Global News Podcast - Israeli strike on Gaza seafront cafe

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Many Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air strike at a popular seafront cafe in Gaza. Also: Microsoft AI system diagnoses patients "much better than doctors", and big wins not so big in Norw...egian lottery.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Tuesday, the 1st of July, these are our main stories. Reports from across Gaza say dozens of Palestinians have been killed in renewed Israeli attacks. The International Criminal Court says it was the target of a sophisticated cyber attack during last week's NATO summit in The Hague. Microsoft says it's found that artificial intelligence can diagnose complex medical problems with far greater success rate than human experts. Also in this podcast... I was at work when I got a message that I want a large amount of money and I went in
Starting point is 00:00:44 and it was 3.9 million instead of 390 kroner. A Norwegian lottery company has apologised to nearly 50,000 people who were wrongly told that they'd won huge prizes. We begin in Gaza where Palestinian officials say at least 60 people have been killed across the strip by a wave of Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire. The bombardment follows the largest evacuation orders issued by Israel since the war with Hamas resumed in March. Among the dead were around 20 people at a beachfront cafe used by Palestinian journalists
Starting point is 00:01:24 and activists in Gaza City. This man saw the blast and ran to help. Everyone was happy sitting in the cafe. They were escaping the sadness. Then the missile hit. It tore into the children, the women, the men and the workers. No one was spared. We heard more from our correspondent in Jerusalem, Ioni Wells. This beachfront cafe is somewhere that was known as a place for journalists, for activists, people looking for a spot to work because it had internet access and chairs and tables there. Medics, eyewitnesses and the Hamas-run civil defense have said that at least 21 people have
Starting point is 00:02:01 been killed after an airstrike hit that cafe on this seafront in Gaza City. Now photos from the scene show people covered in blood. A cameraman with a local production company has told the BBC that people heard a massive explosion there and that there were bodies and blood everywhere. Now, this is part of a series of airstrikes that took place across Gaza on Monday. We've had reports too from Al Ali Hospital saying that 10 people were killed at an airstrike on the Islam aid distribution warehouse.
Starting point is 00:02:33 Another report from NASA Hospital saying 13 people were killed in a strike near an aid distribution center too. All of this is after Israel announced a wave of evacuation orders for areas in the north of Gaza but also around Gaza City to telling people to move south because of what it described as its use of intense force to expand and intensify its operations to, in its words, destroy Hamas's military capabilities. I mean, Israel has acknowledged today, hasn't it, that Palestinian civilians have been harmed at aid distribution points in Gaza and lessons have been learned, apparently.
Starting point is 00:03:09 Is that a change, do you think, in the official position? I mean, what does it mean? Well, it's interesting, because, as we know, over the last couple of weeks, since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, this organization backed by the U.S. and Israel, started operating most of the aid distribution centers in Gaza. There have been near daily reports of Israeli fire, killing people while seeking aid or on their way to seek aid. Now, the Israeli military in the past has acknowledged that it has fired what it's described
Starting point is 00:03:36 as warning shots at people it describes as suspects approaching troops, but it hasn't sort of directly commented on some reports of people being harmed. It's often said that it is investigating cases or looking into them. This statement today from the Israeli military says that they are reorganizing the aid centers, including installing fences and signs following incidents of reports where civilians were harmed. It says it will be issuing instructions from lessons learned, although it hasn't said what those lessons will be issuing instructions from lessons learned, although it hasn't said what those lessons will be.
Starting point is 00:04:05 Now, interestingly, Israeli media are reporting military sources admitting more than that, admitting that there have been people killed in what it's described as inaccurate artillery fire on certain occasions. Now, I've put that to the Israeli military. They say there is no further comment at this time, but they have said that incidents of harm are under review by authorities I only wells in Jerusalem Mitchell Barak is a political analyst and pollster based in Jerusalem who was an advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu Before he became Israeli Prime Minister Paul Henley asked him. What does he think?
Starting point is 00:04:41 Mr. Netanyahu's Gaza strategy is right now I think now that he's had a big win in Iran and especially with the United States him. What does he think Mr. Netanyahu's Gaza strategy is right now? I think now that he's had a big win in Iran and especially with the United States, I mean if the United States became not only in a defensive nature like had been done before when Iranian missiles came in in April and last year but in a very proactive way to destroy their nuclear capabilities, that's a big win for Netanyahu. It's a big win strategically, defensively, militarily, because it does seem to be that their desire, their capability to produce a nuclear bomb has been diminished, if not
Starting point is 00:05:18 totally obliterated. I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm sorry to interrupt. What I'm asking about is the strategy for Gaza now. We've been reporting on what's been happening there. So in order to do that, I have to give you the background of where his head is and how he's going to be able to negotiate. Because until now, he wasn't able to do a deal in Gaza to get the hostages back and end the war because he would lose his government. The right element in his government was threatening to leave if he would make any kind of deal.
Starting point is 00:05:45 Now that he has this huge win in Iran, which is both a military win and a geopolitical one in which the United States came to the serious aid of Israel and was involved in many different levels, so it gives him the latitude and the ability to make a deal and keep his government intact. So it is connected. There is speculation in Israeli media that some generals in the IDF consider the military's close to completing its objectives. Is that correct? In Gaza?
Starting point is 00:06:18 I mean, no. Close to completing the objectives means that the Hamas is totally wiped out. The Hamas has been, you know, they could end this war at any time over the last year and a half. All they have to do is release the hostages and leave and stop governing. Instead they, you know, steal aid and they still have hostages. So the Israeli goal is to destroy Hamas and to make sure that we get our hostages back. So it's hard to say that we're close to doing that because we still have a number of hostages there
Starting point is 00:06:51 and Hamas is still controlling things and is still in charge. Mitchell Barak, a former advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Well Britain's High Court has ruled that the government's decision to export military equipment to Israel is lawful despite accepting it could be used in breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza. The case was brought by a Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq which sought to block the British government from supplying components for Israeli F-35 fighter jets. Caroline Hawley has been following the case. This is the end of a long-running legal battle, first brought by human rights groups at the end of 2023. Last September the government suspended about 30 export licenses for UK-made
Starting point is 00:07:35 arms because of a clear risk they could be used in Gaza in violations of international law. But parts sent to the global F-35 programme were not included. Giving their 72-page written ruling, the judges said they'd had to decide whether the UK should withdraw from a specific multilateral defense collaboration. It was an acutely sensitive and political issue, they determined, that was for a democratic government, not the courts, to decide. The charity Oxfam called on the UK government to do, in its words, what was morally right and immediately suspend all arms sales to Israel. The campaign group Human Rights Watch said it was incredibly disappointed with the decision
Starting point is 00:08:15 at a time of what it called Israel's ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Lawyers for the human rights groups involved in the case are now working out if they can find grounds to appeal. Caroline Hawley. In Iran, the funeral took place on Monday of the family members of a leading scientist who was assassinated by Israel during the 12-day war early this month. Iran says at least 935 people were killed, including 38 children. Our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucet, is being allowed to report in Iran on condition that none of her reports are used on the BBC's Persian service. And Lise was at that funeral. On the seventh day of a fragile ceasefire, Iran is still bearing the dead.
Starting point is 00:09:12 But these aren't funerals for top military commanders or nuclear scientists targeted by Israel. This is about family members of the scientists killed in the last hours before the ceasefire took hold. The family of Sayed Siddiqui Saber. 12 members of his family were killed in all. And today, four members are being laid to rest, including the smallest coffin, which is of a six-year-old boy.
Starting point is 00:09:43 Scenes like this heighten the anger among Iranians, whether or not they support their government over this war, a war in which Israel said it was only targeting military and nuclear sites. It's clear that civilians were also suffering. Least you said in Iran. The International Criminal Court says it was the target of a sophisticated cyber attack during last week's NATO summit in The Hague. The ICC investigates some of the world's most serious crimes and holds highly sensitive information.
Starting point is 00:10:20 From The Hague, Hizana Hologhan. The ICC said the incident was swiftly detected and dealt with by its security teams and a comprehensive analysis is underway to assess the impact and any potential consequences. The timing of the attack coincided with the NATO summit in The Hague, but the ICC has not commented on whether there is any connection. Dutch officials have noted that pro-Russian hackers targeted various websites during the gathering of world leaders, though no specific suspects have been mentioned in the ICC case. This is the second major cyber incident the ICC has faced in recent years. In 2023,
Starting point is 00:11:00 the court suffered a breach that disrupted operations for weeks, but details of that attack, including whether sensitive information was compromised, were never disclosed. Anna Hologan, Health systems around the world are increasingly strained, but could artificial intelligence come to the rescue by reducing doctors' workloads, saving money and providing a better outcome for patients? Microsoft has been looking at real cases published in the New England Journal. Its AI tool was pitted against a group of experienced doctors to see who diagnosed the cases correctly. It says AI was far superior, correctly diagnosing 85% of cases.
Starting point is 00:11:40 The CEO of Microsoft, Al Mustafa Suleiman, spoke to the BBC's Rob Young about the study. We take 300 very long cases that often run to five to seven pages of very detailed information that is often presented by a patient, including pathology tests and radiology scans. And on average, our expert physicians get about 20% accuracy in trying to predict, given what they've read about the patient, what is the condition that they have, and our AI gets 85% accuracy. 85% is pretty phenomenal, and four times more than your average expert physician is incredibly impressive. What are you doing to get it to 100%? Or is that just not possible? impressive. What are you doing to get it to 100% or is that just not possible? Some of these cases are extremely obscure long-tail very rare conditions. In fact we ran the system on last week's edition of the New England Journal of
Starting point is 00:12:34 Medicine and it correctly diagnosed a case that has only ever been seen in the entire literature 1,500 times. So it's that rare and that obscure and I think that that is a seismic leg up for any clinician in practice to be able to have a tool like this at hand. So how could this be used then in the real healthcare setting of today? Well one of the most expensive parts of the process is just being able to figure out what exactly the patient has and you have to go off and commission various tests and so what the AI is very good at is trying to predict what the patient has and minimize the
Starting point is 00:13:12 costs involved in prediction. So it actually does this using fewer unnecessary tests and that obviously is huge for cost, it's huge for time, and obviously it's great for improving patient care. So could you see a world in which we speak to this system or a system like it on an app, which would order tests rather than somebody having to go in to see their general practitioner, for example? Yes, at Microsoft AI we create an AI called Copilot. We get between Microsoft Copilot and Bing, our search engine, we get 50 million health-related sessions per day. So there are people coming and asking about everything from falling over and scratching your knee
Starting point is 00:13:55 through to much more complicated cases around cancer or mental health problems. And so the motivation here is to try to enable Copilot to provide great diagnosis and eventually great treatment. So are you suggesting you would offer this generally? You just put this out there for free online and people would use it? This wouldn't necessarily have to be something that a health system or a nation's health service would buy. I think right now this is early research.
Starting point is 00:14:22 It's pre peer review. It's important to say. So it's a blog post that we're releasing. There's studies that have been done using the New England Journal of Medicine papers and case histories. So it's early research but it's very, very promising. The British doctor Ellie Cannon already uses AI to aid her consultations, but she thinks the study by Microsoft is too narrow. I think we have to be very sceptical about this type of sort of headline. I mean first of all, this is a blog post, very much an advert for a Microsoft product. This has not been trialled in any way, shape or form like other types of evidence-based medicine. And I think one thing that's very, very important,
Starting point is 00:15:06 especially for a worldwide audience, the data in is the data out. So if the data that is fed is only coming from certain populations, we're still gonna end up with the same inequality that we already have in healthcare. If they're not gonna be diagnosed, if they're slightly more atypical, which we've
Starting point is 00:15:25 seen over the last few decades with women of colour for example who have different symptoms from other women. So I'm pretty sceptical despite being somebody who's quite interested in AI. Dr Ellie Cannon. Still to come. Police discovered a palm print on a rear window, but despite collecting thousands of prints from men and boys locally, they were unable to identify a suspect. Here in Britain, a 92-year-old man has been convicted of the murder and rape of a woman 58 years ago, in what's thought to be the oldest cold case ever solved in the UK.
Starting point is 00:16:09 solved in the UK. As we record this podcast, the US Senate has been voting on amendments to what's been called the Big Beautiful Bill by President Trump and his supporters. Mr Trump wants the legislation, which would extend the tax cuts and increase spending from his first term in office, signed into law by the 4th of July at Independence Day. It's a hugely contentious bill and the most senior Democratic Senator, Chuck Schumer, called on Republicans not to support it. So what are my colleagues on the Republican side going to do? Listen to someone who just makes things up? Listen to someone who peddles lies and fantasies?
Starting point is 00:16:47 Follow Donald Trump off a political cliff by passing a bill that will be disastrous for the people back home? Or will my colleagues stand up for the American people? Stand up to protect healthcare, good-paying jobs, middle-class families. The Republican Senate Majority Leader John Tune is still looking to secure the support of several Republican senators. He's rejected criticism of the bill. This is good for America, this is good for the American people, it's good for
Starting point is 00:17:17 working families and it's been a long debate. I know people are weary but at the end of the day we want to get this done so this country is safer and stronger and more prosperous not only for today but for future generations of Americans. I spoke to our North America correspondent Jake Kwan with critics saying this is a bill that takes from the poor to give to the rich. Is that borne out by what's in it? This has to do with the big tax cuts that's in the bill, right? This is the bill that keeps the tax cuts that President Trump installed in 2017 and it cuts taxes across the board which Mr Trump says is going to help poor Americans. But while it collects less money
Starting point is 00:17:59 from the people, it increases spending on border protection, deportation efforts and other measures to boost Mr. Trump's domestic agenda. So it's expected to add $3.3 trillion to the national debt. And this is not making Republicans happy. So what they try to do was they try to balance the budget by cutting back on welfare, like food assistance and health insurance for low-income earners and families. And what the critics are arguing is that this is going to take from the poor and give to the rich. And the Republicans
Starting point is 00:18:29 say what they're arguing is that they're merely removing people who are frauding the system and removing inefficiencies from the programs. So how is this bill, you've described it is obviously hugely contentious, how is it progressing through the Senate? I suppose the key question is, will it pass? Well, it does look like it may pass and it has gone through the Senate earlier just by one vote to be brought onto the floor to the debate and it is going through a process called Votorama where these senators bring amendments to the bill and then they can quickly vote on them. But this is something that takes hours to go through and we'll need
Starting point is 00:19:05 to see if it passes because if it passes, it needs to go back to the House of Representatives for another round of amendments and votes. Now, the president has set the deadline as July 4th, the American Independence Day, but it's still up in the air because the House, the margin there between the Democrats and the Republicans is even slimmer. And there are quite a few Republican lawmakers who are not happy with the changes that were made at the Senate. If it does pass, I mean, what does that mean for the Trump administration? Will this be seen as a huge feather in Donald Trump's hat?
Starting point is 00:19:36 Oh, for certainly. Mr. Trump has been championing this bill for months now. He named it Big Beautiful Bill himself, and he constantly posts about it on social media endorsing it. So he had invested a lot of his political capital and the question really question is even if it passes, how are the voters going to feel about it when the midterm comes next year because we're only you know more than just a little more than a year away from it. Jake Kwan in Washington. After two months of testimony from more than 30 witnesses, jurors in the high-profile sex trafficking trial in New York of Sean Diddy Combs have
Starting point is 00:20:11 begun deliberations. The 55-year-old US rapper is charged with sex trafficking, racketeering, conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. If found guilty of the most serious charges, he could face life in prison. He denies them all. However, within hours of starting deliberations, the judge was informed about a potential problem. Our correspondent, Nomai Iqbal, who was outside the courthouse in New York, explains. The Foreman Centre note and said, we have a juror number 25 who we're concerned cannot follow your Honours instructions. The only information we have a juror number 25 who we're concerned cannot follow your honours instructions. The only information we have about this juror is that it's a 51-year-old male from Manhattan.
Starting point is 00:20:52 I guess what it does underline is how complicated this case is. The verdicts have to be unanimous, but if, let's just say, they decide that the jury can't continue, then they do have backup jurors. They've all gone home for the day, so that would require them to be called back. But we're not at that stage yet. Sean Diddy Combs is no ordinary record producer, executive producer. He is someone who is incredibly iconic.
Starting point is 00:21:17 And the judge said the burden of proof is on the government to prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. So Sean Diddy Combs doesn't have to prove his innocence. And so just to remind you again, this is the government's case. They say that Sean Diddy Combs, they painted a very vivid picture of him as some sort of mob boss, the kingpin of a huge empire of wealth and influence which he built, but they say he used to carry up bribery, violence, blackmail,
Starting point is 00:21:45 sexual abuse. Then at the centre of this were these so-called freak-offs, sex parties or orgies that were fuelled by drugs and alcohol. And there were two women who were the alleged victims, Cassandra Ventura, his former girlfriend, and another woman by the pseudonym of Jane. But the defense's argument is that Sean Diddy-Cohams had a very strange sex life, very extreme sex life, but their view is this was kinky not criminal. It's his private life and that the prosecution overreached the government, essentially is criminalizing him for his sexual behavior and they believe this was all consensual.
Starting point is 00:22:25 Nomi Agbel in New York. Here in Britain a 92-year-old man has been convicted of the murder and rape of a woman 58 years ago in what's thought to be the oldest cold case ever solved in the UK. Louisa Dunn was found dead in her home in Bristol in England in June 1967. Detectives looked again at the case in 2023 and sent items from the original investigation for DNA testing. John Maguire reports from Bristol Crown Court. Louisa Dunn was 75 years old when Ryland Headley broke into her home in Bristol before attacking and killing her in 1967. Neighbours found her body lying on a pile of old clothes. Police discovered a palm print on a rear window, but despite collecting thousands of prints from men and
Starting point is 00:23:11 boys locally, they were unable to identify a suspect. With few clues, they preserved evidence from the murder scene, and a cold case review in 2023 led to a major breakthrough. DNA from Mrs Dunn's skirt had a one in a billion match to Headley. Now living in Suffolk, he'd been convicted of raping elderly women in Ipswich in the 1970s. This afternoon, Mary Dainton, Louisa Dunn's granddaughter, said the guilty verdict brought some solace after so many painful years. I have rarely talked to anyone about this until now. Since Ryland Headley was charged, I've struggled emotionally in ways I did not anticipate. And it falls to me to speak for people who are no longer here.
Starting point is 00:23:59 It saddens me deeply that all the people who knew and loved Louisa are not here to see that justice is done. Detective Inspector Dave Marchant of Avon and Somerset Police says Headley's crimes showed a pattern of behaviour. Headley who has a shocking and abhorrent history of violent sexual attacks on elderly women brutally attacked Louisa in her own home where she should have been safe. Her murder left a community in shock and there are people living in Bristol today who can remember the impact this crime had on the city. He may have thought he'd escaped justice, time and distance keeping him out of reach,
Starting point is 00:24:37 but modern forensic techniques have solved a crime after almost 60 years and Ryland Headley aged 92 is now a convicted murderer. John McGuire reporting. The Chinese Communist Party says it's reached 100 million members, adding a million since last year. In 2024, the population of China was estimated at 1.4 billion people. In keeping with tradition, the membership data was released a day ahead of Tuesday's celebrations, marking the party's finding more than a century ago. The data showed that almost 40 million are female and
Starting point is 00:25:14 the majority of members are over the age of 61. I got more details on the eve of the celebrations from our China media analyst, Kerry Allen. It is pretty huge and there's widespread media attention on this today. Everywhere you look in Chinese media, there's a large focus on the figures originally being in the double digits back in 1921 and nearly a century later reaching this level. There's a lot of fanfare. The Communist Party has been in power for 76 years since 1949.
Starting point is 00:25:46 State media, which is dominant in China, is saying this is something to celebrate. It shows that the party has come a long way from its roots in the beginning in the 1920s to what it is today. But is this about patriotism or is this about career advancement? I'd say it's very much about patriotism. One thing as well that we have to consider is that China does have a huge population and even though the Communist Party does lead messaging, the number of members is actually only about 7% of the population. And today if you look on social media platforms, you'll get this impression that every social
Starting point is 00:26:21 media user who is posting is a Communist Party member, but it only represents a very small amount of the population. But some of the comments I've seen, for example, have been from users talking about how they see being a Communist Party member as part of their identity, a responsibility and an obligation. And you do get this a lot in Communist Party messaging, a real emphasis that it's a unified party, that it's the nation pulling together and that people should join the party, that it's almost a responsibility because of how much the party has given back over recent decades.
Starting point is 00:26:57 And age is no barrier, is it? I mean, there's quite a lot of attention on a 92-year-old actor deciding to join now. Yes, absolutely. So there's been a video that's been doing the rounds today from Chinese broadcaster CCTV showing that this 92 year old actor has said that he's decided to join in recent months because he feels he's not done enough for his country. And actually the majority of this 100 million population is over the age of 60. But state media are also keen to stress that there's also been a growth amongst members under the age of 30. So in particular, there's a real emphasis that the very young demographic are starting to increasingly become
Starting point is 00:27:40 members in the Communist Party. But what happens if you don't join? Will you suffer for it? You won't suffer, no. I mean, again, it only represents a very small amount of the population. But I think if you are a member, then you've got a lot of opportunities in the workplace. It's seen as something that's very positive. And the idea of social responsibility in China is something that can go very far. So I think there are people who think that if they are members that it could take them places. I think there's a real recognition of that in China. Our China media analyst, Kerry Allen. Now have you ever tried to scam a scammer
Starting point is 00:28:16 replying to their dodgy messages or stringing them along on the phone? Well the Commonwealth Bank of Australia has taken that idea to the next level. They've rolled out an army of AI-powered bots, complete with Aussie accents and backstories, to chat with scammers in fake calls and texts. But will it really prevent fraud? Sam Fennick asked Dali Kafir, the bot's creator and CEO of Appati, the company behind the technology, about how it works in practice. We've built an army of what we call perfect victim bots.
Starting point is 00:28:48 So these are AI personas, in fact thousands of them, with different accents, different ages, different genders, different personalities, different attitudes even to the colors themselves. And they can be really speaking very different languages and different dialects. And these army of realistic AI bots are really designed and specifically built to engage scammers across phone calls or messaging platform. And their objective is really to waste the scammers' time and waste the resources of these scammers who are placing calls or engaging with them.
Starting point is 00:29:20 So you're effectively scamming the scammers? That's exactly it. We flip in the tables against the scammers and we're scamming the scammers and the idea is really to disrupt their business model indeed. So it won't be that they will prevent attacks on the bank, they will go out and gather intelligence really and waste their time so that they can't attack the bank? Exactly right. So this is pretty much a different way of really approaching the problem of scam, right? We know that the scam problem is a massive challenge and so far for decades really we've been struggling with this problem.
Starting point is 00:29:54 And the idea here is that rather than just taking a very reactive way to the issue or to the challenge, it's to be really proactive about it. So it's really a paradigm shift by taking really this approach of saying, let's really disrupt their operations and the operations behind these scammers and breaking their business model itself and pretty much really making sure that they have very little capacity to reach out to actual victims. And wasting their time is one thing, of course, but also making sure that they're occupied, they're busy, really engaging with what they think are their perfect victims is the ultimate goal. Essentially because one scammer busy engaging with what they think
Starting point is 00:30:35 is their target is a scammer who's not placing thousands of other calls towards possible genuine customers and this is really how it's becoming a very proactive way of preventing this scam to happen. Dali Khafa, the bots creator and CEO of the Apati AI technology company. Norway's state-owned lottery company has been forced to apologize to nearly 50,000 players who were told mistakenly they'd won huge sums of money. Norris Tipping said the mistake happened after a euro jackpot draw on Friday and was due to an error converting euros to the Norwegian kroner. Winnings were multiplied by 100 instead of being divided by 100. The CEO of the company has since resigned.
Starting point is 00:31:18 Christian Fraser spoke to Halvar Bergham and his girlfriend Islin Anderson-Olefsson. Halvar said he'd had plans on how to use the money. We're planning to build a house next year so the money would come in really handy. So tell me about the message that you got. I was at work when I got the message that I want a large amount of money and I went in and it was 3.9 million instead of 390 Kronor. And Islin, how much is that in UK pounds? I would guess about 350 pounds. How did you find out that they got it so wrong and how long after the original message?
Starting point is 00:31:57 Well, Hallowher called me like straight afterwards and he was at work and I just said, well we just needed to take a break, breathe a little bit and about 20 minutes later it was through the news channel that we found out that it was a flop. So for 20 minutes you'd lived in this blissful situation that you could buy a new house, that you could start your life together without a mortgage and then the realisation suddenly dawned. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:29 Did I also read that you, Halvor, proposed on Friday night, that you proposed to Islin, would you have done that had you not thought you were going to win the money? No, I didn't do it like that, but I thought maybe I had the opportunity to do it when I received the money. Well I suppose I should say congratulations on your impending engagement, but also I'm guessing that you wouldn't have done that. You proposed preemptively, did you, on the basis that they'd given you the wrong information? Yeah, he said it when he got home from work
Starting point is 00:33:06 that his first thought was to not call me at all and then wait over the weekend, go buy a ring and then propose. Like take me somewhere and just propose like... Right, have you had an apology from the company? Yeah, I got a text message this morning saying that it was a mistake and they apologised. Is that enough? I still feel really disappointed by the lottery. Have you thought about taking legal advice? I think they have secured themselves through all the rules that saying that the notification get through the application is only like a pre-message. You have to wait for the mail or the call for it to be final. Your action would probably not take us anywhere. But you weren't the only couple that were called
Starting point is 00:33:51 or given the wrong message. There were thousands of others. Did others go out and spend the money? Yeah. We heard about people buying vacations, popping their most expensive champagne and even one guy paying for everyone at the restaurant who was at. Well, listen, at least there is a little bit of good news that's come out of it. You are getting engaged, so we will wish you congratulations for that and we hope you have a happy life
Starting point is 00:34:15 together. Thank you. And maybe a lottery win somewhere along the line. May I also? Many happy endings we hope for them in the future. That was Halva Bergham and his girlfriend Islin Anderson-Olefsson. Many happy endings we hope for them in the future. That was Halva Bergham and his girlfriend, Islin Anderson-Olefsson. UK. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll, the producers were Liam McShepard and Stephen
Starting point is 00:34:50 Jensen. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye bye.

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