include Blackstone Group LP (BX) and KKR & Co. (KKR), the newspaper reported.

Roche backed away from a $6.7 billion bid for Illumina last year after investors asked for a higher offer. Roche doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation, Daniel Grotzky, a spokesman for the Basel, Switzerland-based company, said by e-mail in response to a question about Life.

A spokeswoman at Moelis declined to comment and a Deutsche Bank official couldn’t immediately comment.

The Spirits Are Back in Force in Brooklyn

For generations, one of the first things visitors to the Brooklyn Museum encountered was the Hall of the Americas, the two-story rotunda right off the main lobby. And when you were in it, you knew you were home. Its towering, glowering Northwest Coast totem poles were city landmarks the way the New York Public Library lions were. Its fantastic kachina dolls radiated a celebrity glow. The 2,000-year-old “Paracas Textile,” one of the world’s rarest Andean weavings, was high on the list of best-kept art secrets in town. Knowing its value made Brooklyn regulars a society of connoisseurs.

When the museum began reassigning its exhibition spaces a few years ago, art of the Americas moved out of the hall. Other things moved in, most recently African art and a sampler of highlights from the institution’s holdings. But we still missed what had been there, especially since the Americas material, a jewel in Brooklyn’s crown, seemed to have been lost in the redeployment shuffle. It stayed in storage for five years.

Now it’s back on view in new quarters on the fifth floor, looking, if anything, more jewel-like than remembered, despite, or maybe because of, changes in presentation. The galleries — three and a sliver — are old-style spaces: roomy and square, with some handsome mosaic work in the floors and high ceilings. (The tall totem poles aren’t out yet but will be, the museum promises, in a couple of years.)

The new design, by Lance Singletary, is minimalist and ice blue, with a few boxlike cases in the center of each room. The only quasi-ethnological touch is a faint soundtrack of heartbeat drums and breathy flutes. Years ago I would have sniffed at such atmospherics. But if they pull people in and get them looking, great.

And great is what they’ll see in “Life, Death and Transformation in the Americas,” an installation of just over 100 objects. The stuff is hypnotic, one spellbinding fever dream after another. The arrangement is by theme rather than by date or ethnicity, with the basic premise that everything here is charged with some form of spiritual agency and conceived to be forcefully interactive: to cure disease, resolve social strife, enforce political power; to transport you, harrow you, center you.

That we’re going to be seeing art of extremes, of first and last things, is clear from the start in two startling images, created centuries apart, that stand near each other at the entrance to the first gallery. One is the museum’s famous Huastec “Life-Death Figure,” carved from sandstone in Mexico between A.D. 900 and 1250. On one side it depicts a sturdy, youthful male deity, eyes alert, mouth open as if speaking. On the other, we see his alter ego, a skeletal figure radiating the malignance of mortality.

The other introductory object is more recent and gives the pre-Columbian life-death concept a Christian overlay. Made in Taos, N.M., in the late 19th or early 20th century, it’s a miniature version of one of the death carts pulled in processions by Roman Catholic penitent societies in Mexico and the American Southwest during Holy Week. Some carts carry images of the suffering Jesus. This one has a female passenger, Doña Sebastiana, the Angel of Death. An apparition of fleshless bones and hair, she’s ethereal and horrific, an awful, eaten-away beauty.

Images of death’s heads recur in the widely scattered cultures the installation encompasses. A skull carved from cedar by a Heiltsuk artist in the 19th century, then painted black and topped with a bear-fur hairpiece, is chillingly realistic. It was made to shock wild young men into sober adulthood.

By contrast, the grinning features on a cotton funerary mask, woven and painted in Peru around 200 B.C. and designed to be attached to a mummy, are almost abstract, almost sweet. Here the visage of death takes its power from what surrounds it: double-headed snakes and supernatural felines like bold and aggressive tattoos.

The ideal of a peaceful or natural death doesn’t get much attention in the warrior-elite worldviews here. Instead there are serial images of decapitation. Tiny trophy heads dangle from the belt of an expertly carved male figure on a Chimu mirror handle from Peru. From Costa Rica comes a half-life-size ceramic male head, naturalistically modeled right down to the signs of its having been cleanly sliced off at the neck.

 At the same time, the Americas have consistently produced art saturated in the beauty of nature. It’s everywhere in this installation, studiously, painstakingly, lovingly caught: in tiny stone Inca llama figurines so smooth they might have been rubbed and caressed into shape; in an Aztec pendant in the shape of a grasshopper, shaped from aquamarine as clear as water; in butterflies, creatures of springtime, flickering over the surface of a 20th-century Hopi jar vase; in a Northwest Coast Tlingit shaman’s rattle in the shape of an oystercatcher, a shore bird that effortlessly negotiates the realms of land, sea and sky.

The border of the “Paracas Textile” is a miniature Eden stitched in thread. Figures abound, mortal and immortal. But the wonder is the depiction of lush vegetation, flowers and fruits, cultivated and wild, all identifiable by name. Each tree, and there are forests of them, is stitched leaf by leaf, with leaves overlapping to create what amounts to a three-dimensional relief. You have to be entranced by the world, devoted to it, hungry for it, to recreate it so closely, to make it come to life and grow in your hands.

A vision of existence as a state of constant, dynamic change may be the real binding element in all of this art. Wherever you look, forms appear mutable, identities seem in flux. Did the ritual use of hallucinogens by many religions in the Americas contribute to this sense of reality as ductile and sometimes disturbingly unstable?

The bodies of men and eagles merge on a monumental Heiltsuk house post. A man turns into a fox — or is it the other way around? — in a sixth-century vessel found on the north coast of Peru. Crocodiles, bats and humans fuse into heroic hunters on a hammered-gold plaque from pre-Columbian Panama.

The museum’s grand 19th-century thunderbird transformation mask, another New York City star and the piece that brings the installation to a close, shows transformation in action.

Made by a Kwakwaka’wakw artist in Alert Bay, British Columbia, this mythological being has both avian and human attributes. By pulling cords attached to hinged panels, a dancer wearing the mask can open the bird’s head to reveal a human face inside, symbolically shifting between spiritual and material realms in the twinkling of an eye.

A once-standard and still common view of non-Western cultures, ancient and modern, is that they are entirely shaped, explained and (the implication is) limited by fixed religious beliefs. But this isn’t so. A very different “Art of the Americas” might have been made on the theme of family and domestic life, or agriculture, or politics and war, in all of which religion would play a part, though not necessarily a dominating one.

It remains, however, that much of the most visually gripping art that survives in the Americas is religious in inspiration and use. And by focusing on that art, and culling extraordinary examples from premier holdings, the organizers of the Brooklyn installation — Nancy Rosoff, curator of Arts of the Americas at the museum, and Susan Kennedy Zeller, associate curator of Native American art — have turned the static format of a permanent collection display into a dynamic experience, an agent of change. Or, rather, the great artists of the Americas have.

Two Mid-Cap Life Insurance Stocks That Could Double in Two Years

The life insurance industry has been facing a tough combination of extreme pressure on product pricing as

well as low interest rates. This industry pressure has been exasperating insurers over the past few years

and weighing on stock prices.

Today, the market provides two compelling opportunities to purchase robust life & health insurers at less

than half of their equity book value. At currently reduced prices, both recapitalized businesses with

improving return on asset metrics could reasonably double in valuation over the next few years.

CNO Financial

CNO Financial ) is a life, health, and long term care insurance business focusing on middle class and

retired Americans. CNO recently invigorated their recapitalization by issuing low cost long term debt and

paying back shorter term debt and convertible shares while reducing outstanding shares by 12%.

CNO is currently trading at 0.43x book value. Given the aforementioned industry issues, CNO Financial’s

return on equity (“ROE”) was 3.9% for the 12 month period ending 9/30/12. Yet the product pricing

environment continues to improve and a return to high single digit ROE metrics is reasonable over the next

few years.

CNO Financial Business Units

Banker’s Life & Casualty sells life insurance, long term care, annuities, Medicare Supplement / Part D /

Advantage plans to middle income Boomers and retirees. Banker’s Life is easily the largest division of CNO

worth 2/3rds of CNO’s value.

Banker’s Life has been recently shifting away from annuity sales. Third quarter total sales declined 5%

from the second quarter, reflecting an annuity sales decline of 35% while life insurance sales rose 5%,

medical supplemental insurance rose 9%, and short term care sales rose 8%. Banker’s Life is targeting a

14% IRR for its expanding long term care segment.

Like Banker’s Life, Washington National sells a similar suite of products to working Americans. Washing

National’s core segment sales were up 9% in the third quarter. CNO’s third segment, Colonial Penn, sells

simple, low cost life insurance to lower & middle income retirees in urban/metro areas.

Liquidity

At 9/30/12, CNO had $310 million of liquidity including $150 million of deployable capital at the holding

company. Segment EBIT grew from $309.4 million in 2010 to $344.3 million in 2011 and is on pace through

9/30/12 to deliver north of $375 million in 2012.

CNO has $893 million of net operating loss carry-forwards which are worth roughly $610 million when

discounted over forward years at 10%.

Conclusion

With a recapitalized balance sheet and improving cash flow and ROE metrics, CNO Financial’s stock price

has the potential to dramatically increase in the coming years. CNO generated $250 million during the first

9 months of 2012 and could be producing $400 to $500 in free cash annually over the next few years.

In 2015, management believes they can be an investment grade company producing 9% ROE paying 20% of

earnings as a dividend. If this happens, CNO could easily trade for book value which would imply a value of

$25 per share which would represent a 150% gain from today’s stock price.


Genworth Financial )

Like CNO Financial, Genworth’s main economic unit is its US life & health business. However, Genworth also

owns a mortgage insurance business in the US, Canada, and Australia as well as a US wealth management

business and an international protection insurance arm.

As you may expect, Genworth’s balance sheet was significantly impaired by losses in the US mortgage

insurance business over the past 5 years. This affected Genworth’s debt ratings and reduced the equity

price as liquidity concerns arose. Yet, in late October, the company’s board implemented a strategy which

will provide the company ample liquidity to operate over the next couple years until the mortgage insurance

business returns to profitability.

Genworth recently announced their intentions of divesting the non-core businesses of (1) international

protection and (2) wealth management. This announcement follows the January 2011 exit of the variable

annuity business and the October 2011 exit from selling supplemental Medicare insurance products.

Upon completion of these divestitures, Genworth will have two main business lines (1) U.S. life & long term

care insurance and (2) global mortgage insurance with the majority of business in the US, Canada, and

Australia. (Note: Genworth is planning to partially IPO the Australian mortgage insurance business in late

2013.)

Liquidity

Let’s assume the International Insurance segment sells for $450 million (70% of book value) and the US

Wealth Management segment sells for $300 million (70% of book value). This $750 million plus the roughly $1

billion Genworth currently has on the balance sheet would place the insurer in an enviable balance sheet

position.

WATCH: Real life remake of 'Toy Story' goes viral

If you've ever wondered what 'Toy Story' would look like in real-life, this movie is for you.

The 'Live-Action "Toy Story" Project" is the brainchild of Jonason Pauley and Jesse Perrotta, two friend's of Apache Junction, Ariz. whose dream is to get into Pixar and spent the last two years creating a full-length, shot-by-shot remake of Disney's Toy Story to do so, The East Valley Tribune reported.

“[Pixar] doesn’t let people in unless you’ve done anything,” Pauley told the Tribune. “But I’m pretty confident; there’s a group of people who made a pizza planet truck in California and they got in.”
Pauly, 19, and Perrotta, 21, met through their church when they were in high school and bonded over a common love for "Toy Story." Years later they decided to remake the movie after watching the third installment of the saga in June 2010.

After two years, turning a couple of bedroom's into Andy's and Sid's rooms, borrowing and creating toys, asking every friend they had to appear as extras and going through $1,000, the 'Toy Story' aficionados' final cut was ready to hit the YouTube screen.

The film debuted on YouTube on Jan. 12 and went viral garnering over three million views in just three days. People's reactions to the film were mainly positive. Many comments read "amazing," "spectacular" and "brilliant."

Easy ways to revive your sex life

Any relationship can benefit from a better sex life, so we spoke with sex therapist and TV personality Dr. Laura Berman about ways to do just that.

Berman told FoxNews.com that in order to have a better sex life, a couple needs physical and emotional intimacy, but it’s easy for kids and mortgages to get in the way.

“You have to recommit to the connection in your relationship, which needs as much work as your job does,” Berman said.

Many times, a relationship suffers from sexual discord, or uneven desire, and it’s usually for emotional, medical or relationship reasons.

Berman said if the reason is emotional, it can be due to stress or fatigue; if it’s medical, it may be due to hormones; and if it’s because of your relationship, that’s when you need to take a step back and look at what needs to be changed.

Men and women look at sex differently. For men, they just want a connection and to feel like they are doing a good job, Berman said. But for women, among many things, she absolutely needs a connection.

Men achieve the emotional connection through sex, but women aren’t as likely to want sex unless they feel emotionally connected first – so it’s about meeting in the middle. Sometimes men have to reach out more and women have to have more sex than they are inspired to have.

Here are some tips to recharge your sex life this year:
1. Share your fantasies. Write them down, and put them in a box. Once a month, act them out.
2. Kiss every day. Men: If you want your gal to have more desire, this will change your world, Berman said. Make a ‘date’ to literally make out – no sex involved – once a week.

3. Share your appreciation, even if it’s something your partner always does. For example, if he or she is giving the kids a bath, tell them thank you for doing it.

4. Practice gratitude. Berman said people spend so much time complaining about their relationships. Think of ways to express your gratitude, and be thankful for the life you have built with your partner. Look at the things that are working in your relationship, instead of the things that are not.

5. Schedule a date night. Schedule one night a week to be alone, without the kids or your friends. If money is an issue, tuck the kids in bed, and go out onto the front porch with a glass of wine, Berman suggested. She advised taking one or two trips per year, again without the kids, even if it's just for one night.

The Good Life is..... and Win a Holiday Worth GBP 3,000!

Holiday lovers are being offered the chance to win a holiday worth £3,000 - thanks to a new competition being hosted by McCarthy & Stone on a Facebook app. Why not take advantage of an extraordinary opportunity from the UK''s leading providers of retirement apartments to fly away on a dream destination; simply by defining what ''the good life'' means to you. This concept could be summed up by a single sentence, a name of a song, a picture, a poem or anything that sparks the imagination. No matter how simple or complex the idea, all entries are shortlisted by an independent panel of judges meaning that the lucky competition winner will be headed for the time of their lives.

For many the first thing that will spring to mind will be classic sitcom ''The Good Life'' - one of the most popular television shows of the 1970s! Tom and Barbara Goods'' quest to become self-sufficient and the corresponding horrified reactions of the Leadbetters, their conventional neighbours, delighted the nation and demonstrated divergent views on what a fulfilling life equates to for different people. For the Goods, this meant allotments and livestock and attempting to make their own clothes, for the Leadbetters, it was about dinner parties and the golf-club.

The good life is more than just the name of a TV programme however; it can mean many distinctive things to people of all ages. Everyone has their own idea of what the good life means to them. We want to celebrate that so, share with us your idea of the good life. It could be a quote, a picture, anything - you decide. Just log on to Facebook, search for McCarthy & Stone click ''Like'' and upload your entry to our specially designed Facebook app.

Once upon a time, ageing was seen as a burden to bear, but not anymore. Whether it be through retirement homes or assisted living, McCarthy & Stone offer their residents the opportunity to fill their later years with fun and freedom. As the UK''s leading retirement developer, they believe that later life can be rich, rewarding and hugely fulfilling. Their developments are designed to offer purchasers an independent, low maintenance lifestyle so they can focus on the good things in life, whether that''s seeing the family more, travelling or learning a new skill.

Notes to editors:
At McCarthy & Stone everything we do is built around a belief that later life can be rich, rewarding and fulfilling. We believe it is an opportunity to rediscover the things you love and explore new territory. Helping people make the most of it is our purpose and our passion, so on a daily basis we strive to think differently and care more about transforming later life.

Over the past 35 years, we have become Britain''s leading provider of retirement apartments, pioneering the concept of purpose-built accommodation for older people. We provide 70% of this type of accommodation, having built more than 45,000 apartments in 1,000 different schemes. We also have a range of financial and estate management products and services specifically designed to help people live later life to the full.

We offer a choice of different types of retirement developments that includes Later Living and Assisted Living. Our Later Living developments offer the independence of retaining home ownership while living in an apartment specifically designed for later life; provide more time to embrace the possibilities of later life through reduced maintenance and admin, as well as peace of mind and companionship. Assisted Living developments offer all of this, plus a helping hand through flexible care and support packages that make life that little bit easier.

McCarthy & Stone offers the widest variety of award-winning one and two bedroom apartments that are for sale in over 200 locations across the UK.

Egyptian appeals court overturns Hosni Mubarak's life sentence, orders retrial

A Cairo appeals court on Sunday overturned Hosni Mubarak's life sentence and ordered a retrial of the former Egyptian president for failing to prevent the killing of hundreds of protesters during the 2011 uprising that toppled his regime.

The ruling put the spotlight back on the highly divisive issue of justice for the former leader — and his top security officers — in a country has been more focused on the political and economic turmoil that has engulfed the country for the past two years.

Mubarak, who is currently being held in a military hospital, will not walk free with Sunday's court decision— he will remain in custody while under investigation in an unrelated case. The 84-year-old ex-president was reported last year to have been close to death, but his current state of health is unknown.
A small crowd of Mubarak loyalists in the courtroom erupted with applause and cheers after the ruling was read out. Holding portraits of the former president aloft, they broke into chants of "Long live justice." Another jubilant crowd later gathered outside the Nile-side hospital where Mubarak is being held in the Cairo district of Maadi, where they passed out candies to pedestrians and motorists.

The relatively small crowds paled in comparison to the immediate reaction to his conviction and sentencing in June, when thousands took to the streets, some in celebration and others in anger that he escaped the death penalty. Sunday's muted reaction could indicate that the fate of Egypt's ruler of nearly three decades may have in some ways been reduced to a political footnote in a country sagging under the weight of a crippling economic crisis and anxious over its future direction.

The court did not provide the reasoning for its ruling, but was expected to do so later. No date has been set for the retrial.

The ruling in favour of the appeal, however, had been widely expected. When Mubarak was convicted and handed a life sentence in June, that trial's presiding judge criticized the prosecution's case, saying it lacked concrete evidence and that nothing that it presented to the court proved that the protesters were killed by the police.

Mubarak's defence lawyers had argued that the former president did not know of the killings or realize the extent of the street protests. But an Egyptian fact-finding mission recently determined that he watched the uprising against him unfold through a live TV feed at his palace.

The mission's report could hold both political opportunities and dangers for Mubarak's successor, President Mohammed Morsi of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. A new Mubarak trial would be popular, since many Egyptians were angered he was convicted for failing to stop the killings, rather than ordering the crackdown that killed nearly 900 people.

But the report also implicates the military and security officials in the protesters' deaths. Any move to prosecute them could spark a backlash from the powerful police and others who still hold positions under Morsi's Islamist government at a time when the nation's new leader is struggling to assert his authority over a nation reeling from political upheaval.

In a retrial, the prosecution has the right to present new evidence, such as that reportedly unearthed by the fact-finding mission, which could lead the court to convict Mubarak of ordering the crackdown.

If convicted, Mubarak could face a life sentence or have it reduced. Under Egyptian law, a defendant cannot face a harsher sentence in a retrial, meaning the former leader cannot face the death penalty.
A new trial for Mubarak could further unsettle the nation at a perilous time.

Egypt is grappling with an ailing economy — the pound's value is slipping against the U.S. dollar, foreign reserves are shrinking and tourism is in a deep slump. And politically, the country is deeply divided by the bitter rivalry between its Islamist rulers and their allies and an opposition led by liberals and secularists.

Clashes between the two sides have left at least 10 people killed and hundreds wounded last month.
The judge also ordered a retrial of Mubarak's former security chief, Habib el-Adly, convicted and sentenced to life in prison on the same charges.

He also ordered the retrial of six of el-Adly's top aides who were acquitted in the same trial. Five of them were found not guilty of involvement in the killing of the protesters, while one was acquitted of "gross negligence." No date was set for their retrial either.

It also granted the prosecution's request to overturn not-guilty verdicts on Mubarak, his two sons and an associate of the former president, Hussein Salem, on corruption charges. Salem was tried in absentia and remains at large to this day.

The six top police commanders held key positions at the Interior Ministry, which was led by el-Adly and which is in charge of the security forces. Their acquittal surprised many Egyptians who are still demanding retribution for the nearly 900 protesters killed during the 18-day uprising that culminated with Mubarak's ouster on Feb 11, 2011.

The prosecutors in the Mubarak trial complained that security agencies and the nation's top intelligence organization had not co-operated with their investigation, leaving them with little incriminating evidence against the defendants. During the trial, prosecutors focused their argument on the political responsibility of Mubarak and el-Adly.

Sunday's ruling came one day after a prosecutor placed a new detention order on Mubarak over gifts worth millions of Egyptian pounds he and other regime officials allegedly received from Egypt's top newspaper, Al-Ahram, as a show of loyalty while he was in power.

The public funds prosecutor ordered Mubarak held for 15 days pending the completion of the investigation. Mubarak was moved to a Cairo military hospital last month after slipping inside a prison bathroom and injuring himself.

Mubarak's sons, one-time heir apparent Gamal and businessman Alaa, are in prison while on being tried for alleged insider trading and using their influence to buy state land at a fraction of its market price.

Style Superstar: Nina Dobrev Is A Sugared Sweetie

It's Nina Dobrev! The "Vampire Diaries" actress was a beauty in turquoise blue on the Critics' Choice Awards red carpet last night. What works about this look? Oh, y'know, just everything. The fit is perfect, the look is perfectly accessorized, and Nina's bouffant-plus-ponytail is just the right combination of glam and sophisticated. And even though the girl herself wasn't up for any awards, her Monique Lhuillier dress with keyhole details and a structured tulip skirt was a sparkling victory for Style Superstardom. Also sporting a sweet look this week: Lea Michele, who donned a pink short-sleeved dress at the People's Choice Awards. But while the People loved Lea enough to send her home with one of the coveted crystal trophies for her role on "Glee," we'd like to have sent her home before the ceremony to do something else to her hair. With a dress like this, the Heidi braids are a little too twee; a sleek, simple ponytail would have kept this look firmly in grownup territory.

How to Turn Life's Challenges Into Positive Outcomes

Life can be hard enough without creating extra problems for ourselves. Yet that's what many of us do by applying false or incomplete expectations to our major life goals. According to psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky in her new book, The Myths of Happiness, people carry around many misguided visions of what it will take to make them happy about their lives. "Immoderate aspirations are toxic to happiness," she writes.

U.S. News has reported extensively on how people can achieve more happiness in their lives in its e-book, How to Live to 100.

In Lyubomirsky's book, she applies extensive research findings toward helping people deal with 10 major life-crisis points, including problems in human relationships, money, careers, and older-age health and achievement regrets.

The myths she refers to are conceptions people often have about the things they think they need to lead happy and successful lives: strong marriages and personal relationships, wealth and professional acclaim, and long lives featuring good health and the comfort of having achieved their life goals.

In fact, she argues, there is a growing and persuasive body of solid scientific evidence that idealized versions of life goals can prevent people from being happy and living successful lives. While there are many reasons this happens, the strongest is that people simply fail to appreciate the powers of human adaptation.

When we fall in love and pursue a passionate relationship, for example, we adapt to the passion and it becomes less central to the relationship. Interactions that once were novel and exciting become routine. Hedonic adaptation is the phrase social scientists apply to the decreasing value of repeated positive events. It is a natural process, but one that still takes people by surprise, often leading them to question important relationships and life goals.

"Our tendency to get used to almost everything positive that happens to us is a formidable obstacle to our happiness," Lyubomirsky writes. "Reduced sexual passion [for example] is perceived as a symptom of something being wrong with our relationship (when it's just a symptom of the normal process of adaptation)."

Likewise, humans also are incredibly resilient in adapting to negative events and hardships. Yet people often overestimate the consequences of adverse life events, in terms of both the duration of their effect and their severity. "Because most of us aren't aware of the ordinary but remarkable dominance of this ability," she writes, ""we typically underestimate our capacity to weather almost any unhappiness."

Lyubomirsky provides research-driven advice to help people deal with specific crisis points in her book. But there are a few tips that apply to many of the problems we confront.

1. Because hedonic adaptation is so powerful—"We can never experience something for the first time twice," Lyubomirsky observes—it can be helpful to devise ways to delay the adaptation process, breaking it down into smaller pieces or steps. Seeking to acquire experiences rather than material goods is especially effective, because it's much harder to take memorable experiences for granted, and their value may actually grow over time. Variety, surprise, and unpredictability can also introduce freshness into experiences that would otherwise become commonplace.

2. It's not the destination points in your life goals that ultimately give you satisfaction and happiness, but the striving and experiences along the way. And among those experiences, it's the small ones that seem to add up to have the largest impact, not a few big ones. "The scientific evidence delivers three kernels of wisdom," she writes. "First, that short bursts of gladness, tranquility, or delight are not trivial at all; second, that it's frequency, not intensity, that counts; and third, most of us seem not to know this."

3. Writing about your life issues is a powerful and often emotional way to confront them and work through tough challenges. "Putting our emotional upheavals into words helps us make sense of them, accommodate to them, and begin to move past them," the book says.

4. It is hard, if not impossible, to live a full life without also having many regrets. "Instead of letting our regrets and might-have-beens poison our happiness," she writes, "we can choose to examine them in ways that will help us grow into more complex, wiser, and ultimately happier individuals."

5. People who succeed at making sense of their lives achieve "autobiographical coherence." Being able to view their activities as part of a coherent life story gives meaning and richness to events, making them part of a significant journey and not just "a collection of isolated, fleeting moments."

Lastly, Lyubomirsky counters the myth that people become unhappy and disappointed with their lives as they get older. The reality is just the opposite. Research concludes that "older people are actually happier and more satisfied with their lives than younger people," she writes. "They experience more positive emotions and fewer negative ones, and their emotional experience is more stable and less sensitive to the vicissitudes of daily negativity and stress."

‘Do Life’: Former Joy Fit Club member's weight-loss journey

At the age of 22, Ben Davis weighed over 360 pounds. Depressed, addicted to food and morbidly obese, he eventually decided to take control of his life and get healthier. In his new book, "Do Life," Ben tells the story of how he went from 360 pounds to 120 and how you two can transform your life.

I’m asked quite often what keeps me going. What keeps me running, what makes me want to eat healthy foods, what makes me want to run five, ten, sometimes twenty miles? Why would I want to put myself through that, for lack of a better word, agony? The simple answer is that it’s worth it. I made a decision four years ago to get a grip on my life. To take control. I called it “doing life.” But what did that mean?

I certainly didn’t always know the answer. For the vast majority of my life, I suffered from a crippling food addiction that led me into a downward spiral of depression, overeating, self-hatred, and eventually morbid obesity. It left me feeling lonely, empty, and sad, and I slowly began to isolate myself so that nobody would see what I had become. My relationships suffered. My girlfriend left me. I hid from and lied to the few friends I had left. Bust mostly, I lied to myself. It hurt too much to face the truth, and I settled into a sense of despair as my entire life disintegrated along with my health.

I was lucky. There were still people who loved me enough to shake me out of my stubborn denial and insistence that everything was “fine.” When forced to face the hard truth, I decided to try a different way of life, something new and tentative and scary. Little by little, I realized that life didn’t have to be this way, and that it certainly wasn’t meant to be. I reached out to others and gradually reconnected. I stumbled at first, kept working at it, found my stride, and then I ran with it. And I ran as far as I could.

In less than two years, I went from weighing over 350 pounds and living a depressed, lonely, and completely sedentary lifestyle to officially becoming an Ironman, and I did it with my brother and father beside me. Now I am 130 pounds lighter and happier than I’ve ever been in my life. In those two years, I took action, jumped into a new lifestyle, and as a result I broke out of the depressed cycles of thoughts and actions that had been holding me back for years.

At first, Doing Life meant going public, allowing others in, and sharing my journey with the people who loved me. I never imagined how public that journey would ultimately become. Now Doing Life means living it to the fullest — getting off the couch and out of your head, finding something that inspires you, something that makes you smile, and something that helps you share that smile with the rest of the world.

Today, I spend my time traveling around the country, running with people I’ve never met before, hearing their stories, and speaking to groups about how I made such a big change in my life. Since deciding to Do Life, I’ve gone from barely going through the motions in solitude to living a full life out in the open — a life that I never could have imagined. I never knew that a life like this was out there waiting for me all along. And it’s right there waiting for you, too.

This book is about running, sure, but it’s also about life. It’s the story of how I learned to do life when I fell in love with running. I hope it inspires you to run, whether it’s just for fun, to lose weight, or to completely change your life. The chapters represent steps in a journey —mine, and possibly yours, too — out of the darkness and into the light, from barely slogging by to pushing yourself to the limits in all aspects of life. I found that light by running, and maybe you will, too. But running is a metaphor for life itself, and the lessons in this book will broadly apply. Maybe you’re already running, and you want to run farther, or better. I’ll teach you how to do that, too. There is no mystery, no secret ingredient that will take you from where you are today to the life you most want to live. All you need is a little bit of inspiration and the belief that it’s possible. I hope that is exactly what I can give you.

I’ll start at the beginning, in my darkest moments before deciding to turn my life around, and lead you through each step of the way, from facing the truth to jumping in, taking the occasional step backward, and pushing myself to the limit. This is my story, and yours may be completely different. Some of you will relate to the highs and the lows, and others of you have never been nearly that low. Either way, I’ll do my best to help you write your own story as I tell you mine.

The Do Life movement is characterized by openness, accountability, and community. In that spirit, each chapter includes inspiring stories from my readers, as well as my answers to some of my most common reader questions. I’m also including tips, terms, and running guides for each type of race that I’ve covered, as well as a Running Glossary at the end of the book.

You now have everything that you need to take this moment, grab life, and get going. So, what are you waiting for? The rest of your life starts now. Let’s do it.

Ex-professor gets life in prison in Oklahoma child porn case

A retired college professor was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for conspiring to take nude photographs of third-grade girls and for exposing himself to the children on a computer video telephone service.

Gary Doby, 66, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, lewd molestation and 18 counts of sexual exploitation of a child under 12 and was sentenced to 18 concurrent life prison sentences by Judge John Carnavan Jr.
Doby's co-conspirator, Kimberly Crain, who was a third-grade teacher in McCloud, Oklahoma, pleaded no contest to similar charges that include allegations she hid cameras in her home to photograph her students changing clothes. She was to be sentenced on March 22.

Doby, a former professor of early childhood development at Oklahoma Baptist University who later taught at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, will not be eligible for parole until he reaches the age of 104, District Attorney Richard Smothermon said.

Smothermon expects Doby to die in prison and that the parents of the young victims wanted to ensure neither defendant was ever released.

Crain, 49, introduced her students to Doby as "Uncle G" during Skype video conversations that took place in her third-grade classroom in McCloud, a town of 4,000 near the campus of Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, where the two defendants met when Doby taught there.

The lewd molestation charge against Doby said he exposed his genitals to the girls during the Skype sessions, Smothermon said.

Parents of the victims were relieved that Doby's guilty plea and Crain's no contest plea would preclude their daughters from having to testify at a trial, he said.

The case came to light when a student told her parents, according to police.

Life Of Pi continues its success march in India

Ang Lee's Life Of Pi which released on 23rd November in 2D and 3D in English, Hindi, Tamil & Telugu across theatres is continuing its box office blitzkrieg in India and is already the flavor of the Awards season as we speak!

The highly anticipated 3D celebration of cinema, life and a rarely seen stunning showcase of India and Indian talent, opened to rave reviews not just by critics and well known personalities but also by audiences reaffirming the massive appeal of Life of Pi as it has grossed an astounding RS 81 Crores -Gross in the first 6 weeks of its run!!

 This extraordinary feat has taken Life of Pi to the highest grosser for a non-franchise film and the 2nd highest grosser so far in India in 2012 (Hollywood) beating the recently released popular franchise releases of the year .

It is also the 4th highest grosser of all time in India as of now! Life of Pi has marked India as the 2nd highest grossing market in Asia Pacific for the film (China being no.1).

Despite being in the early stages of its international release, it has already proven resilient against even the most successful of blockbuster franchises in many territories. In the pre cursor to the biggies (Academy Awards) awards season, LIFE OF PI is already shining brightly; the film has garnered 3 Golden Globe nominations already!  Best Picture, Director and Original Score.

It has also Received 9 Critics Choice nominations for: Best Picture, Director, Young Actor (Suraj), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Editing, Visual Effects, and Best Score. It has also recently received nominations in the prestigious Producer's Guild Of America Awards as well. LIFE OF PI has become a global phenomenon in the making in that it defies box office conventions and all expectations.

The film has far exceeded all expectations, overcoming perceived obstacles such the story being popularly called "unfilmable", its cast a complete unknown with its main lead Suraj Sharma a debutante, Life of Pi being Ang's first 3D film and a CGI tiger that is almost impossible to differentiate from a living creature!!

What's more, the picturesque scenes shot in India have also helped boost the tourism industry as the film has been given two National Tourism Awards by the Ministry of Tourism, recognizing the impact it has had in promoting India as a tourism destination, especially Pondicherry and Munnar (Kerala)!!

Not just the fans and critics but notable names have publicly spoken about the fantastic experience of watching the film, adding to the unprecedented success of the 3D saga. Right from 3 D genius James Cameron, to Bollywood's Biggies such as Shah Rukh Khan, Karan Johar, A R Rahman and more, illustrious names have been praising the film during and after its release.

Life Of Pi marks a significant addition to the stable of Box Office Biggies from Fox Star Studio's whose 3D success legacy includes Avatar, Titanic 3D and their last record breaking animation Ice Age 4 : Continental Drift.

AT&T Digital Life Home Security and Automation Available to Homeowners in March

Turn down the thermostat at home without leaving the office, catch live video of your pets with your smartphone, or lock the back door from the other side of town. Whether you're concerned about intruders, want to check in on your loved ones or pets, or simply want to monitor your energy use, AT&T Digital Life(SM) gives consumers control to secure and manage their homes from virtually anywhere.

AT&T* today announced plans to commercially launch AT&T Digital Life in eight markets in March. A unique, all-digital, wireless-based home security and automation service, AT&T Digital Life equips customers with control of their homes from a smartphone, tablet or PC – regardless of wireless carrier or broadband provider.

AT&T Digital Life provides new growth opportunity for AT&T. Industry observers indicate that home security has the potential to grow significantly over the next several years.

"The home security and automation market is about to expand significantly," said Roger Entner, Founder and Lead Analyst of Recon Analytics.  "As the capabilities and usability of home automation solutions are dramatically improving, installation becoming easier, the value proposition is becoming a lot more attractive to consumers.  Not only can consumers protect their home against intruders, but with these new solutions they can save energy, keep an eye on what is going on in their home even when they are away and protect against costly accidents in their home."

Through dedicated monitoring centers staffed 24/7, professionals will respond to emergencies and alert police and fire authorities, along with customers, with precise details on where the event inside the home occurred. With its state-of-the-art, user-friendly application, customers can easily customize a security and automation package based on their individual needs, and will have the ability to manage and control their services by setting up programs and alerts.

"AT&T Digital Life is a game-changing wireless centric home security and automation experience with its unique integration and an intuitive app to control every feature from your smartphone, tablet or PC," said Kevin Petersen, senior vice president, AT&T Digital Life.  "Combined with AT&T's wireless network and unparalleled distribution channels, Digital Life will offer exciting new innovation. We can't wait to get it into the hands of our customers."

Digital Life offers a simple purchasing process with several options. Customers may experience the services inside an AT&T company-owned retail store before making a purchase, order through a dedicated call center representative, visit att.com/digitallife, or schedule an appointment with an in-home sales consultant.  Digital Life also features simple installation because it is an all-wireless system, eliminating the need for hard wiring.

Film review: 'Life of Pi'

Before we get to the main review, I have to admit to two things which probably colored my viewing of "Life of Pi":

I did not read the novel, so I went into this with little more than the swooping mix of Coldplay’s “Paradise” and the promise of a life-changing experience, from the trailer.

Next, as a secular humanist, I had trouble with the “god exists, let me tell you a story that will make you believe in god” assertions that came heavy-handedly throughout the film.

Those who already subscribe to a god-centered worldview will probably find a lot of the ideas and assertions in the film comforting, but those who would engage such ideas on more than an emotional level would be disappointed.

'Let me tell you a story that will make you believe in God.' Photo from the 'Life of Pi' Facebook page

Here’s the thing about "Life of Pi" though: Lots of people are going to love it.

The people who loved the book and who have a grasp of a lot of the things that did not make the transition to the film will enjoy it. (I watched with a big fan who talked me through some of the parts which I felt were weak. I don’t want to drop any spoilers, but she said that it all works if you know the book. On a film theory level, this should not be acceptable, but considering the current climate of film adaptation, well, this is how it is. The same was said of "Hunger Games.")

Also, if the film’s inspirational tone and worldview conform with and affirm your own, then you will love "Life of Pi."

I just sort of liked it.

Photo from the 'Life of Pi' Facebook page

The greatest asset of "Life of Pi" is director Ang Lee’s commitment to delivering one overwhelmingly beautiful image after another.

Your eyes will pop with the kinds of images that the film provides. There is no shortage of rich imagery in this film, and as it progresses, we get so many beautiful shots.

Even though you might think it would run out, what with the majority of it being set as sea, it still manages to provide us with striking images.

I particularly like the play of colors, which stand out especially in the early scenes which are set in India, before the film moves out to its main section.

Photo from the 'Life of Pi' Facebook page

The story is about Pi, whose interesting background is shown in the preliminary half hour or so. His family owns a zoo, and he grows up with some interesting stories. This opening section of the film is very whimsical and fun.

Pi’s family decides to move to Canada, so they wind up on a freighter traversing the seas with their animals, trying to get to the Western Hemisphere.

A killer storm hits, sinking the freighter (don’t hate me for spoilers, it’s in the trailer) and leaving Pi with a lifeboat full of animal friends, most significantly a tiger. And so we get the struggle, the “story” behind it, which is supposed to prove to us the existence of a higher power.

Photo from the 'Life of Pi' Facebook page

The film is framed by a talk that Pi is having with an author. The author is looking for material for a novel, so this occasion is Pi’s recounting of his unbelievable adventure.

I felt that this was a weak framing device, and the author-Pi scenes became a bit intrusive, pulling us out of the story and often explaining things unnecessarily, as if we had to be led by the hand to understand things.

I feel though that the promise of a life-changing, life-shattering journey is oversold. Perhaps it’s all of the trailers and marketing. Perhaps it’s my admiration of Ang Lee’s body of work, and how I have found a good number of his films, if not life-changing, then at least paradigm-challenging. Perhaps I just expected a bit too much from the film.

Whatever it was, I walked away underwhelmed.

Photo from the 'Life of Pi' Facebook page

I think part of it might be tone. There is a lightness to the whole film, the whimsical, fantastical sense that is imbued in the whole thing.

So even though dark, heavy things happen, there is this underlying feeling of assurance, of things working out. And so even the dark reveal at the end is underplayed because of the light tone that is established.

Whatever it was, I came away feeling that the film lacked a certain gravity to it. It isn’t for lack of acting, as Suraj Sharma, who plays Pi for the bulk of the flick, does a great job, being the only human onscreen for large chunks of time. And it isn’t lack of imagery either.

Suraj Sharma (Pi) with director Ang Lee. Photo from the 'Life of Pi' Facebook page

Maybe it was the sense that there was not enough at stake, or that things were a foregone conclusion.

But then there lies the problem of worldview. The film is supposed to be inspirational. It’s a feel good movie for almost everyone. So even when it has to look at something dark, it does not plunge into and explore that darkness fully.

I am not asking that the film be extremely dark, as that isn’t its project. However, without that darkness, it’s hard to appreciate the light as much.

‘Life Goes On,’ by Hans Keilson

“Life Goes On” is both a very good first novel and a chilling reminder of the Nazis’ success at destroying Germany’s rich literary culture for a generation, if not longer. The author, Hans Keilson, wrote this lightly fictionalized account of his life about 80 years ago, when he was in his early 20s. To give just one example of how much the world has changed since then: Keilson tells us in an afterword that the impetus to start the novel was the fury he felt after he’d been turned away as a patient by the powerful Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. (A few years later, the institute would be taken over by a cousin of Hermann Goering, and most of its analysts would flee to Palestine.) The publisher, the great S. Fischer Verlag, accepted the novel for publication in December 1932. The extremely poor and extremely elated Keilson took his advance and went skiing for the first time in his life. When he came back, the Reichstag was on fire, the Nazis had begun arresting Communists, and the publisher told Keilson to change his ending, which had a Communist twist. The novel appeared, with the altered ending, in 1933. It was banned in 1934. And that is the story, Keilson explains in the afterword, of “the last debut by a Jewish writer from the old S. Fischer Verlag.”

Keilson lived to the age of 101, having survived the Nazis in hiding; published two more novels; abandoned fiction writing because, he said, he’d lost his audience; become a psychotherapist treating Jewish war orphans; and written an important treatise on trauma in children. (He died in 2011.) Though his third novel, “The Death of the Adversary,” sold well in America and was one of Time’s top 10 books of 1962 — along with fiction by Faulkner, Roth, Nabokov, Borges and Katherine Anne Porter — the German Jewish writer had been forgotten by the English-speaking world in 2007, when the translator Damion Searls found another of his novels, “Comedy in a Minor Key,” in the bargain bin of an Austrian bookstore. Searls picked the book up only because he mistook it for another one. At that point, Keilson had only just been rediscovered in Germany; Fischer issued his “Collected Works” as a boxed set in 2005. Searls translated “Comedy in a Minor Key” into English, and in 2010 The New York Times Book Review published an essay on that novel and “The Death of the Adversary” that called them “masterpieces” and Keilson “a genius.”

“Life Goes On,” also translated by Searls, is not a masterpiece, but it is certainly worth reading. Partly a work of social realism and partly a bildungsroman, it contrasts the financial and psychological decline of a clothing merchant and his wife in a small German town during the Great Depression with the artistic awakening of their watchful, worried son. The boy’s father, Herr Seldersen, already exudes a downtrodden timidity when his fat, mincing landlord comes into his store to announce that he’s expanding his stationery business and moving Seldersen to a smaller space next door. Vaudevillian as this opening is, it aptly prefigures Selder­sen’s future as a man at the mercy of ­forces too big for him to push back against. “That winter was the first one when all the poverty and misery was out in the open. Unemployment was rampant,” the boy observes. “People came by and told stories, complained about all sorts of things, and were all so discouraged.” Seldersen extends credit to his customers, but fewer and fewer pay him back. His troubles multiply: tax audits, angry letters from unpaid suppliers, ruinous loans.

Meanwhile, the son, Albrecht, goes from roaming at will with his best friend, Fritz, through their town and its pastoral surroundings, “all-powerful masters of the world,” as Albrecht thinks of it, to noticing with alarm the country’s rapid disintegration and his family’s worsening situation. Fritz, a strong, handsome boy who “could make anyone in the world laugh,” descends into a strange, reckless moodiness and abruptly leaves home. Albrecht, a good-enough but distracted student, senses his own possibilities shrink. One night at the local literary club, though, he hears a lecture on Thomas Mann’s “Tonio Kröger” and is befriended by the lecturer, who lends him the novella: “Grand, strange, wonderful thoughts came to him, and he had no idea himself how they had arisen, but for the time being astonishment and uncertainty outweighed everything else. This fateful book was decisive for Albrecht.”

 Albrecht’s literary development shadows Kröger’s in the sense that Albrecht is equally alienated from the mainstream of German life, but otherwise their lives could not be more different. The wealthy Kröger glides to fame in pre-World War I Germany, retreating into his “fastidious, exquisite, precious, refined, hypersensitive” poetic sensibility, as Mann puts it. Albrecht goes to college in Berlin, which roils with hunger and rage and violent social upheaval. He plays violin in a band to pay his way through school, then to support his parents; this is harsher labor than you’d think if what you long to do is study and write. He keeps his distance from the turmoil at first, as his literary mentor and his own cautious temperament urge him to do, but ultimately plunges into the fray and achieves political consciousness, although the exact nature of the politics he becomes conscious of is never specified.

And that lack of specificity, I have to say, makes this novel a little weird to read. Keilson tells us that he had to cut the ideological content out of the ending, but the rest of the book feels as if it’s been neutered too. For all the sharply observed details of the economic crisis and the riots in the streets and the approach of an unnamed menace, Keilson, writing in the run-up to Hitler’s ascent to power, never names a party, never speaks of Nazis or Communists, utters not one single word about Jews. We who know not only what was happening in Germany while Keilson wrote but also what happened right after his book came out (and that, of course, is nearly all of us) can’t help interpreting the Seldersens as Jewish. Their growing terror, deteriorating social position and loss of dignity make that identification hard to avoid. But Keilson refuses to say that they are.

Was Keilson drawing an allegorical veil over the events and characters of his novel so as to keep it from being pigeonholed by the ideologues of the day? Or was he being evasive? If he was, do we have the right to judge him for that? His other two novels, one or both written while he was in hiding (it’s not clear when “Comedy in a Minor Key” was begun), deal somewhat more directly with the experience of German Jews, although “The Death of the Adversary” pursued a contrarian argument about the love/hate relationship between victims and oppressors that made the novel unpopular among Jewish readers after the war. Still, whatever his attitude toward his own identity during those terrible times, he can’t be accused of having run away from it later.

In any case, “Life Goes On” is an important and heartbreaking novel, and not only because it lets us hear the power of Keilson’s young voice just before it was silenced for more than a decade. The book also lets us relive and understand, a little, the anguish and confusion from which a madman emerged as chancellor. Moreover, as grim as the material is, the prose is a pleasure. Keilson has a lovely, easy style, a gentle tone and an analytic mind. He depicts complicated human interactions — between a broke customer and a near-bankrupt merchant, a tactful schoolteacher and a loving but obtuse father — with a precocious mastery of nuance and full comprehension of what can’t be said. He was so young, and such a natural. We should have had more than just three short novels from Hans Keilson.

Pacific Life Insurance Company Announces Offer to Purchase Up to $250,000,000 Principal Amount of Outstanding Surplus Notes

Pacific Life Insurance Company (“Pacific Life”) today announced the commencement of a cash tender offer to purchase up to $250,000,000 (subject to increase, the “Tender Cap”) aggregate principal amount of Pacific Life’s 9.25% Surplus Notes due 2039 (the “Notes”), at a purchase price determined based on the yield to maturity of a U.S. Treasury reference security specified in the table below plus a spread determined in accordance with the procedures of a modified “Dutch Auction” (the “Offer”).

(1) Per $1,000 principal amount of Notes accepted for purchase.
(2) The Clearing Spread (defined below) within the Acceptable Bid Spread Range (defined below) will be used to calculate the Full Tender Offer Consideration (defined below), which includes the Early Tender Payment (defined below).

The Offer will expire at 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on January 30, 2013, unless extended or earlier terminated by Pacific Life (such date and time, as the same may be extended or earlier terminated, the “Expiration Time”). Holders must validly tender and not properly withdraw their Notes at or prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on January 15, 2013, unless extended by Pacific Life (such date and time, the “Early Tender Time”) in order to be eligible to receive the Full Tender Offer Consideration, which includes an early tender payment of $50 per $1,000 principal amount of Notes (the “Early Tender Payment”). Holders that validly tender their Notes after the Early Tender Time and at or prior to the Expiration Time will not be eligible to receive the Early Tender Payment and will only be eligible to receive the Late Tender Offer Consideration (defined below). Notes validly tendered may be withdrawn at any time on or prior to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on January 15, 2013, unless extended by Pacific Life (such date and time, as the same may be extended, the “Withdrawal Deadline”), but not thereafter. The Depositary Trust Company and any broker, dealer, commercial bank, trust company or other nominee that holds the Notes may have earlier deadlines for tendering Notes pursuant to the Offer than the Early Tender Time or the Expiration Time.

The terms and conditions of the Offer are described in the offer to purchase dated January 2, 2013 (the “Offer to Purchase”) and the related letter of transmittal (the “Letter of Transmittal” and, together with the Offer to Purchase, the “Offer Documents”).

The Offer is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain conditions, including a financing condition and a minimum tender condition, specified in the Offer to Purchase.

Under these conditions and as more fully described in the Offer to Purchase, Pacific Life expressly reserves its right, but is not obligated, to extend the Offer at any time and may amend or terminate the Offer if, before such time as any Notes have been accepted for payment pursuant to the Offer, any condition of the Offer is not satisfied or, where applicable, waived.

Holders that validly tender and do not properly withdraw their Notes at or prior to the Early Tender Time will be eligible to receive the Full Tender Offer Consideration. Holders that validly tender their Notes after the Early Tender Time and at or prior to the Expiration Time will only be eligible to receive the “Late Tender Offer Consideration,” which is equal to the Full Tender Offer Consideration minus the Early Tender Payment. In each case, Holders that validly tender Notes that are accepted for purchase by Pacific Life will receive accrued and unpaid interest from, and including, the last interest payment date for their tendered Notes to, but not including, the settlement date for such Notes, in each case rounded to the nearest cent (“Accrued Interest”).

The “Full Tender Offer Consideration” payable for the Notes will be a price per $1,000 principal amount of the Notes equal to an amount that would reflect, as of the date of purchase, a yield to the maturity date of the Notes (which is June 15, 2039) equal to the sum of (i) the yield to maturity of the U.S. Treasury reference security listed in the table above (the “UST Reference Security”) for the Notes (the “Reference Yield”), plus (ii) a spread (the “Clearing Spread”) that is not less than the minimum spread (the “Minimum Spread”) or greater than the maximum spread (the “Maximum Spread”) listed in the table above, as determined in accordance with the modified “Dutch Auction” procedures set forth below with respect to Notes validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Time. In addition, determination of the Clearing Spread is subject to the Price Cap (as defined below), pursuant to which the Full Tender Offer Consideration may not exceed $1,500 per $1,000 principal amount of Notes tendered. See Schedule A to the Offer to Purchase for the formula to be used in determining the Full Tender Offer Consideration for the Notes. Any Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Time and at or prior to the Expiration Time will be deemed to have been tendered with a Bid Spread (defined below) equal to the Clearing Spread, regardless of the Bid Spread set forth in the Letter of Transmittal or the Agent’s Message, as applicable. Acceptance of tendered Notes will be subject to rejection of tenders made at a Bid Spread below the Clearing Spread and may be subject to proration.

The Offer is being conducted as a modified “Dutch Auction” until the Early Tender Time. This means that if you elect to participate in the Offer at or prior to the Early Tender Time, you must specify the maximum spread (a “Bid Spread”) in excess of the Reference Yield that you would be willing to accept as the basis for determining the Full Tender Offer Consideration payable in exchange for each $1,000 principal amount of Notes you choose to tender in the Offer that is not less than the Minimum Spread or greater than the Maximum Spread for the Notes as set forth in the table above (the “Acceptable Bid Spread Range”). The Bid Spread that is specified for each $1,000 principal amount of Notes must be in increments of 2.5 basis points. If any Bid Spread is not submitted as a number of whole or half basis points that is in increments of 2.5 basis points, such Bid Spread will be rounded up to the nearest 2.5 basis point increment. The aggregate principal amount of Notes tendered at a particular Bid Spread must be in an authorized denomination.

Each Holder tendering Notes in the Offer at or prior to the Early Tender Time is required to specify a Bid Spread; however, Holders who tender Notes at or prior to the Early Tender Time without specifying a Bid Spread will be deemed to have specified the Maximum Spread as their Bid Spread. Tenders of Notes at or prior to the Early Tender Time at Bid Spreads outside of the Acceptable Bid Spread Range as described above will not be accepted and will not be used for purposes of calculating the Clearing Spread.

The “Clearing Spread” for the Notes will be determined by consideration of the Bid Spreads of all validly tendered Notes at or prior to the Early Tender Time, in order of highest to lowest Bid Spreads (i.e., lowest Note price to highest Note price) such that the resulting Full Tender Offer Consideration does not exceed $1,500 per $1,000 principal amount of Notes tendered (the “Price Cap”). See Schedule A to the Offer to Purchase for the formula to be used in determining the Full Tender Offer Consideration for the Notes. Pursuant to this procedure, the Clearing Spread for the Notes will be (1) in the event that the aggregate principal amount of all Notes validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Time is greater than the Tender Cap, the highest Bid Spread such that for all tenders of Notes at or prior to the Early Tender Time we will be able to purchase the maximum aggregate principal amount of Notes that does not exceed the Tender Cap and at a price that does not exceed the Price Cap, taking into account prorationing as described below, or (2) in the event that the aggregate principal amount of all Notes validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Time is less than or equal to the Tender Cap, the lowest Bid Spread with respect to any Note validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Time that does not result in Full Tender Offer Consideration that exceeds the Price Cap.

If you elect to participate in the Offer after the Early Tender Time, any Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Time and at or prior to the Expiration Time will be deemed to have been tendered with a Bid Spread equal to the Clearing Spread, regardless of the Bid Spread set forth in the Letter of Transmittal or the Agent’s Message, as applicable, and you will only be eligible to receive the Late Tender Offer Consideration and will not be eligible to receive the Early Tender Payment. Tenders of Notes after the Early Tender Time (regardless of the Bid Spread set forth in the Letter of Transmittal or the Agent’s Message, as applicable) will not be used for purposes of calculating the Clearing Spread as described above.

If the Tender Cap is reached in respect of tenders made at or prior to the Early Tender Time, Notes validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Time with a Bid Spread equal to the Clearing Spread will be subject to acceptance on a prorated basis. If the Tender Cap is not reached in respect of tenders made at or prior to the Early Tender Time, but is reached in respect of tenders made at or prior to the Expiration Time, Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Time and at or prior to the Expiration Time will be subject to acceptance on a prorated basis. If any Notes are purchased in the Offer, Notes tendered with a Bid Spread equal to or greater than the Clearing Spread at or prior to the Early Tender Time will be accepted for purchase in priority to other Notes tendered in the Offer after the Early Tender Time. Accordingly, if the Tender Cap is reached in respect of tenders made at or prior to the Early Tender Time, no Notes that are tendered after the Early Tender Time will be accepted for purchase.

Pacific Life may, but it is not obligated, to elect following the Early Tender Time and prior to the Expiration Time to accept the Notes validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Time provided that all conditions to the Offer, including the financing condition and the minimum tender condition, have been satisfied or waived by Pacific Life. Pacific Life may then settle such Notes at such time or promptly thereafter (such date of settlement, the “Early Settlement Date”). The “Final Settlement Date” is the date that Pacific Life settles all Notes accepted for purchase and not previously settled on the Early Settlement Date, if any, and Pacific Life expects such date to be one business day following the Expiration Time. Pacific Life refers to each of the Early Settlement Date and the Final Settlement Date as a “Settlement Date.”

Capitalized terms used in this press release and not defined herein have the meanings given to them in the Offer to Purchase.