Russia and Georgia to reopen border crossing

Russia and Georgia have agreed to reopen a border crossing that has been closed since July 2006, Georgia's foreign ministry says.

The Kazbegi-Upper Lars crossing is likely to reopen next March, deputy foreign minister Nino Kalandadze said.

It is the only crossing that does not go through the Russian-backed breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Georgian forces were driven out of the two regions in a bitter war with Russia in August 2008.

The Russian government has confirmed the border agreement, saying that the checkpoint could "in theory" reopen from 1 March 2010.

But air links could only be re-established if the safety of Russian air crews could be guaranteed, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said.

Diplomatic relations had not been restored since the war, and that was the problem, he added.

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow says there has been virtually no contact between Moscow and Tbilisi since the war, so the news that they are to reopen their border is a significant move, especially for the many Georgian and Russian families separated by the conflict.

But the hostility between the Russian and Georgian governments is unabated, our correspondent says.

Russia's Sergei Ivanov on Thursday accused Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili of behaving like the Afghan Taliban, after he ordered the demolition of a Soviet-era war memorial.

Pakistan court orders ears and noses to be cut off

A Pakistani court has ordered that two men have their ears and noses cut off, as punishment for doing the same to a woman who refused to marry one of them.

The two brothers were found guilty of kidnapping 20-year-old Fazeelat Bibi, one of their cousins, in September.

The judge in Lahore also sentenced them to life in prison.

Sentence was passed on Monday under a rarely invoked Islamic law dating from the 1980s. In the past similar sentences have been revoked on appeal.

'Eye for an eye'

Government prosecutor Ehtisham Qadir said the punishment had been awarded in accordance with the Islamic principle of "an eye for an eye".

Sher Mohammad and Amanat abducted Fazeelat Bibi as she returned home from work at a brick kiln in the Raiwind area of Lahore, the court heard.

"They put a noose around her neck, and then cut off her ears and nose," Mr Qadir told the BBC.

Three alleged accomplices are still being sought by police.

The crime was committed after Fazeelat Bibi's parents refused to give her hand in marriage to Sher Mohammad, Mr Qadir said.

Islamic laws were introduced in Pakistan during the military regime of General Ziaul Haq in the 1980s.

The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says punishments prescribed under the laws have rarely been awarded, and never carried out.

Pakistani human rights activists have long campaigned for more to be done to stop attacks against women, which often include facial disfigurement.

However, they also disagree with the type of punishment handed out in Lahore, correspondents say.