Ben Chu
BBC Verify policy and analysis correspondent

On BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper was challenged over the cost of the deal that will see the UK transfer sovereignty of the Chagos islands to Mauritius and lease back the largest of the islands which houses the Diego Garcia UK-US military base for 99 years.

The Conservatives have claimed the agreement will cost the UK £35bn, but Cooper said such figures were “wrong” and the actual figure was “much smaller”.

The government has previously claimed the cost is £3.4bn.

The Conservatives are not wrong in pointing out the cumulative value of the annual outlay in cash terms over the 99 years of this deal could easily add up to £35bn.

The government has reached its significantly lower figure by adjusting these cumulative payments for:

• Future inflation
• Something called “Social Time Preference” - the value society attaches to something in the present compared to the future, so the future costs and benefits are discounted to their present value

The inflation adjustment is valid. A payment of £1bn in 2124 will be considerably less onerous for a future government than a payment of £1bn made in 2025, given the likely growth of the economy and tax revenues over a century.

Also, given the extremely long timeframe of the deal, analysts and actuaries consulted by BBC Verify say it is not unreasonable for the government to further discount the payments for Social Time Preference - given that studies of economic behaviour show immediate costs and benefits are valued more highly than future costs and benefits by individuals, businesses and governments., external

Joshua Cheetham
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, X/@FrenchForces

President Emmanuel Macron says the French Navy has boarded a sanctioned oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea, which was “coming from Russia” and “flying a false flag”.

In a post on X, Macron said the operation was carried out “with the support of several of our allies” and in accordance with UN regulations.

The French government’s Maritime Prefect of the Mediterranean posted a statement on X saying the ship, named Grinch, was intercepted with help from the UK military.

France’s navy have also released an image of a vessel with features matching those of Grinch seen in online archive pictures.

According to location data on MarineTraffic, the ship’s onboard-tracking signal was last received more than six hours ago between Spain and Algeria.

It had previously sailed from around Murmansk in Russia where there is evidence its location signal was spoofed to mask activity.

The ship is flagged to the Comoros Islands and has been sanctioned by the US, UK, EU, Canada and Switzerland.

Grinch’s registered owner is a firm in the Marshall Islands.

Gerry Georgieva
BBC Verify researcher

Image source, PA Media

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage stated: "This week last year, when there was no wind blowing across the UK, no sun for solar, we were importing up to 25% of our electricity every day at inflated prices from Norway and elsewhere".

Throughout the whole of January 2025, there wasn’t a single day when imports of electricity exceeded 17.5% across England, Scotland and Wales, according to data from, external the National Energy System Operator (NESO).

Comparable data isn’t available for Northern Ireland which has a separate electricity grid.

In January 2025 imports made up an average of 11.7% , externalof Britain’s electricity mix. However, there was a particular half-hour period on 28 January 2025 when imports constituted 23.3% of the electricity mix.

National Grid, external says importing electricity via subsea connections avoids the need to use more expensive electricity generation alternatives in Britain.

The UK government hopes to, external become a net exporter of electricity by 2030.

Tom Edgington
BBC Verify senior journalist

Speaking at the Board of Peace signing ceremony in Davos, Donald Trump repeated his claim about ending ending eight wars.

The US president also made several claims about his economic record, including:

“The US economy is booming with virtually no inflation. It was 1.2% for the last three months and we inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country”

This is incorrect, as official inflation figures show prices rose 2.7% in the 12 months to December 2025. , external

Inflation has come down from 3% in January last year, but it remains above the 2% target set by the Federal Reserve, the US central bank.

Furthermore, Trump did not inherit the “worst” inflation on record, which was 23.7% in 1920.

“We have economic growth now of 5.4%”

Latest official data shows US GDP grew at an annual rate of 4.3%, external in the three months to September.

Trump may be referring to an estimate from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, one of the Fed’s 12 regional banks.

Their latest modelling suggests 5.4% GDP growth in the three months to December, external. However, this is only a forecast.

“We have secured commitments for over $18 trillion[of] new investment”

Trump has made similar claims before, but there is no publicly available evidence to support it.

A White House website, last updated in November, tracking new investment put the total at $9.6tn (£7.1tn)., external

Greg Auclair, a statistician at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told BBC Verify the White House tracker "includes pledges that may not materialise".

Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, TikTok

We’ve been consulting colleagues in BBC Weather about the footage coming out of Kamchatka, as the peninsula in eastern Russia has experienced significant snowfall in recent days.

BBC Weather forecaster Georgie Goodfellow pointed out the latest snow reports from 21:00 GMT on Wednesday (09:00 Thursday local time) recorded 159cm (63in) in Kamchatka’s largest city Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, 78cm (31in) in Severo-Kurilsk and 74cm (29in) in Kljuchi.

This has led to some striking videos and images of people in the area dealing with enormous amounts of accumulated snow, like one clip we’ve verified of someone filming themselves walking on top of a huge snow drift which has settled on a bus shelter in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

But, as BBC Weather presenter Simon King points out, residential buildings in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky are generally at most five storeys tall - not nine or 18 like in the AI-generated videos we’ve seen.

“A 10-storey high building would approximately be up to around 40m (131ft) tall. The snow drifts in the videos then would suggest snowfall and drifts of 400cm (13ft) - over three times the amount that we know fell,” he said .

“Having 400cm of snow in one event would be very rare - but it has happened before. On Mount Shasta, California, in 1959 over the course of a week a snowstorm dumped 480cm of snow, according to Guinness World Records.”

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

We’re hearing that the three journalists killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza yesterday were working with an aid organisation and regularly filmed at displacement camps.

The men killed have been named by the Hamas-run Civil Defence as Mohammed Salah Qashta, Anas Ghneim and Abdul Raouf Shaat.

Speaking from al-Shifa hospital yesterday, another Gaza journalist said the three had been filming “displacement tents and suffering faced by the displaced people” in an area they had worked in “many times” before.

A spokesperson for the Egyptian Relief Committee said the journalists were on a “humanitarian mission” with the organisation when they were killed. A day before the strike the committee shared a drone video, external showing the blue and white tents of the Netzarim displacement camp.

Image source, Egyptian Relief Committee

This camp - about 2km (1.2 miles) west of where the strike happened - is where the Egyptian Relief Committee has been installing hundreds of tents, toilets and other public health services, according to its website.

Verified aftermath video shows the strike happened south of Gaza City nearly 2km (1.2 miles) west of the so-called “yellow line” where Israel agreed to withdraw its troops under October’s ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Israel’s military, the IDF, said it struck “several suspects who operated a drone affiliated with Hamas… in a manner that posed a threat to their safety”. Details of the incident are under examination, the IDF added.

Jake Horton
BBC Verify

Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has been setting out plans for the redevelopment of Gaza following the war with Israel.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos he presented a series of slides on a “master plan” for what “new Gaza” could look like.

“In the Middle East... they build this in three years so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen,” Kushner said. "We've already started removing the rubble and doing the demolition,” he added.

BBC Verify has previously looked into the task of rebuilding Gaza. Based on satellite data we assessed in October there could be more than 60 million tonnes of debris in the Gaza Strip after two years of war.

This will need to be cleared to build new water and sewage facilities as well as power, housing, agriculture and education infrastructure.

You can read our full piece on the challenges of rebuilding Gaza here.

Sherie Ryder and Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify

Another example of an AI-generated video of extreme snow in Russia’s Kamchatka region shows people sliding down a giant drift between two high-rise buildings.

One post of the imaginary scene has been viewed around a million times on X. But, unlike the TikTok clips we reported on earlier, it was not labelled or described as being made with AI.

As with those videos there are obvious, seemingly impossible, elements which indicate AI has been used. With a drift so steep and high, people attempting to slide down it would more than likely sink into the snow, fall down it or cause the fragile snow formation to collapse.

Our in-house AI checker, which examines videos frame-by-frame, rated it as a fake.

Henk van Ess, an expert in using AI in investigative research, also ran the videos through his ImageWhisperer tool and concluded they were fake.

He told us when images like this and the earlier example fool journalists “we’ve got a verification crisis”.

“Today it's pretty snow footage. Tomorrow it's a fabricated disaster or conflict zone. Every time media runs these without checking, they're training audiences to either believe everything or nothing,” Van Ess added.

Phil Leake
BBC Verify data journalist

The number of people in hospital with flu in England has fallen for the second consecutive week after a slight post-Christmas increase, according to the latest NHS figures.

There were an average of 2,519 patients in hospital with the virus last week, down from almost 3,000 just after Christmas.

The number of hospital flu cases was higher than in previous years at the start of winter, with just over 3,100 weekly patients in early December.

Hospitals in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have also reported a fall in cases in January compared with December.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

We’re keen to hear what you think the BBC Verify team should be looking into.

We're interested in investigating claims you may've seen online in your social feeds. We're also keen to know if you've think an image may have been made using artificial intelligence to spread disinformation.

You can also get in touch with BBC Verify if you've got a question about how we verify video posted online or work with satellite imagery.

You can send your suggestions to the team here.

Jake Horton
BBC Verify

Image source, Getty Images

US President Donald Trump spoke about his desire to take over Greenland at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland yesterday.

However, he mixed up Greenland with Iceland several times.

When a journalist pointed this out, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied it and said in a post on X “his written remarks referred to Greenland as a ‘piece of ice’ because that’s what it is”.

It’s unclear what she meant by his written remarks, as a transcript of the full address has not been published by the White House.

We have listened back to Trump’s address to check what he said.

Trump did refer to Greenland as a “piece of ice” several times, but also mentioned Iceland four times during his remarks:

• "I'm helping Nato, and until the last few days when I told them about Iceland, they loved me."
• “They’re not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you.”
• “Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland’s already costs a lot of money.”

US President Donald Trump's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday was filled with false claims, from statements about the historic ownership over Greenland to Chinese wind farms.

Our fact-checkers were across the address as it happened - you can read their work here.

BBC analysis editor Ros Atkins talked us through some of the key claims Trump made.

Richard Irvine-Brown and Sherie Ryder
BBC Verify

We’ve been seeing dozens of posts on social media claiming to show huge snow drifts in parts of Kamchatka in eastern Russia. But many appear to have been made or manipulated using artificial intelligence (AI).

Looking at recent weather reports, an enormous amount of snow has fallen in the region since 12 January. However, many of the viral clips show characteristic signs of AI-generation.

Several videos and pictures have been shared on X, YouTube and Facebook - and used by some news organisations - without acknowledging they’re fake.

However the video we’ve taken this grab from, which has been viewed more than a million times on TikTok, has been labelled as AI-generated.

The full clip shows a huge drift of snow between apartment blocks collapsing. Strong blue tints can be seen in the snow - which you’d expect to see in footage of icebergs breaking off and falling into the sea.

Listening to the clip the sound of splashing water can also be heard as the snow lands, indicating it has been made with AI.

Other tell-tale signs of AI-generation in the footage include there being no damage to the front of the buildings while no snow appears to be left behind on the balconies.

If you’re ever in doubt, our AI-spotting video covers the signs to look out for:

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Welcome to the live page where we bring you the work of BBC Verify’s specialists in fact-checking, disinformation debunking, video verification and data journalism.

This morning we’re looking at videos circulating widely on social media that claim to show huge snow drifts in the Kamchatka region of Russia’s far east.

While there has been an enormous amount of snow in the region some of the videos appear to have used AI to make them more dramatic. We’re consulting an expert in artificial intelligence to check them out as well as asking BBC Weather just how much snow would be needed to create such spectacular drifts.

We’re checking reports that a Russian attack in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa has killed at least one person. Odesa’s regional head said a drone struck a tower block in the city and we’re looking to verify images which reportedly show the scene.

And we’ve been looking into the White House’s denial that US President Donald Trump mixed up Greenland and Iceland during his address at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday.

We’ll bring you more on those stories - and others we’re working on - throughout the day.