BBC News with Natalia Royston.
An Internet video has been released purporting to show the beheading of the British hostage Alan Henning by members of the jihadist group Islamic State. Mr Henning, a 47-year-old taxi driver from northern England, was seized last December while taking aid into Syria. Our home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani reports on why Mr. Henning was in the war zone.
Alan Henning was an ordinary man who felt he had to do something extraordinary. In the early 2013 he saw Muslim friends preparing aid convoy for Syria, and he offered to drive one of their ambulances full of supplies to the war zone. He joined two more trips. The timing of the last one meant he would miss Christmas at home. But less than an hour inside Syria fighters stopped the British team and took Mr. Henning away. In the days after Mr. Henning appeared in an ISIS video, his Muslim friends and more than 100 imams directly appealed for his release. His wife Barbara urged his captors to 'see it in their hearts' to spare her husband. Friends say that Alan Henning was kind and selfless, a caring man, murdered while trying to do the right thing.
BBC's Sarah Cambel has been following the story. She read a statement from the charity Mr. Henning was working for when he was seized.
Mr. Mohammed Shafiq who's the chief executive of the Ramadan Foundation, he's quoted as saying I'm appalled at the brutal murder of Alan Henning by the evil ISIS. This barbaric killing is an attack against all decent people around the world. For weeks now the world has tried to appeal to these murderers to do the decent thing, but they have no compassion or respect for human life.
The British Foreign Office has just issued this statement: We are aware of the video and are working urgently to verify the contents. If true this is a further disgusting murder. We are offering the family every support possible.
Planned talks between democracy activists and the authorities in Hong Kong appeared to be off even before they could begin following a day of violent scuffles. The student group said it had no option but to shelve discussions because the government had failed to protect protesters who want fully free elections in the vote for the territory's next leader in 2017. Carrie Gracie has this report.
In the densely packed district of Mongkok, the democracy camp has maintained the position for much of the past week. But today they were surrounded by hundreds of people who shouted at them to leave and tried to take down their tents.
I love China. I love China.
Many waved Chinese flags and said the students were damaging China and making everyday life in Hong Kong impossible. Scuffles went on for many hours with police keeping the students apart. But the democracy protesters accused the police of failing to protect them. One police says he agreed, saying his superiors could easily have put a stop to the incident if they'd chosen to. But at a late night news conference the police denied the allegations.
Carrie Gracie with that report.
BBC News.
The United Nations Mission in Mali says gunmen on motorbikes have killed nine peacekeepers in the northeast of the country. The UN spokesman said he was horrified by what he called a cowardly act of terrorism. The BBC correspondent in Mali says the UN force have complained of being poorly equipped.
The US Secretary of State John Kerry has expressed his concern over intensifying violence in eastern Ukraine during a ten-minute conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. He said it was putting strain on the ceasefire declared nearly a month ago. Fighting between pro-Russian rebels and government forces has again been raging around Donetsk Airport. David Stern reports from Kiev.
It was never much of a ceasefire from the beginning. It was more of a de-escalation and it looks as if the, it's now escalating again. We heard of the fighting around the airport, which is ongoing. The rebels or the pro-Russian forces are firing tanks and mortars and rockets on the airport. And of course we heard about the shelling in the centre which both sides accuse the other of carrying out which killed a Red Cross worker. If this ceasefire, as I say is a de-escalation, but if it falls apart completely, then, yes we could be seeing a very serious humanitarian situation, especially with the onset of winter.
Turning to our main story - the apparent killing of the British hostage Alan Henning. A White House statement says that if true, the video was another demonstration of the brutality of the Islamic State militants.
The Argentine footballer Lionel Messi has been ordered to stand trial over alleged tax offences. The judge in Spain where Messi plays for Barcelona dismissed his appeal that he should not be included in a case against his father's handling of his financial affairs. The judge ruled that it was enough that the footballer knew about his father's alleged fraud scheme for him to be implicated in it. They have five days to appeal against the ruling.