News in Brief

Tourists safety eyed: Sri Lanka’s police have begun keeping track of foreign tourists to “ensure their own safety”, officials announced on Monday.

Hotels and guest houses have been told to submit weekly reports of their foreign guests as part of a new security plan for tourists, police spokesman Buddhika Siriwardena said.

“Tourists are important to our economy. This is to ensure their own safety,” Siriwardena told AFP. “This scheme will ensure officers will have details of tourists in their areas to protect them.”

Hotel owners said they have been asked to pass on passport and visa details of all foreigners in addition to information already given to the authorities for maintaining industry-related statistics. (AFP)

‘Share lions’: India’s Supreme Court on Monday ordered western Gujarat state to share some of its endangered lions with a neighboring state to create a second home for them.

The Asiatic lion has been almost wiped out in India, but intense conservation efforts by Gujarat over the last 50 years have brought them back from the brink of extinction. There are now around 400 Asiatic lions in Gujarat’s Gir forests.

Political leaders in Gujarat have resisted efforts to relocate some of the lions to a forest sanctuary in neighboring Madhya Pradesh, but the top court ordered Gujarat to transfer some of the lions next door within the next six months.

The court said the lions should have a second home to ensure that the endangered species is not wiped out in an epidemic or a fire. (AP)

Spying fears up: Indian security forces have found a dead falcon fitted with a small camera which has sparked alarm near the country’s highly militarised border with Pakistan, an official said Monday.

The carcass was discovered near the ancient fort city of Jaisalmer in the far west of the desert state of Rajasthan where the Indian armed forces regularly conduct drills and war games.

“It was fitted with some device and an antenna,” a senior Border Security Force officer stationed in the state told AFP by telephone on condition of anonymity.

Suspicions were initially that the bird might have been used for military spying, but the camera did not appear very sophisticated and it might instead have been the work of Pakistani hunters, the official said. (AFP)