Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

It’s been a really varied day for the team here at BBC Verify. Here’s a quick recap of some stories we’ve been covering.

In Russia, we verified footage showing an explosion at a munitions factory that killed at least 12 people.

We also analysed satellite images showing the resumption of flights at Khartoum airport, after it reopened for commercial traffic yesterday for the first time since the outbreak of Sudan’s civil war in 2023.

Plus, do UK MPs have the power to “summon” Prince Andrew? Here’s what we know.

Keep an eye out on the BBC News social media accounts for our Washington team’s analysis of President Donald Trump’s claim that each alleged drug boat the US destroys is “saving 25,000 Americans lives”.

BBC Verify Live will be back tomorrow for more, do join us then.

Becky Dale
BBC Verify senior data journalist

The latest total for overall small boat crossings in 2025 stands at 36,954.

We cannot say this is the number of people who crossed the Channel, as the figure represents a count of “detections” and some individuals could have made the journey multiple times.

For example, yesterday it was revealed a man removed to France last month as part of the one-in-one-out scheme has recently crossed again.

This total is slightly lower than the number of crossings at this point in 2022, but well above total crossings as at 22 October in 2021, 2023 and 2024.

We cannot predict whether this upward trend will continue for the rest of 2025. Many factors, including the weather, influence the number of boats that will leave from France heading for the UK.

The British government has also pledged to disrupt the people-smuggling gangs who facilitate the crossings.

You can read more about small boats crossings here.

Benedict Garman, Emma Pengelly & Matt Murphy
BBC Verify

The Israeli military is exerting control over more of Gaza than expected from the ceasefire deal with Hamas, a BBC Verify analysis has found.

Under the first stage of the deal, Israel agreed to retreat to a boundary running along the north, south and east of Gaza. The divide was marked by a yellow line on maps released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and has become known as the "Yellow Line".

But new videos and satellite images show that yellow blocks placed by Israeli troops in two areas to mark the divide have been positioned hundreds of metres deeper inside the strip than the expected withdrawal line.

Specifically, we can see the yellow blocks up to 520m (1,700ft) further inside the line close to the al-Atatra neighbourhood in northern Gaza and between 180m-290m near the southern city of Khan Younis.

If these two sections of boundary were typical of how the markers were being placed along the entirety of the line then Israel would be exerting control over a notably larger area than expected from the ceasefire agreement.

There have already been two deadly incidents near the boundary line and Israel’s defence minister has warned anyone crossing it “will be met with fire”.

The IDF did not address the allegations when approached by BBC Verify, stating simply that: "IDF troops under the Southern Command have begun marking the Yellow Line in the Gaza Strip to establish tactical clarity on the ground."

Read our full analysis here.

Barbara Metzler
BBC Verify senior data scientist

Earlier this week we talked you through new satellite imagery showing the devastation left behind by a tropical storm that hit the west coast of the US state of Alaska.

Nearly all 700 residents of the remote Alaska native village of Kipnuk had to be evacuated by air.

Using computer change-detection techniques, I’ve been analysing the difference between the satellite imagery from before and after the storm in order to measure the extent of structural damage in the village.

I set up a statistical comparison on every pixel to find where the colour changed significantly between images and highlighted those pixels in red below. The darker the shade of red, the greater the damage detected.

Of the 256 buildings that my analysis detected in Kipnuk, 199 of them - just under 80% - have been damaged by the storm.

Tom Edgington
BBC Verify senior journalist

Questions surrounding Prince Andrew’s finances - including his lease arrangements to live at Royal Lodge - are piling up.

Speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight programme yesterday, Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Olney claimed Parliament has the “power, if we wish, to summon Prince Andrew to come and give evidence” in front of a committee of MPs.

Constitutional expert and Institute for Government CEO Hannah White told BBC Verify that in theory a committee could invite Prince Andrew to appear, but it’s unclear whether he could be formally summoned.

If a witness is summoned and still refuses to attend, a committee could argue they have committed a “contempt”. , externalHowever, fines and imprisonment sanctions for contempt have not been used by the Commons since 1666 and 1880 respectively.

Many rules and precedents for the Commons are set out in a book called Erskine May. It states that select committees cannot summon people if it “conflicts with the privileges of the Crown”., external

However, it’s unclear whether “Crown privileges” refers just to the government - which encompasses the King - or also refers to wider members of the Royal Family, including Prince Andrew.

Even if Andrew could not be formally summoned, Dr White explains he could appear voluntarily.

“If a Commons Committee could show it was within their terms of reference, it could, in theory, invite a member of the Royal Family to give evidence”, she says.

But Andrew would in practice not face any sanction if he declined.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

A video made with artificial intelligence (AI) which claims to show Israel violating the ceasefire agreement is being used by some social media users to suggest that Gazans are fabricating evidence of Israeli strikes.

The AI-generated video shows a false news report, with a journalist standing in front of rubble saying that a large number of people were killed and injured in an Israeli strike.

It appears to come from a TikTok account called Isharat News, which describes itself as “the first fully integrated news channel with artificial intelligence technology”.

The account regularly posts AI-made videos that imitate news reports. Many of the videos shared are supportive of the Palestinian cause - including fake clips about the Global Sumud Flotilla and pro-Palestinian protests around the world.

But we’ve seen that some pro-Israeli accounts are now sharing the video to suggest that Gazans are using AI to make false claims that Israel is violating the ceasefire.

In this particular AI video, there is a small watermark in the bottom corner for Veo - a model made by Google that generates video from text prompts.

In other AI videos published by the Isharat News account the Veo watermark appears to have been cropped out.

Veo, like a number of similar AI video generators, limits its clips to about eight seconds per shot which is a helpful way to identify AI-generated content.

Robert Cuffe and Lucy Dady
BBC Verify

We reported earlier on the crimes that you’re most likely to see in the news or hear about from your friends, theft and fraud.

While these offences are up on a year ago, if not since a peak earlier this year, police data published this morning shows more dangerous crimes in England and Wales are falling.

There were 518 homicides in the year to June, which is down from March’s figure - and the lowest in more than 20 years.

Crimes with weapons were down too, including fewer assaults and robberies involving knives - each of which accounted for about 20,000 recorded crimes. Firearms offences also fell to the lowest level in a decade.

But the Office for National Statistics estimates there were about 1.1 million violent crimes, a category which ranges from threats up to assault and murder, committed in the year to June. This is little changed on the year before.

There has also been no significant changes in the number of domestic abuse or sexual offences.

Nihan Kalle and Paul Brown
BBC Verify

As well as assessing overnight explosions in Russia, we've also been analysing footage of damage resulting from another night of drone strikes in Kyiv.

Footage posted from outside the Domino Business Centre in the city’s Podil district shows considerable damage to its distinctive black and white facade.

We've matched this to video from inside the building on the ground floor which shows the extent of the interior damage.

A synagogue located around 400m away also appears to have sustained damage in the attack. Footage from the scene shows what appears to be the wreckage of a drone in a courtyard immediately next to the building. A shard of metal can also be seen protruding from one of the external walls.

The state emergency services say seven people were injured in drone attacks on Kyiv overnight but all fires have been extinguished.

Peter Mwai and Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify

Yesterday the first civilian flight in more than two years landed at Khartoum International Airport, which had been shut down following the outbreak of the civil war between the Sudanese government and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The first images we verified at the start of the conflict in April 2023 were related to intense fighting around the airport in Sudan’s capital, including fighter jets flying over the burning runway and terrified passengers in the terminal.

The Sudanese military regained control of Khartoum from the RSF in March this year - and satellite imagery from May shows the planes destroyed in the first days of the conflict still littering the site.

Sudan's government pledged in August to reopen the airport and subsequent satellite images from September reveal the work done to remove the aircraft debris and repair the runway.

Three more domestic flights have been listed to arrive and depart from the airport today, according to tracking website Flightradar24. We will continue to monitor their status.

Robert Cuffe and Adina Campbell
BBC Verify and BBC News

Image source, PA Media

New crime figures shows there have been increases in fraud, shoplifting and theft offences in England and Wales, according to figures published this morning by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

But the data shows little has changed or is down from peaks reported three months ago. There were 4.1 million fraud incidents in the year to June. That’s up 14% compared with the year before, driven by a one-fifth rise in bank and credit account fraud. But fraud offences peaked in the year-to-March, at 4.2 million incidents.

Police recorded 529,000 cases of shoplifting in the 12 months to June - that’s up 13% on the year before. But that’s slightly down from a record high of around 530,000 cases reported three months ago.

Overall, theft crimes have flattened year on year and robbery has slightly fallen by 2% with the number of people affected by robbery down by 12%. But the number of businesses affected by robbery has gone up by 55%.

Joshua Cheetham
BBC Verify journalist, reporting from Washington DC

President Donald Trump has defended the US strikes against alleged drug boats off the coast off Venezuela and now in the eastern Pacific Ocean, claiming “everyone one of those boats that gets knocked out is saving 25,000 Americans lives”. We could not find where this figure comes from, so we asked the White House.

A spokesperson did not provide any evidence for the number, but said “any boat bringing deadly poison to our shores has the potential to kill 25,000 Americans or more”.

After each strike, the Trump administration has released grainy video but no proof of what was on board and no details about the nature and quantity of the drugs, making it impossible to independently assess how lethal the boat’s alleged cargo could be.

Image source, Donald Trump/Truth Social

According to the latest provisional data, external from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 73,690 reported deaths from drug overdoses in the US between April 2023 and April 2024.

So, using Trump’s figure, stopping three "drug boats” would be enough to prevent a whole year’s worth of drug overdose deaths. “I don’t see a universe in which it [Trump’s claim] could be possibly be true,” Chelsea Shover, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of California Los Angeles told us.

The majority of US overdose deaths in the period we looked at were linked to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.

Shover pointed out that almost all fentanyl consumed in the US is smuggled overland from Mexico, rather than coming in boats from Venezuela.

Paul Brown and Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Verify senior journalists

Image source, Telegram

Several clips have emerged on social media showing an explosion and fire at a munitions factory in the Russian town of Kopeisk, around 1,600 km (1,000 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

Russian state news agency Izvestia has reported two explosions at an "enterprise" in the city last night and that 12 people were killed. As yet the cause of the blast is unconfirmed.

The footage we've seen indicates the explosions occurred at the munitions plant, which is located near to the city of Chelyabinsk in the Urals region.

The clip in question is filmed from a moving car driving past the military facility. We confirmed the location by matching street furniture and a building visible on Google Street View.

We have also verified footage from a CCTV camera positioned around 3km (two miles) away from the site which shows one explosion.

The footage is marked with a timecode saying it was recorded at 23:44 local time (19:44 BST), which fairly closely coincides with initial reports about the explosion.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Welcome to the live page where we share what the BBC Verify team is working on across the day - verifying video and images of news events, checking facts and interpreting data.

First up we’ve been authenticating video posted from Russia showing a blast at a munitions factory in Kopeisk near Chelyabinsk in the Urals region. A Russian official has posted on Telegram that 10 people were killed.

Elsewhere, BBC Verify’s head of statistics Robert Cuffe is looking through the UK government’s latest crime data for England and Wales. We’ll share the headline figures and take a deeper dive into what else we’ve learned from the stats.

And we’ve been fact-checking US President Donald Trump’s claim that “25,000 American lives are saved” each time its military attacks alleged drug boats. More on that shortly.