Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

That’s all from BBC Verify Live for today.

We’ve been following the case of a Russian blogger who has been fined for posting a video of herself and two friends rapping in front of a burning fuel depot in Sochi.

We’ve looked into claims about whether disproportionately large numbers of sex crimes in London are committed by foreign nationals, which you might hear about on the radio later.

And we checked on how the UK government has been getting on with its pledge to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by 2029.

Among other things, our late team is looking out for footage that might back up Ukrainian claims to have struck an air base in Russian-occupied Crimea and damaged fighter planes.

BBC Verify Live will be back on Tuesday. For more of our investigations, analysis and videos check out the BBC Verify section of the BBC News website.

Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify journalist

In our work, we often come across AI-generated images being passed off as real developments related to conflict. Less often we also come across examples of real footage which leads to accusations of being fabricated.

This weekend we saw three critical X posts - with the same exact wording and 75,000 views between them - claiming a picture of a malnourished Palestinian man had been generated by Grok, X’s AI tool.

We have investigated and can confirm it wasn’t.

The video was shared by Ramy Abdu, chairman of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. His post has been viewed half a million times.

Those critical posts focused on the man’s hand as proof of AI-generation because the technology can struggle to replicate details like digits, ears and hair. These are often rendered inconsistently by AI - but in this instance a mark on the man’s hand does not change shape throughout the clip.

We have also seen other recent videos of the man, named as Salim Asfour, which show the same light mark around the upper knuckle of his right middle finger - as you can see below.

This screenshot is from an interview with Samer al-Boji, a journalist in Gaza, who had recently been posting material from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

We also know from the metadata attached to al-Boji’s clip on Instagram that it was posted late morning on 3 August.

Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

A court in the southern Russian city of Sochi has fined a , externalRussian woman 30,000 rubles, external (£283; $375) for posting a video of herself and two others rapping in front of a blazing fuel depot, local media report.

The Russian regional governor said the fire at the depot had been caused by falling drone debris during an overnight Ukrainian attack on Sunday. The Ukrainian military confirmed in a post on Telegram that it had targeted Sochi airport’s fuel storage facility.

In court the 20-year-old woman, who was accused of behaving improperly during an emergency, blamed alcohol for her behaviour.

Police also detained two other people seen in the video and filmed them apologising on camera.

Robert Cuffe
BBC Verify head of statistics

We’ve been examining a claim made by shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “in London, 40% last year of all of the sexual crimes were committed by foreign nationals, despite the fact that they only make up 25% of the population”.

These figures come from a Freedom of Information, external (FOI) request to the Metropolitan Police by the Centre for Migration Control - a think tank for “controlling and reducing migration to Britain”.

The FOI showed that 40% of people “proceeded against” by the Met for sexual offences in 2024 were non-British nationals.

"Proceeded against" means things like charged or cautioned, not necessarily convicted, so Jenrick was wrong to say “committed”.

Apart from that, his claim broadly reflects the figures which do suggest a disproportionate number of Londoners with foreign nationality are charged for sexual offences.

But the analysis does not address age - younger men are more likely to be charged for these offences and foreign nationals in London are younger than British nationals.

Therefore the analysis exaggerates the difference between British and foreign nationals.

Image source, PA Media

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.

Simran Sohal and Ben Chu
BBC Verify

Image source, Getty Images

We’ve been listening to a news conference with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage where he told reporters “there is an exodus from this country of higher taxpayers”.

The claim there has been an “exodus” of high net-worth individuals comes from an analysis by wealth advisory firm Henley & Partners which projected, external that 16,500 more US dollar millionaires will leave the UK in 2025 than will arrive.

The company works with “global wealth intelligence firm” New World Wealth which says it “tracks the movements of more than 150,000 high net-worth individuals [globally] in its in-house database”.

It’s not clear how representative this sample is of all wealthy people, so it’s not necessarily reliable to extrapolate from this data to estimate how many dollar millionaires are moving in and out of each country in the way they do.

New World Wealth says it "uses various public sources to check city locations, , externalincluding LinkedIn and other business portals”. This is not a reliable way to track migration.

Independent tax researchers told BBC Verify wealthy people move countries for different reasons unrelated to tax.

It’s the net additional flow that matters and we do not have the necessary information yet to determine how many wealthy people have left the UK this year.

As we reported earlier, footage has emerged of reported overnight Ukrainian attacks in the Volgograd region of Russia.

One video clearly shows a drone strike, which we’ve pinpointed to the Archeda train station in the town of Frolovo.

Verification by Sebastian Vandermeersch

Benedict Garman
BBC Verify senior journalist

Footage has emerged showing people being shot at near an aid distribution site in central Gaza.

The video, which was first published yesterday afternoon, shows bursts of gunfire with bullets flying past the camera and spraying up sand near where people are crouching.

At least one bullet appears to strike the other side of a brick wall the person filming is hiding behind.

It was filmed about 500m (1,600ft) from the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution site in the Netzarim Corridor.

On Sunday, al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat told the BBC that five people were killed and 30 injured by Israeli forces near this same aid site.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its troops fired warning shots at a gathering advancing towards them "in a manner that posed a threat" hundreds of meters from the site and not during its operating hours.

The IDF said it was not aware of any casualties as a result of the warning shots and the details of the incident are still being examined.

Tamara Kovacevic
BBC Verify senior journalist

I’ve been listening to Home Office minister Angela Eagle who was on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme earlier.

During the interview she was asked about the government’s use of hotels to house asylum seekers.

She said: "In the first quarter of this year there were 6,000 fewer people in hotels than… in the last quarter of the previous year."

This is right - there were 38,079 people in asylum hotels on 31 December 2024. By 1 March 2025 the figure had fallen by 5,734 to 32,345.

However, more asylum seekers were staying in hotels in March 2025 than at the end of June 2024, a few days before Labour came into power.

The government pledged to “end asylum hotels” by 2029.

But the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, told Parliament in June, external that he did not believe the government would meet its pledge

Image source, TikTok

Russian police have detained three young people who filmed themselves next to a blazing fuel depot near the city of Sochi following a reported Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday.

In the video, originally shared on TikTok, the trio can be seen rapping along to Crimson Dawn by Russian musicians Endshpil and Miyagi as the Rosneft-Kubannefteprodukt facility burns in the background.

According to local police, the three detainees are aged between 19 and 21.

The 20-year-old woman who filmed the video was charged with behaving improperly during an emergency. She faces a fine of up to 30,000 rubles (£283; $375).

According to their social media profiles the women are called Karina and Daria and come from Nizhniy Tagil, an industrial city in the Ural mountains.

In a video posted by local police on Telegram, the young people say the came to Sochi to find work and apologise for filming and posting the video.

Local governor Veniamin Kondratyev said the fire was caused by drone debris hitting a fuel tank on Sunday.

Ukraine has not commented on this incident, but its armed forces have been targeting Russian energy and military infrastructure consistently throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Sebastian Vandermeersch
BBC Verify

Image source, Telegram

We’ve verified footage showing a damaged railway station building in the Russian town of Frolovo in the Volgograd region following what is thought to be a Ukrainian drone strike.

The video, filmed from a nearby apartment, captures a drone flying at low altitude before hitting the building in the station complex and exploding.

Ukraine has repeatedly used long-range drones like the UJ-22 to strike targets deep inside Russia as part of its campaign to disrupt military logistics and manufacturing.

We confirmed the location in Frolovo by matching surrounding buildings in the footage to publicly available satellite imagery using online maps from Google and Yandex, as well as conducting reverse image searches to verify the footage was posted recently.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Good morning.

We're starting the day looking at the latest from Ukraine and Russia as we analyse and verify footage being posted online as both sides have accused each other of aerial strikes.

Our verification experts are assessing footage appearing to show the aftermath of a Ukrainian attack that targeted an oil depot near the Sochi airport on Russia's Black Sea coast - more on that shortly.

Elsewhere in Russia's south, we're looking into reports that a railway station in the Volgograd region was attacked last night as well as overnight footage of damage from Ukraine's Odesa.

And we're expecting a news conference from the Reform UK party later this morning so BBC Verify's fact-checkers will be listening to that and will report back on any checkable claims.

As well as those stories our user-generated content team is looking to hear from you if you've been affected by Storm Floris which is bringing unseasonable weather to the northern half of the UK - you can follow the latest on the BBC News live page.