Paul Myers
BBC Verify

President Trump issued a video in response to the killing of Charlie Kirk. Its authenticity has been widely debated online with some users suggesting it had been created with generative-AI technology – a so-called “deepfake”.

Doubters point to the visual quality of the scene, the lack of movement in the president’s body and the way the little finger on his left hand appears to move unnaturally at 19 seconds into the video.

We spoke to one deepfake expert, Prof Hany Farid, chief science officer at GetReal Security, who highlighted a moment about 19 seconds into the video when Trump moves his left hand revealing part of his right hand.

“For several frames, there is visible distortion in the video in which his right hand and tie are malformed. It is not clear if this is the result of AI-editing or simple video editing but I am confident that there is some video manipulation here,” Farid said.

“I do not see signs that the four-minute video in its entirety is AI-generated,” he added.

GetReal Security, a digital forensics company, also ran the sound from the video through two of their specialist audio models and both of them classed Trump’s voice as being real.

Dr Patrick Wong, Chair of neXt Generation Multimedia Technologies Research Group at the UK’s Open University, ran some tests for us through specialist software used for spotting deepfakes. The results, he said, were inconclusive.

“Some frames looked fake, a few looked questionable and the system gave a marginal 52% conclusion that the video is genuine,” he told us.

Wong then compared this with another video of Trump speaking from the Oval Office in May for which the specialist software gave a more conclusive 84% result for being genuine.

“Two videos of the same person taken at the same place and presumably by the same crew and equipment producing such a big difference do seem to be suspicious,” Wong told us.

“However, as the outcomes from my detector and visual inspection on the video posted today are inconclusive, I will not be confident to say the video posted today is a deepfake,” he concluded.

Benedict Garman
BBC Verify senior journalist

We’ve verified several videos published earlier today showing explosions and smoke plumes in the north-west of Gaza City as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continue striking buildings there.

One video shows the moment a bomb explodes and destroys a multi-storey residential building in al-Shati Camp.

Another video, filmed from a different angle, shows the immediate aftermath of the same strike as enormous clouds of dark grey smoke billow into the air.

Meanwhile, there’s an exodus on the coastal road out of Gaza City as people try to escape the IDF’s attacks and head south.

Verified video published this morning shows new tent encampments close to Hamad Town near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Sherie Ryder
BBC Verify journalist

We’ve been looking at social media posts of flooding in parts of Bali as torrential rain since Tuesday has inundated parts of the Indonesian island killing at least 14 people.

In one clip, we see muddied water engulfing vehicles some of which are floating down a street.

This footage was filmed from a balcony above a noodle restaurant called Atoom Baru – which has a recognisable blue sign.

Knowing the name of the restaurant where the footage was shot helped us place it on Google Maps to Gajah Mada in Pemecutan, a town in the south of Bali.

The person filming pans across to a distinctive orange building, which we discovered was the Pasar Badung market, and this enabled us to cross-reference their position on Google Maps.

In another clip, the footage shows a flooded underpass where we can see some cars have stopped just before entering the water. A few drivers weren’t so lucky as we can make out some cars are underwater with just their roofs visible.

To make sure the footage was current, we carried out reverse image searches on some freeze frames. No other images appeared on social media before Tuesday so we are sure what we’re seeing is not old.

Paul Brown and Kevin Nguyen
BBC Verify

A timeline is one of a journalist’s most valuable tools. A precise chronology not only helps us tell an accurate story, but is useful for accountability – it lets us know where people were at any given time, how fast people react (or didn’t react) and who could’ve known what and when.

Despite ample video evidence, all the footage we have seen has been posted online and so we don’t have access to the raw file data (metadata) that can tell us precisely when something was recorded.

We did, however, find a continuous (unedited) video from a citizen journalist who filmed the before-and-after of the shooting across 69 minutes.

While the footage itself does not reveal much beyond what is already available there is a moment after the shooting that the camera drifts past a car park on the Utah Valley University.

On it, there is a digital clock that reads 12:51.

Going backwards from this clock, and matching it against other eyewitness video, we were able to determine that Charlie Kirk appeared around 12:10 local time and the gunshot was fired around 12:25.

This is consistent with the university’s website that scheduled his appearance for midday.

Finding this information means we now know there was a 15-minute window between Kirk beginning his event and the fatal shot being fired.

Hundreds of people had gathered to hear right-wing activist Charlie Kirk speak at the Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

The conservative activist and influential Trump ally was shot and killed while speaking.

BBC Verify has been piecing together a timeline of how the incident unfolded, as Merlyn Thomas reports:

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

After multiple earthquakes in Afghanistan last week killed 2,164 people according to the UN, BBC Verify has seen new satellite imagery which reveals the extent of the damage in the country’s Kunar region.

The Taliban government has said that the majority of deaths were recorded in this remote province and the rough terrain has hampered rescue and disaster relief operations.

At the southern tip of Kunar, close to the border with Nangarhar province, is the Ghaziabad district – at the heart of which is a village by the same name.

In this first comparison we can see that a small settlement consisting of about 70 buildings at the crest of a large hill has been severely damaged.

Some of the buildings appear to have been reduced to rubble, and many of those still standing seem to have suffered serious structural damage. Next to many of the buildings we can see small white tents and it is likely that this is where the inhabitants are now living.

In the images below, we can see that before the earthquakes there were about 15 buildings located around a clearing by a dirt road in a nearby valley. In the pictures taken after the quakes, there is little sign of these buildings.

Instead, a large white temporary structure appears to have been set up with scores of smaller blue and white tents dotted around the clearing, by the side of the road, and up the hillside.

Details are still emerging about the full extent of the destruction caused by the quakes, but UN agency Ocha believes as many as 12,000 people have been affected.

Emma Pengelly and Joshua Cheetham
BBC Verify journalists

We’ve been continuing to investigate Ukraine’s claim that it carried out a drone attack that damaged a Russian ship at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

Ukraine says the ship belonged to a class called Project MPSV07 although they haven’t said which one they targeted.

There are five of these ships in operation at the moment. They’re typically used for undersea operations like investigating the seabed and supporting diving operations.

Ukraine alleges that the ship was on patrol and “conducting electronic reconnaissance”.

Posting on BlueSky, , externalmaritime expert HI Sutton noted that, according to a video released by Ukraine apparently showing the attack, the vessel was fitted with “additional antenna”.

We’ve used tracking tool MarineTraffic to check out the latest positional data for each of the ships in the MPSV07 class. While it’s possible they are trying to mask their locations from public tracking sites only one of the vessels has been broadcasting in the Black Sea recently – the Spasatel Iljin.

While it carries similar characteristics to the ship we can see in Ukraine military intelligence’s drone video, Spasatel Iljin was built in 2022.

However, this doesn’t fit with the Ukrainians’ claims that the ship it struck was put into operation in 2015.

Daniel Wainwright
BBC Verify senior data journalist

The overall waiting list for elective NHS treatment in England increased to 7.4 million in July – the highest since March.

The official target is for 92% of patients to wait less than 18 weeks for hospital treatment so earlier this year, NHS England set a stepping stone target for 65% by next March. As of July, it’s at 61.3%.

By next March, each individual trust needs to see either 60% of patients waiting less than 18 weeks or improve on their November 2024 figure by five percentage points, whichever is greater.

The NHS doesn’t publish individual trust targets, so we calculated it ourselves with data from its website, external.

We are tracking 135 trusts who had at least 5,000 waits on their books last November. As of July, 98 trusts had improved and 37 were doing the same or worse.

You can see the figures for your local trusts here.

Robert Cuffe
BBC Verify head of statistics

We’ve just had official data on Labour’s manifesto pledge to “deliver an extra two million NHS operations, scans, and appointments” in England every year.

Yesterday Sir Keir Starmer said his government had delivered “not two, not three, but over four million extra appointments” – but the figures show there were just over 5.2 million more elective care appointments during his first year in power.

That breaks down as an extra:

• 500,000 extra operations (up 5% on the previous year),
• 1.1 million extra tests (up 6%) and
• 3. 5 million extra outpatient appointments (up nearly 9%)

The increase is slightly flattered by the NHS strikes that took place during the last year of the Conservative government which means that normal levels of health service activity would look like an increase.

But beating that target doesn’t guarantee progress on the government’s other key pledge of bringing down waiting lists.

BBC Verify’s Daniel Wainwright is looking at figures who show the NHS waiting list in England ticked back up in July – we’ll bring you more on that on shortly.

Kayleen Devlin and Olga Robinson
BBC Verify

As we write this, there’s still no confirmation about the identity or motivation of the person who shot the right-wing US influencer Charlie Kirk in Utah yesterday.

But that hasn’t stopped people on social media from attempting to identify a possible suspect immediately after the shooting, which has led to multiple cases of misidentification.

Online users first seized on a video of a man being apprehended by police on site. It was later confirmed he was not involved – but footage of him being described as a suspect are still circulating.

There were also attempts to pass off old footage as related to the killing, like that of US comedian Sam Hyde, whose images holding a gun regularly get shared in the aftermath of violent incidents.

Misidentification is very common in the aftermath of shootings as people try to get quick answers in a rapidly developing situation when there’s little clarity initially.

So it’s very important to be extra cautious when sharing any information naming individuals in the immediate aftermath.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

During high-profile incidents like the shooting of Charlie Kirk, as misinformation and rumour circulate online within minutes, our first job at BBC Verify is to source and authenticate video content and then distribute verified footage to teams across the BBC.

News first began to spread that Kirk has been shot just after 12:20 local time (19:20 BST) at Utah Valley University.

Within about 20 minutes of the first videos emerging online, we had verified and circulated an initial two videos of the attack.

The first showed people who were attending Kirk’s event on the campus running away from the scene after the sound of a gunshot.

The second video was a highly graphic close-up in which we hear a shot, then see Kirk jolt back in his chair with blood pouring from his neck.

We continued to verify footage of the shooting through the hours that followed.

Just before 22:00 BST we authenticated another highly graphic close-up video in which we could hear that Kirk was speaking to a questioner about US mass shootings in the seconds before he was shot.

At an evening briefing held by law enforcement agents in Utah we learned that they were studying CCTV from the university because they believed the suspect was “all dressed in black” and the shot “came from a roof”.

Just after midnight UK time, BBC Verify had geolocated two videos showing a dark shape moving on the roof of a university building which we identified as the Losee Center, located about 150 yards from where Kirk was sitting.

Further information has emerged overnight and BBC Verify is now are working to piece together a detailed timeline of the shooting, pinpoint the location from where the fatal shot was fired, and track misinformation as it spreads online.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

I’ve just been reviewing new satellite imagery taken over Ghaziabad in Afghanistan, a remote district nestled high in the mountains between the south-eastern Nangarhar and Kunar provinces.

These are the regions that have been hardest-hit by three earthquakes last week.

The largest of the three, a 6.0 magnitude tremor, killed 1,368 people and wounded 2,180 others, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has estimated.

Comparing fresh satellite images taken after the earthquakes with pictures from December 2024 can give us an idea of how much damage and destruction the tremors have caused.

We can see that around half of the buildings in this remote Ghaziabad village have been reduced to rubble, with evidence of significant damage to the buildings still standing.

What appears to be about 50 blue and white tents have been set up as temporary shelter for residents whose homes have been destroyed.

We’ll bring you more of these before and after comparisons through the day.

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

Ukraine’s military intelligence has put out a video this morning which it says shows it carried out a drone attack on a Russian ship in the Black Sea near the port of Novorossiysk.

According to Ukraine, the ship is part of the Project MPSV07 fleet which it said was “conducting radio-electronic intelligence” and “patrolling approaches” to Novorossiysk Bay.

We cannot yet say where the attack took place, but the shape of the ship seen in the footage is consistent with Project MPSV07 vessels.

According to open sources the fleet consists of five operational vessels – with four built at the Nevsky shipyard. Ukraine said the one it targeted began operating in 2015. Only one ship in the fleet began operating that year – a salvage vessel called Spasatel Demidov.

I looked up Spasatel Demidov’s most recently recorded position using ship-tracking tool MarineTraffic which showed it off the north coast of Russia. However, it is possible it was spoofing (a common tactic in which location data is manipulated) to remain undetected.

Maritime risk company Vanguard Tech told the BBC that the strike is a “blow to Moscow” with a “$60m reconnaissance ship knocked out in their own backyard”.

”No doubt Russia will seek to respond to the incident, and strikes should be anticipated on Ukrainian maritime infrastructure,” they said.

Update 11:25 – this post has been amended to reflect that the fleet comprises five operational vessels of which four were built at the Nevsky shipyard.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

We’ve received new satellite imagery which shows the impact of last week’s Afghanistan earthquake. The pictures are of such resolution we can see that some buildings have been razed to the ground by the powerful tremor. More than 1,300 people died, according to a United Nations estimate, when the magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit the Nangarhar and Kunar provinces .

On Wednesday evening our team verified more than a dozen videos from the scene of the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in the US. We’ve been sharing these with the rest of BBC News to report on the story and also piece together what happened.

We’ll continue drawing on what we can see from the footage to get a better understanding of how the shooting unfolded.

Elsewhere, Ukraine has posted footage it says shows a drone attack on a Russian navy ship in the Black Sea. We’re working to verify the video and are checking ship-tracking sites and other public sources to authenticate the Ukrainian claim.

We’ll bring you updates onour verification, fact-checking and data journalism throughout the day.