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Foley beheading video shocks the world, Obama says
US President Barack Obama has said the beheading of US journalist James Foley is "an act of violence that shocks the conscience of the entire world".
Mr Obama said the ideology of Islamic State (IS), the group which made a video of Mr Foley's killing, was "bankrupt" and would ultimately fail.
The group said Mr Foley's killing was revenge for US air strikes on its fighters in Iraq.
The US, the UN and other nations have expressed abhorrence at the video.
Mr Foley's mother Diane said he "gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people".
Mr Foley, 40, had reported extensively across the Middle East, working for US publication GlobalPost and other media outlets including French news agency AFP.
In a statement, GlobalPost asked for "prayers for Jim and his family".
British accent
In the video, titled A Message to America, a man identified as James Foley is dressed in an orange jumpsuit, kneeling in desert-like terrain beside an armed man dressed in black.
He gives a message to his family and links his imminent death to the US government's bombing campaign of IS targets in Iraq.
James Foley had previously reported from Libya in 2011, where he was held for six weeks
Clearly under duress, he says: "I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the US government, for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality."
Then the masked militant, who speaks with a British accent, delivers a warning to the US government: "You are no longer fighting an insurgency. We are an Islamic army and a state that has been accepted by a large number of Muslims worldwide.
"So any attempt by you Obama to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islamic caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people."
After he speaks, the militant appears to start cutting at his captive's neck before the video fades to black.
His body is then seen on the ground.
Another captive, identified as American journalist Steven Sotloff, is shown at the end, with the warning that his fate depends on President Obama's next move.
Mr Sotloff was abducted in northern Syria a year ago.
'Cowardly assassination'
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has condemned the killing as "deeply shocking" but said it was "not a time for a knee-jerk reaction".
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it "an abominable crime that underscores the campaign of terror".
Earlier, French President Francois Hollande told Le Monde: "I think we are in the most serious international situation since 2001" - the year of the 11 September attacks in the US.
In the undated video of James Foley, the masked militant accuses the US of attacking IS daily in Iraq
Analysis: BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner
Shocking as it is, the video of James Foley being beheaded by a masked jihadist is not without precedent.
In 2004 al-Qaeda's offshoot in Iraq, led by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the forerunners of Islamic State (IS), did the same thing to Nick Berg, a hapless American telecoms engineer who fell into their clutches.
The group went on to murder Briton Ken Bigley in the same way, after first getting him to plead on camera with the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to change Britain's course in Iraq.
These grisly murder videos are abhorrent to most Muslims and non-Muslims alike and they've even been discouraged by Osama Bin Laden's successor as a "vote loser".
But for the hard-core jihadists of IS they serve a number of purposes: to horrify and scare their enemies, to boost the morale of their own by showing the impotence of the West to prevent it, and thereby to embarrass the US and Britain, with the hope of making them temper their military actions in Iraq.
Mr Foley had spent many years reporting from the world's trouble spots.
He covered the war in Libya and was detained there for more than 40 days.
"I'm drawn to the drama of the conflict and trying to expose untold stories," he told the BBC in 2012.
According to BBc.
Algeria airliner missing on Sahara route from Burkina Faso
Algeria's national airline, Air Algerie, says it has lost contact with one of its planes flying from Burkina Faso to Algiers across the Sahara.
Flight AH 5017, chartered from Spanish airline Swiftair, was carrying 110 passengers and six crew, it said.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the plane, which has 50 French citizens aboard, "probably crashed".
Contact was lost about 50 minutes after take-off from Ouagadougou, Air Algerie said, as the plane crossed Mali.
The pilot had contacted Niger's control tower in Niamey to change course because of a storm, officials say.
BBC West Africa correspondent Thomas Fessy says the route is well used by French travellers.
Air Algerie spokesperson Houari Zuhair confirms "contact was lost"
Speaking in Paris, Mr Fabius said French Mirage fighter planes were scouring the area for the aircraft.
"Despite intensive search efforts no trace of the aircraft has yet been found," he said.
"The plane probably crashed."
Earlier, an Algerian official told Reuters that the plane had crashed, but gave no further details.
France's civil aviation body said crisis centres had been set up at airports in Paris and Marseille.
An Air Algerie spokesman quoted by Reuters said the provisional passenger list included 50 French citizens, 24 people from Burkina Faso, eight Lebanese, four Algerians, two from Luxembourg, one Belgian, one Swiss, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian, one Ukrainian and one Romanian.
The six crew members are Spanish, according to the Spanish pilots' union.
The passenger plane had taken off from Ouagadougou airport in Burkina Faso
Officials in Lebanon, however, said there were at least 10 Lebanese citizens on the flight.
"In keeping with procedures, Air Algerie has launched its emergency plan," Air Algerie officials, quoted by APS news agency (in French), said.
Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal reportedly told Algerian radio: "The plane disappeared at Gao (in Mali), 500km (300 miles) from the Algerian border."
Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo said the plane sent its last message at around 01:30 GMT, asking air traffic controllers in Niger to change its route because of heavy rain.
Bad weather
UN troops in Mali say they understand the plane came down between Gao and Tessalit, the BBC's Alex Duval Smith in the Malian capital Bamako reports.
Brigadier General Koko Essien, who is leading the UN troops, told the BBC that the area leading up to the Algerian border was vast and sparsely populated.
He added that weather in the area had been bad overnight.
Armed groups are also said to be active in the area. However, at the moment the most probable scenario looks like a plane that came down in bad weather, our correspondent adds.
In a statement (in Spanish), Swiftair said that the aircraft was an MD83 and that they were unable to establish contact with it.
An Algerian official had previously told Reuters that the plane was an Airbus A320.
An unnamed Air Algerie company source, speaking to AFP news agency, said: "The plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route."
"Contact was lost after the change of course."
Flight AH 5017 flies the Ouagadougou-Algiers route four times a week, AFP reported.
French Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier told reporters that it was likely there were also many French nationals on board the plane.
In February a military plane in Algeria crashed, killing 77 people on board.
The Hercules C-130 crashed into a mountain in Oum al-Bouaghi province, en route to Constantine, in bad weather conditions. Only one person on board survived.
Rebels in eastern Ukraine have handed over two flight-data recorders from the downed MH17 plane to Malaysian experts.
A senior rebel leader
signed them over to the Malaysian officials at a meeting in the city of
Donetsk.
The handover came
hours after the UN Security Council voted unanimously to demand immediate
international access to the crash site.
The Malaysian Airlines
passenger jet crashed last Thursday, killing all 298 people on board.
Western nations say
there is growing evidence that flight MH17 was hit by a Russian-supplied
missile fired by rebels, but Russia has suggested Ukrainian government forces
are to blame.
European Union foreign
ministers are expected to discuss further measures against Russia later on
Tuesday.
Both the EU and the US
have imposed sanctions on Moscow following its annexation of Crimea and the
outbreak of hostilities in eastern Ukraine.
'In
good condition'
Experts say the
"black boxes" will reveal the exact time of the incident and the
altitude and exact position of the aircraft.
They should also
contain the cockpit voice recorder, which it is hoped will provide clues as to
what the cause of the crash was.
The head of the
Malaysian delegation told reporters that the recorders were "in good
condition".
A newly released satellite image shows the
crash site in the middle of Grabove in eastern Ukraine
Earlier, the
pro-Russian rebels allowed a freight train carrying the bodies of 282
passengers to be moved from a town near the crash site to Donetsk.
The Malaysian experts
and a Dutch delegation will travel with the train to the city of Kharkiv on
Tuesday.
Meanwhile a UN
resolution, proposed by Australia, was passed calling for a "full,
thorough and independent international investigation" into the downing of
the plane over Grabove on 17 July.
It also demanded that
those responsible "be held to account and that all states co-operate fully
with efforts to establish accountability".
Analysis:
Nick Bryant, UN correspondent, in New York
After expressing
misgivings about the wording of the UN resolution, the Russian ambassador
ultimately raised his hand in favour. A veto from Moscow would have provoked
even more of an international outcry.
US ambassador Samantha
Power said it would not have been necessary had Russia used its leverage to get
the separatist rebels to let international experts visit the site sooner.
Raising a hand in
support of a resolution at the UN is different from lifting a finger to help,
and the test of this resolution will come from its implementation on the
ground.
Not for the first time
during this crisis, the chamber of the Security Council felt more like a
courtroom, with Vladimir Putin still very much in the dock.
There has been
international outcry over the way rebels have handled the situation, leaving
passengers' remains exposed to summer heat and allowing untrained volunteers to
comb through the area.
All 15 council
members, including Russia, voted in favour.
Sanctions
threat
On Monday, three Dutch
experts became the first international investigators to examine the bodies of
the victims. They said the storage of the bodies had been "of good quality".
The train's departure
came after tough negotiations between the international community and the
separatists, who had been accused of limiting access to the crash site.
Fighting is continuing in eastern Ukraine,
with heavy clashes reported near Donetsk on Monday
US President Barack
Obama called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the rebels from
hampering the investigation at the crash site.
"What exactly are
they trying to hide?" Mr Obama said on Monday.
He also warned Mr
Putin that he could face additional economic costs if he fails to take steps to
resolve the crisis in Ukraine.
Concerns over security of international teams amid clashes in
Donetsk
British
Prime Minister David Cameron said there was strong evidence that pro-Russian
separatists shot down the plane with an anti-aircraft system known as Buk.
Russia
on Monday again denied allegations that it had supplied such missiles or
"any other weapons" to the rebels.
The
defence ministry said a Ukrainian military plane had flown within firing range
of the airliner just before it came down, but Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko has rejected the claim.
The
fighting in eastern Ukraine erupted in April and is believed to have claimed
more than 1,000 lives.
Battles
continued on Monday, with heavy clashes around the main rebel-held city of
Donetsk.
At
least three civilians were reported killed, and one multi-storey building was
seen on fire.
According To Bbc News
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