Kumar Malhotra
BBC Verify senior journalist

We’ve been checking the movements of an oil tanker, which the US Department of Defense says it has intercepted in the Indian Ocean.

The Pentagon said the vessel is Veronica III, which is under US-imposed sanctions. The ship is the second tanker to be intercepted in the Indian Ocean as part of crackdown on the transportation of sanctioned oil.

The US released a video of the operation to board the ship. In the footage, the ship’s bridge can be seen – and it matches still images for Veronica III on the MarineTraffic tracking site.

The vessel hadn’t been transmitting its position for a while – but it was seen on MarineTraffic at 07:05 GMT on 15 February moving in a north-easterly direction and has been regularly transmitting since.

The Department of Defense posted about the interception at 11:35 GMT on 15 February saying it had taken place overnight. It’s not clear what the vessel’s destination might be.

Veronica III was reported by the monitoring group TankerTrackers.com in January to have left Venezuela, carrying crude and fuel oil., external

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.

Barbara Metzler
BBC Verify senior data scientist

BBC Verify has been monitoring the US military build-up in the Middle East over the last few weeks, as Washington continues to put pressure on the Iranian government over its nuclear programme.

After reports the US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in the Gulf region on 26 January, we have located it in satellite imagery captured yesterday. The nuclear-powered carrier had not been visible in images we reviewed until that point.

Using publicly available images from the European Sentinel-2 satellites, external, which are widely used for ship-spotting, we identified the Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea – around 150 miles (240km) off the coast of Oman.

US officials have also said a second aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R Ford, is being deployed to join the Abraham Lincoln and other military assets recently deployed to the region.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Good morning.

Over the weekend BBC Verify’s journalists saw reports that the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln had been spotted in the Arabian Sea by a satellite.

Confirming the warship’s location – off the coast of Oman – adds to what we know about the US military build-up in the Middle East as Washington continues to put pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme.

After the US military boarded a second oil tanker in the Indian Ocean as part of a crackdown on sanctioned oil exports from Venezuela we’re using ship-tracking to see where it was intercepted. We’re checking publicly available tracking sites to see if we can learn what it is carrying and where it is heading.

Elsewhere, we’re checking reports that strikes overnight have caused damage to energy infrastructure in the Russian cities of Belgorod and Bryansk, both near the border with Ukraine. The government in Kyiv has said it will target energy facilities in Russia following repeated attacks by Moscow on power stations and networks across Ukraine this winter.

More on all those stories to come across the day.