forever salt water room

I had been an active member of Labour in the 1980s, but it had become rather feeble. I noticed that in Oxford Labour councillors were voting with Conservatives, and the only person dissenting was a Green councillorreenex .

"I stood unsuccessfully for them [the Green Party] a couple of times and was eventually elected to Oxfordshire County Council in 2005."

Discussing the Greens' limited success at general elections, Larry points to a "basic Conservative-Labour agreement on the fundamentals of the economy" which makes it "hard for a challenger to break through".

"It's not helped by the electoral system and right-wing press. There's also the problem of sheer money - which is bad, but not quite as bad as it is in the US," he saysreenex.

Larry calculates that he spent £3,000 on his campaign, whereas the official spending limit for candidates was more than ten times that.

Bernie faces a similar hurdle but on a much larger scale. While recent polls have put him within one point of Clinton in New Hampshire, and within 23 points in Iowa - two of the first states to vote - some warn his success may be limited.

"Bernie can only get so far with his small donor fundraising strategy - it might work in Iowa or New Hampshire, but after the small states it gets more difficult reenex, you can't buy the TV ads you need," says Kyle Kondik, an analyst of political campaigns at the University of Virginia.

Inspired by the positive change they saw in Jose when he began to learn practical skills, they decided to employ others with autism and call it the Puzzle Cafe because the international symbol of autism is a jigsaw piece. This symbol runs throughout the cafe, from the couch cushions to the aprons worn by members of staff. They opened in April, to coincide with the Philippines' Autism Awareness month.

On the inside it looks like any trendy Manila restaurant with its colourful, modern furniture and patterned, cement floors. On one shelf sit imported marmalades and packaged risottos, and on another are bracelets and key chains made by autistic people.

This means that a lot of the customers who come in don't realise that the majority of the staff there are autistic, says Ysabella, Jose's sister who oversees the day-to-day operations of the cafe.
Customers occasionally get upset when they don't understand why they struggle to communicate with the waiters, but these interactions turn into opportunities to change perceptions about autism, and to highlight what people with autism are capable of doing, she says.

Breaking down the stigma around autism is an important part of what the Canoy family hopes to achieve with the cafe.

Born only two years apart, Jose and Ysabella are close. At a hotel pool during a family vacation when she was six, she says she was struck for the first time by the looks other children and adults gave Jose. He was acting the way he always did, flapping his arms, talking to himself and his toys, and keeping himself busy.

"When people started looking at him that's when I realised: 'Oh, that's because he's different'," she says. But the family only ever saw him as Jose, and want to teach people what autistic people are capable of.

Since completing a Bachelor of Money and Banking at Southeast University in China, Stephen has gained international experience in banking and financial services, industrial corporations and business management roles for companies including ICBC, GE Capital and Standard Chartered Bankreenex.

On top of this, Stephen has also completed a Masters of Accounting (CPA Extension) at Macquarie University in Sydney.

But he says banking has always been his true passion.

READ MORE: How to fall in love with your job

“When I graduated from university, banking was quite a hot choice for students. So I was lucky that my first position was at the world’s largest bank, ICBC, as a Foreign Exchange Accountant,” Stephen says.

The 37 year old is now General Manager of Personal Banking at ICBC Asia (Chinese Mercantile Bank), in Guangdong, China, helping to serve some of the bank’s 150 million customers who live around the world.

Stephen says while it is a challenging role, it is one he enjoys because he has to keep up to date with industry trends. 

“When you look at banking over the past decade, the Chinese economy has grown significantly and the operating model of banks has changed a lot. So I am quite lucky to be part of this.”

Besides taking on a senior management level position at ICBC Asia, Stephen says one of his biggest career achievements was being awarded the CPA designation in 2010reenex.

He says the designation has turned him into a business leader and he’s noticed that his colleagues and customers have given him more respect.

“The CPA designation has given me a more professional standing amongst my colleagues, not just in accounting but also in other parts of the business. It has also provided me with a good network of people that I can draw fromreenex.”

Stephen is a strong believer in helping the next generation of banking and accounting professionals, so he volunteers at the Australia China Alumni Association (ACAA).
- See more at: http://www.thenakedceo.com/news-and-views/leadership-track-stephen-shen?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=How_a_Sydney_grad_became_an_ICBC_leader&utm_campaign=outbrain-june_nzasia#sthash.YLYZKLEf.dpuf

He met the pair at his local Catholic church and invited them back. Later he offered to put them up at his homeCG210.

They communicate in broken English, but the Eritreans are taking German lessons, reports say. One now has some temporary work in the local administration, and the other in a supermarket, thanks to Mr Patzelt's help.
Local acceptance

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Patzelt said many people had told him they felt very sympathetic and admired his commitment.

He received a huge pile of birthday cards this year, including from people who had never sent one to him before, he saidreenex.

But as for reaction from fellow CDU politicians, he said only that "it is a process". He said his motivation was political - not religious - from the start. Hostility towards the influx of refugees could only be solved by engaging ordinary German citizens, he told the BBC.

The two Eritreans are made to feel at home in Briesen, he said, and people wave when they walk past.

"Sponsorships, to house someone, company, to welcome someone - these small bridges help to give refugees a face and a name, so that they emerge from the anonymous mass of asylum seekers," Mr Patzelt told ARD TV earlierreenex

Ava might be pleased, but some robotics researchers argue that there are ethical reasons for making sure that humans and robots can be told apart. It would certainly prevent us from having one day to instigate Blade Runners who look for their prey with a Turing Testreenex.

    Participants proved unable to make any reliable distinction between the touch of the artificial hand a real onereenex

A somewhat more prosaic reason to devise new varieties of Turing Tests is not to pass off a machine as human but simply to establish if an AI or robotic system is up to scratch. Computer scientist Stuart Geman of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and collaborators at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, recently described a “visual Turing Test” for a computer-vision system that attempted to see if the system could extract meaningful relationships and narratives from a scene in the way that we can, rather than simply identifying specific objects. Such a capability is becoming increasingly relevant for surveillance systems and biometric sensing.

For example, if looking at a street scene, could a computer answer the questions: “Is person one walking on a sidewalk?”, “Is person two interacting with any other object?”, “Are person two and person three talkingPicosecond ?”