Richard Irvine-Brown

One video, posted by the Fars news agency, filmed in Ektaban, west Tehran, contained the sound of a man chanting 'Allahu Akbar,' as advised by state media, but left in the sound of a woman telling him to 'Shut up'.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c7...

Screengrabs from two social media videos filmed in Tehran, 10 February 2026, overlaid with BBC Verify watermarks and the subtitles Death to Khamenei and Death to the dictator.

'Death to Khamenei' / 'Death to the dictator': Celebrations of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran last night also drew cries against the Iranian government following weeks of deadly protest.

For the BBC Verify live page: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c7...

We’ve been looking into what publicly available tracking data tells us about the recent history of Aquila II (IMO: 9281152), the sanctioned tanker seized by the US military in the Indian Ocean yesterday. According to Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, which ships use to transmit their location, the tanker was south of Sri Lanka this time last year. Continuous data shows it then sailed for four weeks to the north end of the Gulf of Oman. Satellite imagery provided by Planet Labs showed the vessel appeared to be at anchor in the Gulf of Oman on 6 March. Its last transmission from there came five days later. According to maritime intelligence company Kpler, Aquila II conducted a ship-to-ship transfer on 19 May off the coast of Venezuela - although this was “dark” meaning neither it nor the other ship was transmitting AIS data at the time. This was followed by a regular ship-to-ship transfer in the Eastern Outer Port Limits, between Singapore and Malaysia in August. It briefly broadcast a location in the Baltic Sea last November before reappearing in the Indian Ocean on Sunday. Its load condition was recorded as “in ballast,” which means it was unladen. It is currently on a north-western heading with a stated destination of the Port of Singapore, according to marine-tracking website VesselFinder.

Kay and I with another update, filling in what we know of the Aquila II, prior to its seizure in the Indian Ocean: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cg...

Dozens of sanctioned Russian tankers navigate Channel despite UK vow of 'assertive' action Some 42 sanctioned tankers has passed through the Channel since 11 January, a BBC Verify analysis finds.

With @kayleendevlin.bsky.social, whose previous tanker work you should definitely read no less than a lot of:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Seized tanker Aquila II heading for Singapore, tracking data says published at 11:19 11:19 Kayleen Devlin and Richard Irvine-Brown BBC Verify Aquila II, a sanctioned oil tanker that was seized by the US military in the Indian Ocean yesterday is on its way to Singapore, tracking data shows. The marine-tracking website VesselFinder reported the stated destination of the tanker around 17:00 GMT yesterday, about three hours after the US Department of Defense posted about the seizure and the ship’s tracking data showed a slight change in course. This morning, the ship is in the Indian Ocean heading north-east towards the Malay peninsula having started broadcasting its position yesterday. The US says it tracked the vessel, which is on its sanctions list, from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean. Samir Madani, one of the co-founders of maritime traffic website TankerTrackers.com, told the BBC “there will likely be more cases of boardings/seizures happening in the Indian Ocean”.

Tuesday morning update, Aquila II bound for Singapore: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cg...

A sanctioned oil tanker, Aquila II, has been seized in the Indian Ocean, the US Department of Defense has announced. Images posted by the Pentagon show a ship consistent with the size and colour scheme of the Aquila II. We’ve also matched the windows on the tanker’s bridge with other images of the ship on the internet. We can’t be certain when the pictures posted by the US military were taken but a reverse-search shows they were not publicly online before today. The US says it tracked the vessel, which is on its sanctions list, from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean. The tanker appears not to have been transmitting its location data for months. It suddenly appeared early on Sunday morning in the Indian Ocean between Australia and Madagascar heading north-east at 10 knots. It’s currently 170 nautical miles further north-east than it was yesterday and while it’s still heading in the same direction its speed has slowed to about 5 knots.

The US has seized another sanctioned oil tanker, this time in the Indian Ocean: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c0...

Post a banger that isn't in English.

soundcloud.com/mrbongo/gold...

I am reliably informed we were sixth for about five minutes while the wailing and gnashing of VAR was done.

(Or were we never sixth as the table was pulled back?)

The Premier League table as of 9 February. Highlighted is the goal difference (plus 5) and points (39) of both Liverpool and Brentford.

Have you considered those who lost out most (and even then, not a lot) from the disallowed Man City goal are Brentford?

Had it been allowed, our bus stop in Hounslow would have gone above Liverpool, to sixth, on goal difference.

44 years ago
Joe Strummer’s original handwritten set list for The Clash’s February 1, 1982 concert at the Sun Plaza Hall in Tokyo, Japan.

Image from Recordmecca

#punk #punks #punkrock #theclash #joestrummer #history #punkrockhistory

[looks around in surprise for the ‘kid’]

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a film journalist.

Produced by @herdjemimah.bsky.social, edited by @olgar.bsky.social and @biancabritton.bsky.social.

Details of Jeffrey Epstein post-mortem released in latest files Twenty new photos released on Friday show Epstein in the immediate aftermath of his death.

Previously unseen photos showing Jeffrey Epstein's body lying on a stretcher and being attended to by medics in the immediate aftermath of his death have been released as part of a declassified FBI report in the latest batch of the Epstein files.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

9/ Team effort, as always.

Video produced by @herdjemimah.bsky.social

Additional verification by @sryder.bsky.social

Peer review by @kayleendevlin.bsky.social

Overseen by @olgar.bsky.social

Screengrab of satellite image from Yandex, over western Ternivka. POV has been circled and direction of view marked with an arrow.

8/ We're looking west at this point, and can see the trees, the pathway and buildings which were damaged on satellite images.

I've used Yandex here, showing approximate POV.

Again, the position of the setting sun, now much more SW, would be correct for 1 February at this position.

State Emergency Services' watermarked image from Ternivka, showing location of drone strike which killed at least 12 miners.

7/ So, by the time we see images from the aftermath - similar ones put out by the National Police, the State Emergency Services, and DTEK (the company for which the miners worked) - we could match the path (again), the treeline and the buildings we would expect to see where the drone dropped.

Screengrab of SunCalc website showing position of sun and shadows in Ternivka, 1 February 2026.

6/ We can also make out the sun is in the SSW of the video making it around 4pm local time.

Going by the shadows, and using SunCalc, here.

Google satellite image with a straight line drawn from a street corner in Ternivka to a building near a car park of coaches approximately 700m to the west.

5/ You can draw a straight line from the POV, past the right-most foot of the pylon as we look (and where we see the drone explode, not included here), to the long, single-storey building with a shallow, pitched, corrugated roof across the road from the facility.

Where we see many coaches parked.

Composite image. Left: Google Earth satellite image of western Ternivka, with approximate point of view and edges of field of vision marked. The tall buildings and chimney of an industrial facility have been circled. Right: Screengrab of social media showing descending drone in Ternivka. The silhouettes of tall buildings and a chimney have been circled.

4/ So, POV should be about 48°31'32"N 36°03'45"E.

I've marked here the rough edges of field of vision, and circled the chimney and taller buildings (again, look for shadows) of the nearby industrial facility.

A composite image of a screengrab from a social media video showing a drone descend in Ternivka, and a satellite image from Google Earth of Ternivka. Each have a pathway, a pylon and a billboard marked on.

3/ So eliminate those places where a pylon is not next to a path. Find one where it is. Eliminate those until you have only place in Ternivka with a single-strut billboard, too.

Tip: If looking for something slim and tall - post, pylon, board, flagpole - look for the shadow as well as the object.

Screengrab of Ternivka seen on Copernicus Browser, showing dotted line of electricity pylons. Two of which have been highlighted with red arrows.

2/ Copernicus Browser has electricity lines dotted around many sites, including Ternivka, like constellations. (I've highlighted a couple of pylons, here.)

We follow those to see if we can find the other elements nearby.

Screengrab of a social media video showing a drone strike on Ternivka, near Pavlohrad, Ukraine. A man stands near a path and billboard, watching a drone descend beyond a nearby pylon.

1/ The widest part of the drone video is the first frame.

Elements: Billboard, path, trees, pylon. Plus large building and chimney (left side of frame, behind/beneath the beneath).

All reports say this happened in Ternivka, so we start looking for those elements there.

Screengrab from BBC video of Richard Irvine-Brown presenting a BBC Verify package on Russian strikes in Ukraine. He stands between two large touch screens, on one is a freeze frame of a video of a drone strike, on the other is a satellite image of western Ternivka, Ukraine.

Watch: How we put together what happened during Russian's renewed attacks on Ukraine, starting on Sunday.

Particularly, how we could work out where at least 12 miners were killed, near Pavlohrad.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cg...

How-to-open-source-this-yourself thread to follow.

Composite image of (left) Google Maps satellite image from Gaza City and (right) screengrab from a social media video showing a projectile heading almost straight down toward the same road. The two images have been marked to highlight a multi-storey building, a nearby roof, nearby solar panels, and the approximate point struck. The right image has also had the projectile highlighted.

For an example of the work we're writing about, here's an approximate sketch for the key landmarks for the strike around Amer Ben Alaas road, Gaza City, the one for which we've labelled the projectile.

Approximate strike location: 31.524866, 34.450788 (try it on a map site of your choice).

Across Friday and Saturday 32 people were killed in a series of strikes across Gaza, according to the Hamas-run civil defence authority. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said a series of strikes were conducted in response to a claimed Hamas violation of the ceasefire agreement on Friday. The IDF said these strikes had hit “four commanders and additional terrorists from the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations across the Gaza Strip”. In one video we see a projectile striking Amer Ben Alaas road, to the northwest of Gaza City and within 100m (330ft) of a maternity hospital and a school. We could be certain of the spot by counting the solar panels and water storage tanks on nearby roofs. In another clip, filmed in the aftermath of a strike on a police station around a mile (1.5 km) to the north of Gaza City, we see unmoving people on stretchers being carried to ambulances and at least one man with a head wound. Both these locations are more than two miles (3km) from the Yellow Line boundary of control established by Israel as part of October’s Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal. Meanwhile, in the southern coastal area al-Mawasi, two verified videos of a different incident confirm an attack happened more than 2.5 miles (4km) from the yellow line, close to road which connects to the city of Khan Younis.

Gaza, with @paulybrown.bsky.social and @benedictgarman.com, locating three of the strikes from Friday and Saturday. Two from Gaza City, one from al-Mawasi.

On the BBC Verify live page: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cg...

BBC Verify: Images show Russia resuming Ukraine strikes after cold weather pause Latest updates from the BBC's specialists in fact-checking, verifying video and tackling disinformation.

And how-we-know on the maternity hospital: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cg...

BBC Verify: Images show Russia resuming Ukraine strikes after cold weather pause Latest updates from the BBC's specialists in fact-checking, verifying video and tackling disinformation.

Here's a how-we-know on the strike on the miners: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cg...

Scroll down if you’d rather see it on BlueSky!

Reposting to share we've posted the video on YouTube (should you wish to go to a separate social media platform to see it): www.youtube.com/shorts/nodpN...

Twelve miners killed by Russian strike in Ukraine, energy company says Seven others were reported injured in the strike near a bus carrying the workers on Sunday.

Latest deadly Russian strikes in Ukraine.

Copy from me on what we could say on Zaporizhzhia: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...