Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Andrew Peach and in the early hours of Monday the 23rd of February these are our main stories. Violence has broken out across Mexico after the leader of one of the country's most feared drugs cartels was killed in a military operation. There's been a second day of protests at Iranian universities with crowds chanting death to the dictator.
And a man who broke into President Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate carrying a shotgun and a fuel can has been shot dead. Also in this podcast, Ukraine's president tells BBC News that Russia has already started World War III. We have different views regarding a third world war. I believe that Putin has already started it. The question is how much territory he will be able to seize and how to stop him.
And the Winter Olympics have come to an end at a glittering ceremony in Verona. We start in Mexico, where a government military operation has led to the killing of a major drugs kingpin, leader of the feared new generation Calisco cartel. Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes was known by his nickname El Mencho, a drug lord so powerful the US authorities put a $15 million bounty on his head.
Since his killing, the response from El Mencho's cartel has been swift and violent. In as many as eight different Mexican states, the group has set cars alight, built roadblocks and attacked security forces. Plumes of smoke have been filmed rising over several cities and many international flights have been cancelled. Our correspondent in Miami, Luis Fajardo, told me more about the drug's lord.
El Mencho was a very big figure in the crime world, both of Mexico and internationally. Friends and foes of Mexican President Claudio Sheinbaum have acknowledged that it is a very big deal for the authorities to have killed him on Sunday.
He was the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which was seen as probably the most powerful or certainly one of the most powerful drug cartels in Mexico. A person who was compared to other major, major figures in the drug trafficking world. Particularly his organization was said to have a big role in sending fentanyl to the United States, which has replaced cocaine.
as the drug of choice for many of these cartels obtaining fabulous amounts of wealth from smuggling drugs to the U.S. El Mencho was 59. He had begun as a police officer. Then he had moved through the ranks of other criminal organizations until he organized the Jalisco New Generation cartel and rose to its top.
So certainly a very big deal for Mexican authorities, taking a lot of credit for that today. And hoping that this is going to have some kind of an impact, particularly on the relations with the United States, where Donald Trump has been demanding more cooperation from Mexico in fighting these drug trafficking organizations.
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Chapter 2: What triggered the recent violence in Mexico?
Shame on you, shame on you, they're chanting. The first rallies to take place on a scale like this since January's deadly crackdown by the authorities, which saw thousands of people killed. It comes as tension continues to mount between Iran and the US over its nuclear programme.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has said he believes there's still a chance that dispute could be solved diplomatically based on a win-win game. He told US television he'd probably meet with President Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff in Geneva on Thursday. We continue our negotiation. At the same time, we are working on the elements of a deal and a draft of the text.
So I hope that when we get there, we are prepared to talk and negotiate on those drafts. Mr Aragchi also repeated his insistence that Iran's nuclear enrichment programme wasn't up for negotiation. President Trump has given Tehran little more than a week to strike a deal or face military action.
In Iran, the students who gathered at numerous universities over the weekend at the start of a new semester did so to honour those killed last month. I spoke to BBC Persian's Barman Karbassi and put it to Barman that anyone going out on the streets of Iran to protest must be pretty brave. And that's putting it mildly.
I mean, we are looking at just around 45 days ago where tens of thousands of people were killed or injured, many more arrested, some of them getting execution sentences, death sentences, awaiting executions. So the environment that this regime has created is one of instilling as much fear as one can possibly imagine.
And despite it all, we've seen elite universities across the country coming out in force, students chanting against the supreme leader, even holding up the historic flag of Iran and demanding the end of this regime directly.
chanting against a supreme leader repeatedly these are the scenes that just indicates that nothing this government has done this month and a half has really changed the calculus of a population okay well i guess that's if the protesters represent the population the protesters certainly want a change of government do you think that the wider iranian population is in support of that Absolutely.
I mean, even though there's no opinion polls done, the fact that we saw on January 8th and January 9th millions of people come to streets, one can confidently say a vast majority of Iranians want change, and they don't want incremental change. They want fundamental change. Do we have any sense of how the current Iranian authorities are going to respond to these protests?
Well, if passes prologue, we can say that if it gets out of their control, especially if it spills out onto the streets of major cities, they will once again use violence the way they did on January 8th and 9th. Will they be putting machine guns on the streets corners that they did on those two days? Bloody nights depends, but it also really different in the sense that the world is watching.
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Chapter 3: How did El Mencho's death impact the Jalisco New Generation Cartel?
First and foremost, Meta Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, said, No, thank you. We're all right. We've got free and public universal health care for everybody and everyone's fine. And then the same was said by Jens Fredrik Nielsen, like he just said, who said, Thank you, but no thanks. We've got free healthcare, we've got a very good system, and our people in Greenland are fine.
We don't need your interference. This is part of a broader scope Trump's had, trying to acquire Greenland. He's made it very obvious that that's what he wants to do. He didn't rule out taking it by force, but then he's backtracked on that, as we found out in January. And this seems perhaps just a bit of a provocation.
I checked the tracking data of the ship, which he allegedly might use, and it's still docked in Mobile, Alabama, so it's not on its way there any time soon.
It's been a star-studded few hours here in London with the BAFTA Awards ceremony honouring the best in cinema. This is the British equivalent to the Oscars. It can often be a signpost towards what might happen at the Academy Awards in a few weeks from now. Our entertainment correspondent Colin Patterson sent this report from backstage.
And the BAFTA goes to... One battle after another.
It was an evening when one battle after another picked up one BAFTA after another.
Thank you, sensei, thank you! God damn it!
Viva la revoluciĆ³n! In the thriller, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a jaded revolutionary trying to save his daughter from a white supremacist. It won six BAFTAs in total, including Best Film and Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson. The night's biggest shock came in Best Actor...
Robert Aramayo from I Swear.
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