Aisha Sembhi
BBC Verify Live journalist

BBC Verify Live is closing shortly, so here’s a quick recap of what the team has covered through the day.

This afternoon we spoke to maritime experts to get their analysis of the US seizing a sixth oil tanker in the Caribbean, which the White House said was defying President Donald Trump’s “quarantine of sanctioned vessels”.

Before that news broke, the team was verifying material emerging from:

• Thailand - after a second deadly incident in just over 24 hours involving a construction crane collapsing
• Iran - where more videos have provided an insight into anti-government protests despite an internet blackout
• Russia - where aerial footage captured a strike on a building just over the border from Ukraine

Thank you for joining us. BBC Verify Live will be back tomorrow.

Sherie Ryder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, TELEGRAM/SUPERNOVA+

There have been reports of blackouts in the Russian region of Orenburg caused by a fire at a substation in the city of Orsk overnight.

It’s not yet clear how the fire started, but some CCTV footage we’ve verified shows the sky light up after what appears to be an explosion.

We were able to locate the footage by identifying a nursery, parking area and block of flats that appears in the foreground. The substation is around 50m away from the camera, behind the nursery.

In posts on Telegram overnight, Orenburg’s governor Yevgeny Solntsev did not mention a specific attack or the power outages, but did alert residents to the risk of drone attacks and closed the airport for several hours.

Aidan McNamee
BBC Verify data journalist

More small boat crossings were recorded this week, with 171 people crossing the Channel in three boats on Wednesday.

This follows 32 people crossing last week, bringing this year’s total to 203 so far - lower than the number of crossings recorded in the first two weeks of 2024 and 2025.

There tend to be fewer crossings in January and February, with the highest average monthly totals typically coming in August and September.

Experts say many factors influence crossing patterns, including enforcement, smuggler networks, conditions in the countries of origin and, of course, the weather.

For more on migration, small boats and asylum see the BBC’s migration tracker.

Barbara Metzler and Alex Murray
BBC Verify

Following recent speculation about the threat of US military action against Iran, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that there’s currently no American “flattop” in the Middle East - that’s military slang for an aircraft carrier. The nearest one is the USS Abraham Lincoln - but how near?

We know it’s somewhere in the western Pacific, because last week it posted on its own Facebook page, external about being replenished at sea.

The images that went with the post come from the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, external and give the location as the “South China Sea”.

Image source, US Navy

Military vessels don’t always broadcast their current location via AIS - a signal that can be picked up by tracking websites like MarineTraffic.

When ships turn off their AIS we use satellite imagery to try to locate them instead. Thankfully it’s not a small unit at nearly 333m long and 77m wide.

Using freely available colour images from the European Sentinel-2 satellites, external, which are widely used for this purpose, we identified the aircraft carrier around 170km (105 miles) off the coast of the Philippines yesterday.

Image source, Copernicus

Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, X

We have verified a video of man armed with a knife being shot by police outside a shopping mall in Hong Kong.

The clip, which spread across local social media shortly after 19:00 local time (11:00 GMT), begins with the man waving a large knife on Tuen Wui Street outside Tuen Mun Town Plaza.

After moving from the street to a covered area just outside the mall he is briefly out of view, but the person filming follows him as bystanders begin to flee in panic.

Amongst the chaos we see the man briefly, he seems to have grabbed hold of someone who has fallen. Three police officers then appear wearing riot helmets, one of whom is also carrying a shield. Two shots are heard.

As the crowd parts, we see two people on the floor next to each other - the man with the backpack and a woman, who the officers immediately pull clear. The police then attend to the prone man, as more police officers arrive.

Local media reports say the later man later died in hospital.

We were able to verify where the video was filmed by matching the pillars, a tree, street signs and flower boxes to street view images.

Aisha Sembhi and James Kelly
BBC Verify

Earlier, we reported on a deadly crane collapse on to a motorway in Thailand - a day after part of a crane used to construct a railway line crashed into a train in a different part of the country.

When covering incidents like this, our eyewitness team is often contacted by people close to where the story happened and we will feed what they have to say into the BBC’s reporting and put them in touch with radio and TV programmes.

We heard from Chris Francis, who lives in East Sussex and is currently travelling in Thailand with friends.

He sent us this video he shot from a moving car showing the aftermath of the crane collapse.

Chris says a delay in leaving his accomodation meant he and his friends narrowly missed being “right in the thick of” the collapse.

"As we arrived we could see the dust settling and the traffic was jammed for around 50 minutes,” he said.

“Hopefully the remaining cranes will be checked to ensure they are safe.”

Kayleen Devlin
BBC Verify senior journalist

The US military’s Southern Command has announced the seizure of another oil tanker that the White House says is operating in defiance of American sanctions.

Southern Command has released a video showing US military personnel boarding the tanker which it says was named Veronica. BBC Verify has matched the vessel seen in the footage with publicly available pictures of the ship.

This is the sixth tanker seized by US forces since 10 December when the vessel Skipper was apprehended.Maritime experts I spoke to said the US enforcement actions are already having a tangible impact on the flow of sanctioned crude oil to countries such as China.

“Recent tanker seizures have significantly curtailed Venezuelan crude departures to China, triggering several cancellations of China-bound loadings”, says Emma Li, China oil market analyst at energy market intelligence firm Vortexa.

“In the near term, Chinese owners are likely to remain cautious about deploying tankers in the region.”

According to internal documents from Venezuela’s state oil company - reported by Reuters - China received an average of 642,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan crude and fuel oil in 2025.

Tom Edgington
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Reuters

Speaking last night, Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said there is a "fundamental disagreement" with the US over Greenland following talks at the White House.

After the meeting, President Donald Trump once again insisted the US needed Greenland for national security. He has previously dismissed the island’s current security arrangements, claiming Denmark “added one more dog sled”.

Rasmussen, however, told reporters Denmark was reinforcing security in the Arctic “by committing additional funds for military capabilities - not dog sleds”.

Denmark’s Ministry of Defence announced yesterday, external there will be an “expanded military presence” around Greenland including aircraft, vessels and soldiers with support from Nato allies.

The announcement comes after the Danish MoD told BBC Verify last week it had already begun a number of investments to “strengthen both our national defence and Nato’s collective defence”, including:

• satellite surveillance
• two additional long-range drones
• additional Arctic vessels
• maritime patrol aircraft capacity
• air surveillance radar
• strengthening of the Joint Arctic Command with a new headquarters

Aisha Sembhi and Paul Brown
BBC Verify

We’ve confirmed that a widely shared image of a cargo ship damaged and sinking in the Caspian Sea is a fake, likely made using artificial intelligence.

Oban sent out a distress call earlier today and all crew members onboard have been rescued.

The vessel is no longer broadcasting a position and its most recent location was recorded around three nautical miles (5.5km) off the coast of Turkmenistan, according to the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.

Comparing the photo being shared on Telegram to publicly available images on MarineTraffic, external, it clearly shows a different vessel.

The ship in the picture is missing a black balcony behind its bridge, has a different shaped funnel, and the name painted on the back is wrong - the false image says it is called “Rona”.

To confirm the image is fake, we also ran it through a series of AI-detection tools including Google’s Synth ID and Backstory. Both suggest it was very likely made using AI.

Sherie Ryder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Telegram

Aerial footage has emerged on social media of a strike on a building in Russia’s Belgorod region just over the border from Ukraine.

The attack happened on Wednesday in the village of Zhuravlevka about 40km (25 miles) from the border.

We matched features in the footage including the buildings and surrounding roads with online maps to confirm where the building was located.

After carrying out reverse image searches of screenshots from Ukrainian Air Force’s Telegram post we can say the footage is recent.

Further checks showed us the video is genuine and not made or manipulated using artificial intelligence.

It’s been reported that 20 Russian soldiers were inside the building but this hasn’t been confirmed by the BBC.

Ghoncheh Habibiazad and Shayan Sardarizadeh
BBC Persian and BBC Verify

BBC journalists are not permitted to report from inside Iran so we rely on material sent to us directly as well as monitoring social media.

The continuing internet blackout in Iran means less new material is being shared. However, some videos are emerging that need to be checked to see when they were filmed.

We can carry out reverse searches which can tell us that a video was published yesterday but we cannot say with certainty that it shows a protest from that day.

Today, we received five videos which the sender says are from last Thursday - the night that saw the most widespread protests over the past two weeks.

We have verified that the videos were filmed in Sadeghiyeh, in north-western Tehran. They show protesters chanting “death to the dictator” - referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

In one video, a green laser is directed at protesters. In another, the sound of gunfire can be heard.

Some Iranians are able share videos by using Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet system. However, connecting via Starlink in Iran can carry a prison sentence of up to two years and authorities have reportedly been searching for dishes in an effort to prevent people from accessing the internet.

Daniel Wainwright
BBC Verify senior data journalist

The NHS waiting list for elective treatment in England was 7.3 million in November, down by 86,500 since October and the lowest number since early 2023.

Of the total, 61.8% of patients had been waiting less than 18 weeks so far - unchanged for two months - but is still the best performance in more than three years. In November 2024 it was 59.2%.

The NHS in England has been set a target to get to 65% of patients waiting less than 18 weeks by March as a stepping stone towards reaching the official target of 92% - a measure the health service hasn’t met in a decade.

A year ago, every NHS trust was set an individual interim target to reach by March, with each one needing to see either 60% of patients in less than 18 weeks or improve on their November 2024 figure by five percentage points - whichever is greater.

• BBC Verify is tracking the progress of individual trusts and you can see how your local hospital is doing here

Separate data on accident and emergency units, however, suggests more than one in 10 patients had to wait more than 12 hours last year to be treated and discharged or found a bed on a ward.

Another set of NHS figures published on Thursday show the number of people in hospital with flu in England fell slightly to 2,725 last week, down from 2,924 the previous week.

Benedict Garman
BBC Verify senior journalist

A recent satellite image shows Israel has built a new dirt road part way across the area of northern Gaza under its military control.

High-resolution imagery published at the end of last month shows the unpaved road under construction, running from near Beit Hanoun in north-east Gaza through Beit Lahia to the Mediterranean coast.

Comparison with imagery from around the time of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire in October shows it did not previously exist.

The southern side of the road is reinforced with a defensive berm, a man-made sand bank, to protect vehicles moving along it.

The road roughly follows the position of the so-called “Yellow Line” which is where Israel agreed to withdraw its troops under the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire which came into effect last October.

It is one of several new constructions in Israeli-held Gaza which include more roads, new bases, staging areas and road blocks.

Sherie Ryder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, X

We’ve been looking footage showing a second deadly construction crane collapse in Thailand in just over 24 hours.

Dashcam video from two vehicles driving along a major road in the Samut Sakhon suburb of Bangkok shows part of a bridge, still under construction, collapsing under a falling crane. Two people were killed.

One video’s timestamp indicates the collapse happened at 09:11 local time (02:11 GMT). The clip captures the moment of collapse and a lorry coming to a halt. We’ve also seen footage from that same lorry, which was only a few vehicles away from the crane crashing onto the road.

Reports indicated the collapse happened near the Paris Garden Inn Hotel, so we were able to pinpoint the exact location of the incident by looking at the signs and the large telegraph posts on the side of the road.

The incident in the capital comes a day after a different construction crane fell onto a moving train in north-eastern Thailand, leaving 32 people dead.

Construction works in both incidents are being carried out by the same company, Italian-Thai Development, one of the country’s largest builders.

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.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

We start this morning with verified footage showing the moment a second construction crane collapsed on to a busy road in a suburb of the Thai capital, Bangkok, killing two people. Today’s incident comes a day after a crane in a different part of the country which was being used to build a high-speed rail line collapsed on to a train in north-east Thailand, killing at least 32 people.

BBC Verify is monitoring US military activity in the Gulf and further afield after President Donald Trump did not rule out using force against Iran after the government’s violent crackdown on country-wide protests. We’ll see what satellite imagery, ship and flight-tracking tells us about military movements in the Middle East.

Here in the UK our data team is working on a map showing which councils in England have asked the government to postpone elections due this year. Ministers had told 63 authorities they can delay polls while a major restructuring of local government is carried out. BBC research suggests 22 have asked to postpone elections that were to be held in May.

We’re also updating our NHS waiting lists tracker for England and seeing what the latest data shows about how the health service is coping with the pressure of winter illnesses.