Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify journalist

I worked with Vitaliy Shevchenko, Russia editor at BBC Monitoring, on this story showing how satellite images show that Russian troops seem to be using his childhood home in Ukraine as a military base.

Vitaliy had been looking at recent pictures of Verkhnya Krynytsya, a village near the front line in the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia region, when he noticed a new track leading to the house. So he asked me for help to see what we can find out about it.

Publicly available images of the property on Google, Bing and Yandex maps are all from before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, so in order to work out what had happened we examined 32 satellite images taken between March 2022 and July this year.

The property appears not to have been in constant use, but periodically occupied by Russian soldiers as we could see the path emerge and fade with the seasons.

Pictures Vitaliy shared with me of his former home made this clearer, as I could see where over time a gate had been removed and several fruit trees cut back to get in and out of the property.

By also examining historical weather data, we managed to confirm it was much wetter and slightly colder between summer 2023 and spring 2024 than it was a year later, which may explain it being used for shelter more at different times.

Image source, Vitaliy Shevchenko/BBC

Benedict Garman
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, The White House

An Israeli government spokeswoman has suggested, its military will withdraw to an area of the Gaza Strip shown on a "widely reported” map if the ceasefire and hostage release deal comes into effect.

While Shosh Bedrosian didn't show the map at a news conference, two versions have been shared by the White House in recent weeks that show an area of Gaza marked with a yellow line indicating initial withdrawal positions for Israeli forces.

Bedrosian said that the first phase of the ceasefire deal would leave the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in control of “about 53%” of Gaza. This proportion broadly matches with our earlier assessment.

Based on BBC Verify analysis of the White House maps the first withdrawal phase would effectively reverse Israeli advances made over the past month in Gaza City. It would retain control over most of the eastern neighbourhood of Shejaiya.

The IDF would also hold on to about a third of the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza, a road created by Israel in early 2024 and used to separate the north and south of the territory to control population movement.

In southern Gaza the withdrawal lines appear to follow existing military partitions created earlier this year:

• The Morag Corridor dividing Gaza between the regions of Rafah and Khan Younis
• The Magin Oz Axis splitting the region (and city) of Khan Younis from east to west

These military corridors already more or less demarcate the current extent of IDF control in southern Gaza, suggesting there would be no significant withdrawal there.

Nicholas Barrett
BBC Verify researcher

I’ve been looking at the UK’s trading relationship with India as Prime Minister Keir Starmer leads a two-day trade mission to the country.

India is home to almost 1.5 billion people and according to the International Monetary Fund is the world’s fourth largest economy.

Despite this, India only represents 2% of the UK’s export market worth £17.1bn, external. That puts it just behind Sweden and far behind the UK’s biggest trading partners the US and Germany.

Historically, the Indian market has been tightly protected by its government. Under the new trade deal, India's average tariff on UK products will drop from 15% to 3%.

The UK government says the deal will increase trade between the two countries by £25.5bn a year by 2040.

Marco Silva
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Reuters

The arrest on Wednesday of a 29-year-old man on suspicion of startingthe Pacific Palisades fire that swept through part of Los Angeles in January has been wrongly hailed online as proof “conspiracy theorists were right”.

In posts viewed thousands of times, some social media users claimed the announcement was proof that arson caused the LA fires and ridiculed politicians who linked them to climate change.

The Pacific Palisades fire, which started on 7 January, killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,000 homes. The blaze was one of the most destructive in LA history.

Extreme wildfires like these require three things to occur: hot, dry and windy weather conditions, abundant vegetation, and an ignition source — such as arson or lightning.

In the weeks that followed the blaze, scientists confirmed climate change was a major factor behind the weather that led to the fires, making such conditions about 35% more likely, external.

“This is not a case of either/or,” says Dr Theodore Keeping, a wildfire and climate scientist with the World Weather Attribution research group.

“The scientific literature unequivocally finds a strong increase in the frequency of extreme fire weather in the western US as a result of climate change."

As well as the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza, US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan also requires Israel to withdraw its troops from parts of the Strip.

The Israel Defense Forces would still control about half the territory.

BBC Verify’s Merlyn Thomas explains what we know so far.

Thomas Copeland and Fridon Kiria
BBC Verify

We’ve just verified two new videos showing an attack earlier today inside Russia - this time in the Rostov region, in the south of the country, close to the border with Ukraine.

In the first video we can track what looks like a fixed-wing drone as it approaches a large green building in the town of Matveyev Kurgan. This is followed by an explosion and a plume of smoke.

The building that appears to have been struck looks like a grain store - based on its listing on Google Maps and pictures of other similar-looking structures in Russia.

We’ve verified a second video which shows a large plume of smoke rising into the sky from the same location. This one was taken from inside a car as it crossed a nearby bridge.

The governor of the Rostov region has posted that “the windows, facades, and roofs of several residential buildings, as well as five cars, were damaged. Information on casualties is being clarified.”

Image source, Telegram

Daniel Wainwright
BBC Verify senior data journalist

NHS waiting lists for planned treatment in England rose again in August — the third month in a row — to 7.41 million procedures - about 12,000 more than in July.

About 61% of patients were waiting less than 18 weeks, below the NHS target for 92%, to be treated. The NHS and government wants to reach 65% by next March.

Each NHS trust was set its own target: reach 60% by March 2025, or improve on its November 2024 performance by five percentage points — whichever is higher.

To help you see how your local NHS trust is doing, BBC Verify created a tracker by calculating how each service was doing in November and which of the two possible targets it needed to reach.

Of the 135 trusts with at least 5,000 pending procedures last November, 90 had improved by August, while 45 have stayed the same or worsened.

Find out how your local trust is doing with the BBC Verify NHS tracker.

Richard Irvine-Brown and Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify

Image source, SNAP

People in Gaza have been posting short videos on SnapChat this morning with some celebrating the possibility of a ceasefire.

However, one video which we’ve located in Gaza City at dawn shows smoke rising from a possible explosion with the caption: "The war is supposed to be over".

Whoever filmed it was taking cover and aircraft can be heard overhead. We can confirm it was filmed a block south of Omar al Mukhtar street near Zeitoun at around dawn.

The video’s timecode and the low sun in the east corresponds with sunrise at 06:40 local time.

International journalists are banned from the Gaza Strip and SnapChat is one of several sites we look at to get the latest pictures. It is one of the most popular social media sites in s the Middle East and has a helpful geotagging feature.

If a user allows Snap to access their device location their videos are - generally - uploaded to a map in the approximate location of where it was filmed.

This helps us see posts from across Gaza in recent hours including scenes of celebration in Deir al-Balah but also people displaced by the fighting queuing for water in al-Mawasi.

Emma Pengelly, Jamie Ryan and Alex Murray
BBC Verify

Image source, EPA

We’ve been tracking the status of Gaza hostages since Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, when around 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken captive. In addition, four hostages were already being held by Hamas, bringing the total in Gaza to 255.

Of the 48 still being in held in Gaza, 20 hostages are believed to be alive.

Just under three-quarters of those still alive are men in their 20s and just over half had been at the Nova Music Festival when it was attacked by Hamas-led fighters.

Those alive are expected to be returned first, possibly as soon as Sunday.

CNN has reported that Israeli sources say the whereabouts may be unknown, external for as many as 15 of the remaining dead hostages.

We will wait for official confirmation before updating our records about the status of all the remaining hostages.

Our three-person team has maintained and updated a database, used to avoid duplication and error across BBC News output, whenever significant new information becomes available.

This could be statements from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum or reliable news reporting, often attributed to family members.

Residents of an apartment block in Chicago that was targeted in a raid on suspected illegal immigrants have described seeing armed agents in the hallways and a helicopter landing on the roof of the building.

One US-born resident of the block told BBC Verify he had his hands zip-tied by officers, before being released.

The Department of Homeland Security, which released dramatic footage of the raid, said 37 "illegal aliens" were arrested, including suspected gang members.

BBC Verify's Nick Beake has been speaking to people living in the block and trying to piece together how the operation unfolded.

Thomas Copeland and Fridon Kiria
BBC Verify

We’ve been monitoring reports of an overnight Ukrainian drone strike on a gas processing plant in Russia’s Volgograd region.

At first all we had was dark footage of the supposed attack, with barely anything visible beyond a large explosion. But this morning more video has emerged showing damage to the plant, in which we can see a large chimney appears to have been charred by fire.

Image source, Telegram

We’ve managed to pinpoint the location where this footage was filmed to a sandy pit just next to the Lukoil-Korobkovsky gas processing facility in Kotovo.

I’ve also checked Nasa’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (Firms) which detects active hot spots on the planet’s surface. As you can see, multiple heat signatures were recorded at the plant overnight.

Image source, Nasa

Volgograd’s regional governor has said that Russian forces “repelled a massive drone attack” on the territory and that “fires also broke out at fuel and energy facilities”.

This comes after a similar strike earlier this week on the largest oil terminal in Crimea and is the latest Ukrainian attack on Russian energy infrastructure.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Hello from the team at BBC Verify.

This morning we’re following up on the Ukrainian military saying it has attacked a gas processing facility in Russia’s Volgograd region. We’re checking footage posted online last night and this morning that does appear to show a fire at a facility in the area.

We’ll also be feeding into BBC News’ coverage of US President Donald Trump’s announcement that Israel and Hamas have agreed a “first phase” of his Gaza peace deal. You can get the latest updates here.

Today we’ll be investigating:

• Where Israeli troops will withdraw to
• Any reports of strikes and fighting continuing today
• The status of the remaining hostages in Gaza

Elsewhere, BBC Verify’s correspondent in the US Nick Beake has been piecing together a raid by immigration enforcement agents on a tower block in Chicago. We’ll bring you more on that shortly.