Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

We’ll be closing our live page shortly, but the the work of our verification team continues.

For most of today, our focus was on the damage caused by the earthquake off the Russian east coast. We showed how we carry out verification work to geolocate videos and images circulating online.

We also pointed out examples of viral misinformation, including an old clip of five beluga whales stranded on the shore of Kamchatka, close to the epicentre of the quake.

Elsewhere, we spoke to aid agencies and Israeli officials about what’s been holding up aid at the Gaza border.

This evening, our team is shifting its focus to the air traffic control , external“technical, external issue” that’s affected all outbound flights in the UK, external.

Our journalists will be tracking how the UK clears the backlog of flights. We’ll also be reaching out to passengers affected by the delays.

Overnight we’ll be publishing a piece online about how tariffs are affecting US consumers.

Verify Live will be back on Thursday.

Kevin Nguyen
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Getty Images

We’re continuing our reporting into the deteriorating aid situation in Gaza.

Israel denies it is limiting trucks from entering the Strip - instead blaming the bui, externall, externald-up of aid at the border on, external , external“collection, external issues” and aid agencies being unable to distribute supplies., external

I’ve made a lot of calls to aid agencies and Israeli officials about this, many of whom spoke to me on background, meaning that we agreed not to reveal their identity. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Aid agencies have told me there are several bureaucratic obstacles that can cause significant delays - from finding drivers willing to risk dangerous routes, to securing Israeli clearance for them.

They also said Israel has strict pre-determined routes during specific times of the day.

Both aid agency and Israel officials I spoke to said locals often anticipating where these trucks are passing through and will converge in large numbers on the convoy, sometimes leading to death and injury.

Israel may sometimes change routes on short notice, according to aid officials. This can lead to delivery cancellations if routes are deemed too risky by the agencies.

And while additional routes for aid entering Gaza were announced last week, agency officials have told me they are still waiting for information relating to these.

Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify journalist

With any images, we want to be certain they were taken where and when they claim. This afternoon I’m filming a video for our social media platforms about how we go about doing that.

For affected locations in sparsely populated areas of far eastern Russia, there is some limited Streetview imagery, which, for instance, allows us to verify exteriors in detail. There is also recent satellite imagery which allows us to match the layout of roads and buildings to what we’ve seen in videos.

As well as being available on Google, we can also use Yandex, the Russian-language equivalent.

We can also check interiors against public photos, as we did here for the airport, for example.

Image source, X

With municipal buildings such as schools and hospitals, we can check against those photos posted on social media by the organisations that run them.

To check if images are current, we take frames from every video and put them through search engines, including Google and Yandex, to see if they’ve appeared online before.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Data from the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic shows the rapid evacuation of Honolulu port after a tsunami alert was issued for Hawaii.

The MarineTraffic data shows a stream of vessels leaving the port in the hours that followed. The video above is a time-lapsed visualisation of the evacuation.

Vessels typically seek to leave ports in the event of tsunami warnings, as wave movement is less pronounced in deeper waters. This also minimises the chances of collisions and damage to vessels and port infrastructure.

The warning was issued at 00:43 UTC (01:43 BST) this morning, warning of potential "damage along coastlines of all islands in the state of Hawaii".

It went on to warn that "Tsunami waves efficiently wrap around islands. All shores are at risk no matter which direction they face."

Paul Brown and Peter Mwai
BBC Verify

Scenes of destruction in the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia’s far east and on a populated island to the south can be seen in two videos we’ve verified this afternoon.

Footage from the Russian emergency services - verified by matching the colourful walls to Google Street View and the shape of buildings to satellite images - shows the recovery effort at a kindergarten.

It also shows that three storeys have collapsed and dozens of people working around it.

Image source, Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation

Meanwhile, in a video filmed in the town of Severo-Kurilsk, people run from residential buildings before the chimneys are shaken loose from their roofs.

Using the layout of roads, trees and houses means we’re confident of the location.

Image source, Telegram

Kris Bramwell
BBC Verify journalist

On the Eyewitness team, we encourage people affected by the news of the day to contact us - but only when it is safe to do so. After we speak to people, they can end up on the news you watch, read and listen to across BBC News.

But, we don’t just wait for people to get in touch. We actively search social media to find them.

We do this by:

• Using advanced keyword searches on X to discover who is posting from affected areas
• Searching Facebook for people filming live videos or by checking local community groups
• Looking on Instagram for images or videos tagged to specific locations.

When someone shares a video or image, we verify it’s theirs. That can involve reverse image searches, or with their permission, asking the uploader to share details from their camera roll. On an iPhone, for example, if you go into your photos app and select an image or a video, you can view useful data including timestamps, device information and location details.

Matt Murphy
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, PA Media

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced yesterday that, unless certain conditions are met, the UK will join France in recognising the state of Palestine in September.

We wondered how many full UN member states now recognise Palestine and it turns out that it is harder to find the answer to that question than you might think.

We approached the UN's press office in New York to find a definitive answer, but they told us that they don't keep an official count. A spokesperson said that diplomatic relations with Palestine are a matter for the states involved.

So we then approached the Palestinian mission at the UN to see if it counted, it told us it didn't have a running tally to hand, but pointed to some media reporting putting the figure at 147 states as of Friday.

Running out of options, our visual journalism team trawled through the records and came up with a figure of 148 full states - with France and the UK set to join in September.

End of the story right? Well, almost. That total includes the Czech Republic, which inherited recognition of Palestine from its predecessor, Czechoslovakia, in 1988. While Prague has never formally revoked that recognition, the government has said it does not recognise the Palestinian state. So, while it’s included in the tally, the true picture is a little more complicated.

Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Verify senior journalist

A video of five beluga whales stranded on the shore of Kamchatka - in Russia's Far East - is being widely circulated online, with false claims that it was nature’s warning ahead of the massive earthquake.

However, the video is from two years ago and it is not linked to today’s earthquake and tsunami.

Image source, X

In the clip, which has been viewed millions of times today, a Russian man films five beluga whales on the coast, while another man attends to them.

An account on X which posts videos about nature shared the video yesterday, saying: “A strong tide stranded five beluga whales on the shore of Kamchatka, Russia.”

Many users shared the video following the earthquake, claiming it was a warning.

“The animals warned us and we didn’t listen,” claimed one user in a viral post.

But by taking screengrabs of the video and reverse searching them, we can establish that the video was first shared on YouTube in August 2023, external by a local news outlet in Kamchatka, and is therefore not related to today’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Olga Robinson
BBC Verify assistant editor

Image source, Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation

We’ve been gathering and analysing footage related to the earthquake and tsunami in Russia’s Far East since the early hours of this morning.

Several of our team have been working on sourcing and verifying visuals from both the Kamchatka Peninsula and the disputed Kuril Islands.

The work also includes weeding out footage that is old and unrelated to today’s events. This is something we see very often in breaking news situations like this one.

We are also checking to see if we can get any satellite images that would reveal the extent of damage in affected areas. This always comes with caveats, of course, as the quality of imagery really depends on weather conditions - especially as the area is cloudy today.

Away from Russia, some of my colleagues have been analysing marine traffic off the coast of Hawaii as people try to leave the area as well as monitoring live local web cams for any signs of incoming waves.

Quite a lot of strands to pursue and we’ll bring you any updates as soon as we can.

Tom Edgington
BBC Verify live editor

Good morning. As we launch Wednesday’s BBC Verify Live page, our team has already spent several hours verifying footage following the massive earthquake off Russia’s coast which triggered evacuations across the Pacific.

Over the course of today, we’ll be showing you how we go about analysing videos to determine what’s real and what’s old, as well as the tools we use. That’s in addition to the news lines we'll be providing to the BBC News main live page.

Meanwhile, we also continue to monitor the aid situation in Gaza. We hope to bring you an update a little later this morning.

Image source, bbc