Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

The live page will be closing soon but before we leave you, here’s a recap of some of the stories we reported on today:

• We tracked the journeys of ships sunk after an attack by the Houthi group off the coast of Yemen
• Our specialists analysed new satellite imagery showing the extent of the devastation left by the deadly floods in Kerr County, Texas
• And we fact-checked Prime Minister’s Questions - notably on tax thresholds and migrant returns

Later on you can look out for our article examining the pull factors for migrants coming to the UK illegally. We’ll be paying close attention to any deals on illegal Channel crossings announced at the UK-France summit at Downing Street tomorrow.

Meanwhile, our late shift will be monitoring the latest developments in Gaza, Ukraine and Russia.

You can check out more BBC Verify content on our pages of the BBC News website.

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

With local media in Gaza reporting multiple strikes east of Gaza City, I’m seeing videos and images on social media purporting to show the aftermath of an attack.

In two of those videos smoke clouds rise over a built-up area and by matching the shape of the plumes in each clip it’s clear they show the same incident.

A Palestinian journalist, who we know is in Gaza because we’ve previously verified their material, has posted an image of the same smoke-filled skyline.

As part of checks we do to work out when the footage was filmed, I’ve run several frames from each video through a search engine to see if they’ve been uploaded previously. The earliest versions of the video began being posted this afternoon, indicating they’re new.

The weather in the clips - clear and dry - also matches conditions for today in Gaza City according to online forecasters.

Rob England
BBC Verify senior data journalist

Image source, PA Media

Speaking on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “A third of the people entering illegally the Schengen Area attempt to cross the Channel.”

In 2024, there were just over 240,000 irregular arrivals into the EU, according to Frontex, external, , externalthe European , externalb, externalorder and , externalc, externaloast , externalg, externaluard , externala, externalgency, external. Over the same period, about 67,500 people (who were not necessarily the same people) either attempted or succeeded in crossing the Channel to the UK in small boats.

That makes UK-bound crossings equivalent to about 28% of EU irregular arrivals, slightly below the one-third figure cited by Macron.

It’s unclear what time period the president was referring to, or how migrants were tracked from their entry into the EU to their attempt to reach the UK. We have asked his office for details.

Frontex notes there is “no EU system in place capable of tracing each person’s movements following an illegal border-crossing”. UK Home Office figures come with similar limitations.

Richard Irvine-Brown and Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify

As well as publishing footage of the attack and sinking on Sunday of the Magic Seas vessel in the Red Sea, the Houthi rebels also released statements on Tuesday saying the crew had disembarked safely before the ship was sunk and it had been targeted because it used ports of what they referred to as “occupied Palestine”.

A social media post early on Monday evening by the port authority in Djibouti showed the crew had been transported to shore by another ship called the Safeen Prism. The post stated that 22 people were rescued: one Romanian, one Vietnamese, and 20 Filipino nationals.

Image source, DPFZA

Ship-tracking website MarineTraffic showed the Safeen Prism docking on Monday at the port of Djibouti, roughly 230 nautical miles (265 miles; 426km) from the Magic Seas’ last recorded position.

Michael Bodouroglu, a spokesperson for the ship’s operator Stem Shipping, said 19 crew and three security personnel were safe.

Bodouroglu confirmed another of the company’s ships was docked in Israel at present. On whether that made the Magic Seas a target, he said neither the ship or its stakeholders had any connection to Israel.

“We had not been passing the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden for more than a year but restarted after the 2025 truce,” he told the BBC.

“One bulk carrier passed there two weeks ago without incident. But as it transpires things are far from normal and we will be very sceptical again about sending vessels through the area.”

Marco Silva
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Reuters

False claims that flash floods in New Mexico have been caused by weather manipulation techniques have been spreading online.

Intense rainfall caused the Ruidoso river to rise from 1.43ft, external , external(43.59, external , externalcm) to more than 20ft, external , external(6m), external in under an hour on Tuesday.

Social media posts seen hundreds of thousands of times blamed the intense rainfall on a three-year “cloud seeding weather modification pilot project” New Mexico state legislators put forward last year, external.

But the project never took off, after senators postponed the bill “indefinitely, external”.

Cloud seeding involves manipulating existing clouds to help produce more rain. It is a decades-old technique that has been deployed across several US states.

Public records suggest , externalonly one company currently holds a license to perform cloud seeding in parts of New Mexico, but not over the Ruidoso area.

Scientists also say cloud seeding alone cannot generate heavy enough rainfall to cause flooding.

“There is some evidence that cloud seeding can produce slightly more rain from clouds when rainfall is marginal, but would be insignificant for the scale and intensity of storms that produced this flooding,” Prof John Marsham, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds, told BBC Verify.

A flash flood alert, external was issued hours before it all unfolded.

Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, PA Media

The fact-check team worked on some interesting claims from today’s Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey criticised the previous Conservative government for “ripping up a returns agreement that allowed us to send migrants back to Europe”.

But the number of migrants the UK returned to the EU under what was called the Dublin III agreement was never very high and in some years the UK accepted more migrants into the UK - under the returns scheme - than were returned to other countries.

You can read the post here.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch criticised the prime minister for refusing to rule out freezing tax thresholds, which are the level of earnings at which people start paying tax or higher rates of tax.

Freezing them means more people are dragged in to paying tax or higher rates of tax.

But the tax thresholds were frozen under previous Conservative governments.

You can find the post here.

Shruti Menon and Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify

Image source, Marine Traffic

A Liberian-flagged cargo ship has sunk in the Red Sea after coming under attack on Monday according to Vanguard Tech, a maritime risk company, and shipping data specialist Lloyd’s List Intelligence.

The ship began its final journey from Berbera port on Sunday morning heading north. Its last recorded position, according to the tracking site Marine Traffic, was on Monday near the Yemeni port of Hudeydah, controlled by the Houthi rebel group.

Vanguard says the bulk carrier Eternity C’s stern was submerged before it completely sank. Four crew members died during the attack and five have been rescued from the water. A search and rescue operation for the remaining 16 crew is under way. No-one was onboard the ship before it sank.

The vessel was attacked on four separate occasions between 7 and 8 July by up to eight small boats with rocket-propelled grenades, small weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles, according to Vanguard Tech.

Yemen’s Houthi militia hasn’t yet said it carried out the attack but similar tactics have been used by the group against ships in the Red Sea.

According to Lloyd’s List, the Eternity C was transporting soybeans to the Saudi port of Jeddah and is the second ship to have sunk this week after coming under attack. Yesterday, Yemeni Military Media - a propaganda channel of the Houthis - released a five-minute video and photographs claiming to be of the capture and sinking of the Magic Seas, another Liberian-flagged bulk carrier.

BBC Verify has contacted the ship’s owner, Cosmo Ship Management, and we will post an update when more information becomes available.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, PA Media

I’ve been looking into the Crown Court backlog following the news about the proposal to have judge-only trials in England and Wales for certain cases.

The government had asked former judge Sir Brian Leveson to come up with some suggestions to cut this backlog, which reached a record high of nearly 77,000 cases waiting to be heard in March 2025, external.

About a quarter of these cases had been waiting for a year or more.

People who have reported sexual offences such as rape or sexual assault often endure long waits for their cases to be heard.

Of cases that closed last year, the average number of days from charge to completion - meaning a defendant was convicted and sentenced, found not guilty or the case was dropped - was 296. That’s the longest waiting time of all offences.

The overall Crown Court backlog first began increasing in 2019 before rising sharply in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and in 2022 during the criminal barristers’ strike.

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

The Ukrainian Air Force says Russia launched 741 drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight in the largest Russian aerial attack since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

According to our analysis of the air force’s data, Russia has consistently been launching hundreds of drones and missiles in recent weeks every time it attacks Ukraine.

So far videos posted to social media by ordinary users, said to show the aftermath of last night’s attack on Ukraine, don’t offer enough visual clues for us to locate. The emergency services have posted a number of pictures, including a video of firefighters extinguishing burning buildings said to be in the north-western city of Lutsk.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Lutsk was the worst-hit but 10 other regions have seen damage as well.

Ukraine also carried out an aerial attack against Russia last night, according to the Ministry of Defence in Moscow. It said 86 drones were detected and “destroyed” by air defence systems.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

We’re working through the latest satellite imagery from Maxar following last week’s devastating flooding in south-west Texas.

Previously we looked at close-up shots of the Camp Mystic summer camp where at least 27 people were killed when the Guadalupe River burst its banks and inundated the site.

This image taken on 23 June shows the camp before the flooding. We can see a large area of grass at the top of the picture near the river.

Image source, Maxar Technologies

Contrast that with the satellite picture taken after the flooding on 8 July and how that has changed the appearance of the same space.

Image source, Maxar Technologies

Tamara Kovacevic
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, PA Media

Defending the government’s cooperation with France on small boats, government minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said on Today on BBC Radio 4: “Preventing 12,000 people from crossing is most definitely something that is in the right direction.”

The figure is an estimate by the French authorities, published weekly by the Home office since May 2024, external. This year, from 5 January to 29 June, a total of 12,321 people were prevented, according to those estimates, which include:

• Individuals prevented from leaving France or those who return to France
• Finds of small boat equipment
• Arrests of people linked to small boats crossings.

But how reliable are those figures and are people not just trying again another day?

Madeleine Sumption from the Migration Observatory, based at the University of Oxford, says there is evidence that migrants make multiple attempts to cross the Channel.

As a result, she says: “It is not possible to say, based on current data, how many people have been prevented from crossing.”

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Maxar Technologies

New satellite imagery released by specialist space technology firm Maxar shows the extent of the devastation left by the recent floods in Kerr County, Texas, in which more than 100 people have died.

Among the images taken yesterday are several from the Camp Mystic girls’ retreat where at least 27 people are known to have died when flash flooding swept through the site last Friday. The flooding appears to have receded at the time the images were captured but the extent of the damage is clear.

Close-up images of the camp show previously plush, green areas now awash with mud and debris. elsewhere trees have been ripped from the ground and there is damage to some of the camp’s structures.

You can see in the image above that on the left - from 23 June before the flood - there are blue tennis courts at the camp which are not present in the 8 July image on the right.

Hundreds of girls were staying at Camp Mystic when the banks of the Guadalupe River broke. Many of them were sleeping in low-lying cabins a short distance from the river.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Good morning from BBC Verify - this is our live page where we share the work being done by our team today.

We're starting off with analysis of new satellite images that show the extent of the damage caused by deadly flashing flooding in south-west Texas. It has killed more than 100 people including at least 27 at a Christian summer camp.

We'll include a selection of the images on this page and explain what they show. There's more details on what made the Texas floods so deadly here.

BBC Verify is also looking into reports that two ships attacked by the Houthi group off the Yemen coast have sunk. We will post an update here when we have verified information.

Plus we'll be standing by for Prime Minister's Questions in the UK's House of Commons at noon to fact-check what the politicians say during the session.