Tamara Kovacevic
BBC Verify senior journalist

I’ve been listening to Home Office minister Angela Eagle who was on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme earlier.

During the interview she was asked about the government’s use of hotels to house asylum seekers.

She said: “In the first quarter of this year there were 6,000 fewer people in hotels than… in the last quarter of the previous year.”

This is right – there were 38,079 people in asylum hotels on 31 December 2024. By 1 March 2025 the figure had fallen by 5,734 to 32,345.

However, more asylum seekers were staying in hotels in March 2025 than at the end of June 2024, a few days before Labour came into power.

The government pledged to “end asylum hotels” by 2029.

But the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, told Parliament in June, external that he did not believe the government would meet its pledge

Russian police have detained three young people who filmed themselves next to a blazing fuel depot near the city of Sochi following a reported Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday.

In the video, originally shared on TikTok, the trio can be seen rapping along to Crimson Dawn by Russian musicians Endshpil and Miyagi as the Rosneft-Kubannefteprodukt facility burns in the background.

According to local police, the three detainees are aged between 19 and 21.The 20-year-old woman who filmed the video was charged with behaving improperly during an emergency. She faces a fine of up to 30,000 rubles (£283; $375).

According to their social media profiles the women are called Karina and Daria and come from Nizhniy Tagil, an industrial city in the Ural mountains.

In a video posted by local police on Telegram, the young people say the came to Sochi to find work and apologise for filming and posting the video.

Local governor Veniamin Kondratyev said the fire was caused by drone debris hitting a fuel tank on Sunday.

Ukraine has not commented on this incident, but its armed forces have been targeting Russian energy and military infrastructure consistently throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Sebastian Vandermeersch
BBC Verify

We’ve verified footage showing a damaged railway station building in the Russian town of Frolovo in the Volgograd region following what is thought to be a Ukrainian drone strike.

The video, filmed from a nearby apartment, captures a drone flying at low altitude before hitting the building in the station complex and exploding.

Ukraine has repeatedly used long-range drones like the UJ-22 to strike targets deep inside Russia as part of its campaign to disrupt military logistics and manufacturing.

We confirmed the location in Frolovo by matching surrounding buildings in the footage to publicly available satellite imagery using online maps from Google and Yandex, as well as conducting reverse image searches to verify the footage was posted recently.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Good morning.

We’re starting the daylooking at the latest from Ukraine and Russia as we analyse and verify footagebeing posted online as both sides have accused each other of aerialstrikes.

Our verification expertsare assessing footage appearing to show the aftermath of a Ukrainian attackthat targeted an oil depot near the Sochi airport on Russia’s BlackSea coast – more on that shortly.

Elsewhere in Russia’ssouth, we’re looking into reportsthat a railway station in the Volgograd region was attacked last night aswell as overnight footage of damage fromUkraine’s Odesa.

And we’re expecting a news conference fromthe Reform UK party later this morning so BBC Verify’s fact-checkers will belistening to that and will report back on any checkable claims.

As well as those stories our user-generatedcontent team is looking to hear from you if you’ve been affected by StormFloris which is bringing unseasonable weather to the northern half of the UK – youcan follow the latest on the BBC News live page.