Prepare to be scanned. Taking a flight without a boarding pass, traveling without a passport, or entering a hotel room without keys or cards is becoming increasingly likely. Tech companies dream of facilitating these “seamless journeys” through biometrics, which uniquely identifies people based on their individual biology. And whoever controls the biometric system will control a significant part of the future tourist experience, becoming a key supplier for infrastructure operators (and governments).

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NEW DELHI, June 4 — Indian police have arrested the owner of a New Delhi hotel where a fire killed 21 people, as investigators probe safety failures.

Police said owner Lavkesh Bajaj was arrested late yesterday, hours after the blaze gutted the building, killing at least nine Indians and several foreigners.

Two foreigners have so far been identified — one a citizen of Liberia and another from Mozambique.

Building fires in India are common due to a lack of firefighting equipment and routine disregard for safety regulations.

People trapped on upper floors were seen jumping onto mattresses below as fire ripped through the Flourish Stay hotel in a densely packed neighbourhood of the city.

Several residents were taken to hospital suffering from severe burns, as well as fractured bones after leaping into the street.

In a separate fire this morning, at least four people died in an intensive care ward in a hospital in Muzaffarpur in the eastern state of Bihar, district government official Subrat Kumar Sen said. — AFP

In 2018, Russian paleontologists discovered in Siberia the almost perfectly preserved frozen body of a cave lion cub. They named her Sparta. She was 32,000 years old, with blond fur, perfectly intact claws, and she looked as if she were asleep. What no one knew at the time was that Sparta carried a secret in her cells that would take years to decode: she and her kind were not, as previously thought, simply a larger, furrier version of the African lion, but something far more extraordinary.

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NEW DELHI, June 3 — At least 21 people, including 18 foreign nationals, were killed in a fire ‌at a hotel in Delhi today, police and broadcaster CNN-News18 said, in one of the worst such incidents in the national capital since 2022. The dead included people from Bangladesh, Nigeria, Mozambique and Liberia, the broadcaster said.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the nationalities of the victims. Several people had jumped out of the burning building in South Delhi’s Malviya Nagar to escape the flames, witnesses said, with residents dragging mattresses from a nearby store to try to break their fall.

“People spread mattresses, and a woman from the third floor jumped on it with a little kid,” witness Sher Khan said.

Television footage showed two people jumping from a higher floor ‌of the building as it was engulfed in flames, with smoke billowing out.

Local people who ⁠helped in the initial rescue said the ⁠fire broke out on the ground and first floors of ⁠the four-storey building, trapping those on higher ⁠floors.

“There is a ⁠mattress shop here... We took the mattresses from there and laid them on the road to help those who were jumping out of the building,” Wasim Raja, a local resident, told news ⁠agency ANI.

A police officer walks in-between security tapes at the spot after a fire at a hotel in New Delhi June 3, 2026. — Reuters pic

Fire may have started in restaurant

The fire broke out a little before 9am (0330 GMT/11am Malaysian time), and eight fire tenders were dispatched to douse the blaze, police said in a statement.

The fire was extinguished around midday, a Reuters witness said.

“Through the coordinated efforts of police, fire services, and other emergency responders, more than 40 persons have been rescued and shifted to ⁠nearby hospitals for medical treatment,” police said.

“It is with profound sorrow that 21 persons have been declared dead in this tragic incident,” it said.

A spokesperson at the ⁠state-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences told Reuters the hospital had received 13 patients, two of ⁠whom were ⁠critical.

“There was reportedly a restaurant operating on the ground floor of the building ... it is most likely that the fire was connected to that restaurant,” local administration official Jitendra Kumar told reporters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi ‌expressed his condolences for the loss of lives in a post on X. “Authorities are providing all possible assistance to those affected,” he said. — Reuters