This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Valerie Sanderson, and in the early hours of Friday the 21st of March, these are our main stories.

President Trump signs an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.

The first woman, first African and youngest ever international Olympic committee president,

Kirstie Coventry,

wins at an election held in Greece.

As these fine negotiations continue, President Zelensky tells EU leaders that Russia must stop making unnecessary demands that prolong the war in Ukraine.

Also in this podcast, thousands of protesters have defied a government ban and rallied for a second

day in Istanbul over the arrest of the city's mayor, a key rival to Turkey's President Erdogan.

If his candidacy is blocked, this will lead to much higher support for him

because people in Turkey will not allow their ballot box rights to be denied.

And why the script of the groundbreaking French film, Breathless,

could fetch $650,000.

It was one of Donald Trump's chief pledges in the run-up to the 2024 election

and in the last few hours the president has signed an executive order

dismantling the Department of Education, the body which oversees public school funding,

student loans and programs for low-income students.

Speaking at the White House, Mr. Trump accused the Department of breathtaking failures,

claiming that the U.S. hadn't done well in education for a long time.

We're going to be returning education very simply back to the states where it belongs,

and this is a very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, it's a common sense thing to do, and it's going to work. Absolutely, it's going to work. And I can tell you from dealing with the governors and others in the state, they want it so badly. They want to take their children back and really teach their children individually.

Probably the cost will be half and the education will be maybe many, many times better.

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