HARARE, Zimbabwe – Starvation Island in northern Zimbabwe is living up to its name for the first time in 50 years as rising lake waters have submerged grazing land for hundreds of animals, conservationists say.

Rescuers here are holding exhausted impalas by their horns just to keep their heads above water after the hungry, exhausted animals desperately tried to escape the flooded island.

Starvation Island was once a staging post for rescued animals, named after many perished from hunger there during the building of the massive Kariba hydroelectric dam.

Now Starvation Island has shrunk to about one-third of its original size after record seasonal rains from central Africa drained into the Kariba lake.

The two-square-mile (five-square-kilometer) island has become four dots of land in the lake, stranding hundreds of animals without enough to eat. At least 200 animals are in immediate danger of starvation.

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JOUY-EN-JOSAS, France (AFP) –
Pigs ears, smoked udders or veal lungs? French archaeologists this week begin examining the remains of an open-air banquet shovelled underground almost 30 years ago as an art performance.

Supervised by the creme-de-la-creme of French archaeology, a bunch of dusty diggers are unearthing the leftovers from a work now known as “Lunch Under The Grass” — a meal for 80 in sumptuous gardens south of Paris where the star course was offal.

On April 23, 1983, Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri, one of the central figures of post-war European art, invited dozens of artists, gallery-owners, critics and friends for a lunch held by a 40-metre (-yard) long trench.

The meal over, the 80-odd participants trundled tables laden with plates, glasses and leftover tripe into the trench to be buried for posterity.

“This is what you could call garbage archaeology,” one of France‘s top archaeologists, Jean-Paul Demoule, told AFP, referring to schemes under way across the world to examine society by perusing its rubbish.

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GENEVA – Governments must come clean on their methods for killing suspected terrorists and insurgents — especially when using unmanned drones — because they may be committing war crimes, a U.N. human rights expert said Wednesday.

Philip Alston, the independent U.N. investigator on extrajudicial killings, called on countries to lay out the rules and safeguards they use when carrying out so-called targeted killings, publish figures on civilian casualties and prove they have attempted to capture or incapacitate suspects without killing them.

His 29-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council will put unwanted scrutiny on intelligence operations of the United States, Israel and Russia, who Alston says are all credibly reported to have used drones to kill alleged terrorists and insurgents.

Alston, a New York University law professor, said the use of unmanned aerial vehicles by intelligence agencies such as the CIA to carry out targeted killings in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere is particularly fraught because of the secrecy surrounding such operations.

“In a situation in which there is no disclosure of who has been killed, for what reason, and whether innocent civilians have died, the legal principle of international accountability is, by definition, comprehensively violated,” Alston said.

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LONDON – A taxi driver described as quiet but friendly went on a shooting spree across a picturesque rural area of northwestern England on Wednesday, killing at least five people and wounding 25 others before apparently turning the gun on himself, officials said.

The rampage, in a region famed for its tranquil beauty, shocked a country where handguns are banned and multiple shootings rare — it was Britain’s deadliest mass shooting since 1996.

Officers found a body believed to be that of 52-year-old suspect Derrick Bird in woods near the Lake District village of Boot, Cumbria police said. A gun was found alongside the body.

“I regret to report that a number of people have been shot and that at least five people have died,” Prime Minister David Cameron told lawmakers in the House of Commons. “I can confirm that a body of a gunman has been found by police.”

Police said that as well as the deaths, 25 people were wounded in shootings in the small town of Whitehaven and nearby Seascale and Egremont, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of London.

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“Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures” (Crown, 336 pages, $25), by Robert K. Wittman with John Shiffman: In this stunning autobiography, former FBI undercover agent Robert K. Wittman details his 20-year career investigating the murky world of art theft.
Adopting the false but carefully documented identity of Bob Clay, a shady art dealer with a taste for contraband, Wittman successfully infiltrated domestic and international criminal networks to recover more than $225 million worth of stolen cultural property — items ranging from a Rembrandt self-portrait to an original copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
Wittman also came closer than anyone else in the world to unraveling the mysterious 1990 robbery at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. His encounters with criminals closely associated with the theft make for some of the most riveting chapters in the book, providing new and surprising information about the heist and the probable whereabouts of the Gardner’s missing Rembrandt and Vermeer.
Authoritative and superbly crafted, “Priceless” is absolutely, hands down, the best book ever written on art crime. It is also a fascinating memoir, giving readers a look at the real-life challenges of a career in law enforcement: Wittman’s day might begin with him donning a bulletproof vest to take part in a sting operation and end with him joining his wife to pump out their basement, flooded by a brutal Northeast storm.
A self-effacing patriot, Wittman says he initially joined the FBI “because it seemed like honorable work and a good way to serve the country.” He encountered his share of frustration dealing with Washington bureaucrats, about whom he writes with wry humor, but he never let office politics or poor pay distract him from his steadfast pursuit of the world’s misappropriated cultural treasures.
“Money is here today and gone tomorrow,” says Wittman. “These objects are our history.”
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Jonathan Lopez is a columnist for Art & Antiques and author of “The Man Who Made Vermeers,” a biography of the forger Han van Meegeren.

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