Around the World for Life Hosts Houston Event Fundraiser at Baytown Airport

The Around the World volunteer team will be hosting a 45-minute ground school, aviation games, face painting and an opportunity for children to take flight with the Around the World pilots. All ages of children are welcome to attend and lunch will be provided by Chick-fil-A.

In addition, Around the World for Life will be raising money for its 2013 Around the World campaign. All funds raised from the event will go to Around the World for Life's mission to bring the joy of flight to children who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity.  With 24,906 miles around the world, supporters can donate in $10 a mile increments on the organization's website to reach founder T.R. Wright's goal of flying around the Earth.

LifeProof, a corporate partner for the 2013 Around the World campaign, will be present at the event demonstrating its LifeProof nüüd case for iPad and its uses in the aviation industry.  LifeProof designs, manufactures and markets an entirely new category of products designed to give people more freedom from environmental constraints. Based in San Diego, LifeProof offers elegant and protective cases for Smartphones and Tablet PCs that enable full functionality and interactivity under any condition encountered in daily life. The registered brand name 'LifeProof' is inspired by the protection and fully functional convenient operation of the device in water, mud, dirt, or snow. For more information, visit www.lifeproof.com.

Life Technologies Reschedules Issuance Of Third Quarter 2012 Performance Report And Associated Conference Call And Webcast to Thursday, November 1, 2012 Due To Expected Severe Weather Conditions

Life Technologies Corporation (LIFE) today announced it is postponing the issuance of its Third Quarter 2012 earnings release and webcast of a conference call with investment analysts, which was previously scheduled for Monday, October 29, 2012 at 1:30 p.m. PDT, due to the expected severe weather conditions associated with Hurricane Sandy.

The webcast of a conference call with investment analysts has been rescheduled for Thursday, November 1, 2012 at 1:30 p.m. PDT.

The webcast can be accessed through the investor relations page of the Life Technologies website at ir.lifetechnologies.com/events.cfm.  A replay of the webcast will be available on the Company's website through Thursday, November 22, 2012.

About Life Technologies
Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE) is a global biotechnology company with customers in more than 160 countries using its innovative solutions to solve some of today's most difficult scientific challenges. Quality and innovation are accessible to every lab with its reliable and easy-to-use solutions spanning the biological spectrum with more than 50,000 products for agricultural biotechnology, translational research, molecular medicine and diagnostics, stem cell-based therapies, forensics, food safety and animal health.

Its systems, reagents and consumables represent some of the most cited brands in scientific research including: Ion Torrent™, Applied Biosystems®,  Invitrogen™, GIBCO®, Ambion®, Molecular Probes®, Novex®, and TaqMan®. Life Technologies employs approximately 10,400 people and upholds its ongoing commitment to innovation with more than 4,000 patents and exclusive licenses. LIFE had sales of $3.7 billion in 2011.

Life in the shadow of Mount Etna

The Mediterranean island of Sicily used to be one of Italy's richest regions but now, as it prepares for regional elections, its credit rating is close to junk status. There are fears that Sicily could become "the Greece of Italy" and drag the rest of the country into default.

And then there's the mafia. Despite some successful efforts to break the hold of deeply entrenched mafia power, corruption is still a huge issue.

But amid the chaos one Sicilian town is thriving. Catania sits on the slopes of mount Etna. Some locals believe they are protected by Europe's biggest volcano. This is their story.

Life Spine Announces Six New Additions to Its CENTRIC MIS Technologies Portfolio

Life Spine, a medical device company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets products for the surgical treatment of spinal disorders, will be displaying six new minimally invasive products scheduled for launch in 2012 during the North American Spine Society (NASS) Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas.

“The significant growth in our CENTRIC MIS portfolio reflects Life Spine’s dedication and response to the market shift towards an increase in minimally invasive procedures,” said Michael Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer. “Our focus continues to be on simplifying all facets of MIS surgery from initial access to final implantation.”

The CENTRIC Expandable Retractor System and the LOGIC™ Delivery System, a unique pedicle screw based retractor system, will be on display along with the PLATEAU®-X Lateral Spacer System. The comprehensive MIS portfolio also includes new offerings to the AVATAR® MIS System and the AILERON® Spinous Process Fusion System.

Accenture Life Safety Solution Named New Product of the Year

The Accenture Life Safety Solution, a wireless-enabled multi-gas detection system that helps protect workers in potentially hazardous environments, developed by Accenture (ACN), Industrial Scientific, Cisco and AeroScout, has received the industrial hygiene product of the year award from Occupational Health & Safety magazine.

The Accenture Life Safety Solution integrates Wi-Fi and location-based technologies with multi-gas (hydrogen sulphide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon and oxygen) detectors. It helps companies to remotely monitor incidents and to locate workers in hazardous locations. The solution is designed for environments such as oil and gas refineries, chemical and manufacturing plants, utilities, mines and other locations where dense steel infrastructure can make wireless safety solutions difficult to implement.

“Worker safety is a key priority for a range of industries with operations in challenging working locations,” said Massimo Pagella, senior executive in Accenture Plant and Automation Solutions. “This solution can help mitigate risks by continuously monitoring the environment in the plant and automatically providing feedback on abnormalities to the control centers and to management. Accenture continues to invest in R&D to broaden the range of services and capabilities the solution offers.”

The Accenture Life Safety Solution uses multiple Wi-Fi access points to determine the location of workers. The solution, which is designed, installed and deployed specific to a location, uses a lapel-based wireless four-gas detector, as well as a panic button and a motion sensor to detect when a worker stops moving for a period of time. The solution is based on Accenture’s patent-pending design and integrates Industrial Scientific’s Ventis™ LS multi-gas detector and Gas Detection as a Service solution iNet®; Cisco’s Unified Wireless Network and Mobility Services Engine; and AeroScout’s Wi-Fi Tags and MobileView location management and user front-end technology.

Raghu Arunachalam, director of emerging technologies at Industrial Scientific, said, “The Accenture Life Safety Solution has brought to market a revolutionary approach to gas monitoring that is capable of overseeing the safety of thousands of employees working across a large plant in real time and from a central location. We are honored to have this unique, life-saving solution recognized as a New Product of the Year by Occupational Health & Safety magazine.”

The Occupational Health & Safety award program honors the outstanding product development achievements of companies that create products which are considered particularly noteworthy in their ability to improve workplace safety.

SCB Life boosts premium target to Bt37 billion

"New business was Bt11.82 billion, rising by 36 per cent, higher than the 24 per cent of the life insurance industry. Renewal premiums were Bt16.94 billion or increasing by 17 per cent. The growth of total premiums in the first nine months was more than the market, which grew by 17 per cent on average," managing director Vipon Vorasowharid said last week.

SCB Life's total premiums rose by 28 per cent to Bt28.34 billion from the same period last year.

The nine-month results were better than expected and the fourth quarter is the high season for life insurance because of the tax deduction.

The company's strong distribution channels are the key driver of premiums, especially bancassurance, which contributed first-year premiums of Bt10.53 billion, up 49 per cent on year and 17 per cent higher than expected.

First-year premiums from special marketing and agency channels were Bt660 million and Bt630 million.

Tesco Lotus' outlets have become a popular channel with 12,000 policies written within one year. Premiums from this nationwide retail channel are expected to increase to Bt300 million this year from Bt200 million last year.

The company is still focusing on policy renewals, which is an important business in the remaining months of this year.

The life insurance market this quarter is expected to continue to grow because it faced several severe challenges last year. This year customers have grown more conscious about security and risk diversification after experiencing the unexpected flood calamity last year.

"We plan to launch new attractive policies in the fourth quarter to stimulate the market and respond to customers' requirement for a tax exemption. Customers are also giving importance to savings and investment through insurance products," he added.

According to the Thai Life Assurance Association, as of August, SCB Life ranked third in the life insurance industry with market shares of 12.9 per cent in first-year premiums and 10.20 per cent in gross premiums.

Standard Life Mutual Funds announces changes to its offering

Standard Life Mutual Funds Ltd. ("SLMF") today announced changes to its fund offering. The changes relate to charge structure, trailing commission, new funds and risk rating and will be part of the updated simplified prospectus filed with Canadian securities regulators.

"Given the current context where the number of funds and options keep increasing in the market, we want to ensure Standard Life mutual funds continue being attractive investment solutions for our customers while ensuring a balanced and sustainable set of funds for SLMF," said Patrick Loranger , Manager, Retail Investment Products at Standard Life. "Our Legend Series is particularly well positioned and it's essential that it remains competitive."

Lower management fees (MF)
On or about October 31, 2012 , SLMF will reduce the management fees by 0.20% of the F-Series of the Standard Life Monthly Income Fund, the Standard Life Canadian Dividend Growth Fund, the Standard Life Global Dividend Growth Fund and the Standard Life Canadian Small Cap Fund. Consequently, the management expense ratio (MER) of these funds will decrease, all other things being equal.

SLMF will also reduce the management fees by 0.20% of the A-Series and E-Series of the Standard Life Money Market Fund, the Standard Life Canadian Bond Fund and the Standard Life International Bond Fund, as well as the A-Series, E-Series and F-Series of the Standard Life Corporate Bond Fund. The reduction will counterbalance higher operating expenses (OE) charged to these funds, and will therefore not impact the MER, all other things being equal.

From low sales charge (LSC) to front-end sales charge
A new automatic feature will be offered to dealers for funds sold on or after November 1, 2012 . As of Year 4 from the original purchase date for a low sales charge option, SLMF will automatically start paying trailing commission as if the fund had been bought under a front-end sales charge option. The new feature doesn't impact the management fees and charges paid by the investors.

New charge structure for the Legend Series
Effective on or about February 1, 2013 , SLMF will no longer pay the operating expenses of its entire suite of Legend Series funds. The change will result in an increase in the MER for 27 of the 31 funds in the Legend Series. A decrease of the management fees by 0.20% of the remaining 4 funds - Standard Life Money Market Fund, Standard Life Canadian Bond Fund, Standard Life Corporate Bond Fund and Standard Life International Bond Fund - will offset the operating expenses, leaving the MER intact, all other things being equal.

Life After Selling A Business

As an entrepreneur, you start a business with the goal of some day selling it and getting a big payoff.  You devote your entire life to making it a success, working your guts out, putting in crazy hours and making many sacrifices to grow your company.  Then one day that payoff finally comes, and you suddenly realize that your goal had been to take your business to a successful exit and you have no idea what the heck is supposed to come next.   At least this was my experience.  

Going Through the Sale of My Company:

The process of selling the company became all-consuming.  All of my time was spent in due diligence and negotiations, not to mention the endless review of legal documents needed for the closing.  Through all of that I was determined not to let my mind think past the closing itself.  I didn’t want to allow myself to get emotionally attached to having the deal close as I knew that would weaken my ability to negotiate the best terms.   Especially where I had seen other entrepreneurs who became so excited about life after the sale that the closer they came to having their deals close, the less objective they were in the negotiations.  In their eagerness they became willing to give away too much.


Signing the closing deal documents with my amazing executive team (after countless days of no sleep, which shows!)

While this strategy helped me tremendously to keep a level head throughout the acquisition, the one area it hurt me was in my emotional preparedness for life after the closing.  Instinctively I knew that the day I signed the closing papers it would no longer be my company and I knew that everything I had built for so many years was now going to belong to someone else.  I knew all of that in my head, but I don’t know if I was prepared for it in my heart.  I suppose most entrepreneurs aren’t prepared for the emotions they will experience as they sell their business, because it’s hard to comprehend exactly how it will feel until you actually go through it for the first time.   However, I will try to put into words how it felt for me in the hopes of helping the next person who will walk this same path I have.

Letting Your Baby Grow Up and Move On:

What did it feel like to sell the company?  There is a sense of excitement and accomplishment for achieving your ultimate goal as an entrepreneur.  At the same time there is a sense of sadness and loss.  The best comparison I can think of would be that feeling of sending a child off to college for the first time.  Similar to raising your children, you put your heart and your soul into preparing the company to go on without you and succeed on its own.  You just hope and pray that you have done enough to prepare the team to be okay on their own.  There is no question that it is a very unsettling feeling, but deep down you have to trust that you have done everything you can for them and know that they will grow even more once they don’t have you to rely on anymore.  Then you pray that you have left a positive legacy of leadership behind.

Dealing With Your Own Identity:

I have been the CEO of my own business for so long that once we sold, it was definitely disconcerting to realize that I had to figure out who I was now that it wasn’t my business any longer.  In the months following the sale I began to ponder what I wanted my future to be.  There was no denying that it feels different to know that you are building a business for someone else, rather than for your own team.  And let’s be honest – entrepreneurs by nature are people who have been willing to bank their entire lives on themselves.  They are willing to take risks that depend on THEM, because deep down they trust themselves and therefore they don’t see it as risky.  But entrepreneurs are not comfortable letting someone else take the reins, which is why they start and run their own companies in the first place.  As I came to recognize how I was feeling about things I decided that it was time for me to step out and once again bet on myself.  This time I wanted to bet on myself doing something I had always dreamed about.  After all, what was the point of working so hard in order to have a payout if I wasn’t going to use that freedom to pursue something that I had always dreamed about doing?

Why Not Retire?:

I woke up the day after I had left my company at 6:30am and hit the ground running in order to launch my next venture.  I had a website to build, a new office to build-out, contracts to setup, and meetings to attend.  The fact was that I didn’t know how to stand still.  Let’s face it, I am an entrepreneur.  It’s in my blood.  My Grandfather Rees was an entrepreneur through and through and his DNA clearly found its way to me.  I have come to recognize that I am who I am and there is no point in fighting it, so I may as well embrace it and move forward with accomplishing the next seemingly insurmountable goal in my life, because that is what entrepreneurs do!

Immortal Images of Native Americans

Timothy Egan‘s new book, “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), recalls the photographer who documented Native American life. Mr. Egan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The New York Times whose column appears in the Opinionator blog. He has also won the National Book Award for “The Worst Hard Time” (also published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in 2005). We asked Mr. Egan to write about Curtis for Lens.

I’m a third-generation Westerner, so the photographs of Edward S. Curtis have been as much a part of my landscape as a desert mesa or a mountain glacier. I took him for granted: those faces of Native Americans, those everyday tasks, those searing looks from the inside of tepees lit by late daylight. In his pictures, ordinary people look extraordinary. He captured the humanity of the continent’s first inhabitants.

But it was only when I started looking at his life story for my book “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher” — his slog by horse and hoof, train and auto to the attics and aeries of America, where Native Americans had been pushed to the margins — that I started to appreciate the scope of his masterpiece.

Curtis was a celebrity, the Annie Leibovitz of his day. He gave up a life as a prominent portrait photographer to start his Indian epic, and spent more than 30 years producing the 20 volumes of “The North American Indian.” It was called “the most gigantic undertaking since the making of the King James edition of the Bible” by The New York Herald.

Pate gets life sentence for murder

Despite a tearful plea from a new mother convicted of murder, a Limestone County judge on Wednesday sentenced her to serve life in prison for her crime.

During a sentencing hearing for Lisa Mechelle Pate, 43, of Arab, Circuit Judge Robert Baker listened patiently as Pate’s friends and family vouched for her character. He listened as Pate expressed sympathy to the family of the man she killed in November 2009 — 59-year-old James Miller of Athens. He listened as she and others asked for leniency from the court. In the end, Baker showed her none.

He sentenced her to life in prison. The minimum sentence possible was 20 years.

Pate was convicted in August in the fatal shooting of Miller. Both she and Miller were married. They met while working at Redstone Arsenal for the Army Corp of Engineers and they began an affair. She had told jurors during the trial she was trying to break off the relationship with Miller when an argument ensued at his home the night of the shooting. She said she feared for her life because Miller was armed and because he threatened her, saying, “If I can’t have you, no one will.”

She fired one round from her 9-milimeter handgun into the back of Miller’s head then another round into his chest while he lay on the kitchen floor of his North Jefferson Street home. He was found dead two days later.

Pleas for punishment, leniency

During Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, two witnesses delivered particularly powerful pleas to the court.

After taking a long pause to gain her composure on the stand, Miller’s daughter, Meagan, said she and her family understood relationships but they didn’t understand how one could end in murder.

“To take it upon yourself to take another life is not right,” she said. “We are taught as children that if you do wrong you have to pay the consequences.”

She told the court just how her father’s absence continues to haunt her family.

“My sister graduated without her dad there,” she said. “Both of us walked down the aisle without our dad.”

She said where her father’s “warm, safe hug and his smile” once existed there is now a void. The family member who always came to the rescue of the others is gone.

In closing, she said, “The decision made today won’t bring my dad back but it can bring some closure and the consequences we have waited for for three years.”

When Pate’s father, Gene Cooley of Arab, rose to take the stand, Pate crumbled; her face red, her body shaking and her crying audible in the courtroom.

Cooley, crying through his entire statement, begged the judge to give his daughter the least time possible, mainly because she has a 17-month old daughter, Ivy, at home who needs her, as well as a 17-year-old daughter and her husband of 22 years.

“She’s always been a good girl,” Cooley said through tears. “Things change. I’m sorry this happened and I know Lisa is. I beg the court to give the lightest sentence it can possibly give. This hurts so much. She is just like her mother — as sweet as she can be. It hurts us all. She’s got a baby girl. Lets forgive and pray to Jesus Christ that he forgives her, too.”

He was one of several witnesses that defense attorney Thomas Woodall of Albertville called to vouch for Pate. Some had know Pate for 10 to 40 years and testified that she was always a laid-back, peaceful, nonviolent, loving person who was an excellent mother. When their testimony ended, it was Pate’s turn.

With tears streaming down her face, she rose from her chair at the defense table, looked at Miller’s wife, Donna, who was seated at the prosecution’s table and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss” and “God’s peace to your family.”

Prosecutor John Gibbs of the Alabama Attorney General’s Office then reminded the court of Pate’s trial testimony.

“You heard the defendant under oath (during the trial) continually not accept responsibility,” Gibbs said, adding that the physical evidence showed “she lied to the court.”

Gibbs told Judge Baker, “This is not a minimum-sentence case; we request more than the minimum sentence.”

Baker then ordered Pate to stand so he could bestow his sentence.

“You shot an innocent man in the back of the head and shot him a second time in the chest. You locked the door, left the house, fled to Arab, hid the weapon under a railroad tie and went to work for two days until law-enforcement found you and then you signed a confession,” Baker said.

“You had a convoluted story of self-defense that the jury did not accept nor did I,” he said. “I can’t understand what happened that day and probably never will. You shot an unarmed man in the back of the head and then in the chest to make sure he died. You have not been honest with the jury and you have not been honest with me.”

With that, Baker sentenced Pate to life in the state penitentiary and ordered her to pay $17,345 to Miller’s widow, which includes funeral expenses.

Some members of both the Miller and the Pate families were left in tears.

My ‘Small Video Star’ Fights for Her Life

I had the privilege of following Malala Yousafzai, on and off, for six months in 2009, documenting some of the most critical days of her life for a two-part documentary. We filmed her final school day before the Taliban closed down her school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley; the summer when war displaced and separated her family; the day she pleaded with President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, to intervene; and the uncertain afternoon she returned to discover the fate of her home, school and her two pet chickens.

A year after my two-part documentary on her family was finished, Malala and her father, Ziauddin, had become my friends. They stayed with me in Islamabad. Malala inherited my old Apple laptop. Once, we went shopping together for English-language books and DVDs. When Malala opted for some trashy American sitcoms, I was forced to remind myself that this girl – who had never shuddered at beheaded corpses, public floggings, and death threats directed at her father — was still just a kid.

Today, she is a teenager, fighting for her life after being gunned down by the Taliban for doing what girls do all over the world: going to school.

The Malala I know transformed with age from an obedient, rather shy 11-year-old into a publicly fearless teenager consumed with taking her activism to new heights. Her father’s personal crusade to restore female education seemed contagious. He is a poet, a school owner and an unflinching educational activist. Ziauddin is truly one of most inspiring and loving people I’ve ever met, and my heart aches for him today. He adores his two sons, but he often referred to Malala as something entirely special. When he sent the boys to bed, Malala was permitted to sit with us as we talked about life and politics deep into the night.

After the film was seen, Malala became even more emboldened. She hosted foreign diplomats in Swat, held news conferences on peace and education, and as a result, won a host of peace awards. Her best work, however, was that she kept going to school.

In the documentary, and on the surface, Malala comes across as a steady, calming force, undeterred by anxiety or risk. She is mature beyond her years. She never displayed a mood swing and never complained about my laborious and redundant interviews.

But don’t be fooled by her gentle demeanor and soft voice. Malala is also fantastically stubborn and feisty — traits that I hope will enable her recovery. When we struggled to secure a dial-up connection for her laptop, her Luddite father scurried over to offer his advice. She didn’t roll an eye or bark back. Instead, she diplomatically told her father that she, not he, was the person to solve the problem — an uncommon act that defies Pakistani familial tradition. As he walked away, she offered me a smirk of confidence.

Another day, Ziauddin forgot Malala’s birthday, and the nonconfrontational daughter couldn’t hold it in. She ridiculed her father in a text message and forced him to apologize and to buy everyone a round of ice cream — which always made her really happy.

Her father was a bit traditional, and as a result, I was unable to interact with her mother. I used to chide Ziauddin about these restrictions, especially in front of Malala. Her father would laugh dismissively and joke that Malala should not be listening. Malala beamed as I pressed her father to treat his wife as an equal. Sometimes I felt like her de-facto uncle. I could tell her father the things she couldn’t.

I first met Malala in January 2009, just 10 days before the Taliban planned to close down her girls’ school, and hundreds of others in the Swat Valley. It was too dangerous to travel to Swat, so we met in a dingy guesthouse on the outskirts of Peshawar, the same city where she is today fighting for her life in a military hospital.

In 10 days, her father would lose the family business, and Malala would lose her fifth-grade education. I was there to assess the risks of reporting on this issue. With the help of a Pakistani journalist, I started interviewing Ziauddin. My anxiety rose with each of his answers. Militants controlled the checkpoints. They murdered anyone who dissented, often leaving beheaded corpses on the main square. Swat was too dangerous for a documentary.

I then solicited Malala’s opinion. Irfan Ashraf, a Pakistani journalist who was assisting my reporting and who knew the family, translated the conversation. This went on for about 10 minutes until I noticed, from her body language, that Malala understood my questions in English.

“Do you speak English?” I asked her.

“Yes, of course,” she said in perfect English. “I was just saying there is a fear in my heart that the Taliban are going to close my school.”

I was enamored by Malala’s presence ever since that sentence. But Swat was still too risky. For the first time in my career, I was in the awkward position of trying to convince a source, Ziauddin, that the story was not worth the risk. But Ziauddin fairly argued that he was already a public activist in Swat, prominent in the local press, and that if the Taliban wanted to kill him or his family, they would do so anyway. He said he was willing to die for the cause. But I never asked Malala if she was willing to die as well.

Finally, my favorite memory of Malala is the only time I was with her without her father. It’s the scene at the end of the film, when she is exploring her decrepit classroom, which the military had turned into a bunker after they had pushed the Taliban out of the valley. I asked her to give me a tour of the ruins of the school. The scene seems written or staged. But all I did was press record and this 11-year-old girl spoke eloquently from the heart.

She noticed how the soldiers drilled a lookout hole into the wall of her classroom, scribbling on the wall with a yellow highlighter, “This is Pakistan.”

Malala looked at the marking and said: “Look! This is Pakistan. Taliban destroyed us.”

In her latest e-mail to me, in all caps, she wrote, “I WANT AN ACCESS TO THE WORLD OF KNOWLEDGE.” And she signed it, “YOUR SMALL VIDEO STAR.”

I too wanted her to access the broader world, so during one of my final nights in Pakistan, I took a long midnight walk with her father and spoke to him frankly about options for Malala’s education. I was less concerned with her safety as the Pakistani military had, in large part, won the war against the Taliban. We talked about her potential to thrive on a global level, and I suggested a few steps toward securing scholarships for elite boarding schools in Pakistan, or even in the United States. Her father beamed with pride, but added: “In a few years. She isn’t ready yet.”

I don’t think he was ready to let her go. And who can blame him for that?

Ex-HPD officer sentenced to life in rape

Abraham Joseph struggled to find anything to say before a judge on Monday affirmed the verdict of two life sentences.

Braced stoicism melted from his face as he started to talk then stopped. The former Houston Police Department officer looked down, shaking his head and began to cry.

He was taken into custody without another chance to hold his 1-year-old daughter, who was often seen offering high fives to strangers outside the courtroom.

Joseph, 28, was convicted Thursday of two counts of aggravated sexual assault for raping a cantina waitress while on duty in January 2011. He'll be eligible for parole after 30 years.

The waitress, 37, testified that Joseph detained her at 3 a.m. outside the cantina where she worked, put her in his patrol car, took her to a dark park and raped her while she was handcuffed. She alleges that Joseph assaulted her on the trunk of his police cruiser.

Friends and family, who had hoped for leniency, were disappointed by the decision. Joseph told the judge he plans to appeal.

Both the prosecution and the defense say the tipping point for the jury likely was testimony from four other women who say Joseph attacked them over a four-month period in late 2010 and early 2011.

All worked at nightclubs in the southwest Houston neighborhood Joseph patrolled, and all live in the U.S. illegally, making them part of what the prosecution called "the perfect pool of victims."

Defense attorney Nicole DeBorde, who had asked the jury to consider community supervision, said she was disappointed with the decision.

"I'm not surprised with sentence given the accusations made in the punishment phase," DeBorde said.

She insisted from the beginning that Joseph's sexual encounter with his accuser was consensual.

Prosecutor Heyward Carter said the evidence gathered by HPD's sex crimes unit left Joseph with few options for defense.

"There was only one thing he could say because they were so proactive," Carter said.

Carter and fellow prosecutor Eric Bily said the city owed thanks to the victim who had the courage to come forward and move ahead with a trial that had her on the stand for three days.

"Without her, who would know the extent of the damage to this city?" Carter said.

Healthy living promoted by province

The provincial government is trying to get more New Brunswickers to live a healthy lifestyle.

Statistics Canada reports 33 per cent of New Brunswick's population is considered obese — one of highest rates in the country — and the Minister of Wellness, Culture and Sport Trevor Holder said a change in lifestyle is long overdue.

"Over the course of a generation or two we got to this stage and if we're ever going to get our health-care costs under control we need to make the investments now so that in a generation we've made that shift," said Holder.

Activities are being held across the province to mark Wellness Week, part of a larger program Holder launched last year called Join the Wellness Movement. It encourages schools, communities and individuals to be more active.

To date, 92,000 have signed up and Holder would like to see that number double this year.
"You know, we've come a long way in certain things in our province," said Holder.

"We have to make sure that people understand that it's just as important to eat well. It's just as important to make sure that you take care of your mental fitness, as well as your physical fitness."
Stephanie MacDonald brought her children to a Wellness Week event at Fredericton's Kimble Park.

"I feel that it's important for them to get out and see the community getting involved and encouraging the community and groups to be living healthier and living a healthy and active lifestyle," said MacDonald.
"I myself, I try as much as possible to live a healthy and active lifestyle and I'm trying to teach that to my kids."

The community with the most people who commit to living well and leading a healthier life by the end of February will win an $8,000 grant from the province for other health initiatives.