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The community charity event, Pretty in Pink—Town Square, raised more than $103,000 to benefit local cancer patients through the Methodist Sugar Land Hospital (MSLH) Cancer fund.
Presenting sponsors, Breast Surgeons – Dr. Sandra Templeton & Dr. Kelly Dempsey joined a wide range of other sponsors and donors to make Pretty in Pink a huge success.
"I am honored to be a part of this important event," said Dr. Templeton, Breast Surgeon. "It was a great way to give back to the community and help bring awareness to the difficulties that so many patients face as they battle cancer. I especially like the fact that all money donated will stay at our hospital and relieve some of my patients' financial burdens."
At the event, keynote speaker Gail Parker said, "The fact that my hospital, my doctors and my community put on this event means the world to me. It is awe-inspiring to see our community come out to support such a great cause."
"As a breast surgeon I see the financial toll a cancer diagnosis can take on my patients. Raising money for the MSLH cancer fund gives me the opportunity to help my patients on a different level." says Dr. Kelly Dempsey, Breast Surgeon. " It was amazing to see the community come out and support the event. It was a great turn out, which helped us raise more money for the cancer fund."
"We wanted to create a fund where our patients could directly benefit from our efforts. Cancer patients often incur extra costs related to their condition, and in many cases, they can't work for extended periods of time," said Leena Taneja, sponsorship chair and director of physician relations at Methodist Sugar Land Hospital. "While the fund cannot pay Methodist directly for medical bills, it can help pay for other non-hospital related costs such as medical equipment, medications, dentistry, car payments, house payments, wigs etc. Our hope is to make the fight against cancer a bit less financially stressful for our patients."
"Pretty in Pink was a great example of how we can come together as a community to help others in need," said Taneja. "We look forward to seeing the funds raised help those fighting cancer in our community."
Organizers send a heartfelt thank you to our volunteers, presenting sponsors, Dr. Dempsey and Dr. Templeton, along with all of the Pretty in Pink sponsors
To see photos from Pretty in Pink, visit our Facebook page, Facebook.com/MethodistSugarLand.
You too can help support; donate now, even if it is something small. To donate, visit our website at MethodistSugarLand.com and click on the "DONATE NOW" button.
For assistance or more information regarding the funds available, call or email Frances Goerlich at 281-274-7930 or email@example.com.


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Tomorrow Is Not Just Another Day
Tomorrow is not just another day.
For it is the beginning of improvement and the end of complacency.
Tomorrow is another opportunity to be a better person.
Tomorrow is another opportunity to learn and teach.
We should take advantage of every day.
We should live life one day at a time.
We should be the best that we can be every day.
We should not take for granted what can be accomplished in a day.
I will start with today. And hope for tomorrow. 🙂
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subset: commoncrawl


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Grow Your Online Marketing Programme with Audience Industries
Let's get serious about your online marketing programme
Do you want to make your business work? Of course you do. So get serious about your success and let's talk about what it's really going to take for your online marketing programme to get you the numbers you want from your website.
Audience Industries is coming to New Zealand for a second year in a row and these two international experts from the US, Dan Morris and Rachel Martin, want to sit down with you and show you what you need to know to operate your business online and make it successful.
A sneak peek of what you'll take away from the courses: Escape Velocity
Do you know how much you make per visitor? Per pageview? How much should you really be spending on your online marketing efforts? You'll get the tools you need to find out and take action to make your online business pump out the numbers you want to see. Set your goals and learn from Dan and Rachel just how to achieve them with Escape Velocity.
Sound like you? This is just one of four courses in the curriculum for the Audience Industries NZ tour. You want to grow your online marketing programme? This is it. Sign up for Escape Velocity in Auckland for April 29th and learn how to tighten up your goals and really reach them.
What else can you look forward to in the 2016 Audience Industries NZ tour?
Auckland, April 29th – Escape Velocity Curriculum
Auckland, May 1st – Sequoia Curriculum
Dunedin, May 3rd half day – Sequoia Curriculum
Dunedin, May 4th half day – Circles Curriculum
Wellington, May 5th – Sequoia Curriculum
Wellington, May 6th – Circles Curriculum
Auckland, May 9th – Circles Curriculum
Auckland, May 10th – Clusters Curriculum
Click through to read about each course in depth including the curriculum.
If you're ready for Escape Velocity, book now and ready yourself for an event that will take you straight to the heart of the 5 key metrics you need to know as a business to operate successfully online.


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Here are a few of the highlights of the new deals at Target this week. Stop by Thrifty and Thriving to see a full list, including the complete list of returning/on-going and clearance deals.
Johnson & Johnson Red Cross First Aid Kit on sale $.97 (travel section)
Use $1/1 coupon from 11/6 SS insert
FREE after coupon
Hungry Jack Pancake Mix (7 oz pouch) on sale $.99
Use $1/1 Target coupon
FREE after coupon
Aquafresh Training Toothbrush on sale $1.99
Use $1.50/1 coupon
$.49 after coupon
Betty Crocker Potatoes on sale $.89
Buy 2
Use $.50/2 coupon from 10/2 GM insert
$.64 each after coupon when you buy 2
Crisco Cooking Spray on sale $1.99
Buy 2
Use $1/2 coupon from 11/6 RP insert
Use $1/2 Target coupon
$.99 each after coupon when you buy 2
Market Pantry Chunk or Shredded Cheese (8 0z) on sale $2.19
Buy 2
Use $1/2 Target coupon
$1.69 each after coupon when you buy 2
Gift Card Promotion: Buy 3 select Cover Girl, Crest or Olay items and get a $5 Target gift card
****Deal Scenario****
Buy 3 Cover Girl eye shadow @ $2.99 each ($8.97)
Use $2.50/2 coupon from 10/30 P&G insert
Use $1/1 coupon from 10/30 P&G insert
Use $1/2 Target coupon from 10/30 RP insert
Use $1/1 Target coupon from beauty bag (came in the mail)
Pay $3.47, Get $5 Target Gift Card
FREE + $1.53 moneymaker after coupons & gift card when you buy 3
New to couponing? Check out the Ultimate Guide to Couponing here.
This post may contain affiliate links. See the disclosure policy for more information.


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StratiFlex™ is made from high performance materials that will withstand the high requirements throughout the product life time.
The polymer film is made from a high performance polymer that is extremely stabile and highly durable. The material has been selected in collaboration with The Danish Technological Institute (DTI) that is a a self-owned and not-for-profit institution that develop, apply and disseminate research- and technologically-based knowledge for the Danish and International business sectors. You can read more about DTI by clicking here.
The mounting system will similarly be high performance materials, including stainless steel (AISI 316).


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The Galveston County Daily News is reporting a Houston man disappeared amid rip currents at Galveston Monday night:
Lifeguards searched Monday night for a man who disappeared in a rip current while swimming in the rough surf with a female friend.
Authorities didn't immediately release the name of the man, a Houston resident, who was reported missing about 7 p.m. from the 29th Street rock pier in Galveston.
The man likely was pulled toward the rocks by a strong rip current, Galveston Island Beach Patrol Chief Peter Davis said.


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2825 Commercial St. SE
Salem, Oregon 97302
(Next to Panera Bread)
Monday 10am–6pm
Closed Tuesday & Wednesday
Thursday–Saturday 10am–6pm
Sunday 11am–5pm
Your Sleep Matters.
Here at Parklane Mattresses in Salem, we care about the quality of your sleep. Our mattresses, handcrafted in Tualatin, Oregon, boast the highest quality materials in the industry, including memory foam, eco-friendly foams, Talalay latex, Marshall coils, and offset coils. Even better, with us, mattress shopping is easy! Come in and use our proprietary mattress finder, which sorts through all of our products to determine which mattress best meets your individual needs. In fact, we take finding the right mattress for you so seriously, we offer a 90-Night Comfort Guarantee to ensure we get it right.


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St. Luke Community Clinic (SLCC) offers medical care for acute, minor illnesses and chronic medical problems. Appropriate referrals are made to other providers in the community for patients needing specialty care, including laboratory work and diagnostic tests. Although care provided at the clinic is provided at a nominal fee, any care offered outside the clinic, such as through a specialist, may come with a significantly higher cost. Patients are responsible for asking all specialists about their responsibility for payment. The clinic does not pay any medical or hospital costs for patients.
The clinic has limited appointments available. Two walk-in clinics are available to patients. Tuesday walk-in clinic, hours 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., is open to patients already registered with the clinic who are sick or need medical follow-up. First-time patients must come to our Thursday walk-in clinic at 5:00 p.m, at which time they will be screened for eligibility. All new patients must go through Thursday clinic to be registered for services. Depending on patient load, established patients who are ill may also served.
Registered clinic patients may obtain some of their medications from the clinic (subject to a small administrative fee) through the Patient Assistance Program (sponsored by drug manufacturers and offering certain medications at no cost to eligible patients). Alternatively, patients may be given prescriptions for generic medications available at low cost at select local pharmacies.
Introduced in late 2015, St. Luke Clinic's dental services are available to existing patients whose eligibility is current and in good standing and only by referral from our medical staff. The clinic has very limited capacity to address dental problems facing many of its patients and therefore treats patients based on most critical medical need. Dental services are limited primarily to extractions and acquisition of dentures.
St. Luke Community clinic offers services to those patients who meet the eligibility guidelines and are within the scope of the clinic's care. No individual will be discriminated against because of his or her race, ethnic group, religion, gender or sexual preference. At the discretion of St. Luke Clinic, patients who are delinquent in providing eligibility documentation may be dismissed until all documents have been received in good order.
For more details call the clinic at: (540) 636-4325


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I don't post a ton of explicit sex on here, but couldn't resist this beautiful blowjob shot – two all-natural & petite Russian girls slide their wet lips & mouths over a hard cock.
Courtesy of X-Art, purveyors of extremely high-quality "art porn" (and incidentally also the creators of the excellent FEMJOY).
Not satisfied with just the blowjob, the lovely young ladies of this photoshoot also have a make-out session and proceed to fuck the lucky guy involved – here we get a cowgirl-style fuck & facesitting combo. Not bad at all…


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16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas
Here, finally photographed and bloggable, is my figure painting from last Tuesday. I absolutely love the busy-ness of Summer - I feel like I could go out plein air painting every day and never get tired of it. I did spend some quality studio-still life time last night (with coffee), though, and that felt damn good too.
Let's see if I'm still this perky when the temperature's hovering around 100° later today!


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A top-to-bottom retrofit transforms a 16th-century Czech townhouse into a chic getaway.
By Joann Plockova |
December 3, 2017
Tags: Architecture
For a hotel in Madrid, designer and artist Jaime Hayon conducts a whimsical journey through Spain's past and present.
October 13, 2017
Tags: Hospitality
A word from our sponsors
A word from our sponsors
Santa Clara 1728 offers an intimate yet refined experience in the heart of Europe's hippest city. Nestled within a labyrinth of narrow streets, small squares and gracefully aged buildings in…
By Rafael Gomez-Moriana |
August 7, 2017
Tags: Hospitality
Designed by Patricia Urquiola, Room Mate Giulia is a vibrant Milan hotel filled with colour and curiosities.
By Amy Verner |
April 24, 2017
Tags: Hospitality
A major renovation of the Watergate Hotel has brought the legendary Washington address back to its former glory.
By Catherine Osborne |
January 2, 2017
Tags: Hospitality
In central Amsterdam, the Zoku hotel is a home-office hybrid where rooms feel like trendy lofts with space to live, work and play.
By Jeanne Tan |
November 12, 2016
Tags: Hospitality
A word from our sponsors
A word from our sponsors
Designed by FAT (Future Architecture Thinking), the Sobreiras – Alentejo Country Hotel in southwestern Portugal is a peaceful, pared-back oasis.
By Rupert Eden |
October 17, 2016
Tags: Architecture, Hospitality
Overflowing with local culture, the renovated Hotel Carlota is a hidden gem just steps from the Mexican capital's best attractions.
By Jeremy Freed |
July 6, 2016
Tags: Hospitality
The Kameha Grand Zurich stands apart from traditionally sterile executive lodging, thanks to a whimsical treatment by the Dutch star.
By Bert Archer |
June 2, 2016
Tags: Hospitality
A former workers' rest house overlooking the Mediterranean finds new life as a retreat saturated with culture.
By Jessica Vrazilek |
April 28, 2016
Tags: Art, Commercial, Hospitality
A word from our sponsors.


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"It is by no means a health food book but as the recipes were mostly designed while working at yoga retreats, they are for people who want to balance out their diet. Lighter options, gluten free and vegan recipes sit happily beside naughty delights such as Parmigiana di Melanzane."
Beth Al-Rikabi, author
"More than any other, this is a book that will give you the inspiration to actually go into the kitchen and make something. It will encourage you every step of the way to cook together with Beth. At some point, you might even hear her humming in the background…."
Foreword from Rachel Bonkink founder of Revealing Vajra Yoga
The book has been produced with photography and design by Matt Inwood, a brilliant and well-respected chap in the publishing industry.


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Ever felt like running away? When all the deadlines you thought were far away, now are due? The truth is you can only run from things for a certain period of time until they eventually catch up with you. Most often we run from things in our minds trying to convince ourselves that the deadline will not matter and we can just carry on as usual. Running away from these things solves absolutely nothing. It is far better to face them head on, than to exhaust yourself in trying to outpace them. Negotiate where you can and meet others when you have to. By taking this approach it will lessen the stress you will be under when you are trying to run.
Give more service than is required and it will be returned to you tenfold!
Posted on 09/01/2013 at 12:00 AM


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Accept Paypal(Credit Card). Up To 70% Off. 100% Authentic. BCBG Clothing, Dresses Outlet, Beach Bunny, Swimwear, Bikinis, Push-up, Triangle, Bralette, Halter Tops, Free Shipping Worldwide. Free Returns.
Product 2/23
This shoulder bag is the perfect size for your day-to-day essentials. Crafted from genuine leather and lined in smooth rayon, this sleek design has an adjustable shoulder strap and interior pocket for added storage.


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Please excuse me if I write rubbish today. The school children didn't think it enough to share the latest sick bug with me, they kindly gave me a cold as well, bless their hearts. The Boss Lady was very understanding, ordering me off work until Monday and, no doubt, adding me to the ever-lengthening list of names under a sad face on the office notice-board, which warns staff of who has the latest lurgy. The icky bit over, I'm now just getting through boxes of tissues and pathetically trailing after everyone in the house, because I'm bored. My head's too foggy to study, although I may have a crack at the creative writing later.
I have to do life writing, so it'll really just be like an extra long blog entry. I was going to write about the month I spent in hospital a few years ago, after my appendix decided to perforate in a spectacular fashion. I only have 1500 words, so will do snapshots of times I remember with affection, such as when I had a reaction to morphine and thought the curtains around my bed had come to life. Or when I saw an air bubble travelling slowly down the tube of my drip and thought I was going to die, but didn't want to bother the nurses. Did you know that coloured photos taken of your insides when they are full of poison are incredibly beautiful and look like something from space? I got shown lots of pictures by doctors who were amazed that I was interested. I wish I'd asked to keep one (a picture that is, not a doctor. Although...). I could have framed it. 'Is that a supernova?' someone would have asked. 'No, that's just me,' I would have replied, modestly.
Do I need to do my creative writing? I could just copy and paste a couple of blog entries. Although someone did actually ask if they could do that, and were told they'd be plagiarising themselves. You have to be careful with that - you never know when you might accidentally sue yourself for writing the same thing twice.
I have been good, and registered for my next Open University course. I decided I would go for the English Language one, and ignore all the reviews which said, 'Avoid like the plague,' or, 'I hated this course - the worst ever.' I think it sounds interesting. Let's just hope I feel the same way when the course actually starts.


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Eagle Pharmaceuticals
View prescribed Eagle Pharmaceuticals products (and get free delivery off your first delivery)
Eagle Pharmaceuticals range of natural medicines are available via the Hygiology Shop, and our high quality service ensures your products ship quickly to your door. Eagle is a 'practitioner only' natural medicine range, providing products with nutritional, herbal and homoeopathic ingredients aimed at healthcare practitioners to prescribe to patients.
With a long history in healthcare, Eagle is rightly regarded as a pioneer in the Australian 'practitioner' natural health sector. Eagle has created a range of advanced and effective naturopathic products. Eagle's synergistic biochemical formulations deliver effective optimal health outcomes that are trusted by both practitioners and patients.
Eagle Pharmaceutical products are only available via our Online Health Questionnaire. It usually takes 3 minutes to complete but may take longer depending on your current health situation. Once completed you will have access to the entire Eagle Pharmaceutical range of alternative natural medicines. Please note that all herbal remedies and vitamin supplements require approval by Hygiology's in-house naturopath.
You can buy Eagle Pharmaceuticals online via Hygiology. For more information on Eagle Pharmaceutical, please visit their website.


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Click here for:-Free email updates-Free sample Reports (International and UK)
Please login or register to see this full article.
A Supreme Court judgement of 29 July relating to information about South Lanarkshire Council's staff pay structure deals with the relationship between the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Data Protection Act. The court ruled that the...
Privacy Laws & Business is now giving you an opportunity to address this group by:1. placing advertisements on the home page or other pages of PL&B's website, and/or2. running an advertisement in our United Kingdom and/or International (rest of the world) e-news service several times a month.Click here for further information
2nd Floor, Monument House 215 Marsh RoadPinnerMiddx HA5 5NEUnited KingdomT: +44 (0)20 8868 9200E: email@example.com


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Love Will Keep Us Together
|"Love Will Keep Us Together"
|Single by Captain & Tennille
|from the album Love Will Keep Us Together
|"Gentle Stranger"
|April 1975
|7" single
|Neil Sedaka, Howard Greenfield
|Daryl Dragon
|Captain & Tennille singles chronology
"Love Will Keep Us Together"
Captain & Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together" from Love Will Keep Us Together
|Problems playing this file? See media help.
"Love Will Keep Us Together" is a song written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield. It was first recorded by Sedaka himself in 1973 and was released as a single in France. American pop duo Captain & Tennille covered the song in 1975, with instrumental backing by L.A. session musicians from the Wrecking Crew and had a worldwide hit with their version.[1]
Neil Sedaka version
"Love Will Keep Us Together" first appeared on Neil Sedaka's 1973 studio album The Tra-La Days Are Over which did not have a US release. His version of the song made its US album debut on the 1974 compilation album Sedaka's Back. The song was released as a single in France, on the Polydor label. In West Germany, Sedaka's original song was also included as the B-side of his 1976 hit, "Love in the Shadows."
In 2009, Neil Sedaka rerecorded a spoof of his song, renaming it "Lunch Will Keep Us Together" for his first children's CD Waking Up Is Hard To Do.[2]
Mac and Katie Kissoon version
"Love Will Keep Us Together" had its first single release via a UK recording by the brother and sister vocal duo Mac and Katie Kissoon on September 28, 1973, but it failed to chart. This version also failed to chart in its US release in February 1974; however, it did become the first hit version of "Love Will Keep Us Together" by virtue of charting in the Netherlands in the autumn of 1973, peaking at number 12 that December.
Captain & Tennille version
"Love Will Keep Us Together" was the title cut and lead single of Captain & Tennille's debut album, although "Captain" Daryl Dragon originally hoped that honor would go to the duo's rendition of "I Write the Songs". The single rose to number 1 on both the Billboard Easy Listening chart[3] and the Billboard pop chart, staying atop the latter for four weeks starting June 21, 1975. It also hit the top of the 1975 year-end chart. In the US it was the best-selling single of 1975.[4] "Love Will Keep Us Together" became a gold record and also won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in February 1976.
Dragon and Tennille acknowledged Sedaka's authorship — as well as his mid-1970s comeback — by working the phrase "Sedaka is back" into the song's fadeout, where the applause from the studio musicians can be heard. Their version would earn Sedaka and Greenfield a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year. Twenty years later in 1995, the duo would re-record the song for their Twenty Years of Romance CD.
Por Amor Viviremos
While "Love Will Keep Us Together" was topping the charts in the summer of 1975, Captain & Tennille released a Spanish version of the song, "Por Amor Viviremos". "Por Amor Viviremos" rose to number 49 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, giving Captain & Tennille a rare feat of the identical song, in different languages and released as separate singles (rather than the A-side and B-side of one single), appearing simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100. Chicago radio station WLS AM 890 used the two versions to create a Spanglish version of the song for their own broadcasting use.
"Por Amor Viviremos" would later appear on their May 1976 album Por Amor Viviremos, a Spanish track-for-track rerecording of their album Love Will Keep Us Together. It also appears on the 2002 Hip-O Records compilation album Ultimate Collection: The Complete Hits.
- Daryl Dragon – keyboards, bass, arrangements
- Toni Tennille – vocals, background vocals
- Hal Blaine – drums, percussion
- Jane Tennille, Louisa Tennille, Melissa Tennille – background vocals
Chart performance
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Other versions
- Andy Williams released a version in 1975 on his album, The Other Side of Me.
- Ray Conniff and his singers released "Love will Keep Us Together/How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)" medley for the 1975 Ray Conniff album Love Will Keep Us Together
- In 1976, The Tubes covered "Love Will Keep Us Together" with a live show track on the album T.R.A.S.H. (Tubes Rarities and Smash Hits).
- Wilson Pickett recorded "Love Will Keep Us Together" for his 1976 studio album release Chocolate Mountain from which it was issued as a single. It reached number 69 on the Billboard R&B chart.
- In the 1979 Mae West movie Sextette, West and Timothy Dalton cover the tune in a Disco style.
- In 1980, Ian Curtis of the band Joy Division wrote the song "Love Will Tear Us Apart" in response, he killed himself weeks after shooting the video. He died on May 18, 1980, the day before their scheduled North American tour.
- In 1983, The Circle Jerks covered "Love Will Keep Us Together" as one of the six cover versions on Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45), which appears on their third album with the same title.
- In 1999, French singer Sheila, who is best known internationally as Sheila B. Devotion ('Spacer' 1979), covered the song for her album Dense. The song was released as a CD and 12 inch single with remixes in the Summer of 2000 (EMI France).
- In 2000, Nickelback performed an impromptu cover on Andrew Denton's Musical Challenge on Australia's Triple M Sydney radio station. Nickelback later added it as a bonus track on some versions of their 2003 album The Long Road.
- In 2007, the song was covered by Lazlo Bane for their 1970s-covers album Guilty Pleasures.
- In 2010, Sarah Geronimo covered the song for her comedy-drama film Hating Kapatid
- ↑ Hartman, Kent (2012). The Wrecking Crew. St. Martin's Griffin. pp. 261–263. ISBN 978-1-250-03046-7.
- ↑ "Music: Waking Up Is Hard to Do (CD) by Neil Sedaka". Tower.com.
- ↑ Whitburn, Joel (2002). Top Adult Contemporary: 1961-2001. Record Research. p. 45.
- ↑ Hyatt, Wesley. The Billboard Book of Number One Adult Contemporary Hits, Billboard Books, 1999, p. 166.
- ↑ Whitburn, Joel. Top Pop Singles 1955-2002.
- ↑ "Top Selling Singles of 1975". THE OFFICIAL NZ MUSIC CHART.
- ↑ "Top 100 Hits of 1975/Top 100 Songs of 1975". musicoutfitters.com.
External links
|Preceded by
"Wonderful Baby" by Don McLean
|Billboard Easy Listening number-one single
June 7, 1975 (one week)
| Succeeded by
"Wildfire" by Michael Murphey
|Preceded by
"Sister Golden Hair" by America
|Billboard Hot 100 number-one single
June 21, 1975 - July 12, 1975 (four weeks)
| Succeeded by
"Listen to What the Man Said" by Paul McCartney and Wings


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About this book
A decision procedure is an algorithm that, given a decision problem, terminates with a correct yes/no answer. Here, the authors focus on theories that are expressive enough to model real problems, but are still decidable. Specifically, the book concentrates on decision procedures for first-order theories that are commonly used in automated verification and reasoning, theorem-proving, compiler optimization and operations research. The techniques described in the book draw from fields such as graph theory and logic, and are routinely used in industry.
The authors introduce the basic terminology of satisfiability modulo theories and then, in separate chapters, study decision procedures for each of the following theories: propositional logic; equalities and uninterpreted functions; linear arithmetic; bit vectors; arrays; pointer logic; and quantified formulas. They also study the problem of deciding combined theories and dedicate a chapter to modern techniques based on an interplay between a SAT solver and a decision procedure for the investigated theory.
This textbook has been used to teach undergraduate and graduate courses at ETH Zurich, at the Technion, Haifa, and at the University of Oxford. Each chapter includes a detailed bibliography and exercises. Lecturers' slides and a C++ library for rapid prototyping of decision procedures are available from the authors' website.
Bibliographic information
- DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74105-3
- Copyright Information Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008
- Publisher Name Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
- eBook Packages Computer Science
- Print ISBN 978-3-540-74104-6
- Online ISBN 978-3-540-74105-3
- Series Print ISSN 1862-4499
- Buy this book on publisher's site


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[layerslider id="4″]
Recent Bankruptcy Successes
The Law Offices of Michael H. Raichelson's Winning Bankruptcy Outcomes
Chapter 11 Plan Confirmed Reducing Principal and Interest
Los Angeles Bankruptcy Attorney Michael H. Raichelson obtained confirmation of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy involving several income producing properties. The debtors in this Chapter 11 bankruptcy hired Law Offices of Michael H. Raichelson, a bankruptcy firm near Los Angeles, to replace their then attorney because he failed to provide them with adequate representation for almost a year.
During the bankruptcy process, Michael H. Raichelson obtained agreements from lenders and/or court orders reducing the interest rates on at least six loans secured by real property to between five percent and five and one-half percent. Also, he obtained reductions (i.e., crammed down) in the principal balances on several real estate loans of one-half to one-third their original loan balances.
Chapter 11 Plan Confirmed Reducing I.R.S. Debt
After unsuccessfully attempting to negotiate with the I.R.S. outside of bankruptcy, a used car dealer turned to the Law Offices of Michael H. Raichelson in that he felt he had been backed into a corner. After filing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Michael H. Raichelson was able to secure an agreement with the I.R.S. reducing the principal, interest and penalties owed to the I.R.S. from over $900,000 to $150,000 spread out over seven years.
Chapter 13 Plan Confirmed Stripping Off Second Mortgage
With their house underwater and months behind on their first and second mortgage, a couple in their thirties with two children turned to the Law Offices of Michael H. Raichelson for a fresh start. After filing their Chapter 13 Plan, the Law Offices of Michael H. Raichelson was able to confirm a Chapter 13 Plan repaying the amounts they were behind over 60 months and to obtain an order stripping off their second mortgage upon completion of their Plan.
Motion to Dismiss Adversary Complaint Granted
A respected businessman had been wrongfully sued by in bankruptcy court for allegedly receiving a preference. The Plaintiff refused to dismiss the adversary complaint voluntarily, forcing the Law Offices of Michael H. Raichelson to file a Motion to Dismiss. The Motion to Dismiss was granted and the clients saved thousands of dollars in that they did not have to fight the lawsuit in bankruptcy court.
Motion to Dismiss Involuntary Chapter 7 Petition Granted
Frustrated in state court by the defense that the Law Offices of Michael H. Raichelson put up in response to a business dispute, the Plaintiff wrongfully turned to bankruptcy court and filed an Involuntary Chapter 7 Petition against the client. The Law Offices of Michael H. Raichelson filed a Motion to Dismiss, which was summarily granted.


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Taglit visiting Synel offices
Monday, December 29, 2014 the known Jewish youth group from Colombia, on behalf of the project "Taglit", visited Synel offices.
Taglit project let young Jews visiting Israel on an educational tour, known and important sites in the history of the Jewish people and the state and meet with Israeli local young people. Also the young "Taglit" visitors visited the offices and Israeli companies to feel the dynamics of Israeli industry, with a focus on high-tech companies, for example Synel Mll Payway Ltd.
Synel chosen by them from the list of Israeli companies that working in Israel to be one of the precentor of the domestic industry.
The tour for 30 young people from Taglit held in various departments of Synel company branch in Yokneam


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Restaurant operators not only want to operate socially responsible businesses, but they want to save money while doing it. A growing number are cutting expenses by lowering gas, water and other costs at their stores through environmentally efficient practices. Following are some of the green ideas recently employed at various operations around the country:
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Burnt tells the story of Simon, who is consistently bullied
by Richard, one of his schoolmates. Set after the situation has come to a
crisis point, the play explores the feelings of three of Simon's
friends – could they have prevented it? – with flashbacks to incidents
between Simon and Richard, and monologues from Simon about his longing
to fit in.
By putting themselves in Simon's place, students learn to have
empathy for the victims of bullying, to understand that "it's okay to be
different" and to create a strong network to support one another.
This student book contains the complete playscript of Burnt,
which was first performed by the Central Queensland University
Theatre-in-Education Company at Yeppoon State High School on 21 July
2000. The format allows for easy reading and performance by student
The companion volume, Burnt: An Australian Anti-Bullying Play – Research, Workshop Activities & Teacher's Notes,
gives supporting contextual information for teachers who hope to use
the play with their students and classes. It includes: background
information about the play; detailed information from current research
on bullying; suggested strategies for managing actual bullying
incidents; and suggested topics for workshops and discussion, complete
with advisory notes.
Burnt is an ideal and creative way to introduce the subtleties of bullying education and the issues it raises with your students.


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'Tis the season for gift giving… and returning. I mean, let's be honest – did you really keep that dated hat and sweater you got last year? Nice thought – of course, but "exchange for something else" is probably your next thought.
So, why not make this year a keeper. Whether your treating yourself or someone else (naughty or nice), everyone deserves a little something for the holidays. And what's better than some holiday lingerie? We know gift searching can be tough, but don't panic. You still have time and this trendy little gift guide. This holiday season we have everything from sexy to cozy. Make this year one to remember with these perfect (season appropriate) pieces.
Enjoy 10% OFF our Gifts Page this week! Use CODE: GIFT10
Wrap Up by VP Marakesh Short Robe ($195)
Cosabella Bisou Fishnet Bralette($60) & Bikini($33)
Natori Exotic Flower Bra($68) & Tanga($30)
Calvin Klein Logo Demi Bra($42) & Thong($22)


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Wickliffe Mounds celebrates end of Archaeology month
Kelly Paul, AY Editor
Wickliffe - In celebrating the end of Kentucky's Archaeology Month, Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site featured special exhibits about archaeology and the importance of preserving sites this past Saturday.
The park hosted an open house, and visitors were invited to view the museum exhibits and participate in a meeting calling for the formation of a Friends of Wickliffe Mounds group. The event was held in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Free Day, and there was free admission to the site and museum.
Gil Lawson, Director with the Kentucky Tourism, Arts & Heritage Cabinet, and his son were two of the visitors to the park on Saturday. Lawson was visiting the campus of Murray State University as a potential college choice for his son and wanted to visit the KY Great River Road Region and the region's two state parks during the Park Preservation Day at Columbus Belmont and Wickliffe Mounds.
Lawson wanted to help the region by visiting, first-hand, the amenities in the KY Great River Road.
Wickliffe Mounds is a registered Historic Site that has been open to the public since 1932. The important research conducted at Wickliffe Mounds has contributed significant information to the study of Mississippian culture, the science of archaeology and knowledge of Kentucky's prehistory as well as providing educational resources for teachers, students, and site visitors. Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site is operated by the Kentucky Department of Parks and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Wickliffe Mounds has valuable educational potential and is worthy of protection and preservation. A highlight of the sites' history was the reburial of remains and restoration of the Mississippian burial mound in 2011.
Those who attended the meeting regarding the proposed Friends of Wickliffe Mounds group listened as park manager Carla Hildebrand explained the importance of advocating for the protection and future enhancement of Wickliffe Mounds. According to Hildebrand, 24 visitors joined the Friends group.
Once a list of interested Friends has been compiled, the group will have a formal meeting in October with Erin Wright, who is a Kentucky State Parks coordinator from Frankfort as a guest speaker to talk about the process for creating a Parks Friends group for Wickliffe Mounds.
129 people visited the park on Saturday much to the thanks of marketing done for the event by Kentucky Great River Road (KGRRO), whose focus is on promoting events in the counties located along Kentucky's portion of the Great River Road.
If you are unable to stop by Sept. 28th, but are interested in joining the Friends group, please contact Carla Hildebrand at 270 335-3681 or (email@example.com.), and you will be added to the list.


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Today, a lot of the younger generation invest a great deal of time submitting electronic pictures into their social networking websites. This means that several pictures end up left on a cam or a computer screen and do not obtain printed. Here in this article we shall look at the various ways you could make one of the most out of your images, from picture books via to canvases and also the different effects you can add to make your pictures that little bit a lot more unique.
Image books are amazing as you could select all your own photos from anytime that you like, so if you want to gather all your favored photos ever before after that you can. You could maintain personalized calendars done in one refuge, recognizing that they are offered to you whenever you desire. Alternatively you can establish specific pictures with each other to develop a timeline, so you could maintain a photographic document of your household members-with all their essential mile stones.
Another amazing function of image publications is that you could typically edit the photos you want uploaded on their. Much of the online firms that use this solution will certainly be able to modify your pictures if you desire them to, including changing them to black and white, sepia as well as photo shopping out any kind of imperfections you do not want on the image.
You are not simply restricted to picture publications nonetheless; there are many different products you can have customized that are readily available online. Photo books make brilliant present suggestions yet so do, mugs, bags, computer mouse floor coverings and canvases. All you should do is select the picture you think will be most ideal and after that develop your order online as well as upload. Why not take some photos on your good friend's big day or birthday then create an one-of-a-kind gift for them-by either having it printed on a present or your personal photobook.
There are numerous innovative things that you can do with your electronic pictures today it seems such a shame to just leave them on a computer screen. Photos come active once they are published; it is probably the most effective part of taking an image. Typically though, lots of people never ever get as far as printing their images and also do not get to see exactly how potentially excellent they might look, modified, bigger or printed onto appropriate photography paper. The entire procedure is so simple, there are numerous excellent business online that will certainly print your pictures at a reasonable cost-all you need to do is submit your pictures as well as pick exactly what you want-it could not be less complex.
For more information, have a look at this site http://www.photobookcanada.com/calendars.


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Ger Slattery: 'Crescent's Munster Schools Junior Cup final win a big lift'
CRESCENT College Comprehensive assistant coach, Ger Slattery said winning a first Clayton Hotel Munster Schools Junior Cup title in five years provided a 'big lift' for the Dooradoyle rugby nursery.
Crescent College ended a run of defeats in three successive finals at Junior Cup level when easing past holders CBC, of Cork, 17-7, in their replayed final at Thomond Park on Wednesday.
The Limerick sides scored three excellent tries from number eight Jack Madden, prop Ronan Gallery and winger Ben Carew to score a deserved victory. Captain John Hurley also added a conversion.
Ger Slattery said: "It was a great final. The first half was a bit like the drawn game in Cork. It was nip and tuck.
"I was happy with how the first half was going at 5-0. Then they convert their try and all of a sudden you are down. It was a bit of a blow.
"The way the lads responded in the second half was excellent.
"I was a bit worried for a while there, but I definitely think we worked harder to get the ball back, got a bit more possession and eventually it told with the two tries in the second half.
"When we did play with ball in hand we looked very dangerous. The second try we scored was an exceptional one. I haven't seen a try like that in schools rugby, especially at Junior Cup level for a long time.
"There were a lot of players involved in the build-up, a lot of good hands and then Ronan Gallery, our tighthead prop, scored it.
"That was great for him as he spent time in a cast on his ankle after the drawn game, got it off and then made it back to play in the replay which took a great effort.
"We were planning without having him, but he made it today, which is great credit due to him for that.
"We had a bit of a cushion at 12-7 and the third try killed the game. It was a great score. The backs really stood up for that one.
"We are extremely lucky with the group we had. They are extremely talented. We didn't really have to improve much in terms of skills. It was just about putting structure on it, ensure we left them play and not limit them in attack, make sure they expressed themselves.
"The off-loads for the two tries were excellent and with the talent in the backs, we were keen to give them the ball.
"We spoke about it there with the lads in the dressing room, this is start for them. They have to push on and develop as players and they will develop both mentally and physically. Hopefully, they will stick at it and improve."
Crescent's victory was their third at Junior Cup level in seven seasons. The Dooradoyle side has reached six finals during that period.
"Winning the final is a big lift for Crescent. The school has obviously been doing something right to be in the mix to win the Cup. For the school to finally get over the line is a big boost, especially for the group of players and everyone involved in the backroom team, the likes of Chris Cullinan, Stephen Tuohy, Matt Evans, Cecelia Hoffman as well who were great throughout the year.
"For them it was bigger because they had been involved in previous campaigns."
The win was also fitting as it came less than a month after the passing of Crescent College's former multi Schools Senior Cup winning coach Dudley Herbert following illness.
"I have good memories of Dudley with Munster Schools and that sort of thing," Ger Slattery said.
"It was a sad time recently with his passing. It was important to give something back for all the work he put into Crescent rugby. To win is that extra special for him."


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Chattahoochee Nature Center — A privately-funded center with live wildlife exhibits, aviaries, two nature trails, canoes, and activities for kids. 9135 Willeo Rd, Roswell. 770-992-2055.
Website… http://www.chattnaturecenter.com
Chattahoochee River National Recreational Area — The river itself starts up north of Helen, Georgia, runs south through Lake Lanier and Buford Dam, passes to the west of Atlanta and becomes the Georgia/Alabama border, flows through West Point Lake, enters Florida and becomes the Apalachicola just before entering the Gulf of Mexico. In the 48-mile park, stretching from Lake Lanier to Peachtree Creek, you'll find rafting and canoeing, hiking, picnicing, fishing and horseback riding. National Park Service: 678-538-1200.
Website… http://www.nps.gov/chat/
Lake Lanier/Lake Lanier Islands (Buford) — Lake Lanier is a 38,000 acre human-made lake located about 45 miles northeast of Atlanta. (On the islands, you'll find a water park and resort or two, boats and cabins to rent, and a campground to park your RV. One neat thing to do in the summer is to rent a houseboat there, then doodle around and tie up to a different island every night.) They have fireworks on the lake July 4th, and miles of Christmas lights to drive through during the holidays. 6950 Holiday Rd, Buford. 770-932-7200
Website… http://www.lakelanierislands.com


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Ignite your playful imagination this season in the backyard with our start the fun bundle. This bundle includes our popular toddler coaster swing, a new ultimate in secure comfort. It offers a tremendous upgrade to the standard bucket child seat that is sure to have your toddler (ages 18 months to 3 years) enjoying hours and hours of swinging fun. A Telephone, a purple passion telephone that may look like a trip down memory lane, but the musical ring tones of the functional keys promises future delight for your youngster. And a telescope with compass.
- Coaster swing has high seat back features mold and water-repellant padding that can be removed for cleaning
- Coaster swing has cushioned 3-point securing T-bar and added lap belt for security
- Coaster swing easily mounts to existing standard swing hangers
- Phone and telescope easily mount to any wooden play set or can be used as a separate item
- Non-magnifying Telescope allows your child to view exciting surroundings and includes a compass for your child to determine his or her directional orientation
- For private backyard use only, do not use in public settings
- Meets and/or exceeds American society of testing materials (ASTM) safety standards
- All Swing-N-Slide products are designed for single family residential use only, the item cannot be shipped to a commercial ship to address or used in a commercial setting
- Product Overview:


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|• Family rooms
|• Cycle rental
|• Lockers available
|• Suitable for wheelchair users
|• Free WiFi
|• Laundry facilities
|• Self-catering kitchen
|• Common room(s)
|• Game room
|• Breakfast served every day
|• Café/Bar
|• Luggage storage
|• Travel/Tour bureau
|• Cycle storage
|• Female dorm w/shared or private wc
Reykjavík City HI Hostel is located in Laugardalur Park close to swimming pools and a campground. You will need 30 minutes to walk to the centre along the seashore. Bikes for rent.
Public transport: BSÍ (Bus Central Station) is on a direct bus line to the Hostel. Take bus no. 14 to City Centre. From City Centre / BSÍ: Take bus no. 14 to Laugarásvegur bus stop.
Parking: We have plenty of free parking onsite.
Airport: To and from Keflavík Airport (50 km): FlyBus and Airport Express run to a schedule connecting with every flight, and will drop you off at the hostel / the airport upon request.
From Reykjavík Domestic Airport (3 km): Take bus no. 15 to Hlemmur, change to bus no. 14 and get off at Laugarásvegur bus stop.
To Reykjavík Domestic Airport: Take bus no. 14 to BSÍ and walk 15 minutes to the service centre.
Sea Port: Reykjavík Harbour is located 3 km from the hostel.
- Only 2 km away from the city centre and right next to Reykjavík's main swimming pool, the hostel is tremendously well located.
- There are excellent facilities for groups of all sizes, as well as families and lone travellers, including guest kitchens, a BBQ-deck, laundry room and bike rental.
- There is a wide selection of rooms, most with ensuite bathrooms and all with bed linen included. Free WiFi throughout the premises.
- Get great deals on tours available for booking at reception.
- The staff are always at hand to help you make the most of your stay in Reykjavík.
Get an estimate for your group


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Purchase WOMEN'S EQUALITY DAY CELEBRATION tables.
Celebrating when votes to women officially became part of the US Constitution and the 70th Anniversary of our local league.
Honoring six women trailblazers and three community organizations that exemplify making democracy work, whose actions and words are aligned to the LWV-CC Mission.
See the August Voter for details.
Reservations closed Friday, August 22. For more information, call the League at 445-4436 or contact the League President, Dr. Mary Jane Garza, at firstname.lastname@example.com. (Reservations required: tickets will NOT be sold at the door.)


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|In most circumstances, an entity will be tax resident where it is incorporated and is managed and controlled (although this will depend on the domestic legislation).
If the entity is not managed and controlled in the same place that it is incorporated then, the entity may be 'dual resident', a tax resident of more than one country or jurisdictions.
For the Implementation of International Tax Compliance Regulations, a reportable entity also includes entities that are typically tax transparent (partnerships, etc.). For reporting purposes, an entity will be held to be 'tax resident' there even if the law of that country or jurisdiction does not treat the entity as a taxable person, e.g. a partnership managed and controlled in the UK will be 'tax resident' in the UK even though the taxable persons are the partners rather than the partnership itself.
If an entity is not certain where they are a tax resident, then they should refer to HMRC guidance or ask their tax adviser.


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New Obama Initiative Stresses Equal Access To Good Teachers.
president Barack Obama
Obama Loves HBO's "The Normal Heart," Calls The Director | Vanity Fair
President Obama Hits Up The Youth On Tumblr
June 11, 2014 at 03:29AM
By Deepak verma
Obama Leaves White House for Lunch With Duncan
That's MY President . . . just kickin' it . . . with the Secretary of Education! #micdrop
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — President Barack Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, had lunch Tuesday at an Alexandria, Virginia, neighborhood known for its good restaurants.
The White House says Obama went to FireFlies Restaurant because the owner wrote him earlier this year and asked him to come try the best burger around.
Obama said after lunch that he was "very happy" with the burger.
Burger runs are becoming somewhat of a regular thing for Obama. Last month, he and Vice President Joe Biden surprised diners at a Shake Shack burger restaurant in Dupont Circle.
But his unscheduled outings are hardly limited to just getting a burger. Obama left the White House on foot Monday and went to a nearby Starbucks with his chief of staff.
(© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
Boehner Keeps Heat on Obama, Not Shinseki, in VA Scandal
House Speaker John Boehner declined to join the growing calls for the resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki on Thursday, a day after a damning watchdog report found that problems racking the agency were widespread and had been identified four years ago.
"I'm going to continue to reserve judgment on General Shinseki," Boehner said at a news conference. "The question I ask myself is him resigning going to get us to the bottom of the problem? Is it going to help us find out what's really going on? And the answer I keep getting is no. The real issue here is that the President is the one who should be held accountable. … For the President to say that he didn't know anything about it is rather shocking. The President is going to have to step up here."
The House overwhelmingly passed a bill last week that would give…
View original post 208 more words


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Training Courses
Recent Activities
Links to all ICAs
Itereleng: ICA (South Africa)
South Africa is one of the continent's growing economies, with many global measurements indicating its trajectory towards a middle income nation. And yet extreme challenges remain for the vast majority of young South Africans:
Where we operate in Gauteng Province, youth unemployment exceeds 50%; and the HIV prevalence rate among young people is 19%, compared to the national average of 12%.
Itereleng: Institute of Cultural Affairs (South Africa) was founded in 2001 in response to the devastating impact of HIV and AIDS on young South Africans and the lack of preventative health education interventions in urban communities.
Young people are in a uniquely influential position to take action against issues that concern them. We believe that their long term involvement is required to bring about improved livelihoods for young people and their communities, and to place young people at the forefront of change and development in South Africa.
Our programmes promote positive behavior change, improve livelihood opportunities and involve young people in community and government development and policy making.
Itereleng: Institute of Cultural Affairs aims to reach 20,000 young people on a regular and consistent basis in urban communities in the Gauteng Province by 2015.
For 2012-15 we plan to build on our advocacy work, engaging young people in policy making and building the capacity of other youth-focused organisations. We also intend to develop our research base as a resource to inform government policy.
Our objectives
The Youth Empowerment Programme mobilises and trains young people to engage youth to
Via Youth Development Centres, our volunteer peer educators target communities using:
Our expertise also supports other youth organisations to develop core skills in youth development. We have recently provided training in monitoring and evaluation, fundraising and partnerships, peer education, and strategic and project management.
How do we do this?
Youth Development Centres provide a focal point for communities, as well as opportunities for skills development and leadership opportunities. IT and video resources enable young people to access information about HIV, hold workshops and debates and undertake practical IT training.
We also provide activities around sexual and reproductive health, with a strong gender focus, including:
Youth Action Groups (YAGs) further mobilize students and out-of-school youth to focus on their own personal development and that of their communities. Their involvement ensures our work becomes self-sustaining.
The big picture
Itereleng: Institute of Cultural Affairs works with government, tertiary institutions, and other like-minded organizations - complementing their efforts and avoiding duplication of effort and resources.
We are indebted to the following funders whose support to date has enabled us to reach so many young people: the Metropolitan City of Johannesburg, Rotary International USA, Rotary Club of Denvar, Rotary Club of Rosebank, UNICEF South Africa and The Institute of Cultural Affairs Canada
Itereleng: Institute of Cultural Affairs work in South Africa contributes to Millennium Development Goals 1, 2, 5 and 6 through focusing on reducing HIV infections, enabling universal primary education and improved maternal health.
We also contribute to 4 of the 6 key priority areas of the government's National Strategic Plan. These are prevention; treatment, care and support; impact mitigation; and the promotion of human and legal rights.
What we did
In 2010, our Youth Empowerment Programme
In the same year, our two Youth Development Centres also saw
The results
Our annual surveys have shown significant positive changes over the last three years, including:
Increases in young people's livelihoods engagement, such as increased involvement in community development (16%), youth groups (5%) and in engagement with local government officials(3%).
Itereleng: ICA (South Africa)
Training: (at our facilities or inhouse where you work)
To enable you to increase participation, build consensus, handle difficult situations, enable groups to work together creatively and get powerful results to build commitment for action. You can become an excellent facilitator. We offer training programmes that will develop skills that last a lifetime See Training above
Specific programmes:
Youth As Facilitative Leaders (YFL)
Youth as Facilitative Leaders (YFL) Programme is the organisation's major programme that has been working with young people from different areas of Johannesburg since 2002. The overall goal of the programme is "To develop young people as facilitative leaders to mobilize and influence positive social change in their schools and communities." Young people are taken through a process of training in peer education, facilitation, youth development and life-skills.
Orphans/Vulnerable Children (Services and support for families
of orphaned and vulnerable children)
Providing focused, multi-level support for families on the brink increases their capacity to properly nurture orphaned and vulnerable children.
Institute of Cultural Affairs South Africa works to positively change the destiny of children affected by the AIDS pandemic. Our approach is the holistic support of families and the community so that they are empowered to nurture their children into productive adulthood. We know that you cannot help a child without helping the family. We believe in acting in the best interests of the child, and therefore deliver services that enable community-based care of orphaned and vulnerable children.


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[a huge THANK YOU to my friend Mike Jones for his invaluable feedback and advice about this long and complicated post]
If there's a question that I dread receiving – and I receive it very often nonetheless, even from colleagues - is the following:
"Why can't I provision in ACS OAuth 2.0 providers in the same way as I provision OpenID providers?"
Or its alternative, linearly-dependent formulation:
"Provider X supports OAuth 2.0; ACS supports OAuth 2.0. How can I connect the two?"
I dread it, because the question in itself is an indication that the asker uses "OAuth 2.0" in its conversational meaning, as opposed to referring to the actual specification and all that entails. For the non-initiated the term "OAuth" has come to be a catch-all term that expresses intentions and beliefs about what one "authentication protocol" should be and do, rather than what it actually does (and how). Therefore, the answer will have to include lots of context-setting and myth-debunking; in fact, the entirety of the answer is context setting, as once the asker knows how OAuth 2.0 really works the question becomes a non-sequitur.
As I am currently sitting on a long flight (I won't tell you from where, or you'll hate me :-)) with a batteryful of a laptop, this seems the ideal time to work through that. Be warned, though: this post is a bit philosophical in nature, no coding instructions or walkthroughs here. You must be in the right mood to read it, just like I had to wait to be in the right mood to write it. Also, as everything you read here, this is purely my opinion and does not necessarily reflect the position of my employer or of my esteemed colleagues. Finally: please don't get the wrong impression from this post. I love OAuth 2.0, I am super-glad it is gaining ground and I like to believe we are contributing to spreading it further with our offering. I just want to save you wasting cycles on expecting it to deliver on something that it doesn't do.
Short note: if you are not in the mood of reading a long & winding post, here there's a spoiler. OAuth 2.0 is not a sign-in protocol. Sign-in can be implemented by augmenting OAuth, and people routinely do so; however, unless they're using the OpenID Connect profile of OAuth 2.0 – see the end of this post, no two providers are alike and that forces library implementers to cover them by enumeration, supplying modules for every provider, rather than by providing a generic protocol implementation as it is standard practice for OpenID, WS-Federation, SAML and the like. If you want a good example of that, take a look at the modules list of everyauth. The rest of the post substantiates this statement, going in greater details.
Some Confusion Is Normal
Even if you don't drop the words "chamfered" or "skeumorphism" very often in your conversations, chances are that you were exposed in some measure to the renewed interest in Design. You might even have gone as far as reading "The design of everyday things", a beautiful classic from Don Norman that I cannot recommend enough, no matter what your discipline is. When I read that book, quite a few years back, I learned about a concept that I believe helps describing what's going on with our question. I am talking about the concept of affordance. More specifically, perceived affordance. In a nutshell, the affordance of an object is the set of things/actions that can be done with it: a door affords being opened (by pushing or pulling), a chair to be sat upon, a hammer to be handled. The perceived affordance is the set of visual aspects in an object that give hints on how it can be operated: a door handle invites grabbing and (depending on the shape) turning or pushing, a chair offers a slat and rigid surface at the right height, a hammer has a handle that invites brandishing.
As soon as you recognize that something is a door, no matter how weirdly shaped or placed, you will instantly know what to expect from it: you can open and close it, you can use it for moving between adjacent environments, you might need to unlock it, and so on. That holds even if the specific instance does not offer the specific perceived affordances necessary for a given operation, as you can generalize it from other instances of the door class you encountered in the past.
How's all this even remotely relevant to the issue at hand? Getting there…
Although they have no physical reality or appearance to offer, authentication protocols are tools from the architect's and the developer's conceptual toolbox. As such, they have a number of common uses that the developer and the architect will come to expect from every instance of the "authentication protocol" class. Namely, one common affordance of authentication protocols is "authenticate users with provider A to access a resource on another provider B". That works for a long list of protocols: SAML, WS-Federation, OpenID 2.0, OpenID Connect, WS-Trust, even Kerberos.
It is that affordance that allows us platform providers to create development libraries that secure your resources without knowing in advance who the identity provider will be, or services that allow you to dynamically plug new identity providers without knowing anything but the protocol they support and he coordinates that the given protocol mandates.
So, what's the problem with applying the above to OAuth 2.0? Well, here there's the kicker:
OAuth 2.0 is not an authentication protocol.
I can almost hear you protest! We'll get to the technical details in a moment, but just want to acknowledge that I understand the reaction. The "OAuth 2.0 is a sign in protocol" narrative had innumerable boosters in the public literature: "Facebook uses OAuth 2.0 for signing you in!" and "In order to sign in our Web site via Twitter, go through their OAuth consent page" and many others. In fact, using OAuth 2.0 as a building block for implementing a sign in flow is not only perfectly possible, but quite handy too: a LOT of Web applications take advantage of that, and it works great. But that does NOT mean that OAuth2 *is* an authentication protocol, with all the affordances you've come to expect from one, as much as using chocolate to make fudge does not make (chocolate == fudge) true.
[Unless they are using OpenID Connect] Every provider chooses how to layer the sign-in function on top of OAuth 2.0, and the various implementations do not interoperate: both because of sheer chance (two developers implementing a class for the same concept will not produce the same type, even if they use the same language) and because almost always that's not one explicit goal of those solutions. Usually providers want to offer access for their users to their own resources; the only external factor is that they want to do so even for applications developed by third parties. That does entail crossing a boundary, which is the staple of authentication protocols; but it happens to be a different boundary than the one you'd normally traverse when implementing sing-in. More details below.
Crossing Boundaries
Let's decompose a classic App-RP-IP authentication flow, then a canonical OAuth 2.0 flow. We'll see that the two approaches are designed to cross different chasms: that has consequences that become evident when we try to apply one approach to the problem that the other approach was designed to solve.
Classic App-IP-RP Authentication Protocol Flow
In a classic authentication protocol, a resource outsources authentication to an external authority. The resource can be called relying party (RP), service provider and similar; the identity provider can be called IdP, OpenID Provider, and so on, depending on your protocol of choice; but the conceptual roles remain the same. The RP and the IP can be run by completely different business entities, and in fact most protocols assume that that is the case. The boundary to be crossed is the one between the identity provider and the resource. That entails establishing messages for invoking the provider asking for an authentication operation and messages/formats for flowing back to the resource the outcome of the authentication operation. The outcome must be presented in a way that admits verification from the resource. Every other detail about the implementation of identity provider and resource can be ignored, as adherence to the protocol as described is all that's needed to carry an authentication operation.
The figure above shows a classic flow for nondescript sign-in protocol; the app can be a browser or a rich client app; the IP can be implemented with an STS or whatever other construct that can authenticate users and spit out tokens; and the token is represented as the usual pentagon carrying the signature of its issuer. I am not going to walk you though that flow here, you'll find countless similar diagrams explained in details in the last 9 years of posts.
Different authentication protocols have different strictness levels on how the authentication results should be represented: the SAML protocol will only use SAML tokens, WS-Federation admits arbitrary token types (though in practice it almost always uses SAML tokens as well), but in general the idea is that the format is well-known to the resource, which can validate its source and parse it for meaningful info (e.g. user claims). This is NOT optional: the resource knows nothing about the provider apart from the protocol it uses and associated coordinates, hence agreement on the token format is essential.
Another interesting thing to note is that the application used by user or accessing the resource plays absolutely no part in the authentication flow. In most protocols the identity provider will not care about what app the user is leveraging for performing authentication, but only about the credentials (hence the identity) of the user; and the resource won't care about that either, only validating that the token comes from the right issuer, has not be tampered with, contains the required user info, and so on. The next example is venturing a bit in the inter-reign between authentication and authorization, but I think it captures an important intuition about the general point hence I'll go ahead anyway. Say that Judy is trying to open a Word document from a SharePoint library: her ability of doing so will depend on the permissions granted to her account and the restrictions assigned to the document, the fact that she is using IE or Firefox will play no part in the authorization decision. The same can be said for all of the rich clients using traditional authentication protocols to call web services.
Canonical OAuth 2.0 Flow
The OAuth 2.0 protocol is aimed at authorizing rather than authenticating. There's more: its aim is to authorize applications, an artifact that was not playing an explicit role in the flow described in the earlier section.
Applications are the main actor here: the user is involved at the moment of granting his/her permission to the app to access the resource on his behalf, but after that the user might disappear from the picture and the app might keep to access the resource, unattended.
I am sure you already know the canonical story for explaining the problem that OAuth 2.0 was designed to solve:
- A user keeps his/her pictures at Web application A
- The user wants to use Web application B to print those pictures
OAuth 2.0 provides a way for the user to authorize the Web application B to access his/her pictures on A, without having to share his/her A credentials with B. The importance of that accomplishment cannot be overstated: with the explosion of APIs which heralded the rise of the programmable Web, the password relinquishing anti-pattern was going to be completely unsustainable. OAuth is one of the key elements that is fueling the current API wave, and that is a Good Thing.
Given that the regular reader of this blog might be more familiar with the federation protocols than with OAuth 2.0, I'll fix a quick walkthrough for one of the most common flows (OAuth 2.0 supports many). Note that not all the legs I'll describe are part of the framework in the spec: here my purpose is to help you to understand the scenario end to end, and to that purpose I'll have to add a bit of color and throw some simplifying assumptions here and there. If OAuth2 normative reference is what you seek, please refer to the actual specification! (in fact, there are two of those you want to look at: RFC 6749 and RFC 6750).
I will introduce the OAuth 2.0 canonical roles during the walkthrough, with the hope that seeing them in action right away will make them easier to grok their function. Here is what happened in the figure above:
- Say that Marla navigated to a Web site that offers picture print services. We will call that Web site "Client", for reasons that will become evident momentarily.
Marla wants to print pictures she uploaded to another Web site, let's call it A again. The Client happens to offer the possibility of sourcing pictures from A: there is a big button on the page that says "Print pictures from Web site A", and she pushes it.
- The client redirects Marla's browser to an Authorization Server (AS for short). The AS is an intermediary, an entity that is capable of
- authenticating Marla to A,
- asking her if she consents to the Client app accessing her pictures (up to and including what the Client can do with those: read them? modify them? etc) and
- issuing a token for the client that can be used to carry the actions Marla consented to.
The redirect message carries the ID of the Client, which must be known beforehand by the AS; what the Client intends to do with the resource; and some other stuff required to make the flow function (e.g. a return URL to return results back to the client).
The AS, and specifically its Authorization Endpoint (it has more than one), takes care of rendering all the necessary UI for authenticating Marla, assist her in the decision to grant or deny access to resources, and so on.
The Client sends a message to the token endpoint containing the just-obtained Code, which proves that Marla consented to the actions that the Client wants to do. Furthermore, the message contains the Client's own credentials: the same Client ID sent in 2, and some secret (the Client Secret) that the AS can use to verify the identity of the Client and use it in the authorization process. For example; say that Web site A is offering its API under some throttling agreement, and that the Client already exceeded its quota of daily tokens: in that case, even if Marla consented to granting Client access to her pictures, the Client won't get the token that would be necessary to do so.
In this case let's assume that everything is OK; the AS issues to the client an Access Token, which can be used to secure calls to the A API which offer access to Marla's pictures. I can't believe I made it this far without telling you that in the OAuth 2.0 spec parlance Marla's pictures are a Protected Resource (PR), and that the A Web Site is the Resource Server (RS).
In the same leg the AS can also issue a Refresh Token, which is one of the most interesting features of OAuth 2.0 but can be safely ignored for today's discussion.
Wow, that took much longer than I expected; and I left out a criminally high number of details! Hopefully this gave you an idea of how one of the most common OAuth2 flows works. Let's see if we can work with that to extract some insights.
The first observation is obvious. I guess that's pretty clear that this flow does NOT represent a sign-in operation.
Actually, a sign-in might take place: in #2 Marla had to authenticate (or have a valid session) with A in order to prove she is the Resource Owner hence competent to grant or deny access to it. However OAuth 2.0 does not specify how the authentication operation should take place, or even which outcome it should have: OAuth is interested in what takes place AFTER authentication, that is to say consent granting and consequent Code issuing. If we want to use OAuth as sign-in protocol, the sign-in that takes place in #2 does not help.
The second is a tad more subtle. If somebody felt the need to regulate how this flow should take place, it is reasonable to assume that there is a boundary to cross: and the boundary to be crossed is the one that separates the Client from the AS+RS combination. True, the letter of the specification does not position this boundary as the obvious and only one: AS and RS can be separated entities as well, owned and ran by different businesses. In practice, however, the specification does describe all communications between the Client and AS+RS, though it does not give details on AS-RS exchanges. This means that if your solution calls for distinct & separate AS and RS, you'll have to fill the blanks on your own: which in turn means that how you will fill those blanks will be almost certainly different from how others in the industry will solve the same problem.
Too abstract for your tastes? Here there's some *circumstantial* evidence that keeping AS and RS under the same roof is baked in OAuth's common usage, if not the spec itself.
- The AS must know how to authenticate users who keep resources at the RS
- The AS must know the resources (and their affiliation with respective owners) kept at the RS well enough to render relevant UI for the resource owner to express preferences (which resources? what actions can be performed on them?)
- The RS must be able to validate tokens issued by the AS and understand their authorization directives well enough to enforce them, yet the OAuth 2.0 spec does not mandate specific token formats, callbacks from the RS to the AS for validation, or any other mechanism that would regulate RS-AS communications, offline or online
- In almost all of the OAuth 2.0 solutions found in the wild the AS and the RS positively, consistently live under the same roof. Think of Facebook and Twitter.
You know, it even makes complete business sense. If you have a Web site and you want to offer an API for other Web sites, those other Web sites are the entities you want to enter in a relationship with; those are the ones that you want to charge, throttle, block when something goes wrong, and so on. Again, you just need to look at the market and what happens when an API provider changes its policies to understand what are the parties entering in a contract here, and what is the boundary that needs regulation in this scenario.
The Trivial Mapping: PR as RP, AS as IP, Client as "App"
Still with me? Excellent. Let's get back to the original problem; why can't I just bake into ACS (or a library) the use of OAuth 2.0 as a sign-in protocol so that it will work with all the "OAuth2 providers" out there without custom code, just like it does for OpenID or WS-Federation providers?
To learn more about the problem, let's simply try to use OAuth 2.0 to perform a sign-in flow. What I observed is that people tend to map OAuth2 roles to sign-in protocol roles, according to correspondences that make just too much intuitive sense to ignore. You can see such mapping in the diagram above, where I pasted the two flows (sans individual steps, for the sake of readability) and highlighted the correspondences. Let's spend few words about those; just remember, intuition can be very treacherous ;-).
- The protected resource/resource server is the entity we seek access to, hence it must be the relying party counterpart: right? The even almost have the same acronym!
- The authorization server authenticates users and issues tokens; and anything that issues tokens can be thought as an STS, isn't it? And has is an STS, if not the arm of the IP? It's settled, then: AS == IP.
- The client app is what requests and uses the token; it is also what the users operates in order to perform the desired function: that seems to be a pretty natural fit for the app/client/user agent role in a sign-in protocol. True, it is a bit troubling the fact that in OAuth2 the Client is a role that is much more in focus (and with lots more rules to obey) than the app/client/user agent in sing-in protocols is; OTOH we ran out of entities to map, hence our hands are kind of tied here. Like some nasty element in an equation we are trying to simplify, we can always hope it will cancel out as we move forward.
Does that mapping make sense to you? It usually does; also, it can be made to work and can be quite useful. However, in order to apply this approach you need to handle a couple of thorny issues; and in the process you'll *have* to occasionally go beyond what the specification mandates, introducing elements that make your solution (and everybody else's) potentially unique hence non-interoperable out of the box.
Say what you will about service orientation, but it is a very powerful way of thinking about distributed systems. Just glancing at the diagram above you should detect a capital sin occurring not once, but twice: the proposed mapping violates boundaries.
- In a classic sign-in scenario, there is a boundary that separates IP and RP. Per our mapping, that induces a boundary between AS and RS/PR: but OAuth2 describes no such boundary!
In our discussion above we have seen how OAuth 2.0 does not really regulate communications between RS/PR and AS. Whereas in a sign-in protocol – say WS-Federation – the RP knows how to generate a sign-in request for the IP and knows how to validate incoming tokens, in OAuth 2.0 you'll find a big blank there; co-located AS and PR do not have issues with this, but here you *have* to fill the blank. You'll have to pick a token format to accept, and you'll need to establish how to tell if a token is valid: that might entail deciding what are the signing credentials used by the AS, how they are used and getting a hold on the necessary bits; or some other method to validate incoming tokens. Ah, and let's not forget about extracting claims! They might not be strictly necessary for the sign-in in itself, but experience shows that usually you want some user info contextually to the sign-in operation.
What format will you choose? Whatever you'll pick, chances are that others will pick something different. Furthermore, people have no way of knowing (programmatically, as in via metadata) what you have chosen.
It gets worse: if you own the RP and you want to work with an existing "OAuth 2.0 provider" (hopefully the expression is changing its meaning for you as we dig deeper in what it actually entails) chances are that its AS and RS/PR are co-located, per the above. In that case its access tokens might be opaque strings in a format you have no hope to crack from your own RP. To make an extreme example: if an AS issues an access token that is simply the primary key of a table in a DB, only a co-located RS/PR which can access the same DB will be able to consume the token; but if you throw a boundary in the picture, as it would happen for a RP (==RS/PR in our mapping) ran by a third party, direct token validation is no longer possible (but don't completely forget the scenario, as we'll revisit it in the next section).
- In a traditional sign-in scenario, the client/app/user agent used to access the resource is simply not a factor in deciding whether the user should be signed in or not. However in OAuth 2.0 the Client, to which our lower-case client/app/user agent is mapped in this approach, is not only a factor: the Client has its own identity, and that identity is an important element in the AS' decisions. There is a boundary between the Client and the AS+PR, and as we saw this has important consequences that induce ripples in the mechanics of how Client-AS communications are implemented. Even ignoring the matter of the Client secret, which is not mandatory in all flows: most existing "OAuth 2.0 providers" in existence will expect to know beforehand the identity of the Client, and that means that your transparent sign-in clients will suddenly need to acquire some measure of corporeity. You'll have to assign Client IDs and use them when requesting codes & tokens; what's more, you'll have to provision those, often by registering your client with the AS. Funny story, tho: very often your existing sign-in client apps will not have an obvious business reason for having their own identity, which means that you'll have to work something out for sheer implementation reasons. That can be pretty onerous: imagine a rich client app that, as long as the user has valid credentials, with traditional sign-in protocols would do its job no matter how old the bits are or from where they are ran. The same app with an ID would now need that ID provisioned with the AS, distributed to (or with) the rich client app, have that ID maintained when it expires or gets blocked for some reasons, and so on. Remember the example we mentioned earlier in which Marla could be denied access because the Client itself exceeded its daily amount of tokens it can be issued? That's one example of things that might happen when the client app is not transparent. Also: I subtly shifted the conversation to rich client apps, but imagine what you would do when the client is a browser.
Most of the issues here can be worked around if you own all of the elements in the scenario: for example, you might decide to admit anonymous clients or have special IDs that you reuse across the board (not commenting on whether that would be a good idea or not, that's for another day). That said: you can see how all this might be a problem if you'd want to be able to use "OAuth 2.0 providers" for sign-in flows out of the box. In all likelihood, existing providers would want to know the identity of your client app, but more often than not your client would not have an identity of its own, adding it might not be a walk in the park and the way in which you'd provision it varies wildly between providers (think of the differences in app provisioning flows between Facebook, Twitter and Live) and it often entails manual steps through web UIs.
Lots of words there! You can't say you weren't warned 🙂 Let me summarize.
Treating AS as an IP, RS/PR as RP and clients as Clients does not enable you to take advantage of OAuth 2.0 providers for sign-in scenarios without requiring you to write custom code. That mapping violates various boundaries, which in turn requires you to fill blanks in the specs (like which token format will be used for access tokens) or find out how every provider decided to fill those blanks. Furthermore, there might be providers that simply do not admit this kind of mapping (think opaque tokens that cannot be validated without sharing memory with the AS).
That does not mean that this approach is not viable, only that it is not generally applicable if all you know is that you want to "talk to an OAuth 2.0 provider".
Yes, intuition can be misleading, but it is really the case to say that it's all in our head. You really cannot blame a PR for not being an RP, or an AS for not being a perfect match for an IP. That's not what they were designed for, and you can't blame a screw for not being a nail just because they both have a head and you are used to going around with a hammer.
But let's not give up yet! Maybe the problem will yield, if we attack it from a different angle.
Alternative Mapping: Client as RP, AS+PR as IP
Let's shuffle the cards a little. The issue with the former mapping was that we focused on the individual nodes of the graphs, instead of trying to preserve their topologies (and with it the boundary constraints).
Here there's an idea: what if we'd use the Client to model an RP, and the AS+PR/RS to play the role of the IP? Counterintuitive, true, but think about it for a moment:
- The boundary crossing constraints would be preserved
- Instead of "traditional" token validation, a RP could consider a user signed in if it can obtain an access token and successfully access a PR/RS on the user's behalf
- Keeping PR/RS and AS together saves us from having to define how they communicate with each other; furthermore, that assumption happens to be a good fit for most of the existing providers
- Usually RPs need to be provisioned by the IP before tokens for them can be requested. A RP=>Client mapping is compatible with both the need to assign to the Client an identity and the need to provision it with the AS
MUCH better, right? This does sound much more viable, and it is. LOTS of sign-in solutions layered on top of OAuth 2.0 operate on this principle.
However, it still does not make possible to create a generic library or a service that would allow to implement sign-in with any "OAuth2 provider" without provider-specific code. That is actually pretty easy to explain. Although you might achieve some level of generality for obtaining the access token (task made difficult by the plethora of sub-options/custom parameters/profile differences that characterize the various providers) you'd still have to deal with the fact that every provider offers different protected resources and different APIs to access them. There would be no generic call you could bake in your hypothetical library to prove that your access token is valid, nor fixed user properties you could use to reliably obtain what you need to know about your incoming users. And what holds for a library, holds for products and services that would be built with it.
Wrap-Up, and the Right Way to Go About It: OpenID Connect
Between the description of the trivial mapping and the Client=>RP one, I hope I managed to answer the question I opened the post with.
Q: "Why can't I provision in ACS OAuth 2.0 providers in the same way as I provision OpenID providers?"
A: "Because OpenID is a sign-in protocol, and OAuth 2.0 is an authorization framework. OAuth 2.0 cannot be used to implement a sign-in flow without adding provider-specific knowledge. Also, there's a long blog post with the details."
This would be a good time to remind you that as usual, THIS ENTIRE POST is all my own personal opinion. Please take it with a huge grain of NaCL.
Also, I ended up writing this post thru THREE intercontinental flights: not very relevant to the topic at hand, but wanted to dispel the notion that I am very prolific 🙂
That settled, the fact that the Client=>RP does not solve the issue really leaves with a bitter aftertaste. We were so close!
As it turns out, dear reader, we are not the only ones feeling that way.
Have you ever heard of OpenID Connect? OpenID Connect is the next version of OpenID. It is layered on top of OAuth 2.0, and is very much a sign-in protocol.
One way to think about it is that OpenID Connect formalizes the Client=>RP approach, by providing the details of how to express user info as protected resource, how to redeem access tokens and even which token format should be used (the JSON Web Token: what else? :-)).
OpenID Connect is still a draft specification, but it is enjoying a lot of mindshare and is rapidly spreading through the industry: it will help providers to build on top of their existing investment on OAuth 2.0, and consumers to take advantage of their services for sign-in flows. Yes, even with generic libraries 🙂