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

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

Our senior correspondent in London is on the scene after the brutal attack in Woolwich on a British soldier.

Follow our live blog for updates

KILIS, Turkey — With his shiny gray suit and long hair, Ahmed Hiedar, 28, bears little resemblance to a rebel soldier. But he has won more battles against the Syrian government than the average AK-47 welding opposition fighter.

His war is waged from the Turkish side of the Syrian border, in a cluttered hotel room, barely wide enough to fit a single bed.

His weapon is a modest laptop, and his goal is not to take lives but to save them.

“I stand with the rebels, but have not taken a side in the fighting. I don’t like killing. My weapons are viruses and a servo” — a motor used in robots, Hiedar said, as he tidied a bed littered with books and electronic components.

Cyber warfare: the Pirates of Aleppo

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

ATLANTA, Georgia — It’s a new breed of warfare, unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

It can threaten a nation’s core security, cause mass casualties and weaken the economy, according to the Government Accountability Office, the US Congress’ research arm.

Assailants “could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals. … They could contaminate the water supply in major cities,” then-US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last October. Foes could take down electric or water systems, fomenting public panic, reaping high death tolls and causing high physical and economic costs.

It might not even be immediately clear who was behind the attack, or where it was coming from. This devastating power could be wielded with comparatively few operatives, or without the support of a national government. And the massive kinetic strength of the US military would be essentially helpless in thwarting it.

For more than two decades, internet-based attacks have been relatively infrequent and mostly low level. Now, many experts caution that the specter of cataclysmic cyber war is upon us.

How hackers could annihilate US utilities and unleash havoc on infrastructure

Photo illustration by Kyle Kim (Image from Getty Images)

British Prime Minister David Cameron said there are “strong indications” an attack in south London was a terrorist incident.

Speaking at a press conference alongside French President Francois Hollande, Cameron said Britain would “never buckle” in the face of such attacks.

One man was killed and two other men shot on a street in Woolwich, South London Wednesday, after what has been reported as a brutal machete attack.

Armed police were summoned to the scene after reports that two men had attacked another man with knives, and then left his bloodied corpse in the road.

Cameron says ‘strong indications’ London machete attack was terrorist incident

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

NEED TO KNOW

What’s Kim Jong Un’s boy doing in Beijing? Good question.

North Korean state media announced the departure on Wednesday of one Vice Marshal Choe Ryong Hae for China. Not only is this the first special envoy that Kim Jong Un has sent anywhere, but the visit also marks the first of its kind since North Korea began this latest round of militaristic bluster. In other words, long overdue.

Choe Ryong Hae is also a top military advisor to Kim Jong Un, and probably the most high-profile envoy the leader of the rogue state could have chosen for such a visit.

So, what are they going to talk about? Oh, y’know, probably North Korea’s recent missile launches and the hijacking of a Chinese boat by North Korean sailors. China has historically been the only country to have any sway in telling North Korea what to do, though that doesn’t seem to be the case so much right now.

WANT TO KNOW

As the search for survivors winds down in Oklahoma following a devastating tornado on Monday, here is some good news. It’s the best thing you will see today. That’s a promise.

After two decades of relative peace, security experts caution that internet warfare is all but imminent. GlobalPost examines the skirmishes, defenses, and the “calamitous” threat that a small group of hackers could pose to American cities.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

Russia is not happy about its Eurovision score and is taking it to the top. The Russian and Azeri foreign ministers held a joint press conference to voice their displeasure over a missing 10 points that Azerbaijan awarded the Russian singer but that mysteriously were not tallied in the final scores. Russian balladeer Dina Garipova finished 5th, 17 points behind 4th place Sweden, so the points would not have made any difference. But still. Don’t mess with the Soviet bloc and Eurovision.

And, like a New York Fashion Week of flowers, the Chelsea Flower Show highlights the top talent of Britain’s garden-mad society. As any such high-profile event, the show imposes limits. One hard and fast rule in particular has fenced Chelsea’s gardens off from commoners’ plots: no gnomes! Except this year.

LONDON, UK — The UK’s gay marriage bill passed the House of Commons on Tuesday, by a vote of 366 to 161. It now goes before the House of Lords.

Monday night’s Commons debate on the bill resulted in #aggressivehomosexual trending on Twitter in a cheeky nod to a Tory MP’s comments on the bill.

Tory MP Sir Gerald Howarth warned that the bill was a stepping stone for the “aggressive homosexual community,” prompting many gay marriage supporters to take to Twitter to express their… well, humor.

Example: I just knifed a lime and then drowned it in gin…#aggressivehomosexual

Check out the full story, and the humorous fall out from the debate