MEXICO CITY, Mexico — President Enrique Peña Nieto says he wants to soften Mexico’s bloody, military-led offensive against its criminal lords with a brainier, more preventive strategy.

Well, wish him luck with that.

Peña Nieto this week had to dispatch troops to the so-called hot country of western Michoacan to quell confrontations between marauding gangsters and village self-defense militias.

Mexico drug war, rebooted

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

theifiles:

Focusing on the ineptitude, drug abuse, sexual misconduct and corruption of Afghan security forces, VICE’s new documentary “This is What Winning Looks Like” begs the question: IS this what winning looks like?

These 9 eye-opening clips from the film take a grim look at the situation in Afghanistan. 

Correspondent Ben Brody has photographed the American military at war both as a soldier and a civilian. For GlobalPost, he documented what ending a war looks like, US troops packing up and moving out, Afghan security forces facing their first fighting season alone and how to find the elusive truth.

FUKUOKA, Japan — With declining enrollments at his junior college, Tokutaro Ushijima thinks he’s found one way to attract more students: pop idol training.

The political philosophy professor at Nishi-Nippon Junior College, a two-year school in the southern city of Fukuoka, has found his cause celebre by starting the unconventional “Department of Media Promotion.”

In its third year, Ushijima oversees 32 teenage and 20-something girls who seek celebrity and glamour. Every day, the young women in this department train for hours in two girl bands, a modeling troupe, and in a TV broadcasting studio.

My teacher, the J-pop idol

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

TBILISI, Georgia — Two dozen stunned pro-gay rights protesters stood in a stranger’s kitchen last week. Blood streamed down a young woman’s face where it had been struck by a rock.

Outside the building, an angry mob was gaining in numbers and ferocity as the protesters’ outnumbered police escorts frantically debated how to evacuate them.

“All this crowd, like zombies, they simply wanted to kill us. Not beat or humiliate, they simply wanted to kill us,” said Nino Kharchilava, one of the protesters. “At some point, I definitely thought, ‘We’re going to die here, and that’s it.’”

Rising church asserts itself in Georgia after Orthodox Christian protesters attack gay-rights activists

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

SEOUL, South Korea — This year, North Korea has been flaunting its nuclear hardware in an effort to extort concessions from the United States and South Korea.

But the tactic has failed to provoke panic for one key reason: Officials doubt that Pyongyang would be stupid enough to start a nuclear war.

While nukes are better seen than used, and thus of limited blackmail value, dictator Kim Jong Un possesses a quieter weapon that’s more readily unleashed — and has already become a serious nuisance: cyber war.

North Korea: How the least-wired country became a hacking superpower

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

Does Thursday’s 7.3 percent plunge in Japanese stocks spell the end to Abenomics?

Unlikely.

Since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was swept to power in December on a promise to defeat deflation and revive the world’s third-largest economy, the benchmark Nikkei 225 has soared 50 percent.

Thursday’s fall, though the biggest since the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster more than two years ago, merely takes the market back to where it was about 10 days ago.

“Everyone is upset because stocks fell by 1,000 points, but current levels are much higher than those seen several months ago,” Yoshio Kono, chief executive of Norinchukin Bank, told the Wall Street Journal.

Does the Japanese market plunge signal the end of Abenomics?

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

NEED TO KNOW

Droning on. Barack Obama, in a landmark policy speech, has defended the use of drones, arguing the United States is fighting a “just war” of self defense and countless lives have been saved by thwarting terror attacks. The US president also announced new guidelines, saying drone strikes would be used only when a threat was “continuing and imminent.”

In Pakistan, where hundreds have been killed by drone strikes, the country’s foreign ministry said it appreciated that Obama had acknowledged “force alone cannot make us safe,” but reiterated that drone strikes were counter-productive. The lawyer leading a UN drone inquiry praised Obama’s speech as a “significant step towards increased transparency.”

Obama also called for the closure of the controversial US detention center at Guantanamo Bay — a key campaign promise that he has so far failed to achieve — and even took on a heckler who repeatedly interrupted the president as he talked about Gitmo.

WANT TO KNOW

Gay scouts. From next year, openly gay boys will be allowed to join the Boy Scouts of America. But confusingly, the ban on gay adult leaders remains.

Following months of intense debate about the Scouts’ longstanding ban on gays, more than 60 percent of delegates attending the organization’s annual national meeting voted for the historic policy change. “No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone,” the approved resolution says.

But the Boy Scouts chose to continue its policy of excluding gay adults as leaders, leading to a flurry of reaction on Twitter. 

“So you’re going to help gay boys become excellent leaders when they’re scouts but tell them they’re not fit to lead as adults? Not ok,” one tweet read.

Heathrow emergency. A British Airways jetliner with 75 passengers on board was forced to make an emergency landing at Heathrow Airport this morning not long after it took off, closing both runways and fueling speculation about what had caused the trouble.

Amateur footage showed the Airbus SAS A319 spewing smoke from its right engine as it descended over London. The flight had been headed for Oslo, Norway.

“The aircraft landed safely and emergency slides were deployed and we are currently caring for our customers,” said a British Airways spokesperson, adding that carrier will perform a full investigation into what is being described as a technical issue. 

STRANGE BUT TRUE

Troubled bridge over very cold water. The Interstate 5 bridge in Washington state collapsed last evening, sending cars and people plunging into the frigid Skagit River.

A section of the four-lane bridge collapsed between Burlington and Mount Vernon, Wash., on the main route between Seattle and Vancouver. State officials said three people were rescued and there were no fatalities. 

The cause of the collapse is not yet clear. But, hey, maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise: more than a quarter of the 7,840 bridges in Washington state are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 Infrastructure Report Card.

HONG KONG — These days, any conversation about hacking and cyber warfare inevitably has to turn to China.

The People’s Republic is, by just about any measure, home to the world’s most relentless, prolific and successful hackers in the world. More cyber-attack traffic comes from China than any other country: over 40 percent of the world total in the last quarter of 2012, according to a new report by Akamai Technologies (Disclosure: Paul Sagan, Akamai’s executive vice chairman, is one of GlobalPost’s investors).

And when it comes to spying, China’s preponderance is even more striking. Verizon estimates that 96 percent of all cyber-espionage intrusions in 2012 had Chinese hackers behind them, possibly making them “the most active source of national and industrial espionage in the world today.” Their alleged targets have ranged from Coca Cola and Google to journalists, human-rights lawyers, air-traffic control systems and the Pentagon.  

To many, hackers are a nuisance who clutter their inboxes with poorly crafted spam, but to the US economy, according to Greg Autry of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, it’s a $400 billion problem. The crisis is so great that the White House has begun speaking out publicly against the attacks.

Meet Zhang. He hacks for Beijing.

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

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