Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

We’ll be closing this live page shortly, but the BBC’s main live page covering Donald Trump’s speech will contain fact-checks from the BBC Verify teams in London and Washington DC.

Earlier today, we took a look at the US president’s claims about autism rates and the uptake of the MMR vaccine in the US made at a press conference last night.

Also today, we’ve investigated:

• What Danish officials have called a “serious” drone attack on Copenhagen Airport

• Footage showing the destruction left by a super typhoon in Taiwan

• The progress of the Rapid Support Forces, a Sudanese paramilitary group, towards the besieged city of El-Fasher in Darfur

Plus, watch as a cargo plane flies very low over Moscow amid reports of Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian capital.

BBC Verify Live will be back tomorrow morning, thanks for joining us.

Yi Ma and Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify

We’ve been looking into a series of videos showing the destruction brought by Super Typhoon Ragasa to parts of Taiwan earlier today, much of it driven by massive floods in the east of the island.

The tropical storm, believed to be the world's strongest this year, has injured at least six people and forced 3,200 people living close to a landslide dam to evacuate.

Schools have been shut in the Hualien and Taitung counties - and more than 100 international flights departing from the capital Taipei have been cancelled.

One video we verified has been taken by a drone and shows a bridge almost entirely submerged by a fast-flowing river.

Image source, 東穩通運/Dongwen Transport Company

We geolocated the footage to the Mataianxi Bridge in Hualien county by matching the patterns of surrounding roads and the mountainous landscape to satellite images.

Another video from the rural Guangfu township shows a car being swept down a street by several feet of muddy water, as the floodwaters enter nearby shops and homes.

Image source, Threads/@hsinzai.11

Tamara Kovacevic
BBC Verify senior journalist

I’ve been listening to Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey’s speech to his party’s conference, where he said: “In the EU, the United Kingdom could legally and fairly return people with no right to be here.”

He has made this claim before, referring to an EU scheme, known as the Dublin III Regulation, which the UK was part of until the end of the Brexit transition in 2020 when it formally left the bloc.

The scheme determined which EU country was responsible for processing asylum claims, taking into account where applicants first tried to enter without permission and factors such as family reunion.

He is right that the scheme enabled the UK to return some people with no right to be in the UK back to the EU.

However, the numbers were never very high and some people were brought to the UK under the scheme too.

According to Home Office figures Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK, external, in 2015 – the year before the Brexit vote – 510 people were returned to the EU while 131 were transferred to the UK under the scheme.

In the last two years of the scheme, between 2018 and 2020, the UK returned 577 and received 2,811 people.

Christine Jeavans
BBC Verify senior journalist

Following President Donald Trump’s comments yesterday about combined childhood vaccines we’ve been looking into the uptake of the MMR vaccine in the US.

Data shows it is below the 95% level for two doses that is recommended by the World Health Organisation, external - a high target because measles is so contagious.

An estimated 90.3% of children in the US, external had their first dose of MMR by the age of two, according to the latest published data. This is also just below the country’s own target of 90.8% by that age.

The latest US data covers children born in 2020 and 2021 - during or after the height of the Covid pandemic.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found a drop in estimated coverage for most childhood vaccines compared with those born during 2018–2019.

In the UK, MMR first dose vaccination has fallen back below 90%, with the latest figures, external finding 89.3% of children have received the jab by age two, rising to 92.3 by age five.

As shown in the chart above, the UK had several years of low MMR take-up in the early 2000s, following a now-widely discredited study by Andrew Wakefield. He was a British doctor who was struck off the UK's medical register for unethical research and his false claims that linked the MMR jab to autism.

Despite his research having been totally debunked it did have an impact on vaccination rates for several years.

Meanwhile, the US has seen a measles outbreak this year with almost 1,500 confirmed cases, external of which two-thirds were in children and young people under 20.

According to the CDC, 92% of cases are in people who are unvaccinated or their vaccination status is unclear.

As of 16 September, 181 people have required hospital treatment and three have died.

Peter Mwai and Kumar Malhotra
BBC Verify senior journalists

Image source, X

Footage we’ve seen appears to show that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been battling the Sudanese army in a civil war for more than two years, appears to be making progress in taking the key western city of el-Fasher.

We have verified a recently filmed video showing RSF fighters outside the military hospital in the besieged city and worked out it was filmed at a location roughly 360m (1,200 ft) from the Sudanese 6th Infantry Division Command - the headquarters of the military there.

We were able to match a distinctive gate with brick roofing along with a mosque, trees and other structures in the area to satellite imagery available on Google Earth.

This would be a significant development in the battle for control of the city - the capital of North Darfur region - and the army’s last stronghold in the wider Darfur region.

The Sudanese army has issued a statement saying its forces repelled “a large attack” by the RSF, adding: “El-Fasher is stable and under complete control of the armed forces.”

Being able to verify footage from inside places like el-Fasher helps us understand what is happening in a place that is all but impossible for journalists to report from.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Data from the flight tracking website Flightradar24 shows aircraft that were scheduled to land at Copenhagen Airport on Monday diverting to other cities as traffic was suspended following the detection of drones in the vicinity.

The visualisation above shows how a Scandinavian Airlines ATR plane from Hannover (AT76 above), which was due to land at 20:18 local time, changed course during its approach and entered a holding pattern over the Oresund to the north-east of the airport.

Similar activity can be seen by aircraft operated by Ryanair’s subsidiary Buzz and British Airways which diverted to Billund and Malmo respectively.

Monitoring air traffic in this way can help us to build a timeline of events such as the drone sightings in Copenhagen. In this instance, we see the first sign of unscheduled activity was at around 20:30 local time (19:30 BST).

In a post shared earlier this morning, external, Flightradar24 said 51 flights were diverted from Copenhagen and 109 were cancelled.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

BBC Verify is dedicated to examining the facts and claims behind a story to try to determine whether or not it is true - whether that’s a political statement, a video shared on social media, or images from a war zone.

And we’re also keen to hear from you - is there something you think we should investigate? We're particularly interested in claims you have heard or seen that maybe don’t seem right.

Or perhaps you’ve come across something online and want to know if it was created using AI or even a deepfake.

You can send your suggestions to the team here.

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, MOHAMMAD NAZAL/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has denied detaining people during a joint raid with Israeli police at a university in the occupied West Bank yesterday, after being approached by BBC Verify for comment on some footage we looked into.

Yesterday, we verified videos of the incident at Birzeit University in the early hours of Monday - including one showing signs, clothes and leaflets Israeli personnel were accused of removing from a campus building and scattering outside.

In a statement posted to Facebook, the university accused Israeli forces of “detaining and assaulting” members of the university security staff. It added several buildings were raided, there were varying levels of damage to property and “threatening leaflets” were distributed.

The university later posted photos of staff it said were assaulted.

We’ve now heard from the IDF which said material “promoting terror and incitement to violence against Israeli citizens” was located at the university and confiscated.

The IDF denied that anyone was apprehended. It said “a number of suspicious individuals hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails towards the forces in the area, as a result, an Israeli security forces vehicle was damaged".

The IDF added its forces fired live ammunition into the air in response.

Sebastian Vandermeersch and Paul Brown
BBC Verify

We’re looking into footage of what the Danish police have said was a drone attack at Copenhagen airport last night which led to flights being halted for four hours.

One video in particular is being widely shared online – filmed by a passenger from the window of an aircraft operated by the airline Norwegian.

It shows some green light hovering at what appears to be low altitude over the airport. But because it was shot at night the footage is not clear enough to identify what the lights are, or whether they show a drone, so we have contacted Unmanned Aerial Vehicle experts to help assess it.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called it a “serious attack on key Danish infrastructure”.

Frederiksen said she could not rule out that Russia might be behind it, but stopped short of making a direct accusation, adding that this attack should be viewed in the context of recent airspace incursions over Poland, Estonia and Romania – as well as drone activity reported over Denmark and Norway.

Air traffic disruption was significant, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24. Copenhagen airport saw 51 flights diverted and 109 cancelled.

We’re continuing to verify footage of the incident and will update you on our work and bring you expert analysis later today.

Merlyn Thomas
BBC Verify senior reporter

Image source, EPA

On Monday morning, BBC Verify saw footage circulating on social media claiming there had been public executions in Gaza.

We immediately knew that if the footage was genuine it would be graphic, which meant precautions were necessary in order to avoid our team needlessly viewing traumatic media.

Before watching the footage, I did a quick reverse image search to find out whether it was new and worth looking into. After finding the earliest version started emerging on Sunday evening, apparently from Gaza City - the focus of a major Israeli ground offensive - we decided to examine it further.

As expected, the videos were incredibly graphic and distressing. But in order to investigate incidents like this, we have to watch them.

Let me explain some of the precautions the team takes when dealing with graphic imagery, based on expert advice:

• I watch the video on my own, to protect colleagues around me and prevent those passing by from catching a glimpse of something graphic
• I also view it without sound, because the audio alone can be distressing and it allows me to be one step removed from the contents of the video
• And finally, I take pauses away from the screen so I'm not sitting looking at the imagery for too long at a time

Mainly, when you know you're about to watch something graphic you can mentally prepare yourself to engage with the work as a journalist. It's very different to being caught unaware by a distressing clip online.

Once I've watched it and verified it, I'll ask a colleague to check my workings out. But I'll give them the time frame within which the execution takes place so that they can avoid the moments of death and focus on the geolocation.

You can read my full investigation here.

Tom Edgington
BBC Verify senior journalist

Following the BBC’s investigation into what happens inside asylum hotels, Housing minister Matthew Pennycook claimed on Radio 4’s Today programme that “the number in hotels are broadly where they were”.

The latest official statistics show there were more asylum seekers staying in hotels in June 2025 compared with June 2024 - just before before Labour won the election.

At the end of June, there were 32,059 people in hotels. This is up by 2,474, an 8% rise when compared to the same time last year.

Although the numbers rose over that 12-month period, the asylum hotel population has fallen by 286 since the previous set of figures were published in March 2025.

The Home Office does not regularly publish figures on the number of actual hotels in use, but last month government sources suggested there were 210 - two fewer than were in use in July last year.

The government has pledged to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers by 2029 - read more about how it is doing against this pledge here.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Reuters

US President Donald Trump told a news conference yesterday about what he said was the potential risk of taking the painkiller paracetamol - known as Tylenol in the US - during pregnancy which he has claimed is linked to autism.

During the event he mentioned several different numbers purporting to show autism rates in the US over time.

“It used to be one in 20,000, then one in 10,000, and I would say that’s probably 18 years ago. And now it’s one in 31 but in some areas it’s much worse”, he said.

He’s right in that the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, external , external(CDC) from 2022 - which provides official estimates for autism rates in the US and whose work is often cited by the current administration - suggests 1 in 31 eight-year-olds in the US have autism.

And this rate has increased from 18 years ago - but by nowhere near as much as Trump suggested.

There was no prevalence study for 2007 but in 2006 the CDC estimated the rate to be 1 in 110. In 2008 it was 1 in 88.

Most experts say rising rates of autism can primarily be attributed to changes in how the condition is diagnosed, as well as greater numbers of people being tested.

Trump also said about autism rates that he “gave numbers yesterday [Sunday] it’s one in 12, I was told that’s in California where they have for some reason a more severe problem”.

The CDC estimated that in 2022, external, about 1 in 12 eight-year old boys in California had autism - the highest rate for boys in the study across 16 US states.

Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify journalist

A cargo plane was filmed flying startlingly low over high-rise apartment buildings in a Moscow suburb, several verfiied videos posted on Russian social media last night showed.

Russian media reported many warnings of drones approaching had caused the capital’s airports to halt flights and the closure of Sheremetyevo Airport, north of the city.

In a series of posts on Telegram overnight and into this morning, Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin said at least 36 drones had been destroyed by Russian air defences. He did not report any damage or injuries.

Three videos we’ve verified were all filmed in the southwestern suburbs of Moscow.

They all show the same aircraft - reported to be an Antonov AN-124 Ruslan cargo plane - flying east away from Vnukovo International Airport, 6km (3.7 miles) to the west.

The distinctive architecture of the apartment buildings and the layout of carparks and open spaces were matched to satellite imagery of the area, as well as and street-level views on both Google and its Russian equivalent, Yandex.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Hello from the BBC Verify Live team.

We’ve been discussing in our morning meetings the stories we’re going to be focusing on today - notably we’re looking at reports of drone attacks on Moscow last night that caused the temporary closure of one of the Russian capital’s airports.

We’ve verified dramatic footage showing a giant cargo plane flying low over blocks of flats and we’re investigating how this ties in with the incident. Moscow’s mayor said 36 Ukrainian drones that had been launched towards the capital were destroyed.

There was also disruption from drone activity in Scandinavia last night leading to flights being halted for several hours at Copenhagen and Oslo airports. Danish police said they appeared to have been flown by a "capable operator”. We’re using footage posted online to see what more we can learn about yesterday’s events.

Elsewhere we’re looking to fact-check several claims made by US President Donald Trump during a news conference he held yesterday with his Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. As well as comments about the use of paracetamol by pregnant women - which you can read more about here - Trump also made other claims about childhood vaccines that we’re looking into.

As well as those stories, we’re also preparing to fact-check UK Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey’s speech to his party’s conference this afternoon and we’re keeping a close eye on super typhoon Ragasa as it barrels towards Hong Kong.