Speak English or lose pay, Aussie firm tells staff

An Australian company has directed its multicultural work office to speak only English or sacrifice a pay rise.
The Australian company Cochlear, famous for hearing aids, has threatened to deny pay rises to staff who speak foreign languages at the workplace, despite the fact that more than half of its workers hail from non-English speaking countries.
Huy Kha, a worker from Cambodia, alleges in his complaint – to be lodged today with the NSW’s anti-discrimination board that in June his manager ordered him to “speak English at al times”
“The team leader said if we are found speaking a foreign language, we will fail our assessment to get a higher classification,” he wrote.
The Age quoted Cochlear’s Chief executive Chris Roberts as saying he was unaware of Kha’s complaint but that the company had “a policy of mutual respect in the workplace. So, there is a bunch of people in a group, they should not speak a language that cuts others out.”

Boy playing with matches began fire in California

A boy playing with matches has confessed to starting a wildfire that destroyed 63 structures near Los Angeles, officials said. The unidentified youngster, believed to be a pre-teen, was questioned by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigators on October 22, a day after the Buckweed fire started rampaging across 38,000 acres (15,000 hectares) in the Santa Clarita area, 50 km north of downtown Los Angeles.

The boy “admitted that he had been playing with matches” said sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore yesterday.

The Buckweed fire was one of about 24 conflagrations that ravaged sothern California last week.

World’s oldest animal found

British scientists have found a 400-yr old clam, the world’s longest-living animal, off the coast of Iceland, which may reveal the secret of longevity.

The scientists say the discovery of the quahog clam, a bivalve millusc, aged between 405 and 410 years old, might allow them to get a better understanding of the ageing process, as well as revealing the secrets of a long life.

The creature was nicknamed Ming, after the dynasty which ruled China at the beginning of the life.

“When the animal was a juvenile, King James 1 replaced Queen Elizabeth 1 as English monarch. Shakespeare was writing his plays – Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth – and Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for espousing the view that the sun rather then the earth was the centre of the universe,” Bangor University said in a release.

The scientists calculated the age of the animal by counting the annual growth rings on the shell, a technology similar to that of estimating a tree’s age.

Vegetable And Fruit Bra

Well designing yourself with toilet papers!! Is that not enough .. people have now come up with a new bizzare idea ..Which is called a vegetable bra??
Really amazing and amusing when i have a glance of it.. Designed with carrots, cabbage leaves and a hint of fruits like cheery and grapes really make it delicious ... According to me :-)

Giant of dino world

Argentine and Brazilian paleontologists claim to have found a giant plant-eating dinosaur, Futalognkosaurus dukei, that roamed the earth some 80 million years ago. The dinosaur measured at least 32 m (105 ft), making it one of the tallest dinosaurs ever found, said Jorge Calvo, director of the paleontology centre at the National University of Comahue, Argentina.

“This is one of the biggest (dinosaurs) in the world and one of the most complete of these that exist,” he said.

Its name (pronounced foo-ta-long-koh-sohr-us) is derived from the Mapuche Indian words for “giant chief of the lizards” and from Duke Energy Argentina, a company which helped fund the excavation.

Scientists believe the skeleton discovered in Patagonia represents a previously unknown species because of the unique structure of its neck.

Calvo said the dinosaur’s remains possibly washed into river, creating a barrier that collected remains of other nowfossillised animals, fish and even leaves found at the site.

Since the first bones were found on the banks of Lake Barreales in Neuquen, Argentina in 2000, paleontologists have dug up the dinosaur’s neck, back, hips and the first vertebra of its tail.

Calvo said the skeleton also showed signs of its owner having being eaten by predators.

Alexander Kellner, a researcher with the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, said the fossilized ecosystem pointed to a warm and humid climate in Patagonia, which had forests during the late Cretaceous period. The area is steppe-like now and almost bare of vegetation.

“It’s among the biggest dinosaur finds and the most complete for a giant dinosaur finds and the most complete for a giant dinosaur. The accumulation of fish and leaf fossils, as well as other dinosaurs around the find, is just something fantastic. Leaves and dinosaurs together is a great rarity. Its like a whole lost world for us,” said Kellner.

The study appears in the journal Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, reports the BBC.