Verifying deadly strike in Ukraine and reports of Gaza aid lorry deaths
Date: 09:37 BST
Title: Wednesday on BBC Verify
Content: Rob CorpBBC Verify Live editor
Hello from the live page team - we'll be bringing you the latest updates on the work of BBC News' fact-checkers, verification specialists and data journalists.
Following our editors' meeting we're looking at:
We've also carried out an analysis of the
number of drones and missiles launched by Russia against Ukraine since US
President Donald Trump returned to office. We've found that they have reached
their highest levels since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February
2022.
You can read the full analysis by BBC Verify's Matt Murphy and Ned Davies here.
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Daily Mail
11 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Foreign criminals to be immediately deported after sentencing under new plans announced by Labour
Foreign criminals living in Britain are to be deported immediately after sentencing under new plans revealed by Labour. The proposal, which is one of the most hardline actions taken so far by Sir Keir Starmer 's government, was unveiled by Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood. It comes as Labour struggles to get a grip on the number of migrant crooks - including rapists, paedophiles and murderers - swarming into Britain illegally. Violent protests have erupted outside asylum seeker hotels across the UK as fury builds over the number of foreign residents allegedly carrying out crimes while living in them. The new scheme, which is being rapidly rolled out by an increasingly-under pressure Downing Street, could reportedly save taxpayers almost £600million. Meanwhile, the government is continuing to shell out billions on putting up illegal migrants in hotels nationwide. The ramped up measures come weeks after Ms Mahmood declared foreign prisoners caged behind bars would be deported after serving just a fraction of their sentence. Announcing the proposal today, Ms Mahmood told The Sun on Sunday: 'My message to foreign criminals is clear: "Break Britain's laws and you'll be sent packing in record time.". 'These new powers mean removal and bans from our shores - keeping victims and the public safe. 'This will ramp up removals of foreign offenders jamming up our jails, with deportations already up 14 per cent on the same time last year.' It's believed around one in eight prisoners in England and Wales are foreign-born, costing taxpayers about £580million a year. Under the new measures rapists, drug dealers and burglars - who receive custodial sentences - will be deported straight away to their home countries. Those kicked out of Britain will then be banned from life from ever coming back. However, the most violent criminals - including murderers, foreign-born terrorists and others serving life behind bars - will still need to finish their sentences before being ejected. As of June 30, 2025, there were 10,772 foreign nationals in custody, data from the Ministry of Justice showed. This included 1,731 in jail for sexual offences. The number of overseas criminals now behind bars in England and Wales is higher now than at any point since 2013. The Conservatives say the number of foreign sex offenders in prison has increased by 9.9 per cent in Labour's first year in office. Meanwhile, the number of foreign crooks behind bars for violence has skyrocketed by 8.8 per cent in Labour's first year in office - with 3,250 now locked up. Critics of Labour's newest plan say it could fail if jailed crooks try to use human rights laws to dodge deportation. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick told the Mail: 'In Starmer's topsy turvy world investors are fleeing the country in their droves while record numbers of violent and sexual offenders from abroad are put up in our prisons. It's a farce. 'Yet again Starmer has refused to confront our broken human rights laws. He needs to grow a backbone and change them so we can actually deport these individuals. The safety of the British public is infinitely more important than the "rights" of sick foreign criminals. 'If countries won't take back their nationals, Starmer should suspend visas and foreign aid. His soft-touch approach isn't working.' News of the latest measures comes just weeks after Ms Mahmood unveiled new legislation, due to come into force next month, which will see foreign inmates facing deportation after serving 30 per cent of their term behind bars rather than the current 50 per cent. The latest change is expected to come into force in 2026. Prisoners eligible for the so-called 'early removal scheme' will also see other discounts under Labour's other sentencing reforms, as reported by the Mail last month, meaning they could be eligible for deportation after serving just 10 per cent of the sentence handed down by a court. Offenders who are deported will also permanently barred from re-entering Britain. Speaking in June of the plan, Ms Mahmood said: 'With prisons close to bursting, I'm clear we shouldn't be giving bed and board to foreign criminals with no right to be here. 'These changes will get more of them on planes out of the country much sooner, saving taxpayers' money and keeping our streets safe as part of our Plan for Change.' The existing early removal scheme came into operation in 2004. It only applies to those serving a 'determinate sentence' – in other words, a specific period of time. Inmates sentenced to life are ineligible. The measures come amid increasing levels of outrage after a number of illegal migrants staying in asylum hotels were accused of crimes. In Epping, Essex, violent protests erupted outside one such venue - The Bell Hotel - last month after one residents was accused of sexually assaulting young girls. Ethiopian Hadush Kebatu, 38, is alleged to have put his hand on a 14-year-old schoolgirl's leg, asked her for a kiss and suggested they make 'Jamaican babies' in Epping over two days, Chelmsford Magistrates' Court was told. Kebatu, who had arrived in the UK by small boat eight days prior, denied three charges of sexual assault against two girls aged 14 and 16, inciting a 14-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity and harassment without violence. His arrest on Tuesday, July 8, prompted a huge anti-migrant demonstration in Epping - and a counter 'Refugees Welcome' rally which led to clashes between rival demonstrators. The court heard how on July 7 the schoolgirl was allegedly sitting at a bench in Epping High Street with friends eating pizza when Kebatu approached. Prosecutor Sharon Hall said: 'Mr Kebatu approached [the schoolgirl] while she was eating pizza. There was some suggestion that the children gave Mr Kebatu some pizza when he asked for it. 'He then made comments to [the schoolgirl] and another girl, saying 'Who wants to have a kiss and make love and have Jamaican babies?'.' The judge asked defence barrister Miss Tia Ojo if she accepted those comments. She answered: 'Those comments are denied.' Mrs Hall then told the court that Kebatu approached the same schoolgirl the next day and touched her thigh and touched the leg of a 16-year-old girl the following day. She said: 'On 8th July [Kebatu] approached [the schoolgirl] and he tried to kiss her and brush the hair from her face. 'She moved away at which point the defendant followed her and put his hand on her thigh and then it appears that he was confronted. '[Earlier] the defendant tried to kiss [the 16-year-old girl]. He put his hand on her leg and told her she was pretty.' Miss Ojo, for the defence, told the court: 'All those allegations he denies.' District Judge Williams told the court he was refusing bail and set the date for a two-day trial on August 26 and 27.
The Guardian
38 minutes ago
- The Guardian
As the world hurtles ever closer to nuclear oblivion, where is the opposition?
Nuclear weapons – their lethal menace, dark history and future spread – are back in the headlines again and, as usual, the news is worrying, bordering on desperate. Russia's decision last week to formally abandon the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty banning medium- and short-range nuclear missiles completes the demolition of a key pillar of global arms control. It will accelerate an already frantic nuclear arms race in Europe and Asia at a moment when US and Russian leaders are taunting each other like schoolboys. Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, has repeatedly threatened the west with nuclear weapons during his war in Ukraine. Last November, Russian forces fired their new Oreshnik hypersonic, nuclear-capable intermediate-range missile at Dnipro. It travels 'like a meteorite' at 10 times the speed of sound and can reach any city in Europe, Putin boasted – which, if true, is a clear INF violation. Moscow blames its decision to ditch the treaty on hostile Nato actions. Yet it has long bypassed it in practice, notably by basing missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic sea, and Belarus. That said, Russia has a point about Nato. Donald Trump first reneged on the INF treaty way back in 2018. The subsequent huge buildup of mainly US-produced nuclear-capable missiles, launchers, planes and bombs in European Nato states has understandably alarmed Moscow. It should alarm Europeans, too. In the 1980s, deployments of US Pershing and cruise missiles sparked passionate protests across the continent. In contrast, today's ominous tick-tocking of the Doomsday Clock, closer than ever to catastrophe at 89 seconds to midnight, is mostly accompanied by eerie silence. Trump's melodramatic claim last week to have moved US nuclear submarines closer to Russia came in response to crude threats from the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, a notorious Putin stooge. It was another chilling moment. But this puerile standoff will have served a useful purpose if it alerts slumbering European public opinion to the growing risk of nuclear confrontation. Maybe people have grown complacent; maybe they have too many other worries. Maybe governments such as Britain's, suspected of secretly stashing US nuclear gravity bombs at an East Anglian airbase, are again failing to tell the truth. (The UK government refuses to say whether or not American nukes are now at RAF Lakenheath.) Whatever the reason, it falls to the children of the cold war – to the daughters of Greenham Common, to the heirs of ban-the-bomb protesters, to CND's indefatigable campaigners – to more loudly warn: this way lies extinction. Yet why is it that they alone sound the tocsin? It's all happening again, only this time it's worse, and everyone's a target. If unchecked, today's vastly more powerful nukes could turn the planet into a universal killing field. Last week's ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings should be seen as a warning as well as a reminder. The nuclear weapons buildup in Europe proceeds apace. The US already stores nuclear bombs in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. Now the UK, too, has offered facilities – and is buying nuclear-capable fighter jets. Germany will host Tomahawk cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles next year. The US is expanding missile bases in Poland and Romania. Nato countries such as Denmark and Norway have joined missile exercises aimed, for example, at establishing 'control' of the Baltic. All this is justified in the name of self-defence, principally against Putin's Russia. Likewise, Nato's decision in June to raise national defence budgets to 5% of GDP. The global picture is no less disturbing. The nine nuclear-armed states – Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the US – spent $100.2bn, or $3,169 a second, on nuclear weapons last year, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) reported. That's up 11% on 2023. Under Trump's proposed 2026 budget plan, the US, already by far the biggest spender, will increase funding for its nuclear forces, including the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, by 26% to $87bn. Doing its bit for global insecurity, China has more than doubled its nuclear stockpile since 2020, to 500 warheads. Who can doubt where all this is leading? For the first time since the cold war, Europe, Asia and the Middle East are being transformed into potential nuclear battlegrounds, with the difference, now, that atomic bombs and missiles are viewed not as deterrents but as offensive, war-winning weapons. The proliferation of lower-yield, tactical warheads supposedly makes 'limited' nuclear warfare possible. Once that red line is crossed, an unstoppable chain reaction may ensue. The collapse of arms-control agreements – the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New Start) will be next to lapse in February 2026 – is destroying safety nets. Signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty are bound 'in good faith' to gradually disarm; instead, they are rapidly rearming. Dehumanised AI systems may raise the risk of accidental Armageddon. Rogue states such as Israel and North Korea constantly push the boundaries. Trump's impetuosity and Putin's psychosis increase the sense of living in a global shooting gallery. It might have been very different. In June 1945, a group of University of Chicago nuclear physicists led by James Franck told President Harry Truman that an unannounced atomic bomb attack on Japan was 'inadvisable'. Detonating the new weapon would trigger an uncontrollable worldwide arms race, they predicted. Their warnings were rejected, their report suppressed. Now, the UN is trying again. In line with the 2021 treaty outlawing nuclear weapons, a high-powered, international scientific panel was tasked last month with examining 'the physical effects and societal consequences' of nuclear war 'on a local, regional and planetary scale'. The challenge is formidable, the outcome uncertain. But someone, somehow, somewhere must call a halt to the madness. It is still just possible to hope that, unlike in 1945, wiser counsels will prevail. Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
The Independent
41 minutes ago
- The Independent
Zelensky could be part of peace talks with Trump and Putin
Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to hold a summit in Alaska next Friday, 15 August, to discuss the war in Ukraine. Trump is reportedly considering inviting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to join the meeting, though nothing has been finalised. Zelensky has stated that any peace negotiations without Ukraine's involvement would be "dead decisions" and ineffective. Putin is expected to outline Russia's demands for a ceasefire, with Trump suggesting a peace deal might involve "some swapping of territories". This meeting would mark Putin's first visit to US soil in a decade, despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, and follows past controversial interactions between Trump and Putin.
