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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service and Valerie Sanderson.

And in the early hours of Thursday, the 4th of March, these are our main stories. The International Criminal Court is opening a formal investigation into war crimes in the Palestinian territories. Israel has branded the move as anti-Semitic. Swedish police are treating as a suspected terrorist attack, an incident in which a young man stabbed eight people. Police in Washington say they have information about a possible plot by a pro Trump militia to breach the Capitol building later on Thursday. Also in this podcast, it's been 10 years of conflict in Syria, the highest risk for us was when we are in health facilities.

So when you leave the hospital, you just thank God because now you are outside.

You can be a doctor there. Tells us of the attacks on the country's health care facilities. And South Korea's first transgender soldier who campaigned for trans rights after being discharged last year has been found dead.

Maybe it didn't take long for Israel's prime minister to reject the International Criminal Court's decision to investigate alleged war crimes in the Palestinian territories. Benjamin Netanyahu called the probe the essence of anti-Semitism better than it was when the court is pretty biased against Israel.

There's only one thing left to do to fight for the truth on every stage, in every forum, to defend each and every soldier, each and every commander, each and every civilian. And I promise you, we will fight for the truth until we cancel this scandalous decision.

But the show will dissolved. In fact, the inquiry will look at possible transgressions by Palestinians as well as Israelis when it looks into events since June 2014 across the Israeli occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. The US based campaign group Human Rights Watch has praised the ICC announcement, and a spokesman for Hamas says the Palestinian group is ready to work with the court. And on a duly elected.

We call on the international court to resist any pressure to prevent it from achieving justice and punishing the criminals. Hamas is ready to cooperate with any party that brings justice to our Palestinian people and punish the occupation for all its crimes.

And when the criminal courts chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said the ICC had no agenda and that its main concern is for the victims of crimes arising from a long cycles of violence.

Our correspondent in Jerusalem, Tom Bateman, told us more in terms of specific incidents, while the prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has said in the past that there is reason to believe in her view that there was a case for war crimes have been committed, first of all, in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in their conflict of 2014, and also that there is the scope to investigate Israel's settlement activities in the occupied West Bank. That is where Jewish settlers and Israeli citizens live in settlements in that territory.

And also part of the referral from the Palestinians was about the protests at the perimeter fence in Gaza from 2018 2019, in which more than 200 people were killed by Israeli forces. Now, Israel had always said that it was defending itself against the risk of attack by Hamas and that those protests were simply, in fact, a cover for that. So all of those things may well come into the scope. But in terms of details, we just don't have any yet other than the prosecutor will launch a formal investigation.

Tom, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been very swift in his reaction, hasn't he, saying the criminal courts probe is the essence of anti-Semitism and Israel is not a member, is it, of the ICC?

It's not it's not signed up to the Rome Statute, which effectively establishes the courts. And those states that are signatories amount to its jurisdiction, which is actually one of the reasons why this process has been even more lengthy so far, because there was deliberation by the judges about whether or not the court had jurisdiction in the Palestinian territories and it ruled in February that it did so. Now, Israel said that that was wrong. It still believes the court simply doesn't even have jurisdiction.

But as you say, Mr. Netanyahu has reacted to this tonight. He was actually had a big platform to do so because he was announcing his party's political campaign ahead of the upcoming elections in Israel. He said that Israel is under attack tonight and the court has found that our brave and moral soldiers who are fighting terrorists are war criminals. So the underlying position of the fundamental position of the Israelis is that the court is biased, politically motivated, and that it doesn't have jurisdiction.

The Palestinian leadership has welcomed the decision. They say it serves Palestine's tireless pursuit of justice and accountability. As for Hamas, I mean, they both stages in the recent decisions by the court have welcomed what the court is doing, despite the fact that, of course, the group itself will come under investigation. But they have said that they welcomed the prosecutor's move.

Tom Bateman in Jerusalem. Swedish security services say they're investigating a potential terror attack after eight people were. Stabbed in the southern city of Atlanta. No one died in the incident and the suspect has been detained by police. More from Madison in soccer.

Police say witnesses began phoning in to report a man appearing to attack people in the Atlanta town center at around 3:00 in the afternoon. This is a small town southwest of Stockholm. And within minutes, officers said they made it onto the street. They'd shot the suspect who's now being treated in hospital. Now, this is somebody previously known to police for minor crimes, but we don't know anything else about them at the moment other than that they're in their 20s.

They're not understood to have life threatening injuries. The suspect is under police observation, but we don't know if they've been able to question him yet, if at all. And very little is known about the people who were injured or how badly they've been hurt. And we also don't have information on what kind of weapon was used. So still lots of unanswered questions.

But the key thing here being that police earlier in the day said that they were treating this as an attempted murder inquiry. Now they're considering whether or not it could be a terror attack.

Do we know why they've said it's too early in the investigation to say if there was any particular reason these victims were targeted or if the attack was random? And they also say there was nothing to indicate that a deadly terror attack was likely in this particular area in this town of Atlanta. But the threat level for these kind of incidents in Sweden is currently at three on a scale of one to five. So police said that indicates that something of this kind could happen in Sweden.

This kind of violence is generally rare in the Nordics. The last deadly terror attack in Sweden was in 2017 when a man drove a truck into a busy pedestrian shopping street here in Stockholm, killing five people. So so this is a major news story here. And the Swedish prime minister, Stefan Levy, and he's tweeted about this saying he condemns the violence, also issued a more detailed statement in Swedish saying that we will respond to these appalling actions with the collective force of society.

And he said he wanted everybody to send their thoughts to those affected by the violence.

Marty Savidge, police at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington say they have intelligence showing a possible plot by a militia group to breach the complex. On Thursday, Trump supporters launched a deadly assault on the Capitol in January to try to stop Congress certifying President Biden's victory.

Donahue reports the intelligence involves a possible plot by a far right group to storm the Capitol. The FBI has indicated that it could involved the three percenters, an organization deemed extremist by prosecutors. The date of March the fourth is significant as conspiracy theorists believe it marks the true Inauguration Day and will see the return of Donald Trump. Police say they're taking the threat seriously. And the capital remains surrounded by miles of razor topped fencing. And 5000 National Guard troops remain on patrol.

Gary O'Donahue, South Korea's first transgender soldier who campaigned for trans rights after being discharged last year, has been found dead. The case of 23 year old Vunani Su triggered a debate about the treatment of LGBT troops, as Jonathan Savage reports.

Beaune, he soon who was 23, was a staff sergeant and a top rated driver in a tank regiment when she underwent gender reassignment surgery in November 2013. While on leave in Thailand, she had hoped to continue serving in the female corps of South Korea's military, but was discharged in January last year on the grounds that personnel with physical or mental disabilities can be discharged. If those issues did not occur in the line of duty, Miss Beaune began a landmark legal challenge, but her petition for reinstatement was rejected.

Then, in December, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea said the decision not to allow her to continue to serve in the military had no legal grounds. A hearing on a lawsuit brought by the former soldier was expected in April, but he soon said that apart from her gender identity, she wanted to show everyone that she could also be one of the great soldiers who protect the country. A local counseling center at which misprision was registered reported to emergency officials that she had been unable to be contacted for several days.

Her body was found at her home in the city of Cheongju. The cause of death has not been disclosed. Jonathan Savage.

Still to come, abortion is banned in Brazil, so she's just undertaken the biggest journey of her life. She flew in for the first time ever to have a procedure in Mexico, abortion in Latin America.

Two big political events took place in the U.K. on Wednesday in London, the finance minister outlined a post pandemic future for the country. And in Edinburgh, the first minister for Scotland faced big questions on her performance in Oddjob. Chancellor Rishi Sinak, speaking in parliament, said he'd do whatever it takes to protect jobs and livelihoods, including extending the government's wage support scheme.

For those unable to work due to Lockdown's, an important moment is upon us. A moment of challenge and of change of difficulties, yes, but of possibilities, too. This is a budget that meets that moment, and I commend it to the House.

Our political correspondent Rob Watson listened to Mr Sinak.

This was a budget of two halves. If I could borrow from the football commentators. The first half was just eye watering, record breaking amounts of emergency government spending and borrowing for the next year. So even beyond June, when the lockdown restrictions are supposed to end and then the second half, of course, was the government saying how it would start to claw back some of that that money and debt, essentially by raising taxes on all of us here in the UK and businesses, too.

And what's been reaction? Well, the reaction has been supportive by some saying this is just about the right balance between continuing the emergency measures and how you get it all back. And then you've got a sort of spectrum of criticism on the left, I guess, of the spectrum. The opposition Labour Party essentially saying, look, the covid crisis has essentially revealed and exacerbated existing and worsening divisions between rich and poor divisions caused by 11 years of conservative government. And then, if you like, on the right of the spectrum, the criticism has been it would never be a smart thing to to raise taxes on businesses, especially in the light of Brexit.

That's what happened in London. Now to Scotland, where the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has been speaking at an inquiry into her government's handling of harassment complaints against her predecessor, Alex Salmond. During a seven hour grilling, the Sturgeon said her government had nothing to hide, despite accusations of a cover up by opposition parties.

I feel I must rebut the absurd suggestion that anyone acted with malice or is part of a plot against Alex Salmond. That claim is not based in any fact. What happened is this, and it is simple. A number of women made serious complaints about Alex Armin's behaviour. The government, despite the mistake it undoubtedly made, tried to do the right thing. As foreign minister, I refused to follow the Egil pattern of allowing a powerful man to use his status and connections to get what he wants.

And of course, Alex Salmond was cleared in court, wasn't he robs? Why is this whole thing so important?

It's so important because it could do potentially nothing less than alter the course of the history of the British Isles. Why do I say that? Because this could affect the stranglehold that the popularity that the Scottish National Party, the independent Scottish National Party has in Scotland. If it's felt that the the row between its two sort of former stars were to affect the way its standing in Scotland.

So how safe is First Minister Nicola Sturgeon now? I mean, will she have to resign? That's what many in the opposition are calling for, aren't they?

I hesitate to stick my neck out now, but having watched both Alex Salmond last Friday and Nicola Sturgeon today, I don't think either one of them scored a knockout blow. So I can't see her resigning. The interesting question, of course, does go back to this issue of does it at some point impact on the popularity of the pro independence Scottish National Party and, of course, of the cause that they support, which is an independent Scotland? Important, of course, because there are elections coming up to the Scottish Parliament in May and Robertson in December.

Argentina voted to legalise abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. While pro-choice activists see this as a big step in a region where abortion is most illegal, other parts of Latin America, such as Honduras, have more recently ruled on toughening restrictions for terminations, as North America correspondent Katy Watson looks at how things could change.

This vote was a long time coming, the culmination of years of campaigning by Argentina's women's movement in one of the most restrictive regions in the world for reproductive rights. On the other side of South America, in Brazil, Hinata watched with fascination. She saw it as a step forward. Then she says, her world collapsed. She hates me.

I can't. Under no circumstances could I be pregnant in my city. You have to fight hard to get a job with. covid pregnant woman are laid off, but her options were limited.

Abortion is banned in Brazil. Unless it's a result of rape, the mother's life is in danger or if the fetus is anencephalic. Ainata said she didn't want to risk having an abortion at home and finding herself in jail. So she's just undertaken the biggest journey of her life through the support of charity Miles for the lives of women, she flew for the first time ever to have a procedure in Mexico, and that was after spending all of her savings on a plane ticket to Colombia, only to find the borders shut and way out close to Mexico City.

She was looked after by Dr. Carlos Degrowth because in Mexico City it's legal in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

I applaud Argentina because it's an important step. Mexico City was a great example of what can be achieved for women because since it was decriminalized, no woman has died from a safe abortion.

But Latin America is deeply divided. It's a region where religion and conservatism reign. When Argentina moved in one direction in December, a month later, Honduras Congress added an outright abortion ban to its constitution.

While many credit in support of Argentina's president Alberto Fernandez in helping push through the changes, Brazil's leader jailable senario condemned the decision selling. Salamo has campaigned vociferously against abortion as part of Sao Paulo's 40 Days for Life Group, part of an international Christian group that organizes campaigns against abortion.

Because it was the Argentinians desire, there was a lot of pressure.

Zannini blames left wing politics. She thinks Brazil's leader Jabel scenario would take a very different approach.

A lot of people say that this is because we are Catholic and that's the religious. It's not this is a basic human right that maybe has the right to be born.

Pro-Choice activists in the region say they'll continue to fight.

In Argentina, women have joined together wearing a green bandana. It's come to represent a peaceful resistance by growing women's rights movement, which argues that society needs to change.

And it's a symbol has been taken on by many other activists in the region, Deborah Denise is a professor of anthropology at the University of Brasilia and a prominent feminist activist.

Traditionally, Latin America would not operate in that way, recognizing each other in a common symbol. It was a colonized region looking much more to the global north. So even a country that understands itself as a continent like Brazil is using now the Green Square to represent women's causes, causes that are likely to become more prominent than ever in the coming years.

Katie Watson reporting. This month marks 10 years since Syria began its descent into war and for untold numbers of Syrians, the damage, the lives lost, the future has ravaged remains. One measure of how filthy and brutal this conflict has been is in the repeated systematic attacks on hospitals and health care staff. In a moment, we'll hear from the head of one of the world's major relief agencies. But first, let's hear from a doctor on the ground in northwestern Syria.

He asked us not to broadcast his name, smen from the air like airstrike bombing.

So come in. Not like using car bomb being on the ground. And also there are some cases of kidnapping.

And how is it made you feel as a doctor? Actually, if we are talking on the all time low since the start, I can say the highest risk for us was when we are in health facilities come in in the high risk area. And so when you leave the hospital, you're just thank God, because now you are outside, you can breathe. You can imagine that would happen. So for me and other health staff, like decides to steal and provide services by Syria, we are believe it was to stay and help people.

They are, you know, more than four million now in the area of northwest Syria includes about 16. I'm not in Aleppo. So we believe the people need to be helped. You know, most of them, they don't have the best for their life.

It's absolutely stunning to hear you say that the moments when you have felt most at danger, you and your colleagues, is when you're actually in the health facilities because you think presumably that they are being deliberately targeted.

Yeah, I worked in some areas where all the attacks on the area and when the government tried to capture this area, A, started to attack the health facilities there, first of all. So I remember the time when they tried to capture Hama and led the attack around 48 health facilities in the area and closed the facilities that I worked in. And people are trying to move away from from hospitals. Some some people like refused to come in for four cold cases.

I mean, and even a woman prepared to deliver in Homs, about a dozen come in to hospitals because the higher risk also that nearby hospitals, they started trying to convince the management of hospitals to move away from the center of the city.

And that was a doctor who's worked extensively in Syria. Well, David Miliband is a former British foreign secretary who now runs the US based relief agency, the International Rescue Committee. We asked him what the is his own research suggests about the extent of the assault on health care in Syria.

It's quite extraordinary that the doctors and nurses, 81 percent report that they know co-workers or patients who've died in attacks on health facilities, 78 percent. So effectively, four out of five have seen one of those attacks. And that's why doctors like the one you interviewed say they breathe a sigh of relief when they leave because horrifically, what should be a sanctuary turns out to be a target in the war of attrition that's still being fought, notably in the north west of the country where about four million Syrians live, as well as sometimes in the north east of the country where two million live.

This is nothing new. These attacks on health care facilities, they have been going on for years.

Well, you're right to be outraged. We know that the laws of war that were brought into international law after the Second World War weren't always observed. But the Syria conflict has plumbed new depths not just for the use of chemical weapons and the kind of breaches of international law that have happened. But the systematic and continued nature of them, I mean, 600 attacks on health facilities since 2010. Eleven 24 of them just run by my own organisation, the International Rescue Committee, just in the last two years.

And that shows that I'm afraid Syria is becoming a poster child for a new age of impunity. Absolutely. Central to that is the loss of outrage. The UN did establish an inquiry into seven attacks on health facilities. It was clear where the finger was pointing. The obviously the Assad regime and its Russian supporters are the only people who are running bombing raids in. However, air power in the conflict and yet the sense of gridlock in the UN system remains strong, and I think that that's something that goes right to the heart of the challenge that's been presented to the new Biden administration, because they've come in, they've said they want to turn a page, they want to re-establish accountability as a centerpiece of international law.

And that's going to take real effort.

And it's not the first time that you've talked about an age of impunity, about this sort of collective shrug that seems to occur when people see these depredations happen on this scale. But are you saying also that it needs to be followed up criminally in terms of the justice system as well?

I think that there are three elements that really are very, very important now. One is the investigations and the accountability. Secondly, the health facilities that the doctor you depend on are cross-border aid flows and the United Nations has to manage. The Security Council has to reauthorize those cross-border operations, those cross-border operations that are absolutely essential to keep the health facilities running finally, as Syria can't drop off the diplomatic agenda. There is a UN envoy here. Pettersen is a very experienced Norwegian diplomat.

But of course, the political process is really run by the group of Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria. They've set up an alternative mechanism for taking forward diplomatic activity. And it's absolutely vital that the whole region, nevermind the whole of the international community, recognizes the significance of Syria.

David Miliband and the Syrian doctor were both speaking to the BBC's Tim Franks in Africa. Vultures are in danger of extinction. Their numbers are diminishing because they're being poisoned. It's particularly bad for the bearded vulture in Kenya. There are fewer than five of the birds left. The BBC's Anaka reports from Lockpick in the foothills of Mount Kenya.

As you can see now, they are running away and are headed this way.

That is Ezekiel Cyclical from the rural village in the Cape York County in central Kenya, together with his neighbours, this kid, and are on high alert for this lions and not that far from here, evident in the observing the way the goats, the gazelles and the zebras are behaving.

They are moving away very fast from a nearby bush. They believe there's a pack of lions near their village. And from the look of things, they might not be far. There are some eight homesteads here, we are told, residents in the homestead where we are left early in the morning to find their camels that escaped last night after being scared by the lions. On the right, there's an empty homestead. Its owners left yesterday with their livestock frustrated by attacks from lions with its agenda.

Every day they kill goats.

You take your goats to the grazing fields and you come back with one less. They have even started attacking zebras. Only thing left now is for them to feed on humans.

If they kill my livestock, I'm left with no option but to poison carcasses.

I find lying around in other cases of human wildlife conflict. I reported here almost daily out of frustration. Residents are forced to lay carcasses with poison targeting predators. But vultures in big numbers are caught up in the trap. Martin Ordinal works with the Peregrine Fund conservation and has seen firsthand the devastation caused by humans to livestock are very important to pastoralists.

One cow might cost between maybe between 20 and 50000 of its bulls if they say go up to a hundred thousand, a significant amount of money. And so it's no wonder that they will do whatever it takes to try and punish where they think to steal their livestock.

At Ol Pejeta Conservancy, around 11 vultures are devouring a carcass.

Dasi or conservationist sees this number is lower than it used to be. Poisoning has led to a sharp decline of vultures in Africa and across the world. A single poisoned carcass can fatally devastate an entire breeding cluster of vultures, since these animals breed slowly and take years to mature.

Right now in Kenya, there are four species that are critically endangered and two that are endangered. I don't know if you can see the hills behind me, but that hill, there's a cliff up there. We used to have breeding colonies of bearded vultures of Egyptian vultures and repels vultures. Currently, there are there are no breeding vultures that we know of up there.

Among the worst affected species is the hooded vulture that has seen its population plunge by. 90 percent over the past three or four decades and Ohkuma and that's it from us for now, but there will be an updated version of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, all of the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC Dot 08 UK. The producer of this edition was Alison Davies, the studio manager, Julian Farmer.

Karen Martin is the editor. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time for my.