Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

We’ll be finishing our live updates shortly. Today we’ve unpacked the UK government’s proposed changes to welfare benefits, explained how disability assessments actually work and fact-checked a claim about climate change made by US podcaster Joe Rogan.

After violent anti-government protests in Kenya yesterday, we’ve been using open sources to find out more information about those who were killed. This evening we’ll continue that work using social media to corroborate the names and details of those that died.

Our late team will also be monitoring developments in Gaza after details emerged of a drone strike in the centre of the territory.

Benedict Garman
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, INSTAGRAM

We’ve been collating videos posted on Instagram that show the aftermath of an Israeli drone strike in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

Local residents and eyewitnesses said Israeli drones fired two missiles at members of a Hamas police unit which was attempting to assert control over a market.

In one video, people scream as a bloodied child is carried from a side alley. Onlookers run to help, and at least three more bodies are visible motionless on the floor of a narrow street.

We've geolocated where this happened by matching the street layout and several distinctive buildings in the footage to satellite imagery and can see it happened near al-Kholafaa al-Rashdeen in central Deir al-Balah.

A second video, which we also geolocated with satellite mapping, shows people approaching the scene from the southern end of the same street. A motionless body is being lifted by two men and another is being carried away.

A doctor at Deir al-Balah’s al-Aqsa Hospital confirmed that 18 bodies were transferred to the morgue with many bearing severe burns and critical injuries.

The Israeli military has so far not commented on the strike.

Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Verify

As we’ve previously reported, the Iran-Israel conflict has seen a surge in viral fakes generated using AI - artificial intelligence.

One example is this fake video - screenshotted above - which claims to show damage to the Israeli city of Tel Aviv after 12 days of Iranian missile strikes. It was published by the Fars news agency which is closely affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

While the quality of fakes like this are gradually getting better there are still some common giveaways.First, the details - it often helps to zoom in to see those. AI often struggles with lighting and smaller objects. They can look unrealistic, out of place or defy gravity.

Buildings and other details also often blend into each other or lack precision - like some of the structures in the screenshot above.

A typical AI-generated image would have several of these tell-tale signs. In this particular case, we’ve been able to trace the fake video to a TikTok account that has a history of creating AI videos.

If you’ve done the checks and are still not sure whether a picture is fake, it is probably best not to share it.

You can read our full analysis of the AI fakes from the Iran-Israel conflict here.

Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Maxar Technologies

We’re always keen to hear from BBC Verify Live readers and Terry O’Shaughnessy in Leeds has emailed us asking: Is Iran another Chernobyl? Is there likely to be radioactive dust in the atmosphere?

Our colleagues on the BBC News science team have looked at this question.

Briefly, the real concerns for environmental damage are from attacks on places where nuclear reactions are taking place such as in a nuclear power plant.

No nuclear reactions are believed to have been taking place where uranium was being enriched - so if there is any danger it is that some uranium will have been dispersed locally by the blasts.

"Highly enriched uranium is about three times more radioactive than non-enriched uranium. But in fact, on the scale of things, neither of them are particularly densely radioactive. It wouldn't cause a major environmental contamination problem," the University of Portsmouth’s Prof Jim Smith, who has studied the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, explained in the article.

If you have any questions you would like answered or claims you would like us to investigate you can get in touch via this page.

Joshua Cheetham and Peter Mwai
BBC Verify

We’re continuing to monitor social media and other publicly available sources for information about the people killed in anti-government protests across Kenya yesterday.

There are conflicting reports about the number of people killed - one statement put out by Kenya’s medical association, law society and police reform group put the number at eight while Amnesty International Kenya said it was at least 16. There has been no official confirmation of the number killed.

We’ve seen graphic images of a man lying on the ground who appears to have been shot in the head. There are also images of him beforehand, which we’ve located to a road in Juja, southern Kenya.

We’re working with BBC colleagues in Kenya to confirm his identity along with other victims of yesterday’s violence.

David Verry
BBC Verify consultant

New data out today shows that the Crown Court backlog in England and Wales - which handles the most serious crimes - has hit record levels again, with 76,957 cases outstanding, external in March of this year.

It’s up from 74,651 cases outstanding, external at the end of December 2024.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) publishes this data once every three months and this is the eighth time in a row that the backlog has reached a record level. The MoJ expected this rise and last year commissioned senior judge Sir Brian Leveson, external to come up with solutions. His report is expected in the autumn.

I’ve spoken to Cassia Rowland, a senior justice researcher from the Institute for Government, for her take on what is behind the backlog. "The fundamental problem is that the courts just can’t get through cases as quickly as they used to,” she told me.

There are several reasons for this, she said: "It is partly because case complexity and the volume of evidence both seem to have grown, meaning each case takes longer to deal with, and partly because falling productivity means more court time is wasted – often because cases aren’t ready to go ahead when the trial date arrives.”

Marco Silva
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Getty Images

Clips of US podcaster Joe Rogan wrongly claiming that the planet is going through a “cooling period” have been viewed millions of times on social media.

In a podcast episode, Rogan interviewed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who pointed out that the “last 10 years have been the warmest” since 1850 - a claim backed by the World Meteorological Organization, external (WMO).

In response, Rogan mentioned a Washington Post article, external published last year, which he wrongly claimed suggested the Earth is undergoing “a cooling period”.

This misrepresents the content of the article and is not backed by scientific evidence.

The article reported on scientists’ efforts to study how global temperatures have changed over the past 485 million years. They found that, external, over that period, global average temperatures were mostly higher than those registered in recent years.

But there is no question that the planet is currently warming at a rapid rate. The WMO estimates, external that, in the last 150 years, the Earth has already warmed by about 1.3C.

And, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, external, temperatures haven’t been this high for about 125,000 years - a time that long preceded modern society.

Joshua Cheetham
BBC Verify journalist

We’ve been monitoring footage of violent clashes between police and protesters yesterday in the capital Nairobi and other cities, where thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate against President William Ruto’s government.

This was the latest in a series of protests, known as "Gen Z" demonstrations, largely led by Kenyan youth against unpopular tax rises introduced by the government last year.

Amnesty International Kenya says at least 16 people were killed, adding that this had been confirmed by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.

We’ve verified a number of videos - including some that captured the violence. One particularly graphic video shows a man with his hand blown off, allegedly caused by the impact from a teargas canister.

Others show police beating protestors - and protestors beating police.

We’re continuing to look today for any more footage that sheds light on what unfolded.

Image source, X

Robert Cuffe
BBC Verify head of statistics

Image source, Getty Images

One of the potential compromises being suggested for the government’s plans on welfare benefits is a softening of the requirement to “score a four” on assessments for personal independence payments (Pips) - but what does a “four” actually mean?

The government’s original aim was to raise the bar for claiming Pip by excluding people who had many lower-level difficulties in their daily living but no single higher-level difficulty. Your ability to do each of 10 things like prepare and eat food or wash and get dressed are all examined in a Pip assessment by a health professional. Each activity is scored on a scale of zero (no difficulty) to 12 (severe difficulty).

Currently a total score of at least eight across all the activities qualifies you for the payment.

Under the government’s new requirement a claimant would need to score a four or above on at least one activity to qualify. You would therefore no longer get support if you only had ones and twos across a broad range of activities.

And the compromise being discussed is about where to set that bar.

To give you an example: if you need someone to prompt you to use the loo, that would count as two points. Needing someone to help you in the loo would count as four and incontinence would count as six.

You can read more about the other activities assessed for Pip on the Citizens Advice website, external.

Tom Edgington
BBC Verify senior journalist

As it faces a growing rebellion over proposed welfare changes, No 10 has confirmed it’s holding talks with Labour MPs and the vote will go ahead as planned next Tuesday.

The plans include tightening the personal independence payment (Pip) criteria - a benefit that helps people with daily living costs - and halving incapacity benefit (now known as the health-related element of Universal Credit).

This morning the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has published its analysis, external.

Without any reforms, the IFS says health-related benefit spending will rise sharply to £66bn by 2029-30 (in today’s prices), compared with £52bn last year.

If the reforms go ahead, spending is expected to rise more slowly, to £61bn in 2029–30 - but that is still considerably more than the £52bn spent last year.

You can read more about the government’s planned welfare cuts and how much it expects to save here.

The UK government’s planned cuts to welfare have provoked significant opposition within the Labour Party - with some 120 of its MPs signing an amendment calling for the proposals to be scrapped.

Ahead of a key Parliamentary vote due next week, BBC Verify’s policy and analysis correspondent Ben Chu has been looking into the detail of the proposed reforms and the debate about their impact.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Hello from me and the team.

Today we're continuing to unpack and explain the UK government's plans to overhaul the way benefits work - as ministers attempt to see off a potential backbench rebellion over its proposals ahead of a Commons vote due next week.

We're looking into personal independence payments - or Pips - which are paid to people with disabilities who need help with mobility and daily living.

Some Labour MPs are unhappy with proposed changes to how people are assessed for the benefit, so we'll explain how the scoring system works.

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