Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

We’re closing this live page soon, but our teams in London and Washington DC will be on hand to provide verification and fact checks for BBC News through the rest of the day.

Already today we’ve verified footage of explosions in southern Russia and the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

We’ve also analysed videos from western Sudan where at least 370 people have been killed, according to a UN official.

We’ve looked into the data on the number of people who’ve come to the UK on study visas before claiming asylum and tracked how many refugees are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

Plus, we looked into whether an “AI-enhanced” image has helped fuel online claims about Trump’s health.

We’ll be back with BBC Verify Live tomorrow morning.

Peter Mwai and Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify

We have verified videos and images circulating online said to show the aftermath of a landslide in Darfur, western Sudan.

A UN official has told the BBC at least 370 people have been killed.

Meanwhile Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), the armed group which controls the area, had said earlier that as many as 1,000 people could have died.

With the location being remote in the Marra Mountains and with few obvious landmarks to help, this has been a painstaking task of trying to match the mountain peaks, farmland and houses in the footage to satellite imagery.

We found a match at an area about 3km (1.8 miles) south of the Tarseen village.

Then, by also comparing the footage to old satellite imagery we confirmed that multiple houses were swept away by the landslide.

In the video, we can make out a crowd of people gathered where the houses previously stood, possibly involved in a rescue operation.

Image source, Facebook

As the UK government announces a crackdown on students seeking asylum after their visas expire, BBC Verify's Ben Chu has been looking through the numbers to understand the scale of the issue.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Following the government’s announcement about clamping down on students overstaying visas in the UK, we’ve been looking at how many visas are issued each year.

There were 431,725 study visas issued in the 12 months to June 2025, according to the latest Home Office figures, external.

Just over 17,800 of these visas were issued to the family members of students - what the Home Office calls dependants.

The overall number of study visas fell by nearly a fifth compared with the same period last year but it’s still significantly higher than in previous years.

Between 2011 and 2016, for example, there were about 200,000 study visas granted per year, with the majority (92%) issued to the students themselves rather than to dependants.

The following years saw a steady rise in dependants being granted study visas, which peaked around June 2023 before falling again in 2024.

This decline was likely because of a Conservative government policy which allowed only researched-based postgraduate students to bring dependants to the UK.

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.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Following the government’s announcement about clamping down on students overstaying their UK visas I’ve been looking at how many people on study visas go on to claim asylum.

This year the Home Office started to publish data on the routes people used to travel to the UK before claiming asylum.

The latest figures show that , externalof the 111,084 people who claimed asylum in the year ending June 2025, nearly two-fifths (41,100) arrived in the UK on a visa or through another type of permission to enter the country.

And 14,800 of them (36%) were on study visas.

This was the most common visa group to claim asylum in this period - although it’s down from 16,500 claimants in the same period last year.

The overall number of asylum claims from people who arrived in the UK on a visa or another type of permission has tripled over the past three years.

These figures do not provide any breakdown about the nationalities of these students - unlike the overall Home Office statistics on visas granted - nor do we know which institutions they were enrolled in.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

After days of unsubstantiated rumours about the US president’s health, a manipulated picture of Donald Trump began to spread online yesterday.

The image distorts the president’s face, especially around his eyes.

Some social media users have used this manipulated picture to claim that Trump has suffered a health crisis - with their posts getting millions of views online.

But the image was generated by a user of the X social media platform who used artificial intelligence (AI) to “enhance” a long-distance news agency photograph of the president that was taken on Monday as he left the White House to play golf.

So how does “AI-enhancement” technology actually work?

These tools are trained on lots of high-quality images, which are then blurred so the AI can learn to predict what a clearer version might look like.

So when you ask an AI tool to “unblur” an image, it is just making a prediction based on the images it has been trained on, says Prof Thomas Nowotny, head of the AI research group at the University of Sussex.

One sign that the image has been manipulated are the USA letters on Trump’s hat where you can see the “S” looks distorted.

Nowotny suggested this could be based on a faint pattern in the original picture and another expert we spoke to thought it was likely just a corruption of the picture.

“If you want to enhance your holiday snaps to be sharper, more colourful and crisper and don't need them to actually reflect reality, it's the perfect tool,” says Nowotny.

“If you are working on an image to extract more information about an underlying truth, it is a risky path to take.”

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, State Emergency Service of Ukraine

As well as looking into reported drone attacks inside Russia we've also been following reports of attacks overnight and this morning on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and the surrounding region.

So far we haven't seen much from Kyiv itself apart from some pictures of residents sheltering in underground stations.

But we have verified the location of photographs released by the emergency services of an attack on the city of Bila Tserkva which is around 100km (62 miles) south of the capital.

Local authorities have said one person was killed during a drone attack on the area.

The pictures we’ve verified show firefighters tackling a blaze at what looks like an industrial complex.

A quick scan of satellite imagery showed areas that resembled this on the outskirts of Bila Tserkva which we could compare with the photos. This led us to the exact spot on the northern edge of the city.

Mykola Kalashnyk, head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, said there had been "fires at a garage co-operative and damage to commercial and industrial facilities".

Rob England
BBC Verify senior data journalist

Earlier today, UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said local councils were seeing “a big increase” in homelessness applications from refugee families.

She was speaking as part of a government review into the family reunion visa system. Ministers want to reconsider how soon refugees can apply to bring relatives to the UK, in the hope that giving them more time to secure jobs and housing will reduce pressure on local services.

Some of these families are applying to councils for help because they are homeless, so what do the figures tell us?

Between January and March 2025, more than 4,000 refugee households in England were recorded as homeless - meaning either a single person or a family unit had applied for support after leaving Home Office accommodation.

This was the second quarter in a row that councils reported a rise in homelessness following a grant of refugee status.

The number previously hit a record high in December 2023.

A further 1,900 households were recorded as “at risk” of becoming homeless over the same period - also marking a second consecutive rise.

Peter Mwai
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Sudan Liberation Movement/Army

We’re looking at a video and images from western Sudan after local officials said a landslide had killed at least 1,000 people at a village in the Marra Mountains.

Video and images that emerged earlier today show the apparent aftermath of a landslide. We can see chunks of earth have moved, trees have been uprooted and what appears to be remains of houses.

Some of the images have been shared by the armed group the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army which reported the incident.

In remote locations one of the best ways to verify content like this is to match the landscape to satellite imagery. We will look to match some of the remaining structures in the footage and the nearby mountains to confirm the location.

We are also looking for before and after satellite imagery to help us assess the impact of the reported landslide.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

This morning we've verified footage of two high-rise buildings on fire in the city of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia following a reported Ukrainian drone attack.

Both buildings are visible on Google Maps and Street View and are located less than 500m from each other and appear to be residential.

Local Telegram channels have reported power cuts in western areas of the city.

Russia's Defence Ministry says it intercepted and destroyed 13 Ukrainian drones over the Rostov region last night.

It is not clear from the footage whether the fire was caused by targeted strikes or drone debris.

We're also looking into reports in local social media channels of a drone attack in Kyiv region this morning. We've seen a video of a drone flying overhead. There are few visual clues to assist geolocation but it is newly circulating online.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Welcome to our live page bringing you updates on the work of our specialists in fact-checking, open-source verification and data journalism.

This Tuesday morning we’re assessing the latest overnight images showing new drone attacks on the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. Footage seen by BBC Verify shows an apartment block was damaged - we’re carrying out verification checks and we’ll update you with what we’ve found.

Our Africa specialist is looking at checks on video and images following a landslide in the Darfur region of western Sudan which local officials say has killed at least 1,000 people. You can read more about that story here.

Following Sunday’s magnitude 6.0 earthquake in Afghanistan which has killed at least 800 people we’ll see whether specialist satellite companies have any up-to-date imagery from the affected area. It may be there is a time-lag before we can see signs of damage, but we will share what we know if we can get good quality images.

And BBC Verify’s UK fact-checkers are digging into the government’s plan to clamp down on international students applying for asylum after their visas have expired. We’ll examine what the data says to see how many of these visas are issued and the number of people who overstay.