Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

I’ve been looking into the Crown Court backlog following the news about the proposal to have judge-only trials in England and Wales for certain cases.

The government had asked former judge Sir Brian Leveson to come up with some suggestions to cut this backlog, which reached a record high of nearly 77,000 cases waiting to be heard in March 2025, external.

About a quarter of these cases had been waiting for a year or more.

People who have reported sexual offences such as rape or sexual assault often endure long waits for their cases to be heard.

Of cases that closed last year, the average number of days from charge to completion – meaning a defendant was convicted and sentenced, found not guilty or the case was dropped – was 296. That’s the longest waiting time of all offences.

The overall Crown Court backlog first began increasing in 2019 before rising sharply in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and in 2022 during the criminal barristers’ strike.

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

The Ukrainian Air Force says Russia launched 741 drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight in the largest Russian aerial attack since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

According to our analysis of the air force’s data, Russia has consistently been launching hundreds of drones and missiles in recent weeks every time it attacks Ukraine.

So far videos posted to social media by ordinary users, said to show the aftermath of last night’s attack on Ukraine, don’t offer enough visual clues for us to locate. The emergency services have posted a number of pictures, including a video of firefighters extinguishing burning buildings said to be in the north-western city of Lutsk.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Lutsk was the worst-hit but 10 other regions have seen damage as well.

Ukraine also carried out an aerial attack against Russia last night, according to the Ministry of Defence in Moscow. It said 86 drones were detected and “destroyed” by air defence systems.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

We’re working through the latest satellite imagery from Maxar following last week’s devastating flooding in south-west Texas.

Previously we looked at close-up shots of the Camp Mystic summer camp where at least 27 people were killed when the Guadalupe River burst its banks and inundated the site.

This image taken on 23 June shows the camp before the flooding. We can see a large area of grass at the top of the picture near the river.

Contrast that with the satellite picture taken after the flooding on 8 July and how that has changed the appearance of the same space.

Tamara Kovacevic
BBC Verify senior journalist

Defending the government’s cooperation with France on small boats, government minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said on Today on BBC Radio 4: “Preventing 12,000 people from crossing is most definitely something that is in the right direction.”

The figure is an estimate by the French authorities, published weekly by the Home office since May 2024, external. This year, from 5 January to 29 June, a total of 12,321 people were prevented, according to those estimates, which include:

• Individuals prevented from leaving France or those who return to France
• Finds of small boat equipment
• Arrests of people linked to small boats crossings.

But how reliable are those figures and are people not just trying again another day?

Madeleine Sumption from the Migration Observatory, based at the University of Oxford, says there is evidence that migrants make multiple attempts to cross the Channel.

As a result, she says: “It is not possible to say, based on current data, how many people have been prevented from crossing.”

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

New satellite imagery released by specialist space technology firm Maxar shows the extent of the devastation left by the recent floods in Kerr County, Texas, in which more than 100 people have died.

Among the images taken yesterday are several from the Camp Mystic girls’ retreat where at least 27 people are known to have died when flash flooding swept through the site last Friday. The flooding appears to have receded at the time the images were captured but the extent of the damage is clear.

Close-up images of the camp show previously plush, green areas now awash with mud and debris. elsewhere trees have been ripped from the ground and there is damage to some of the camp’s structures.

You can see in the image above that on the left – from 23 June before the flood – there are blue tennis courts at the camp which are not present in the 8 July image on the right.

Hundreds of girls were staying at Camp Mystic when the banks of the Guadalupe River broke. Many of them were sleeping in low-lying cabins a short distance from the river.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Good morning from BBC Verify – this is our live page where we share the work being done by our team today.

We’re starting off with analysis of new satellite images that show the extent of the damage caused by deadly flashing flooding in south-west Texas. It has killed more than 100 people including at least 27 at a Christian summer camp.

We’ll include a selection of the images on this page and explain what they show. There’s more details on what made the Texas floods so deadly here.

BBC Verify is also looking into reports that two ships attacked by the Houthi group off the Yemen coast have sunk. We will post an update here when we have verified information.

Plus we’ll be standing by for Prime Minister’s Questions in the UK’s House of Commons at noon to fact-check what the politicians say during the session.