World in brief: Depp plans film on Litvinenko

Johnny Depp is planning a film about a former Russian security agent whose poisoning in London has touched off an international mystery, according to the trade magazine Variety – one of three possible Hollywood projects about the case.

One of the other projects, involving the director Michael Mann, came after Columbia Pictures agreed to pay $1.5 million for the film rights to a book about the former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko, being co-written by his widow and a close friend, the report said.

Warner Bros., which was outbid for that book, acquired the rights to a book by Alan Cowell, a New York Times reporter, which is expected to be published next year by Doubleday, Variety said. Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil, will produce the film, and the actor could star in it.

Litvinenko fled to Britain, was granted asylum and became a Kremlin critic in exile. The former FSB agent died in November, several weeks after falling ill with what was later determined to be poisoning by the rare radioactive isotope polonium-210.

Cebu, Philippines

Nations speed plan for trade zone

Association of Southeast Asian Nation leaders agreed Saturday to turn their region into a free-trade zone by 2015 – a decade earlier than previously proposed – and create a tighter political bloc.

The 10-nation free trade zone will be adopted in two stages, with the six richer nations – including wealthy Singapore and oil-rich Brunei – starting the integration in 2010 and the others following later.

In addition, the leaders signed a counterterrorism pact legally binding their countries to share information and allowing for joint training aimed at stemming terror and cross-border crime. They agreed on the protection of millions of migrant workers and vowed to shift energy use from fossil fuel to biofuels.

In a major break with its consensus-based past, the 10-country body also agreed to discuss a plan for a more cohesive organization able to sanction – or even expel – members that do not follow its rules. ASEAN’s members are the Philippines, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar, Brunei and Indonesia.

Rome

Tribunal convicts 10 ex-SS members

A military tribunal on Saturday convicted 10 former members of the Nazi SS in the 1944 slaughter of more than 700 people near Bologna – the worst civilian massacre in Italy during World War II, news reports said.

The 10 received life sentences for murder, while seven others were acquitted, the Italian news agency ANSA and state-run RAI television said. But none of the men was in custody. They were tried in absentia, and all are believed to be living in Germany.

The massacre occurred around Marzabotto, a mountain town south of Bologna, during a retreat by German troops. From Sept. 29, 1944, to Oct. 5, 1944, SS soldiers slaughtered more than 700 people – mostly children, women and elderly – in what was ostensibly a hunt for resistance fighters.

Nazi troops lobbed grenades at civilians locked in a house and sprayed machine-gun fire to hit a row of children, among other atrocities.