Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

We’ll be finishing this live page shortly but our late verification shift will continue to feed the rest of BBC News with material from the Afghanistan earthquake that has been checked and authenticated.

We’ve spent much of the day verifying footage posted on social media following the magnitude 6.0 quake and debunked fake AI images of the aftermath circulating online.

We’ve dug into the data behind refugee family reunion routes to the UK and tracked the number of small boats crossing the English Channel last month.

Plus, we’ve used satellite images to identify construction work on new aid distribution sites in Gaza run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

You can find more of BBC Verify’s investigations, analysis and videos on our section of the BBC News website.

Earlier we posted about how we used publicly available satellite imagery from Google to check the location of a video which showed damage to one area of eastern Afghanistan following Sunday night’s magnitude 6.0 earthquake.

You can see the footage for yourself by clicking play below.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

After a weekend of viral claims about the health and whereabouts of the US President, Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform yesterday that he has ”NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE”.

So why did Trump need to say that?

The president last spoke directly to the press during a meeting of his cabinet on Tuesday 26 August.

On Friday, White House watchers began posting that Trump had not spoken publicly since his cabinet meeting.

One US journalist posted on X that Trump had no scheduled public events during the weekend either. This post alone has had more than 33 million views, external.

Google search data showed there has been a surge in queries like “Is Donald Trump still alive”, while hashtags including #WhereisTrump, external started trending on X, and viral claims that the president had suffered a health crisis reached tens of millions of views online.

Trump was posting on his Truth Social platform all week, however, and a journalist from The Daily Caller posted a picture with the president which she said was taken before an interview on Friday.

“He’s very much alive!”, external said White House correspondent Reagan Reese.

On Saturday morning, four days since he last appeared publicly, Trump was photographed by news agencies departing the White House for his golf course in Virginia.

Image source, Reuters

But claims about the president’s health continued to swirl online.

Adding to the confusion was a video purportedly showing Trump greeting fans when he arrived at the course on Saturday, external, but this video was actually first posted online in June, external.

The president was photographed again on Sunday heading to his golf course and that afternoon Trump finally addressed the rumours himself on his Truth Social platform, external.

Today is Labor Day, a federal holiday in the US, and the president’s schedule shows that no public events are planned.

Daniele Palumbo
BBC Verify journalist

The European Commission has confirmed that an aircraft carrying its president, Ursula von der Leyen, was affected by GPS jamming while it was about to land in southern Bulgaria yesterday.

Bulgarian authorities have said they suspect Russian interference.

GPS interference has become common in the Black Sea region following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

This map from tracking website FlightRadar24 shows suspected GPS jamming on 31 August. The areas in red show where GPS interference has been reported, and covers countries that border the Black Sea including Bulgaria and Romania.

Image source, FlightRadar24.com

So what is GPS jamming?

The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) of an aircraft can be affected in two ways - jamming and spoofing.

A ground-based jamming device - a jammer - transmits a strong signal that blocks the plane’s GNSS making it difficult or impossible for it to transmit its position.

Spoofing is when a device - a spoofer - sends a false signal to the navigation system of the plane. The GNSS receiver thinks the false signal is accurate and changes its real location to a different one - potentially sending it dangerously off course.

Benedict Garman
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, X

Damage to buildings in and around a mountain village can be seen in video we have verified which was filmed from a helicopter as it flies along a river valley in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar Province.

By matching the shape of buildings, the road layout, and the terrain to features in publicly available satellite imagery from Google Earth, we identified the village of Ghaziabad and its neighbouring settlements. We can see from the footage the earthquake has damaged roofs and there is extensive rubble from collapsed buildings.

In the video, shared by Bakhtar News Agency, a helicopter has landed near the village and a crowd is gathered nearby. A helicopter is also pictured on the ground with people around it a short distance further up the river valley.

This area is remote, about 40km (25 miles) north-east of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar Province, and 30km (19 miles) from the border with Pakistan.

Separately, we've verified video of people saying they felt tremors from the quake as far away as Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, around 230km (143 miles) from the epicentre.

Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

The Home Office has released figures showing that no people were detected crossing the English Channel in small boats on Sunday.

That means we now have figures for the number of people who crossed during the month of August, which show that 3,567 people were detected in 56 small boats.

That’s the smallest number crossing in the month of August since 2021 in the smallest number of boats since 2019.

But the average number of people in each boat, 64, was the highest for any August since records began in 2018. This reflects a long-term increase in the number of people per boat.

So far this year 29,003 people have crossed the Channel in small boats.

Benedict Garman and Alex Murray
BBC Verify

Satellite photos captured yesterday show construction work has nearly finished on two new aid distribution sites in Rafah run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Israel’s military announced the two new sites, external last week along with a video and pictures showing construction was under way. It said the sites would be operational in the “coming few days”.

The new distribution centres, positioned near the coast of south-west Gaza, will replace a previous site located nearby which closed in June after a series of shooting incidents and chaotic scenes during aid collections.

At the time the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: “Based on lessons previously learned it was decided to temporarily close the first aid distribution center in the Tel al-Sultan area.”

Its latest announcement suggests this closure is permanent. The IDF said “the distribution complex in Tel al-Sultan neighborhood will be replaced by the two complexes currently under construction” with the aim of “increasing safety during distribution”.

Currently there are three active aid distribution sites operated by the US-backed GHF - two in southern Gaza and one in central Gaza.

The new sites are each about double the size of these three, suggesting that Israel is anticipating providing aid to larger numbers of people as it continues to tell the population of Gaza City to move to the south of the Strip. The Israeli government has approved a plan to take over and occupy Gaza City.

For the last five days the GHF has reported, external distributing 31 trucks of food aid per day at its active sites.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Recent protests outside asylum hotels in Britain have reignited the debate about the role of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in domestic law. Asylum seekers and foreign criminals can use the ECHR to appeal against their removal from the UK.

Those whose applications to stay in the UK are rejected can use Article 8 of the convention - which protects a person’s right to respect for private and family life - as the basis for an appeal.

In practice, this means that people can argue that being deported would negatively impact their partners and children in the UK.

There is not much publicly available information about how often Article 8 is used except in the case of some limited data on foreign criminals.

A government review found, external that of 1,011 appeals by foreign criminals against deportation that were allowed on human rights grounds between 2016 and 2021, the majority (70%) relied solely on Article 8 grounds.

These appeals were heard in a special court known as the First Tier Tribunal but a higher court called the Upper Tribunal can overrule those decisions.

We therefore don’t know from looking at successful appeals how many foreign criminals were ultimately allowed to remain in the UK since some of these rulings may have been overturned at a later stage.

I’ve asked the Home Office for figures on Upper Tribunal appeal outcomes.

Emma Pengelly, Jamie Ryan and Alex Murray
BBC Verify

Image source, Israeli Government

Last Friday we reported that the body of hostage Ilan Weiss had been recovered from Gaza and Israeli officials were also working to identify the remains of a second captive found in the same military operation.

This weekend the Israeli prime minister’s office confirmed the remains were those of Idan Shtivi.

Mr Shtivi was 28 when he was killed by Hamas fighters in their attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. His body was then taken into Gaza.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said he loved photography and had been at the Nova Music Festival to take pictures of his friends playing music and leading workshops. Hundreds were killed at the festival during the Hamas attack.

We're continuing to update the number of hostages still held inside the Gaza Strip and their status.

With the retrieval of Mr Shtivi’s body confirmed, there are now 48 hostages still in Gaza including one hostage who has been held prior to the 7 October attack. Of the 48, Israel says 20 are assumed to be alive.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Later today I’ll be following Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s statement to Parliament where she is expected to announce that rules will be tightened for asylum seekers bringing family members to the UK.

Refugee family reunion is a legal pathway for close relatives of a person granted protection to join them in the UK.

Generally, only spouses, partners and children under the age of 18 can apply for this route and they are not given refugee status themselves.

The latest figures, external show that 20,817 family reunion visas were granted in the year ending June 2025. More than half of these were to children aged under 18.

The government says these proposed restrictions will bring the UK into line with other European countries. Earlier this year the German government voted to temporarily suspend family reunification for people with “subsidiary protection”, according to the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, external.

This type of protection applies to people who didn’t meet the criteria to be recognised as a refugee but who still face a risk of serious harm in their home country.

The German government said it took the decision because of the strain on cities and municipalities who have to support refugees and their family members.

This year Austria also announced a temporary suspension of family reunification, external, citing similar concerns about capacity.

Kayleen Devlin
BBC Verify senior journalist

As BBC Verify continues to search for and authenticate footage and pictures from the Afghanistan earthquake we’ve also found that two widely shared images purportedly showing destroyed buildings are AI-generated.

Our suspicions were first raised by the lighting in the images, which didn’t look quite right. We put both of them through SynthID, Google's own AI fake detector, which suggested they had been "made with Google AI".

A reverse image search of the images drew up hundreds of results across all major social media platforms. They’ve also been picked up and shared by several news outlets globally.

One post on X from a former member of Afghanistan’s parliament claimed one of the fake images showed “heartbreaking scenes” from Kunar province.

While it is difficult to identify who first posted the image, we can see some accounts began sharing it late last night on X and TikTok.

Shruti Menon
BBC Verify senior journalist

We are gathering information and footage being shared online following the earthquake that has struck Afghanistan.

The affected area is mountainous, access is limited and communications are poor. Rescuers are also being hampered by landslides triggered by the earthquake.

Image source, x.com/@ARCSAfghanistan

The Afghan Red Crescent has released footage showing rescuers carrying a person on a stretcher down a mountainous road in Kunar province. The video shows the kind of terrain that relief teams are working in.

For those of us working on open-source material, there’s an added challenge of sparse imagery and information from these locations due to its remoteness and few reliable sources available to cross-check.

We have verified one video showing an ambulance entering a medical facility. We first checked the footage is new and then confirmed the location by matching images of Asadabad provincial hospital.

We’ll continue to monitor footage and bring you more verified material throughout the day.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Good morning and welcome to today's BBC Verify Live.

Our team is looking into what the data tells us about how many family members of successful asylum applicants have come to the UK ahead of an expected announcement today which could lead to a tightening of the rules.

We're also expecting data on the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats last month which we'll bring you on this page.

Elsewhere, BBC Verify is assessing and authenticating footage being posted online from Afghanistan following the earthquake there which has killed more than 600 people, according to the Taliban government's interior ministry.

Once verified this footage can help BBC News tell the story as seen by people on the ground.

If there's something you think BBC Verify should investigate do get in touch via this form.