Christine Jeavans
BBC Verify senior journalist

After a few days during which no migrant small boats were detected crossing the English Channel, the number rose at the end of last week.

Some 217 people were spotted on Friday, bringing the total for the year to 39,292.

This is higher than the number for the whole of 2024, but is below the record year of 2022, which saw 45,774 people cross in total.

For much of this year, the number of migrants detected crossing was actually much higher than the equivalent point in 2022.

That was due to a relatively high number of crossings in spring and early summer of this year.

However, a high number of autumn crossings in 2022 means that year remains the highest on record, at least for now.

Benedict Garman
BBC Verify senior journalist

The Polish military is set to inspect 120km (75 miles) of railway line after the route used to deliver aid to Ukraine was sabotaged with explosives, officials have said.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said “an explosive device detonated and destroyed the railway track” on the Warsaw-Lublin route. In a video posted to X, he added “unfortunately there is no doubt that we are dealing with a deliberate action, an act of sabotage”.

The first images we’ve seen of the location are from videos shared on Instagram yesterday evening. They were filmed near Mika station around 80km (50 miles) south-east of Warsaw. The footage show, externals, external a short train and a section of track cordoned off by police tape, external. There are police vehicles, quad bikes and a fire engine parked nearby.

A close-up picture of the track, which appears to have been shared online for the first time yesterday but has been cropped too close to verify, shows a section of the railway line is missing, scattered sharp fragments of track and apparent scorch marks.

Tusk has confirmed that a second similar incident is also being investigated a bit further south on the same line.

Kumar Malhotra and Fridon Kiria
BBC Verify and BBC Monitoring

We’ve been checking images from Balakliya in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region after reports of two overnight Russian strikes, in which local officials have reported three people killed and several others wounded.

Pictures shared by Ukrainian police on Telegram show badly damaged buildings and debris lying on streets nearby. We were able to verify the location of the attack by matching distinctive buildings to existing satellite images of the city.

Separately, we’ve also verified a video showing pitch black streets in the centre of the city of Donetsk in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. The blackout is said to have been caused be Ukrainian strikes on power infrastructure in the region. A tall distinctive building seen briefly at the end of the video helped us locate the footage using street view images.

In Russia itself, we’ve seen video posted overnight showing an explosion and ball of flames in the city of Oryol. Again, we used nearby buildings and landmarks to work out where this was filmed from. It’s not clear where exactly in Oryol the explosion happened or what caused it, although local media reports indicate the city had been targeted by Ukrainian drones.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

We’ve verified images showing the aftermath of an apparent Russian attack on the town of Balakliya in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region. The head of the town’s military administration posted on the Telegram messaging app that at least three people were killed.

UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is set to announce major changes to asylum policy later, so BBC Verify is examining the potential impact of measures that have already been reported in the media.

Elsewhere we’ve been investigating a video doing the rounds on social media that purports to be from 2000 and claims to show Donald Trump joking around with former President Bill Clinton. Our analysis – which we’ve also consulted an expert about – is that this video is almost certainly AI-generated.

If you’ve seen a claim made online or a video being shared that you think could be AI-generated do get in touch with us.