South Korea is beginning the mass production of a low-cost laser weapon that has successfully shot down small drones during testing, the country’s key arms agency said Thursday.

The laser weapon, called Block-I, “can precisely strike small unmanned aerial vehicles and multicopters at close range,” a news release from South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said.

The release did not give a cost for the weapon, but said each shot fired would only cost about $1.50.

Imagery supplied by the agency appears to show a weapon around the size of a shipping container with a laser mounted on top and what appears to be a radar or tracking device mounted on one side of the platform.

DAPA said the unit measures 9 meters by 3 meters by 3 meters (29.5 feet by 9.8 feet by 9.8 feet), and fires laser rays that are difficult if not impossible to detect before impact.

“It is invisible and noiseless, does not require separate ammunition and can be operated only when electricity is supplied,” the DAPA release said. Future versions could be developed to take out much bigger targets, including aircraft and ballistic missiles, which would be a potential “game changer,” according to the release.

DAPA will develop “a laser anti-aircraft weapon (Block-II) system with improved output and range compared to the current one,” the release said.

But the Block-I weapon itself comes online at an important time. In Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere, small drones – some available off the shelf – have shown the ability to disable or destroy multimillion-dollar pieces of military hardware, including tanks.

Militaries have typically responded by trying to take out low-cost drones with defensive systems that cost tens of thousands of dollars per strike. A weapon that could do the same for practically pennies would be a big boost to the country that can deploy it.

“Low-cost drones and rockets have swung the economic calculus of offense and defense in favor of those using large volumes of cheap unmanned systems and munitions to overwhelm more-sophisticated air and missile defenses,” James Black, assistant director defense and security for the RAND Europe think tank, wrote in a blog post in January.

DAPA said the Block-I weapon has been in development for five years, with more than $63 million invested.

The Korea Institute for Defense Analyses led the system development with participation from Hanwha Aerospace, it said.

The system was evaluated suitable for combat in April 2023 after achieving 100% success in shooting down targets in live-fire tests, according to DAPA.

The agency said South Korea is the first country to publicly acknowledge it will deploy a mass-produced laser weapon.

Earlier this year, Britain showed off a new laser weapon that its military says could deliver lethal missile or aircraft defense at around $13 a shot.

But no possible deployment date for that weapon had been announced.

In 2022, the US Navy successfully tested a high-energy laser system against a target representing a cruise missile.

But a Navy account of that test said there was no plan to get it into the hands of warfighters, adding that it “offers a glimpse into the future of laser weapons.”

A case of a rhino with a bullet hole through its head, a poisoned giraffe and a maimed lion are all crime scenes you might find you might find at the Wildlife Forensics Academy (WFA), an hour’s drive north of Cape Town, South Africa.

On a mission to tackle poaching, the WFA recreates wildlife crimes in a warehouse and students and rangers dressed in hazmat suits are taught how to handle the evidence.

Across the world, wildlife crimes – including animal trafficking and poaching – are on the rise and are a major threat to the planet’s biodiversity. In Africa, rhinos are a prime target, with around 10,000 lost to poaching in the last decade, the majority in South Africa. Almost 500 rhinos were poached in the country in 2023, with more than 300 from within KwaZulu-Natal province, home to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park. Yet the province only recorded 49 related arrests and seized just 13 firearms.

By providing forensics training, Greg Simpson, co-founder of the WFA, hopes to increase the rate of successful convictions. Often, he says, wildlife crimes happen in remote areas without witnesses and first responders can accidentally disrupt the scene and contaminate evidence. As a result, the culprit isn’t caught or punished.

“It’s really important to give people skills so that they can collect evidence … that can be used in an investigation and hopefully down the line will end up in a prosecution,” he says.

Crime scene simulation

The facility tries to make the training experience as realistic as possible. It uses life-size animals preserved by taxidermy, and some are marked with bloody wounds made with red paint. Besides the corrugated iron walls and roof, the warehouse looks like a typical dry African landscape, with sandy terrain and a scattering of plants. There is a poachers’ house and truck, ready to be searched and swabbed for fingerprints, and footprints lie on the ground, ready to be measured and identified.

Once the crime scene has been investigated, the students are taught how to chemically analyze the evidence at an on-site laboratory. The lessons culminate in a replica courtroom where they practice presenting the evidence at trial and undergo cross-examination.

“The purpose of cross-examination is to test the credibility, the trustworthiness of evidence. And unless you can survive it, the court might not accept your evidence,” says Phil Snijman, director of education at the WFA and former state advocate and prosecutor.

Fingerprints, DNA samples, ballistics (when a weapon is matched to a cartridge), shoe tracks can all be discounted by the court if they have not been correctly sealed, photographed or documented, he explains. And while he does not expect the course to make students and rangers forensic experts, he believes that it will help them to preserve the evidence correctly if they are ever the first responders to a crime scene.

Boosting convictions

Launched in 2022, the WFA attracts university students, such as those studying veterinary or biomedical sciences, and wildlife rangers from all over the world to its one to four-week courses. This year, it expects to train around 200 people. One of them is Leita Mkhabela, a ranger from the all-female Black Mamba anti-poaching unit that operates in Greater Kruger, a collection of private game reserves in northeast South Africa, who attended a course in April.

“This is something we come across every day, we have a high rate of rhino poaching,” she says. “We have so many poachers that have walked free in court because rangers didn’t collect enough evidence. It’s really important for rangers to get this knowledge.”

Mkhabela plans to take back all that she has learned to her colleagues so that they can implement the techniques in the bush. She believes that increasing the rate of convictions will act as a deterrent for poachers.

There are signs that the training is leading to convictions. According to the WFA, a ranger reported that since doing the course, he was able to collect traces of poison at a crime scene involving wild dogs, and police were confident they would be able to arrest and convict the poachers as a result.

Other forensic laboratories have been set up across the continent, in countries such as Malawi and Botswana. One initiative, led by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), ran four workshops during 2023 and early 2024, training 80 wildlife rangers, investigators, and intelligence officers from the Kenya Wildlife Service on collecting and presenting evidence in court. In the first quarter of this year, IFAW reported 32 wildlife crime cases being presented in court and 24 people accused of wildlife crimes awaiting prosecution. Previously, these cases would have been dropped due to a lack of sufficient evidence, it says.

Kevin Pretorius, director of the Green Law Foundation and a practicing attorney at the High Court of South Africa, who specializes in criminal and environmental law, and is not involved with WFA, says that one of the main hurdles in convicting wildlife crimes is the “admissibility of evidence,” especially since the charge must be proven “beyond reasonable doubt.”

“The training of a cohort of people that understand the value of evidence, and that a crime scene tells a story, and that story can assist the investigator in linking the perpetrator to a crime, is always valuable,” he says.

For the WFA, assisting law enforcement is its central mission, but it also hopes to raise awareness of the threats presented by the illegal wildlife trade and why it should be treated as a priority. “It’s a threat to biodiversity, it’s a threat to human health,” says Simpson. “If we can improve knowledge around this, that would be really valuable.”

Pakistan is extending the stay of nearly 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees – but its mass deportation of “illegal immigrants” will continue, authorities said.

Afghan refugees in Pakistan with Proof of Registration (POR) cards will be able to stay in the country until June 30, 2025, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said Wednesday.

The fate of 1.45 million refugees whose PORs expired at the end of June had previously been in doubt, with many fearing they’d be deported.

News of the extension came one day after the United Nations’ high commissioner for refugees visited Afghanistan and urged Pakistan to extend the POR cards.

“Glad that Pakistan’s tradition of hospitality is maintained,” Filippo Grandi wrote on X Thursday.

But Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs disputed the UN’s claims that Islamabad had put on hold its plan announced last October to deport undocumented Afghan refugees.

Pakistan is home to one of the world’s largest refugee populations – most of them from Afghanistan. But the country has not always welcomed Afghan refugees, subjecting them to hostile living conditions and threatening deportation over the years.

More than 3 million Afghan refugees, including registered refugees and more than 800,000 undocumented people were living in Pakistan as of March 2024, according to UNHCR data.

Some fled their home country decades ago during the Soviet invasion, while other Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan when the Taliban retook Afghanistan in 2021, implementing its oppressive rule.

Last October, Pakistan gave undocumented Afghans weeks to leave or face deportation, claiming Afghan nationals carried out 14 of 24 major terrorist attacks in Pakistan last year. Between September 15, 2023 and the end of June, about 650,000 Afghans had returned home, according to the UNHCR. Some 32,000 of them were deported.

They’re returning to a country under the control of a militant regime that has imposed a form of gender apartheid and where millions live in poverty.

A UN report published Tuesday detailed human rights violations by the Taliban’s so-called morality police – which have disproportionately targeted women and girls – creating a “climate of fear and intimidation” in Afghanistan.

Moniza Kakar, a lawyer who helps Afghan migrants navigate Pakistan’s legal system, said the POR card extension will not provide stability for all refugees.

“There is still a huge worry amongst families of being split because of these issues of documentation.”

Thyagi Ruwanpathirana, regional researcher for South Asia at Amnesty International, said the human rights group had “documented extensive delays and barriers refugees face in obtaining POR cards.”

The status of 80,000 Afghan Citizen Card holders, another form of registration for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, was also uncertain, Ruwanpathirana added.

“We urge the government of Pakistan to formally suspend its ‘Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan,’ stop all deportations, and develop a national legal framework to regulate access to refugee status in line with international refugee law,” she said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

At least 27 people have been killed and 53 have been injured in the strike, which hit the gate of the Al-Mutanabbi school complex, also known locally as the Al-Awda Schools, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

“Part of the section is missing, showing a cutaway of the internals,” Ball tweeted.

“Using any munition, even of this size, will always incur risks in a densely populated area,” said Cobb-Smith, who is also a former British Army artillery officer.

A Spanish tourist was crushed to death by a herd of elephants inside South Africa’s Pilanesberg National Park after he left his vehicle to take a close-up photo of the breeding animals, local police said.

Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia identified the tourist as Carlos Luna, whom it said was from Zaragoza.

The Pilanesberg Game Reserve is South Africa’s fourth-largest park and a popular tourist destination. It is also home to more than 7,000 animals, according to its website.

Police said that while touring the park, the man and his passengers “spotted three elephants with three calves,” adding that “the man stopped the vehicle, alighted and went closer to take pictures” before he was attacked and killed by the herd.

The province’s tourism board said in a statement that the Spaniard “did not heed the warnings” of “his fellow passengers, and occupants from two other vehicles that were at the sighting” before approaching the elephants “that were feeding a distance from the road.”

“An adult elephant cow charged at the man, who then ran … (but) was unfortunately not able to escape or evade the elephant, which was now joined by the whole herd, and was caught and trampled to death,” the board said.

It added that the elephants left the scene afterward and did not attack anyone.

“Statements by witnesses who observed the whole incident further suggest that the female elephant that charged and attacked might have done so to protect the herd and young ones.”

Plans are being made to repatriate the tourist’s body, the Spanish newspaper said, citing officials.

Elephant attacks are not rare in South Africa.

In 2019, a suspected poacher was attacked and killed by an elephant, and his body eaten by lions in the northeastern Kruger National Park, authorities said at the time.

In the same year, a security guard was similarly crushed to death by an elephant at a mine in the country’s Limpopo province.

Other parts of Southern Africa have witnessed similar tragedies. Three months ago, an elderly American woman was killed after an elephant charged at a vehicle transporting tourists inside Zambia’s largest national park.

The North West tourism board said it was “saddened” by the incident at the Pilanesberg park, urging tourists to “respect distance between vehicles and animals and … to only alight in specially designated areas.”

The daughter of Cameroon’s president said she hoped that by coming out as a lesbian she can help change laws that ban homosexuality in the country.

Brenda Biya, who lives between the United States and Switzerland, came out in an Instagram post on June 30.

In an interview with the French newspaper Le Parisien published on Tuesday, the 27-year-old said she had not come out to her family before she publicly posted a photo of her kissing her girlfriend.

“There are plenty of people in the same situation as me who suffer because of who they are,” she said. “If I can give them hope, help them feel less alone, if I can send love, I’m happy.”

Same-sex relations are punishable by up to five years in prison under Cameroon’s penal code.

Her father, Paul Biya, 91, who has led Cameroon for four decades, has not publicly commented on the matter.

Brenda Biya said the law punishing gay sex existed before her father came into power in 1982, and she hopes her story will lead to change in the legislation.

“It may be too soon for it to disappear completely but it could be less strict. We could first eliminate the prison sentence,” she said in the interview.

Bandy Kiki, a Cameroonian LGBT rights activist based in Britain, said she was happy for Biya, who she said had affirmed the existence of LGBT people in Cameroon.

“However, it highlights a harsh reality: anti-LGBT laws in Cameroon disproportionately target the poor,” she said.

“Wealth and connections create a shield for some, while others face severe consequences.”