Authorities ordered hundreds of schools to close Tuesday and fishermen to remain on land as a tropical storm barreled towards India's southern coastal state of Tamil Nadu on Tuesday.

The storm was centered in the Bay of Bengal, 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of the city of Chennai, with winds of about 55 kilometers per hour, the India Meteorological Department said.

Australia's High Court on Friday ruled that an asylum-seeker deemed a security risk can still be granted a refugee visa, in a decision that could have implications for others in similar situations.

The 36-year-old plaintiff, a Sri Lankan known as M47, arrived in Australia in December 2009 and has been held in detention since.

A Chinese man accused of swallowing a diamond worth $13,600 at a gem show in Sri Lanka actually ingested a fake stone in an elaborate bluff to allow the real thief to escape, police said Tuesday.

Detectives discovered the ruse after waiting until the man, 32, passed the fake stone that he had swallowed at the Facets Sri Lanka annual jewelry exhibition in Colombo last week.

A Chinese man arrested for attempted theft after swallowing a diamond worth nearly $14,000 at a gem exhibition in Sri Lanka Wednesday will have to undergo surgery to remove the stone, police said.

The 32-year-old had asked the stall owner for a close inspection of the 1.5-carat diamond on the opening day of Facets Sri Lanka, an annual jewelry show in the capital Colombo.

Sri Lanka's navy arrested a boatload of people heading to Australia and raised the number of would-be illegal immigrants detained this month to a record 500, an official said Sunday.

A fishing trawler carrying 31 people was intercepted off the island's western coast on Saturday, and another 20 were arrested on shore ready to board the vessel, the navy official said.

Sri Lankan scientists have identified a new genus of fresh water fish and named it after the evolutionary biologist and renowned atheist Richard Dawkins.

Lead researcher Rohan Pethiyagoda said the new genus, named Dawkinsia, comprises nine species that are found only in South Asia and are characterized by long filaments that trail from the dorsal fins of males.

Rescuers were on Saturday making a final search for survivors from a refugee boat accident off Australia's Christmas Island, with two more bodies found and little hope for around 90 people still missing.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said overnight and morning searches of the sea north of remote Christmas Island had failed to find any more survivors, with the last living person found late Thursday night.

Sri Lanka's president has ordered the release of his jailed electoral rival, ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka, bowing to U.S.-led international pressure three years after the end of the island's long ethnic war.

The 61-year-old former four-star general could leave prison on Monday following legal formalities, an official said Sunday, after President Mahinda Rajapakse marked the third anniversary of the Tamil Tigers' crushing defeat.

An elephant named Shanthi at the U.S. national zoo plays a harmonica with her trunk and appears to love doing it.

Video released Wednesday by the zoo in Washington shows the 36-year-old Asian elephant has a harmonica attached to her stall and plays tunes even when no humans are within view.

A hen produced a live chick in a freak birth at a poultry farm in central Sri Lanka, a veterinary surgeon said Friday.

The vet in charge of the town of Welimada, P. R. Yapa, said the egg appeared to have incubated inside the hen for 21 days and the hen died when it gave birth to the chick.