Bangladesh Police today introduced the first female police dog handler team — comprising members of the female Airport Armed Police Battalion — to make the operational activities more dynamic.Seven female APBN members have been included in the police dog handler team after getting training from the K9 dog handler course. They received training from professional dog squad trainer Tony Brison (UK) and Melin Broadweek (New Zealand). The US embassy and Airport Armed Police jointly organised the training.Commanding Officer of Airport Armed Police Battalion-13, Tofail Ahmed, handed over the certificates to them after the conclusion of the training course today.Airport Armed Police Battalion started the K9 Dog Squad unit with two labradors, two German shepherds and four malinios dogs in 2017.The dog squad unit has been used for checking passengers and screening luggage.Mohammad Ziaul Haque, additional superintendent of police (media) of Airport Armed Police Battalion, said the government has taken a step to upgrade the number of dogs to 66 in the dog squad group by 2025.The government took the steps considering the operations of the third terminal of the airport, he said.Fifteen more dogs will be attached to the dog squad in 2023.A full-fledged dog squad can play an important role in preventing sabotage, drug smuggling and currency smuggling, said speakers at the programme.

Archaeologists have found the earliest direct evidence for horseback riding – an innovation that would transform history – in 5,000 year old human skeletons in central Europe. “When you get on a horse and ride it fast, it’s a thrill – I’m sure ancient humans felt the same way,” said David Anthony, a co-author of the study and Hartwick College archaeologist. “Horseback riding was the fastest a human could go before the railroads.” Researchers analyzed more than 200 Bronze Age skeletal remains in museum collections in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic to look for signs of what co-author and University of Helsinki anthropologist Martin Trautmann calls “horse rider syndrome” – six tell-tale markers that indicate a person was likely riding an animal, including characteristic wear marks on the hip sockets, thigh bone and pelvis. “You can read bones like biographies,” said Trautmann, who has previously studied similar wear patterns in skeletons from later periods when horseback riding is well-established in the historical record. The researchers focused on human skeletons — which are more readily preserved than horse bones in burial sites and museums – and identified five likely riders who lived around 4,500 to 5,000 years ago and belonged to a Bronze Age people called the Yamnaya. “There is earlier evidence for harnessing and milking of horses, but this is the earliest direct evidence so far for horseback riding,” said University of Exeter archaeologist Alan Outram, who was not involved in the research, but praised the approach. The study was published Friday in the journal Science Advances. Domesticating wild horses on the plains of Eurasia was a process, not a single event, the researchers say. Archaeologists have previously found evidence of people consuming horse milk in dental remains and indications of horses controlled by harnesses and bits dating back more than 5,000 years, but that does not necessarily indicate the horses were ridden. The Yamnaya culture, known for its characteristic burial mounds, originated in what’s now part of Ukraine and western Russia, an area called the Pontic Caspian steppe. The horses they kept were distinct from modern horses – likely more easily startled and less tolerant of humans – although they may have been the immediate genetic ancestors of modern horses, which emerged a few centuries later, the researchers say. The Yamnaya are most significant because of their dramatic expansion across Eurasia in only a few generations — moving westward to Hungary and eastward to Mongolia, said University of Helsinki archaeologist and co-author Volker Heyd. “The spread of Indo European languages is linked to their movement, and they reshaped the genetic make-up of Europe,” he said. Their relationship with horses may have partly enabled this stunning movement, the researchers suggest. “Horses expand the concept of distance – you begin to think about places previously out of reach as being reachable,” said co-author Anthony, the Hartwick College archaeologist. That does not mean the Yamnaya people were warriors on horseback, as the horses they rode were likely too skittish for stressful battlefield situations, he said. But horses may have allowed the Yamnaya to more effectively send communications, build alliances and manage the herds of cattle that were central to their economy. Because only a small percentage of the skeletons studied clearly showed all six markers of riding horseback, “it seems that a minority of the people at that time were riders – that does not suggest that a whole society was built on horseback riding,” said molecular archaeologist Ludovic Orlando, who is based at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse in France and was not involved in the research. Still, he praised the work for helping to better pinpoint the potential genesis of horseback riding. “This is about the origins of something that impacted human history like only a few other things have,” said Orlando.

Brazil on Friday confirmed the country's first monkeypox-related death, according to the Health Ministry. The case was reported in Belo Horizonte, capital of the southeast Minas Gerais state, and the victim was a 41-year-old man who was undergoing treatment for other serious clinical conditions, including cancer, and whose health deteriorated after getting infected, the ministry said. The man, whose name was not released, was admitted to a public hospital in Belo Horizonte, where he suffered septic shock aggravated by monkeypox. Read: New York City declares monkeypox a public health emergency In Minas Gerais, state health authorities said there were 44 confirmed cases of the disease and 130 suspected cases under investigation. In Brazil, there were 978 confirmed cases of monkeypox as of Wednesday. The World Health Organization has declared the current outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. Experts classify monkeypox as a rare viral disease that causes skin lesions and is transmitted through close contact with an infected person, including through hugs, kisses, massages or sexual intercourse, in addition to being transmitted through respiratory secretions or contact with clothing, towels, or other items used by the infected person. ■

Bangladesh opted to bat first in the second ODI of the three-match series against South Africa in Johannesburg.  A win will ensure the series for Bangladesh as they won the first match by 38 runs riding on the superb performance by Shakib Al Hasan, Liton Das, Yasir Ali Rabbi and Mehidy Hasan Miraz.  While Shakib, Liton and Yasir hit a fifty each, Mehidy bagged four wickets.  “We'll have a bat first. We are confident, looks like a good wicket. We have to start well and post a decent total. It's a great opportunity for us, everyone is motivated. We know how hard we have worked to get here. We have not made any changes,” Tamim said after winning the toss.  READ: SA vs BAN Test Series 2022: Head to Head Records, Venue Stats, Fixtures Bangladesh never won an ODI in South Africa before this series. Now, they are on the verge of winning a series in South Africa against the hosts.  South Africa: Janneman Malan, Quinton de Kock (wk), Temba Bavuma (capt), Kyle Verreynne, Rassie van der Dussen, David Miller, Wayne Parnell, Kagiso Rabada, Keshav Maharaj, Lungi Ngidi, Tabraiz Shamsi Bangladesh: Tamim Iqbal (capt), Liton Das, Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim (wk), Yasir Ali, Mahmudullah Riayd, Afif Hossain, Mehidy Hasan, Taskin Ahmed, Shoriful Islam, Mustafizur Rahman