Cricketer Abdur Razzak, his family suffer injuries in road accident

Veteran Bangladesh cricketer Abdur Razzaq and his family members suffered injuries in a car accident in Gopalganj yesterday.

According to various media outlets Razzak is 'out of danger' after receiving preliminary treatment.

Late on Tuesday night, Bangladesh Test skipper Mushfiqur Rahim posted regarding the accident.

He shared a message of concern and a request for good wishes for his erstwhile national teammate Abdur Razzaq.

The 35-year-old left-arm spinner was reportedly travelling from Khulna when the accident occurred.

Everyone present in the vehicle suffered minor injuries and local police came to their rescue.

Razzak is the third-highest ODI wicket-taker for Bangladesh and one of only three Bangladesh bowlers to take more than 200 wickets in the format, along with Mashrafe Bin Mortaza and Shakib Al Hasan.

He last played an international match for Bangladesh on August 27, 2014, in the lone T20I on the tour of West Indies.He is the long-serving captain of Khulna Division in the National Cricket League and of South Zone in the Bangladesh Cricket League. He also captained Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club in this year's Dhaka Premier League.

Thailand backtracks on labour law after migrant workers flee

Thailand's military government said it will delay enforcing new labour regulations after thousands of migrant workers fled home to neighbouring countries this week fearing arrest and heavy fines under the new decree.

The scramble is the latest chaos triggered by Thailand's efforts to regulate the millions of foreign workers who prop up its economy with jobs in factories, fishing boats and other low-paid work.

The junta has trumpeted a flurry of campaigns aimed at registering migrant workers and cracking down on illegal smuggling routes, but the efforts are often ad-hoc and short-lived. As a result, much of the migrant work force remains undocumented and vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers and unscrupulous employers.

On Friday the junta said it would suspend parts of a new foreign labour law, which came into effect on June 23, for 120 days after the regulations sparked a panic among migrant workers and their employers.

"(During this window) there will be no arrests or crackdown on illegal workers except for those who violate human trafficking laws," Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam told reporters.

The reprieve comes after thousands of labourers fled home to neighbouring Myanmar and Cambodia fearing arrest and fines of up to $3,000 under the law which punishes migrant workers lacking valid work permits. Employers can also be fined up to 800,000 baht ($24,000) for each undocumented worker they hire.

In Samut Sakhon, a seafood industry hub known as "Little Burma" for its concentration of Myanmar migrant workers, around 500 labourers have been returning home daily during the past week, said Suthasinee Kaewleklai from the Migrant Worker Rights Network (MWRN). "These workers don't have any documents and have to return to Myanmar as they fear needing to pay a heavy fine," she told AFP.

The advocacy group also warned that traffickers frequently profit from such mass movements of migrants, with smugglers and border agents exacting fees from undocumented workers looking for a safe passage home.

A police chief in Myanmar's Karen state said around 6,000 migrant workers had returned home from Thailand since Thursday.

Meanwhile on the Cambodian border, the number of migrants streaming home has been increasing daily since the new law came to into effect, said Thai immigration officer Benjapol Robsawad.

Since Wednesday nearly 2,000 workers have crossed back to Cambodia through the Poipet checkpoint, he told AFP.

Two elephants team up to save baby elephant from drowning

Incredible footage shows a pair of elephants working together to rescue a young calf from drowning.

Filmed in the Grand Park Zoo in Seoul, South Korea, the astonishing video shows the baby beast falling into a pool in the wildlife enclosure while standing beside one of the adult elephants.

Incredible footage shows a pair of elephants working together to rescue a young calf from drowning.

Filmed in the Grand Park Zoo in Seoul, South Korea, the astonishing video shows the baby beast falling into a pool in the wildlife enclosure while standing beside one of the adult elephants.

Mediterranean diet may cut colorectal cancer risk by 86%

Consuming a Mediterranean diet — rich in fruits and fish — while decreasing the intake of soft drinks may help prevent the risk of developing colorectal cancer by nearly 86 per cent, a study has showed. Colorectal cancer develops from intestinal polyps and has been linked to a low-fibre diet heavy on red meat, alcohol and high-calorie foods

We found that each one of these three choices was associated with a little more than 30 per cent reduced odds of a person having an advanced, pre-cancerous colorectal lesion, compared to people who did not eat any of the Mediterranean diet components,” said Naomi Fliss Isakov from Tel-Aviv Medical Centre, in Israel.  “Among people who made all three healthy choices the benefit was compounded to almost 86 per cent reduced odds,” Isakov added.

For the study, presented at the ESMO 19th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer, the team included 808 people who were undergoing screening or diagnostic colonoscopies who were between 40 and 70 years old and had adhered to a Mediterranean diet.

A typical Mediterranean diet was defined as consumption levels above the group median for fruits, vegetables and legumes, nuts and seeds, whole grains, fish and poultry and a high ratio of monounsaturated to saturated fatty acids, as well as consumption below the median of red meat, alcohol, and soft drinks.

Consumption of even two to three components of the diet, compared to none, was associated with half the odds of advanced polyps, the study showed.

Federer demolishes Zverev to win ninth Halle title

World number five Roger Federer delivered a tennis masterclass to beat rising star Alexander Zverev 6-1 6-3 and clinch a record ninth Halle Open title on Sunday as he lay down a marker in the lead-up to Wimbledon.

The 18-times Grand Slam champion, who skipped the claycourt season to prepare for grass after winning the Australian Open and titles in Indian Wells and Miami, is in ominous form and won in Halle without dropping a single set all week.

"It has been a difficult year with a lot of practice, training and rehab so I am very happy to be back on the court," Federer said.

"I do not know if I will ever be going to win this tournament again so I will enjoy this one," said the Swiss, who has won eight Wimbledon titles.

The 35-year-old, defeated in his first comeback match in Stuttgart last week, took control from the start with an early break and kept world number 12 Zverev on his toes.

He earned a second break point with some deft volleying, which he pounced on to race through the first set in 24 minutes.

Zverev, who beat the Swiss in last year's semi-final and has already won three titles this year, had a chance to break at the start of the second set.

But he simply could not discover a chink in Federer's armour, even as he attempted to mix up his game by forcing the Swiss to come to the net more often.

A superb dropshot put Federer 5-2 ahead and sealed Zverev's fate before he won the match on his first match point with a crosscourt volley.

In doing so, he became the first player to beat both Zverev brothers at the same event, having defeated older sibling Mischa in the round of 16.

PM too suspects market manipulation for spiralling rice prices

Speaking on budget discussion in the parliament on Wednesday, she said there was no fear of food shortage in Bangladesh as the reserve now is over 10.65 million tonnes, 188,000 tonnes of which are in government silos.

"Rice prices have risen slightly due to destruction caused by rains in the Haors. And there might be manipulation by some unscrupulous businessmen," she said.

The government has been facing criticism for months for the hike in rice prices.

Government data are often lower than market prices, but even these show a 47 percent rise in the price of coarse rice while the fine variety saw around 20 percent hike in a year.

Hasina said the government has moved to bring down the prices. "We've cut the duty on import of rice. So fresh food consignments will come into the country now." 

The prime minister, however, found a positive in the hiked rice prices. "The farmers have got the fair

Tower of human skulls in Mexico casts new light on Aztecs

A tower of human skulls unearthed beneath the heart of Mexico City has raised new questions about the culture of sacrifice in the Aztec Empire after crania of women and children surfaced among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.

Archaeologists have found more than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments in the cylindrical edifice near the site of the Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which later became Mexico City.

The tower is believed to form part of the Huey Tzompantli, a massive array of skulls that struck fear into the Spanish conquistadores when they captured the city under Hernan Cortes, and mentioned the structure in contemporary accounts.

Historians relate how the severed heads of captured warriors adorned tzompantli, or skull racks, found in a number of Mesoamerican cultures before the Spanish conquest.

But the archaeological dig in the bowels of old Mexico City that began in 2015 suggests that picture was not complete.

"We were expecting just men, obviously young men, as warriors would be, and the thing about the women and children is that you'd think they wouldn't be going to war," said Rodrigo Bolanos, a biological anthropologist investigating the find.

"Something is happening that we have no record of, and this is really new, a first in the Huey Tzompantli," he added.

Raul Barrera, one of the archaeologists working at the site alongside the huge Metropolitan Cathedral built over the Templo Mayor, said the skulls would have been set in the tower after they had stood on public display on the tzompantli.

Roughly six meters in diameter, the tower stood on the corner of the chapel of Huitzilopochtli, Aztec god of the sun, war and human sacrifice. Its base has yet to be unearthed.

There was no doubt that the tower was one of the skull edifices mentioned by Andres de Tapia, a Spanish soldier who accompanied Cortes in the 1521 conquest of Mexico, Barrera said.

In his account of the campaign, de Tapia said he counted tens of thousands of skulls at what became known as the Huey Tzompantli. Barrera said 676 skulls had so far been found, and that the number would rise as excavations went on.

The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples performed ritualistic human sacrifices as offerings to the sun