supply route
to Afghanistan, which closed after the death of Pakistani soldiers in Nato airstrikes. Jonathan Marcus reports.
The closure of the crucial supply lines means that Nato has had to rely upon more expensive and circuitous routes through central Asia and Russia. The closure marked a new low in relations between Pakistan and the alliance, worsened by disagreements about US drone strikes against militants. Such tensions are likely to continue. But the opening up for the supply routes, if they can be secured, will be important, not least for the eventual withdrawal of Nato equipment, thus troop numbers in Afghanistan begin to
wind down
.
The Vatican says it's received an unconditional apology from the Italian clothing company Benetton in a legal settlement over a controversial advertising campaign
depicting
Pope Benedict appearing to kiss a Muslim cleric. From Rome, David Willey.
The official Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said that a legal settlement had been reached with an unconditional apology by Benetton for publishing a
provocative
image of Pope Benedict apparently kissing an imam, the grand sheikh of the al-Azhar mosque in Cairo. Benetton has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money to a Vatican charity in recognition of the legal settlement.
World News from the BBC
The former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper empire, Rebekah Brooks, has been charged along with her husband, Charlie Brooks, with conspiring to