LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) –
The story of civil-rights activist and labor organizer Cesar Chavez is headed for the big screen.

Screenwriter Keir Pearson and producer Larry Meli have optioned life rights for a biopic.

Pearson, who will write the feature screenplay, is producing with Meli for Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna’s Mexico-based Canana Films. The rights were controlled and granted by the Cesar Chavez Foundation; negotiations were handled by the labor leader’s son, Paul Chavez.

From the 1950s through 1993, when he died, Chavez worked as a community organizer and fought for improved working conditions for California farm workers. The Mexican-American co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers union, and campaigned to prevent illegal immigration from undermining unionization efforts.

Chavez’s birthday, March 31, is celebrated as a state holiday in several states, including California and Texas, and he was awarded the U.S. Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1994. In 2006, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger inducted him into the state’s hall of fame.

Pearson was nominated for an original screenplay Oscar in 2005 for co-writing “Hotel Rwanda” with the film’s director, Terry George. He also has an adaptation of Jim Wooten’s “We Are All the Same: A Story of a Boy’s Courage and a Mother’s Love” in development, and he is writing a biopic about Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente for HBO.

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan will seek U.S. aid for its civilian nuclear power program next week when its top military and senior civilian leaders visit Washington to re-start a “strategic dialogue” between the two countries.

The series of meetings, scheduled to begin on March 24 , will be the first such talks since mid-2008 and are expected to cover numerous issues. Pakistan thinks it’s suffered from the fallout of the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of neighboring Afghanistan and wants more assistance, despite a recent $7.5 billion U.S. aid package.

“I think the time has come. My message to Washington is: We’ve been talking a lot. The time has come to walk the talk,” Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a news conference Thursday in which he confirmed that civilian nuclear talks are on the agenda. “We’ve done our bit. The ordinary citizen in Pakistan has paid a price. We’ve delivered. (Now you) start delivering.”

The U.S., however, is unlikely to deliver by offering a nuclear deal that parallels the package that former President George W. Bush granted to Pakistan’s archenemy India .

The Senate would have to approve such a deal, and despite claims that Pakistan’s recent arrests of the deputy leader of the Afghan Taliban and other members of its governing council signal a “strategic shift” against its longtime Afghan allies, its performance combating Islamic extremists is uneven. Moreover, the former head of its nuclear program, A.Q. Khan , sold nuclear weapons-related technology to Iran , North Korea and Libya , and Pakistan has never allowed U.S. intelligence officers to interview him.

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ROME – The case of an Italian teenager who disappeared in 1993 has returned to the spotlight after decomposed remains believed to be hers were discovered in the church where she was last seen, police said Thursday.

At the same time, an unsolved 2002 murder in Britain has resurfaced, with British police linking their case with the disappearance of the teen.

Elisa Claps vanished from her hometown of Potenza on Sept. 12, 1993 at the age of 16.

She was last seen in the Most Holy Trinity church in downtown Potenza with an acquaintance, Danilo Restivo, who later admitted that he had spent about 10 minutes in the church with her before leaving.

Restivo has denied wrongdoing. He remains under investigation in the case, his lawyer Mario Marinelli said Thursday. He said his client was living in Britain and was calm.

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KHARTOUM, Sudan (AFP) –
An employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross with joint British-French citizenship who was kidnapped in Darfur last October was freed on Thursday, an ICRC official said.

“He has just been released after five months in captivity,” the official told AFP.

“He is currently being taken by helicopter to El Geneina,” the state capital of West Darfur.

Gauthier Lefevre, 35, who had worked for the ICRC for five years — 15 months of them in Darfur — was travelling in convoy of two vehicles clearly marked with the organisation’s logo when he was seized by gunmen near the Chadian border on October 22.

He has the unenviable record of having spent the longest time in captivity of any hostage — 147 days — since a wave of kidnappings of foreign aid workers began in March last year.

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ATTABAD, Pakistan – The water is rising day by day in this remote part of northern Pakistan, and with it, so is the fear among thousands who stand to lose their crops, their homes and maybe even their lives.

A massive landslide early this year formed a natural dam in the Hunza River, creating a lake that is consuming upstream villages as it expands. If the dam breaks, a flash flood could threaten downstream villages too. The landslide also has blocked the Karakoram Highway, a vital trade link to China, cutting off 25,000 people in the Upper Hunza Valley.

The crisis is another headache for the weak, U.S.-allied government in Islamabad, already struggling to contain a spreading al-Qaida and Taliban militancy.

“Why can’t the government remove this debris to give an outlet to the water? Doesn’t it have sufficient machinery to do away with it?” asked Ajaz Ali, who has watched in frustration as the water slowly submerges his village of Shishkat.

The landslide was large even by the standards of the mountainous Hunza region, whose beauty is said to have inspired James Hilton’s novel, “Lost Horizon,” a tale of the mythical paradise of Shangri-La.

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