Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Telegram

Footage circulating on social media shows the moment a Russian strike hit a residential area of Ukraine's northern city of Kharkiv overnight.

The video begins in darkness with the distinctive whirring sound of a drone audible in the background. There's then a flash of orange light which briefly illuminates the surroundings, followed by a loud explosion.

The impact forces the person filming to turn away briefly before returning to film a large fire in the distance, as car alarms ring out.

That flash of the explosion provided us with sufficient evidence to verify the video, as it briefly illuminated a high-rise building across the road.

We had already seen footage from Kharkiv showing the ruins of a large supermarket on one of the city's main roads, so it was clear where to look.

Google Street View images show the building seen in the video is just a few doors along from the supermarket, which confirms it is from the same incident and was filmed from a nearby block of flats.

As we reported earlier, Ukraine was subjected to a number of Russian drone and missile strikes overnight, including one on a block of flats in Ternopil where officials say at least 25 people were killed.

Nicholas Barrett and Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify

At PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch quoted Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Budget speech from last year, external in which she said: "I am keeping every single promise on tax that I made in our manifesto. So there will be no extension of the freeze in income tax and National Insurance thresholds."

Badenoch asked: “Why was freezing thresholds a breach of the manifesto last year but it isn’t this year?”

There have been reports that Reeves may now choose to keep them frozen and the Tory leader asked the prime minister to rule this out - which he did not do.

Freezing income tax and National Insurance thresholds is widely regarded as a tax rise because of a process called "fiscal drag", which sees more people start paying taxes or moving into higher rate tax bands as their wages rise.

These thresholds were frozen by two Conservative chancellors (Rishi Sunak and then Jeremy Hunt) and are in place until April 2028.

Labour’s 2024 election manifesto pledged that the party “will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT”, but it did not mention thresholds.

A further freeze to tax thresholds would not mean raising individual tax rates but it would eventually mean raising more in tax from working people.

Peter Mwai and Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify

We’ve been examining video of at least 60 bodies in the morgue of a hospital in Dar es Salaam, claimed to be the result of killings in the wake of the disputed presidential election last month.

The footage is so graphic that we’ve decided not to show any of it here.

We have confirmed the location by matching details from rooms we see in the video, including floor tiles, windows and doors, to separate footage of the Mwananyamala Hospital morgue from an East Africa TV news report in 2014.

Among bodies seen in the footage are two that we’ve been able to match to earlier verified video of post-election violence in Dar es Salaam.

One body in a dark green t-shirt and wrapped in an orange and purple mat can be seen being handed over to armed police around 1km (half a mile) to the east of the hospital, while the second body in a Manchester United football kit was documented by someone filming around 2km south of the facility.

Tanzania’s health ministry says the video is fake and describe it as being “made by criminals with malicious intent to defile our country”.

BBC Verify has asked the ministry for evidence that the video is not authentic, but have not yet received a response.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan has announced an official investigation into the violence following her re-election.

As we've been reporting, UK Defence Secretary John Healey has said a Russian intelligence ship is approaching UK waters off the Scottish coast.

Vessels like the Yantar are difficult to track using open-source ship tracking websites as they frequently turn off their tracking signals.

But flight tracking website FlightRadar24 shows an RAF Poseidon P-8 surveillance plane operating over the sea to the east of Scotland. We cannot say for certain that the aircraft is tracking the Yantar.

The plane left RAF Lossiemouth at 09:38 GMT and has been circling the area since 10:01. The P-8 is a maritime patrol aircraft used by the RAF for "anti-submarine warfare, surveillance, and search and rescue missions".

The Yantar is reportedly operated by Russia's Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research and has long been suspected of mapping undersea cables used by Western governments.

Yi Ma
BBC Verify researcher

Image source, X

A fire broke out yesterday in a residential area of Oita, a city in south-west Japan. It spread rapidly and burned more than 170 buildings, according to local officials. Authorities say one person has died with another still missing.

About 188 residents have been evacuated, 270 households are without electricity and the blaze has spread into nearby woodland, according to the latest official update. Firefighting efforts are ongoing and Japan’s military been requested to assist.

One clip I verified was filmed overlooking the neighbourhood and shows bright flames lighting up the night sky, as well as thick plumes of smoke.

I located the affected area to the coastal district of Saganoseki near Tanaka Sports Park, by matching the surrounding landscape with Google Street View. A reverse-image search indicates the footage had not been shared online before yesterday.

Matt Murphy
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, UK Ministry of Defence

UK Defence Secretary John Healey has said that a Russian surveillance ship, the Yantar, is currently on the periphery of UK waters and warned Moscow that if the ship "travels south this week we are ready".

Western nations have long tracked the Yantar’s operations in European waters and Healey told reporters that it is "designed for gathering intelligence and mapping our undersea cables".

It’s difficult to track the ship’s location through publicly available tools because these vessels often turn their tracking systems off, or even broadcast false locations. But, on 6 November the Dutch Navy said it escorted the ship out of the North Sea two days earlier, where it was operating just near Dutch territorial waters.

Healey also said that in an incident in UK waters earlier this year the Yantar's crew "directed lasers" at the pilots of British planes monitoring the ship.

Nicholas Barrett
BBC Verify researcher

During last night’s Today Debate for BBC Radio 4, Green Party leader Zack Polanski said the "50 wealthiest families own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population combined”.

He appears to be referring to a study published by economists at the University of Greenwich, which used estimates of private wealth from the Sunday Times rich list stretching back to 1989 and compared them with family and household data published by the Office for National Statistics.

The research did indeed conclude that in 2023 the 50 richest families in the UK had more wealth than the poorest half of the population, about 33.5 million people. Both groups had around £466bn in wealth, which the study defined as the total value of business, financial, housing, pensions and physical assets.

The study, conducted by Ben Tippet and Rafael Wildauer, also estimates that those included on the Sunday Times rich list in 1989 had 6,000 times as much wealth as the average person. By 2023, they had 18,000 times as much.

Peter Mwai and Paul Brown
BBC Verify

Image source, X

We have verified video showing the moment armed men attacked a church in Nigeria yesterday evening.

Authorities say two people were killed and an unknown number abducted in the attack in western Kwara state, according to local media reports.

In the video, which appears to be a live stream, a service is going on when we hear gunshots. People inside the church panic and run to hide. Some of the worshippers are elderly women, unable to move quickly to safety.

Later we see men, some of them armed with rifles, enter the church and grab bags left on pews. Afterwards, they kick open one of the doors to where the worshippers are hiding.

Shooting continues to be heard throughout the clip, although it isn’t clear what is being fired upon. Towards the end of the video, the device being used to record rings and a man we see briefly cuts off the feed.

We have verified the location as being the Christ Apostolic Church in a town called Eruku by matching the interior of the church to previous footage filmed there that was uploaded on YouTube in June.

The killing of Christians in Nigeria has been in the headlines recently, after US president Donald Trump said the religion is facing an existential threat there and threatened to intervene.

BBC Verify has investigated the extent to which Christians and other groups have been targeted in Nigeria.

Image source, X

Jake Horton
BBC Verify journalist

During a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman yesterday, US President Donald Trump said Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader “knew nothing” about the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and high-profile critic of the crown prince, was visiting the country’s consulate in Istanbul when he was murdered and his body cut up.

When asked about the incident by the press gathered in the Oval Office Trump defended bin Salman and said “things happen”.

A US intelligence assessment determined the crown prince had approved the operation that led to Khashoggi's death.

The intelligence analysis began in 2019, during Trump’s first term as president. It was published in February 2021, external just after he had left office.

It cited: "The Crown Prince's control of decision making in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman's protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince's support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi."

At the time Saudi Arabia rejected the report, calling it "negative, false and unacceptable".

Image source, Reuters

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

We’ve been bringing you footage from the city of Ternopil in western Ukraine showing the aftermath of Russian strikes there overnight, including on a block of flats where several floors have been destroyed.

The police now say at least 20 people have been killed including two children, with another 66 wounded.

This is one of the deadliest Russian strikes on western Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Here’s the full BBC News story on the strikes.

Gerry Georgieva
BBC Verify

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has posted a graphic on X which says “we have already halved the number of asylum hotels since its peak in Summer 2023”.

While the number of hotels housing asylum seekers has been halved, the majority of the closures happened before Labour were in office.

That number is not published regularly but a Home Office minister said in March that the peak was under the Conservatives in the summer of 2023 when there were “more than 400 hotels” in use.

It had fallen to 213 by the time Labour came to power in July 2024.

A week ago, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the number had gone down to 200 hotels.

That would represent a decrease of 13 hotels since the election with the bulk of the reduction since the peak happening under the Conservatives.

Ending the use of asylum hotels was a pledge in Labour’s 2024 manifesto.

Image source, X/Shabana Mahmoud

Fridon Kiria and Paul Brown
BBC Monitoring and BBC Verify

Image source, State Emergency Services of Ukraine

Video and images from the city of Ternopil in western Ukraine show the aftermath of Russian strikes, including a block of flats with several floors devastated.

Ukraine's interior minister Ihor Klymenko says 10 people have been killed and dozens more injured, including 12 children.

Footage from the scene shows major damage to two high-rise buildings, including one whose top three storeys have been almost completely destroyed. That building is identifiable thanks to a distinctive geometric design on its side which is visible on Google Street View.

A second video filmed around 150m away shows smoke pouring from another high-rise, with emergency services in attendance.

President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia launched more than 470 drones and 47 missiles across Ukraine, including on other western regions Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk.

Western Ukraine has been hit by Russian strikes since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, but it is rare for them to result in such a high death toll. A similarly deadly incident took place in July 2023 when a missile strike killed ten people in the city of Lviv.

Read the full coverage BBC News coverage of the attack here.

Adam Durbin
BBC Verify Live editor

Good morning, here at BBC Verify Live today we’re going to be looking into videos and images of the aftermath of Russian strikes across Ukraine. Ten people have been killed in the western city of Ternopil, according to Ukraine’s interior minister, but more are feared trapped in the rubble. We’ve verified footage showing a block of flats with several storeys destroyed and will be looking into attacks reported elsewhere in the country.

Our verification team is also working on footage showing a deadly raid by armed men on a church in Nigeria. The video live stream shows worshippers realising that the attack was taking place and fleeing, followed by men with guns searching bags left behind. Two have been reported killed in the attack.

Plus, our-fact checkers here in London are assessing some claims made by Green Party leader Zach Polanski last night, as well tuning in to the House of Common’s for this week’s edition of Prime Minister’s Questions.