Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

This live page is closing now but there's more to come this evening from BBC Verify.

Our late team will continue to look into Ukraine's drone attacks against Russian bombers after we received new satellite imagery showing the damage to aircraft at one of the airfields that was hit.

We also recently published a video from analysis editor Ros Atkins on the White House's claims about the BBC's coverage of Gaza.

Policy and analysis correspondent Ben Chu will be on Newsnight on BBC Two after 22:30 BST looking ahead to next week's spending review.

And if you're interested to know more about what we do our previous published pieces are on the BBC website.

Kayleen Devlin
BBC Verify senior journalist

We’ve been looking into an attack on a school housing displaced people in western Khan Younis, which officials from the Hamas-run Gaza health authority and rescuers say killed 12 people.

We haven’t yet seen footage of the moment the attack took place.

However, multiple videos posted on social media that were filmed at around the same time show people near Nasser hospital. One features a man carrying a small body bag, which looks about the size of a child.

Another video shows people crowded around multiple body bags. One person, who says they witnessed the attack, said women and children were killed in the strike as they were eating breakfast.

A freelancer working for the BBC in Gaza shared co-ordinates with us which he believed was of the school. We reviewed older videos filmed there and the buildings and surroundings clearly matched what could be seen in satellite imagery.

The BBC has approached the IDF for comment on the attack.

Image source, Telegram

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt launched an attack on the BBC's coverage of reports that Israeli forces had killed Palestinians near an aid distribution centre in Gaza. She claimed that the BBC took down a story after reviewing footage.

The BBC has said that claim is completely wrong and that it stands by its journalism.

Ros Atkins from BBC Verify takes a look at the facts.

Peter Mwai
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Getty Images

We don’t often cover stories from Uganda, and today I’ve been looking at some dramatic CCTV footage of an explosion involving a motorbike on a busy main road south of the capital, Kampala. The BBC has written up the story here.

Footage of the incident posted on X shows two people riding on a motorbike approaching a road junction just across the road from the Roman Catholic Munyonyo Martyrs' Shrine.

The Ugandan army says it killed two people it described as “armed terrorists” in an “intelligence-led operation” near the site where commemorations were taking place for Christians killed for their faith in the late 19th Century.

An examination of the CCTV casts some doubt on this official explanation, with no evidence of the presence of security forces when the explosion occurred.

We have verified the location by comparing the buildings and road junction to satellite imagery on Google Earth and matching it with later footage taken after the incident along with images captured by media outlets.

Army spokesperson Col Chris Magezi told Reuters the attackers were believed to be linked to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group which is allied to the so-called Islamic State group (IS).

Last year, the army issued warnings that the group was planning attacks in urban areas, places of worship, schools and public events.

In 2023, the group was accused of carrying out an attack on a Ugandan school which killed nearly 40 students.

The group also said it carried out several bomb attacks in Uganda in 2021.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Our fact-checkers were watching Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch go head-to-head in this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) earlier today.

The two leaders debated public finances, steel tariffs, and touched on other topics such as prisons.

Here are three claims we fact-checked:

The £22bn black hole

Keir Starmer claimed the previous Conservative government left a “£22bn black hole” in the public finances. Kemi Badenoch responded that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) "said there was no such black hole”. We looked back at what the OBR – which makes economic forecasts for the government – said. Last year, it identified a shortfall in Conservative spending plans of £9.5bn – not £22bn. BBC Verify has previously looked at how Labour came up with that higher figure.

Image source, PA

US steel tariffs

Starmer and Badenoch also clashed over the level of steel tariffs the UK faces, after a new 50% tariff on steel and aluminium imported into the US came into force today. The UK and the US announced an agreement last month that UK ministers say will reduce these tariffs to 0% - which Starmer highlighted. But as the agreement is not yet in effect, relevant UK exports will continue to be subject to a lower 25% tariff - as Badenoch pointed out. If the US deems the UK not to have complied with the deal, that could rise to 50%.

Prisoner release scheme

Towards the end of PMQs, Badenoch accused the PM of “releasing more criminals onto the streets”. She was talking about the government’s early release scheme, which aims to reduce overcrowding in prisons. The latest figures, external for the scheme show that between September and December last year, 16,231 prisoners were released 40% of the way through their sentences in England and Wales. But an early release scheme also existed under the last Conservative government, and more than 10,000 prisoners were freed up to 70 days early, external between October 2023 and June 2024.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Having pored over this morning's satellite imagery from Planet Labs of the Belaya air base in Russia, we have a clearer picture of what happened there when it was targeted by armed Ukrainian drones on Sunday.

Three days on from that attack we can see clear damage to seven planes at the base. The wrecked aircraft have been identified as three Tupolev Tu-95 bombers, a Tu-22M bomber on the southern edge of the runway and three other Tu-22s parked in bays nearby.

Footage taken from one of the Ukrainian drones that entered the Belaya base shows it slowly lowering itself onto the wing of one of the Tu-95s. This would have placed it close to one of the aircraft's fuel tanks.

Manufacture of both the Tu-95 and Tu-22M ended after the collapse of the Soviet Union more than 30 years ago which will make repairing them difficult and replacement nearly impossible.

Both types of aircraft are known to have conducted air strikes against Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

We've been analysing the latest satellite imagery of a Russian air base following Sunday's Ukrainian drone attack to get a picture of how much damage was done.

Satellite imaging is a key tool for us because it offers a birds-eye view of what is happening at a given location – especially from places where we can’t send journalists because it’s either too dangerous or we can’t get access.

For example, a few weeks ago my colleague Benedict Garman spotted gradual changes in the landscape at various points in Gaza and concluded - correctly - that these appeared to be locations for the new aid distribution points which have featured so prominently in the news this week.

Optical imagery from providers like Planet Labs, Maxar Technologies, Airbus and the Copernicus Programme offer a range of images at differing resolutions which all serve a purpose in helping us understand events on the ground.

And, as we mentioned yesterday, radar imagery from companies like Umbra and Capella can provide us with high resolution, black and white pictures penetrating through cloud cover - invaluable in areas where the weather works against us.

Such imagery offered our first confirmation of damage to aircraft at Russian air bases following the Ukrainian drone attacks on Sunday.

Ben Chu
BBC Verify policy and analysis correspondent

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch brought up the issue of US steel tariffs at Prime Minister's Questions.

A new 50% tariff on steel and aluminium imported into the US came into force today but Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the Commons the UK's trade agreement announced on 8 May, external means these will be reduced to 0%.

But as Badenoch said, the agreement is not yet in effect so until it is, relevant UK exports will continue to be subject to a lower 25% tariff. These could reach 50% if the US believes Britain is not keeping to its side of the deal.

The US tariffs also apply to products derived from steel and aluminium, such as gym equipment and machinery.

It's estimated by the Global Trade Alert think tank, external that the UK's exports of these products to the US in 2024 were around $2.9bn (£1.6bn).

Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, PA Media

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch began her six questions to Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the Commons just now by asking about the winter fuel payment.

The government is under pressure over its decision last year to restrict it to those receiving pension credit.

Speaking in Greater Manchester this morning, Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed that "more people will get the winter fuel payment this winter".

There's still no detail about how the policy will be changed, with Reeves saying the means test "will increase" and they would set out the detail "as soon as we possibly can".

There are options the chancellor could consider:

• The Resolution Foundation think tank says, external the simplest would be to continue only giving winter fuel payment to those receiving pension credit, but to raise the threshold at which people qualify for that benefit by 10%
• That would cost around £2.5bn a year which is more than the government’s policy is estimated to have saved
• The government could separate winter fuel payment from pension credit and raise the threshold just for winter fuel payment by 20% at a cost of about £100m a year
• The Resolution Foundation says there are “huge doubts” about whether this was administratively possible and it would “further complicate an already complex system”

Thomas Spencer
BBC Verify researcher

Image source, Planet Labs

We’ve got some initial thoughts on what today’s new satellite imagery from Planet Labs shows us following Sunday’s Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian air bases.

What we have in front of us now is a birds-eye colour picture of Belaya air base in southern Russia - some 4,000km (2,500 miles) from the Ukrainian border - rather than the radar imagery that looked through the bad cloud cover that has been covering the base in recent days.

We can see that at least three Tupolev Tu-95s, a type of long-range Russian bomber aircraft, appear to have been very badly damaged.

In their initial assessment prior to the release of these new images, defence experts Janes told BBC Verify that the aircraft were likely to have been destroyed.

At the far end of the runway several other different bomber aircraft also appear to have been struck. While the full extent of the damage remains unclear we can see burn marks and changes in and around these aircraft.

We'll continue to examine further satellite imagery from this and other Russian air bases as it becomes available.

Image source, Planet Labs

Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist

BBC Verify carries out fact-checking while Prime Minister's Questions is taking place in the House of Commons. I've been speaking to senior journalist Tamara Kovacevic about what they do.

How do you prep ahead of PMQs?

We try to fact-check claims made at PMQs as quickly as possible and the key to being able to do that is preparing in advance. We try to identify which topics might come up and what specific claims might be made by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. We look at what the evidence is for each claim, including what we can find from publicly available data.

How do you identify what the likely topics are going to be?

We check for claims that Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch have made on social media or in recent interviews, we stay across party press releases and other announcements and we also talk to our colleagues in Westminster. In the past week there has been plenty of talk about the government's defence strategy and the numbers of people arriving in the UK on small boats, so we'll be preparing for questions about those.

How is the team assigned?

Today we have a team of four who will all listen to PMQs and post claims in our internal chat as we hear them. Once we decide which claims to check – wrong or misleading ones are the priority - we'll listen back to double check the exact wording to quote. The journalist who prepared that topic in advance will write the post and the editor will check it and sign off before publication.

What is the most challenging aspect of it all?

There are often claims that are not clearly wrong or right. We also get claims we haven’t prepared for. We have to work at speed to check them against all the available information and – if we can’t find any evidence for the claim – we may have to contact the politician who made it to ask them for their sources.

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Planet Labs

We've received new satellite imagery taken this morning of Russia's Belaya air base - one of those targeted by Ukrainian drones on Sunday.

The imagery, provided by Planet Labs, is the first full colour shot we've seen since the attacks. At first glance, we can see significant damage to several aircraft.

We're now in the process of analysing what we're seeing, comparing it with the most recent imagery taken before the attack, and cross-referencing it with footage from Sunday to get a better indication of how many aircraft were lost or damaged.

We'll report back with our findings later.

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, PA

Yesterday, the government published new figures on small boat crossings in the English Channel.

Here are three things we learned from the data:

1. There were 190 "red days" - when weather conditions are considered favourable for small boat crossings - in 2024-25 which was the highest number since records began
2. There was a rise in "severely overcrowded boats" in the same period - in the year to April 2025, there were 33 boats which carried 80 or more people on board, but the year before there were only 11 boats carrying this many people
3. While the number of people per boat has increased, the total number of boats has fallen from 1,116 in 2021–22 to 738 last year

The Conservatives and Reform have accused the government of "blaming the weather" for the record crossings so far this year, whereas the government has said it is working to fix "a broken asylum system" left by the Tories.

You can read BBC Verify’s full analysis of the figures here.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Hello - welcome to today's live feed bringing you updates from the BBC's team of fact-checkers, open-source intelligence experts, and disinformation debunkers.

We'll be across a range of stories throughout the day and will aim to share with you here how we go about methodically making sure what you see, hear and read on the BBC is accurate and true.

Following the BBC Verify editors' meeting just now these are our priorities this morning:

• We're monitoring video and pictures from Gaza that can add verified new information to our reporting of the situation on the ground
• The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said its aid centres are closed today - we'll continue to update what we know about the recent violent incidents that have happened near where they've been set up - we've got a full write-up of our investigations so far here
• You can get the latest updates on Gaza throughout the day on the BBC News live page
• BBC Verify policy and analysis correspondent Ben Chu is looking into how the UK might benefit from being exempted from US tariffs on aluminium - there are also live updates here
• And we're scouring satellite imagery to get more of an idea about the damage caused to the Kerch Bridge in Russian-occupied Crimea by yesterday's explosion

Plus our fact-check team will be across Prime Minister's Questions from midday UK time - we'll hear shortly about how they get ready to assess what's said at the session.