ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast ? Numerous supporters of ex-President Laurent Gbagbo were injured when their rally was attacked on Saturday, according to the United Nations.
A statement issued by the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast said that "many were injured" during the meeting of the Ivorian Popular Front party, known by its French acronym of FPI.
For 10 years, the Gbagbo-led FPI dominated the political scene in this former French colony in West Africa. The party has been reduced to a shell of its former self ever since Gbagbo was forced from power last April.
Reached by telephone, FPI spokesman Augustin Guehoun said that U.N. peacekeepers provided security for the rally, but armed intruders were able to gain access to the crowd, which had come to express support for Gbagbo.
"We had all the authorization (required to hold a rally) but we were aggressed. They started throwing stones then they began shooting," Guehoun said.
Gbagbo was held under house arrest for seven months after being toppled by Alassane Ouattara's forces. He was transferred to The Hague in November, where he is now awaiting trial for crimes against humanity committed by his army in the standoff that followed the 2011 election.
Although Gbagbo lost that election, he refused to cede power, forcing Ouattara to enlist the help of a rebel army which removed the former leader with the help of U.N. airstrikes.
Human rights groups say that abuses have been committed by both sides, and now that Gbagbo has been removed, the worst atrocities are being committed by Ouattara's armed forces, who are accused of massacres, rapes and summary executions of Gbagbo supporters.
In limbo for nearly 25 years, Red Tails?George Lucas' sweeping aerial epic about the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II?finally hits theaters today. Red Tails spends much of its time in the cockpits of P-51s as the Airmen fight and dodge their way through a flurry of fire. And because Lucas spent a quarter century and millions of his own dollars to bring to the movie to life, it's no surprise that his team obsessed with getting the World War II?era details just right.
"There's historical footage everywhere," says visual effects supervisor Craig Hammack. "You can watch old John Wayne movies that were shot with real airplanes. So people have a general idea of the capabilities of the planes, and how to tell that story and stay true to those dynamics is a challenge."
The visual effects team started its research by analyzing historical footage and flight simulator games to get a good understanding of P-51 flight dynamics. Then Lucas called in Ed Shipley, an acrobatic pilot of P-51s, to help. "He's an absolute expert," Hammack says. "And so he was always made available to talk through dynamics of the scenes." The actors who portrayed Tuskegee pilots also studied with real surviving airmen to learn how they controlled their planes.
On set, the crew built cockpits?and, in some cases, entire mocked-up planes?for the actors to sit in. To get the jumpy, jolted look of 1940s combat, the crew relied on a hand-operated gimbal?a platform equipped with extenders that crew members could hold and manipulate. "The thing about these planes, especially in the first part of the movie, is that they're supposed to be kind of just buckets of bolts up there," Hammack says. "You want a little bit of shimmy, a little bit of unexpected rattling kind of going on." The hand-operated gimbal delivered this kind of imprecise, organic movement perfectly, and it was faster to use, too.
Back at Industrial Light & Magic, VFX artists replaced everything in the cockpit except for the actor and the seat?the guages and switches you see are digitally created. "Reality is not always as exciting or as good-looking as you would want," Hammack says. "The thing about the mockup planes and even the real planes is that they're very functional, which means they're very sparse, and they're built for function. And it ends up looking not as realistic." But even more important was that in order for the shots to look realistic, animators had to have completely control of how the light played in the cockpits. "One of the really recognizable things about aerial photography is the play of shadows across everything as you maneuver," Hammack says. "You're typically up above the clouds or in the clouds, so you get really pure light direction. In real photography, you don't always have the ability to control light to simulate the high-speed maneuvers in the air. So we chose to replace it all so that we could get the right kind of light kicks and emphasize the action more." Making sure the finished result was photo-real was incredibly important. "You couldn't let the audience even begin to think that the cockpits might be CG because they show up so much throughout the movie," Hammack says. "It would have taken viewers out of the story."
When it came time to build VFX sequences for the dramatic aerial battles between the Red Tails and the Germans, Hammack's team faced a unique challenge: making the dogfights feel fast-paced and exciting while keeping the dynamics of the planes true to life. "Dogfights in movies are always tricky because these days we have a video game culture," Hammack says. "Things need to move faster than they normally would to keep your attention. So it's a little bit of a struggle, design-wise, to keep the action very fast-paced and to keep 14-year-old boys entertained while still showing that these planes built in the '40s are kind of lumbering machines and only have a certain amount of maneuverability."
And Lucas challenged his team to stay true to history. "I think that some of the initial Star Wars space scenes with the X-Wings and the TIE Fighters are based on World War II footage, so he's had a lot of experience studying it," Hammack says. "It was very important to him specifically to get the speeds right. There were times where we would push it beyond and he would say, ?You know, you guys are making it exciting but you're starting to break the reality of what the planes could do, you know, so just dial it back a little bit.'?"
The final result was dogfights that floored real Tuskegee airmen. At a panel for the film, Hammack sat next to one of the airmen while filmmakers showed the dogfight footage for the first time. "You could see him almost maneuvering the controls in his seat," Hammack says. "Afterward he told me that it felt very, very real to him, and that was a huge compliment."
TEHRAN (Reuters) ? Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Saturday it considered the likely return of U.S. warships to the Gulf part of routine activity, backing away from previous warnings to Washington not to re-enter the area.
The statement may be seen as an effort to reduce tensions after Washington said it would respond if Iran made good on a threat to block the Strait of Hormuz - the vital shipping lane for oil exports from the Gulf.
"U.S. warships and military forces have been in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East region for many years and their decision in relation to the dispatch of a new warship is not a new issue and it should be interpreted as part of their permanent presence," Revolutionary Guard Deputy Commander Hossein Salami told the official IRNA news agency.
The apparently conciliatory comments may be a response to the European Union and Washington's rejection of Iran's declaration it was close to resuming negotiations with world powers and with the Pentagon saying it did not expect any challenge to its warships.
Crude prices have spiked several times this year on fears diplomatic tensions could escalate to military clashes as well as uncertainty about the effect of sanctions on the oil market.
Along with the EU, which is set to agree an embargo on Iranian oil next week, Washington hopes the sanctions will force Iran to suspend the nuclear activities it believes are aimed at making an atom bomb, a charge Tehran denies.
There has been no U.S. aircraft carrier in the Gulf since the USS John C. Stennis left at the end of December at a time when the Revolutionary Guard was conducting naval maneuvers.
On January 3, after U.S. President Barack Obama signed new sanctions aimed at stopping Iran's oil exports, Tehran told the Stennis not to return - an order interpreted by some observers in Iran and Washington as a blanket threat to any U.S. carriers.
"I recommend and emphasize to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf," Iran's army chief, Major General Ataollah Salehi, said at the time. "We are not in the habit of warning more than once."
NEW MANOEUVRES
Washington says it will return to the Gulf and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said any move to block Hormuz - through which around a third of the world's sea-borne traded oil passes - would be seen as a "red line," requiring a response.
Citing operational security, the Pentagon will not say when the next carrier will return to the Gulf but officials say it is only a matter of time and they do not expect any problems.
In the coming days or weeks, the Revolutionary Guard will begin new naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf. Salami told IRNA these would go ahead as planned in the Iranian month of Bahman which runs from January 21 to February 19.
Iran has said it is ready to return to talks with world powers that stalled one year ago, but the West, concerned about Tehran's move of the most sensitive atomic work to a bomb-proof bunker, says it must first see a willingness from Tehran to address the nuclear issue.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday "time is running out" for a diplomatic solution and urged Russia and China to drop their opposition to sanctions on Iranian oil.
Iran is OPEC's second biggest exporter and blocking its crude exports - through the EU embargo or U.S. moves to punish banks that trade with Iran - could have a devastating impact on its economy but there are no signs so far such pressure would force it to stop what it calls its peaceful nuclear rights.
(Writing by Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Sophie Hares)
Samantha Garvey, a Long Island teen and an Intel science contest semifinalist, spent her childhood moving between homeless shelters and rented homes. But now she has a new home and a $50,000 college scholarship, showing us all anything is possible.
While I have my home's wooden floor covered in Chinese, Persian and Turkish rugs, I'd love to exchange them all for digital interactive rugs like this. One of them full of swimming crocodiles. [Buzzfeed] More »
