Narcos.
HALO.
“(News Items) is the first thing I read every morning.” — Rob Manfred, Commissioner, Major League Baseball.
1. The New York Times:
The Mexican government said it killed the nation’s most wanted cartel boss on Sunday, setting off a wave of fires and violence across the country as cartel operatives sought to exact revenge in an unsettling show of force.
Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” was the longtime leader of one of Mexico’s most powerful cartels, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and was widely regarded as one of the country’s most violent criminal figures. He presided over a criminal enterprise that has expanded rapidly over the past decade, producing and selling drugs, extorting local businesses and terrorizing communities across the country.
Mr. Oseguera’s killing plunged Mexico into a highly tense moment that could unleash a surge in violence. Past captures of cartel leaders have set off wars between the government and cartels, as well as between opposing factions jockeying for power in the beheaded criminal group.
Those fears were heightened on Sunday by a swift outbreak of violence across Mexico. In states around the country, armed groups blocked roads and set fire to supermarkets, banks and vehicles, in one of the most widespread eruptions of turmoil in the nation’s recent history. (Source: nytimes.com. More here. Local coverage here.)
2. Drug smugglers and cartel gunmen no longer wield just handguns or automatic rifles, officials and experts say, but also Claymore land mines, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars built from gas-tank tubes and armored trucks mounted with heavy machine guns. They are burying improvised explosive devices to kill their rivals and modifying drones bought online to make attack drones, loaded with toxic chemicals and bombs. “We cannot continue to just treat these guys as local street gangs,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with EWTN, a Catholic television network, last month. “They have weaponry that looks like what terrorists, in some cases armies, have.” (Sources: nytimes.com, state.gov)
3. Colombian soldiers defending a state-owned oil pumping station near the border with Venezuela were under attack. Two powerful insurgent groups that have been fighting the Colombian state for decades had been regularly stealing fuel fromit. The soldiers were used to snipers and ambushes, but now they had to contend with a new weapon their adversaries have by the thousands: swarms of small drones, the kind hobbyists can buy on Amazon, fitted with clawlike hooks carrying grenades. Over 15 days, the soldiers shot down 50 of them, according to four government security officials familiar with the operation. On the 16th day, a much larger drone, commonly used for spraying pesticides, appeared carrying four grenades. The battalion did not detect it in time. The grenades exploded, killing one soldier, the officials said. The four government security officials working in active combat zones across Colombia shared similar stories with The New York Times, reflecting what they said was a worrying trend: cheap access to easily modifiable drones is upending the country’s decades-long war against insurgent groups and putting the government on its heels. (Source: nytimes.com)
4. Russian forces conducted another large, combined strike package overnight on February 21 to 22 and appear to be shifting their target set from primarily energy infrastructure to include Ukrainian water and railway infrastructure. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched 347 drones and missiles against Ukraine overnight. (Source: understandingwar.org)
