Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

We’ll be closing this live page shortly.

Today the team has been looking at figures behind small boat crossings to the UK, as the government’s “one-in-one-out” deal with France is ratified. It will come into effect tomorrow.

We’ve verified video and stills of flood damage in northern India’s Uttarakhand state, where dozens of people are feared to be trapped following an intense rain storm.

And we’ve seen damage in or near train stations both in the Ukrainian city of Lozova and the village of Tatsinskaya in Russia's Rostov region.

BBC Verify Live will be back on Wednesday.

Rob England
BBC Verify senior data journalist

With the government’s “one-in-one-out” return scheme for small boat arrivals coming into effect tomorrow, ministers hope it will deter people from trying to get to the UK illegally because some migrants will be sent back to France.

Government figures, external show that irregular migrants - those who enter the UK outside of legal routes - made up 4.7% of arrivals in the year to March 2025 (excluding short-term visitors and those in transit).

That share has remained broadly consistent over recent years, while those arriving legally to study, work, or join family vastly outnumber irregular arrivals.

However, a recent opinion poll suggests many Britons believe the number of migrants staying in the UK illegally exceeds those who are here legally.

A YouGov survey carried out in May suggested that almost half of those questioned (47%) thought “somewhat more” or “much more” people in the UK were staying here without legal permission.

The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford says it is difficult to estimate the true number of unauthorised migrants, external in the population, which makes it hard to directly compare legal and illegal groups.

However, Census data provides some useful context, external. In 2022, 16% of the UK population, about 10.7 million people - had been born abroad.

That figure, even without factoring in population growth, is significantly higher than the 226,000 people who arrived irregularly between January 2018 and March 2025 according to figures from the Home Office, external.

Image source, Planet Labs

Satellite imagery provided by specialist observation firm Planet Labs has revealed damage to a submarine base in far eastern Russia following last week's earthquake.

The quake off the eastern coast of Russia on 30 July was one of the largest ever recorded. It prompted numerous tsunami warnings around the Pacific Ocean but did not result in any major damage.

The satellite image, captured yesterday, shows a break in one of the piers at the Rybachiy submarine base which is located around 126km (78 miles) north-west of the quake's epicentre. There is no other clear damage to the base or any vessels.

The damaged pier is also visible in low-resolution imagery taken on 1 August but an image captured on 21 July shows it intact.

BBC Verify obtained the image by sending a "tasking" to Planet - a request to capture the location at the next available opportunity. We routinely do this after incidents which are likely to have caused damage.

Rob England
BBC Verify senior data journalist

The UK government’s new agreement to return some small boat arrivals to France comes into effect from tomorrow.

Ministers say the scheme is aimed at disrupting the business model of people smugglers. It will see some migrants who cross the Channel in small boats returned to France.

For every person returned, the UK has agreed to accept someone from France through a new legal asylum route, as long as they haven’t previously tried to cross illegally.

This is one of several measures being used by the British government to try to reduce crossings.

Another approach is to stop small boats from leaving France altogether. According to official figures, there have been at least 15,369 instances this year where people were either prevented from boarding boats by French authorities, or the vessels were returned after launch.

In recent months, a gap has emerged between the number of preventions and successful crossings. In July, there were more than 5,000 arrivals in the UK - compared with about 3,000 preventions.

At present, French authorities can only intervene on land or if there is a clear threat to life at sea. France is now considering legislation that would allow police to intervene with boats already in the water.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Telegram

As we reported earlier, we've been investigating reports of overnight strikes on rail infrastructure in both Ukraine and Russia.

We have now verified footage from the village of Tatsinskaya in Russia's Rostov region, which indicates there was at least one drone impact and a fire in the vicinity of the railway station there.

In footage filmed from a car park, we can hear the buzzing sound of what is likely to be a drone followed by a flash of orange light in the direction of the station, which lies around 230m (750ft) to the north.

Other footage shows a fire closer to the station and photographs from this morning show a police presence at the same spot. These were geolocated by matching identifiable buildings seen in the footage with satellite imagery.

None of the verified footage shows a fire at the station itself. Based on the visuals we’ve seen we can’t confirm the station was hit.

We also know Ukraine has been targeting transport and industrial infrastructure since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Shruti Menon
BBC Verify senior journalist

We’ve verified a dramatic video and still image from northern India’s Uttarakhand state which shows floodwater rapidly running down a mountainside towards Dharali village and crashing into residential and hotel buildings following an intense rain storm.

Dozens of people are feared trapped and the Indian army and national disaster response team have launched a search and rescue operation.

In the video we can see the water hitting several buildings which are inundated or swept away.

To confirm the location of the footage, we compared the village and its terrain to satellite imagery available on Google Earth.

We also ran reverse-image searches of frames from the video and checked the weather to be sure the images are from today and are of the affected area.

We will continue to monitor and verify more footage as it emerges on social media.

The UN Security Council is due to meet later today to discuss the fate of the remaining hostages taken from Israel still held in Gaza.

The UN session was called after Palestinian armed groups put out videos showing two of the Israeli hostages, Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, looking severely emaciated.

At BBC Verify, through media reports and video, we’ve been keeping across the status of the hostages taken into Gaza during the 7 October 2023 armed attacks on Israel by Hamas. Our understanding is that:

• 49 people who were taken on 7 October are still in Gaza, plus one more who was taken prior to the attack and whose remains have been held since 2014.
• Of those 50, 28 are dead and whose remains are unrecovered.
• 20 are assumed living hostages, but Hamas claims the number is lower. This would include David and Braslavski.
• Two more whose status was last reported as “uncertain”.

Regarding hostages no longer in Gaza:

• 48 hostages taken on 7 October have died and their remains recovered, as has another hostage taken before.
• 148 hostages have been returned, including two hostages taken before, across two ceasefire deals.
• Eight hostages have been rescued alive.

Verification work by Alex Murray, Emma Pengelly, and Jamie Ryan

Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

The BBC Verify team keeps track of the data on people arriving in the UK on small boats so that we can show how the numbers are changing year-on-year.

The Home Office publishes the figures both for the last seven days, external and a time series going back to 2018, external.

Each day’s figures come out the following day, so we’ll get Monday’s figures later on.

So far this year, 25,436 people have been detected crossing the English Channel in small boats which is almost 50% higher than at the same point last year.

Robert Cuffe
BBC Verify head of statistics

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has told BBC Radio 4 Today there should be “more transparency” about the nationality and immigration status of people accused of crimes.

Her comments come after Conservative shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick told the same programme yesterday 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”.

Yesterday we described where the data comes from and why it can’t tell us whether foreign nationals as a group are more likely to commit crimes than British nationals without taking into account the different ages of different populations.

These warnings apply particularly for small groups such as Eritrean or Afghan nationals. They are much rarer in both the Metropolitan Police data (10 and 16 of the 1,600 sexual offences charged or cautioned last year) and population statistics.

When you’re dealing with small numbers, minor shifts or weaknesses in the data have an outsized effect: taking four offences from the Afghan total would be a 25% reduction.

Paul Brown and Peter Mwai
BBC Verify

Image source, State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Reuters

We have verified video showing severe damage at a railway station in the Ukrainian city of Lozova in the northern Kharkiv region following reports of a major Russian drone attack overnight.

Local authorities say at least one person was killed and 10 injured.

The videos show the station’s roof, wall and windows have been damaged and a train at the platform has a buckled carriage.

We have confirmed the footage was filmed at the city’s main railway station by matching the unique facade of the building, benches and coloured paving blocks with imagery available on Google maps.

Both Ukraine and Russia have been attacking each other’s transport infrastructure in an attempt to disrupt industry and movement of supplies.

We are also looking into reports that Tatsinskaya station in the Rostov region in Russia’s south was hit overnight and will post here on the live page when we have verified material.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Hello from the team.

We're getting on with verification work following an overnight Russian strike on the Ukrainian town of Lozova which officials say killed at least one person and injured 10 others.

Images we've seen so far suggest the attack caused significant damage to the town's railway station - Lozova is a key transport hub for the north-east of Ukraine.

Our fact-checkers have been listening to UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper who has been doing broadcast interviews this morning as the UK's "one in, one out" migrant returns deal with France comes into force.

And we'll also be looking for the latest verifiable information coming out of Gaza as it's reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing to expand military operations in the Strip.

If there's a story you think BBC Verify should investigate then do get in touch with us via this form.