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Instead, the Council’s rotating chairman will assume the post in the new line-up.
US occupying authorities in Baghdad appointed the Council in July and has since been working to establish ministries.
Elections are expected to be held in the next two years.
When US tanks invaded Baghdad on 9 April, American troops almost immediately protected the oil ministry. All other ministries were burned, looted or bombed.
The new Aardman Animations movie "Shaun the Sheep" contains woofs, oinks and bleats aplenty. But the inventive comedy from the Bristol, England-based makers of stop-motion animated hits such as "Chicken Run" and "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" surprisingly lacks one auditory element: a single spoken wo...
"The best movies are the ones you can watch without any volume on, so that was our goal," said Richard Starzak, the Aardman veteran who wrote and directed "Shaun the Sheep" with Mark Burton.
Based on a British children's TV show that is itself a spinoff of the 1995 Wallace and Gromit short film "A Close Shave," the "Shaun the Sheep" movie opens in Los Angeles on Wednesday as a kind of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" for livestock. The film follows its ebullient, woolly protagonist and his flock as they head to ...
Like the best of Aardman's oeuvre, the movie feels both decidedly British and wholly universal. The farmer's Wellington boots and Fair Isle sweater place him squarely in the U.K., but the film's dialogue-free format has helped it to play well to a broad range of countries and ages, including 20-somethings in China and ...
In an interview at Lionsgate, the film's Santa Monica-based U.S. distributor, Starzak and Burton discussed the roots of their unconventional storytelling approach, which was born not of artistic ambition but financial necessity.
In 2007, when Starzak started writing and directing the "Shaun the Sheep" TV show, which aired on the Disney Channel in the U.S., he needed to keep budgets down. Manipulating characters' mouths was time-consuming for animators and, therefore, expensive.
"The initial idea was labor-saving," Starzak said of the lack of dialogue. "I knew it would help us internationally a bit, but I had no idea — Shaun's gone really global now. That's been the big surprise. The lovely thing is when you go to China and everyone laughs in the same place."
Starzak, who previously went by the name Richard Goleszowski, started out fetching coffee and props at Aardman in the 1980s. He worked as an animator and director on projects as varied as the video for the Peter Gabriel song "Sledgehammer" and a British TV special about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's overweight son, ...
Burton teased Starzak when the latter paused before listing his film references for "Shaun the Sheep."
"You're trying to sound film-literate, but you can't. Your crib sheet's gone missing," Burton said. "Uhhhhh … 'Casablanca.' "
Actually, the list includes classic film comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and Jacques Tati.
When Starzak pitched Aardman founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton on a feature-length treatment of the character, their first reaction was cautious, Lord said.
"We looked at each other and said, 'Really?' " Lord said by phone, adding that Starzak "was very convincing and has a very sure instinct. We thought it would be a challenge and great fun."
The filmmakers declined to disclose a budget for "Shaun" other than to say it is significantly less than Aardman's last feature, the 2012 "The Pirates! Band of Misfits," a visually ambitious stop-motion film Lord directed for $55 million. They secured financing from French-based production company StudioCanal and produ...
The movie eschews several conventions of big-budget American animated movies, including using globally famous voice actors. Justin Fletcher, a children's television personality in the U.K., supplies Shaun's voice, which is really an expressive collection of bleats, baaaas and whimpers, while comic John Sparkes voices t...
"What we said to the voice cast was, 'We could be making 'Battleship Potemkin.' This is the most serious thing," Burton said. "You spend a lot of time describing to them what's going on emotionally, and then they come up with some noises. You say, 'Try saying it. Now express that without the words.' "
Aardman is enjoying something of a moment culturally. This weekend, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is hosting three events celebrating the studio's work, including a panel on Sunday at Siggraph, the computer-graphics conference at the L.A. Convention Center. In Paris, an Aardman exhibit at the Art Ludi...
Reviewers often praise Aardman's movies for their warmth and reliance on stop-motion, a century-old technique that reveals the artist's hand in a way that feels increasingly rare in the era of computer animation. But even by the studio's high standards, "Shaun" is a success with critics, earning a 100% fresh rating on ...
"We never think, let's not do what the big studios do," Lord said. "We do what we love. We believe there's a kind of magic and a kind of humanity about this technique. Maybe it's not slick, not noisy. But surely a change of diet is a good thing for audiences."
Starzak and Burton said they have begun sketching out plans for a sequel.
"There was a time when reviewers were referring to the dying art of stop-motion animation, but every time they said that, they were talking about another film that was vying for an Oscar," Starzak said. "It's a question of, it'll survive if we make the movies good enough."
Stuck in the weeds: Five years and millions of dollars later, why doesn’t the EBR Redevelopment Authority have more to show for its efforts?
In a slick, glossy report published by the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority in 2012, Mayor Kip Holden wrote a letter praising the agency for its hard work and accomplishments during its first three years in operation.
“As a new partner in community revitalization, the RDA’s accomplishments are astoundingly broad in scope, creating a positive, unique impact on the revitalization and growth of Baton Rouge,” the letter read.
Just two years later, the RDA has fallen on uncertain times and few in high places are singing its praises.
The agency is running out of money and will have to shut down by the end of 2015 if no permanent funding source is identified. Holden has refused to allocate city-parish funds to help keep it afloat, and has pointedly criticized its former president and CEO, Walter Monsour, who resigned in November amid controversy.
Whatever the underlying personal reasons for the mayor’s animus towards his one-time friend and former chief of staff—and many believe there is a personal issue here—the questions the mayor has posed about the agency’s performance under Monsour invite scrutiny. Specifically, what has the RDA accomplished in the past fi...
As to the RDA’s accomplishments, it’s not fair to say the agency has not accomplished anything. It has done a lot, actually. In five years it has established a land bank program that has taken and cleared title to more than 100 vacant, adjudicated lots in the city’s hardest hit areas and turned them over to developers....
Perhaps most ambitiously, it has taken the lead on two high-profile projects: Ardendale, the urban village planned for the neighborhood off Florida Boulevard formerly known as Smiley Heights; and the former Entergy site at 1509 Government St., which is envisioned as a mixed-use facility. Both, it is hoped, will be cata...
The problem is that few of those initiatives have yet produced tangible results. (See related stories). Of the 104 adjudicated lots, only eight have been redeveloped so far into single-family homes. None of the capital projects outlined in the five community improvement plans has been started, much less completed. The ...
At Ardendale, which will include new housing and retail anchored by an automotive training center and a high school career academy, only infrastructure work has begun. As for 1509 Government St., it is still in the early planning stages. In other words, it’s too soon to feel any effects from either project yet.
No one has been more stung by the criticism of the RDA and its former CEO than Noland, a successful business leader and generous philanthropist in the community. For him, the RDA has been a labor of love, and he has poured his heart into the agency since its inception. He is among its staunchest defenders, believes in ...
But even Noland will concede the business of redevelopment is a lot more challenging than anyone involved with the RDA thought when the agency was created in 2008. It’s tedious, costly and inherently fraught with obstacles that range from dealing with layers of federal bureaucracy, to identifying generations of propert...
RDA’s track record is more impressive than it might at first seem, according to Frank Alexander, a law professor at Emory University and expert on land banks, who helped the RDA establish its program.
Where criticism of the RDA rings more true is on the issue of why its funding model failed. The short explanation is that, basically, the RDA had no funding model. From the beginning, Monsour knew he would have to find a permanent source of funding. In early 2012, he and board members began making the rounds to communi...
That didn’t matter so much in 2012, when there was still a lot of federal stimulus money available and an assumption that more New Markets Tax Credits would be allocated to the RDA, which was able to generate operating income for itself through the lucrative administrative fees associated with the program. There was al...
But the federal stimulus money dried up, requests for New Markets Tax Credits were denied, and Holden earlier this year decided the city couldn’t afford to support the RDA when it can’t even give city workers a pay raise.
It didn’t help the RDA’s case with the mayor that Monsour was making more than any other city administrator. At $350,000, his compensation package was about 30% of the RDA’s $1.3 million annual operating budget and twice that of the head of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, who earns $172,000 running an agency a...
Given such handsome compensation, one could argue that Monsour should have done a better job developing a long-term business plan for the RDA. That, after all, is what the board was paying him to do.
But he didn’t, and Noland says the board shares in the responsibility for that shortcoming.
“We never forced Walter to roll up his sleeves and do a detailed business plan,” he says.
The belief among them all was that the agency would prove itself to the community and to City Hall before it was too late. Now, it’s on to plan B. Noland says he is doing a detailed business plan for Ardendale, which he hopes will help the community understand how an asset can ultimately become a revenue generator—prov...
The agency has also named a new interim CEO: Gwen Hamilton, a respected community leader with experience in government and the nonprofit sector. She is known as a good communicator and is seen by many as a consensus builder, which is perhaps what the agency needs as much as it does permanent funding. Though she is keep...
European stocks headed for their longest losing streak in more than a month as the latest batch of earnings failed to lift investor sentiment.
Saudi Arabian stocks entered a bull market after the price of crude, the kingdom’s main source of revenue, climbed above $45 for the first time this year.
Stocks in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council declined for a third straight quarter as equities failed to fully recover from oil’s plunge in January.
More Lebanese and foreign firms need to be listed on the Beirut Stock Exchange to increase the bourse’s liquidity, a leading economist said.
Opportunities, methods and challenges while working to achieve Gov. Bill Haslam's goal - to make Tennessee the No. 1 place among southeastern states for high quality jobs - were discussed Wednesday afternoon at Columbia State Community College.
The discussion was the luncheon program for another monthly meeting of the Workforce Employer Outreach Committee, an arm of the state Labor Department. Haslam's Jobs4TN Initiative - administered by the Economic and Community Development Department - was the topic.
Jobs4TN is a program targeting industries for high quality job development, reducing business regulations and a variety of other goals.
In addition to reviewing methods such as recognizing clusters of like businesses that are already here, and other outlines posted on a state Web site, Lewisburg resident Jamie Stitt, the southern middle regional director in the Business Development Division of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Developm...
The tried and true method of focusing on businesses already here and helping them grow was substantiated when Stitt cited a statistic: 81.6 percent of new jobs come from existing businesses.
As a result, retention of those businesses is important, Stitt and Lowe said. She pointed to the danger of "reverse engineering." That's when a company figures out how to make a product that's made here and then start making it elsewhere.
"They could take your product," Lowe said.
Stitt said if a company has a supplier overseas, and it appears there's a possibility of reverse engineering, then the state would want to help a business find a supplier in the United States and especially in Tennessee.
"It's something I'd like to get into here," Stitt said.
The Department of Economic and Community Development (ECD) is taking steps to help grow jobs here by consulting with businesses to see if there are regulations that are a hindrance to operations.
In Marshall County, Lowe and ECD officials are visiting factories to see how the state can make the work easier. Haslam and Bill Hagerty, the ECD commissioner, are visiting the business leaders at their headquarters, Stitt said.
Lowe said he wants to go beyond finding out that businesses want employees to arrive on time and be reliable, and advise applicants that when they go to an interview they shouldn't wear baggy pants, a ball cap on backwards or check their cell phone during an interview.
"What skills are needed from new employees?" Lowe asked rhetorically at the Workforce Employer Outreach Committee meeting to explain what developers, like him, need to know to help residents get jobs and, if necessary, to be sure educational opportunities are available for residents so they qualify for jobs.
Ultimately, Stitt's presentation was to advise members of the Workforce Employer Outreach Committee - an arm of the Labor Department - to know what ECD is doing to help workforce development.
And, just as the state's ECD has a strategy, Stitt said, a regional plan on how to achieve goals for crating jobs is to be posted on the state's ECD Web site before Thanksgiving.
The Detroit Pistons may have lost more than Game 1 on Sunday.
All-Star forward Blake Griffin sat out the series opener against the Milwaukee Bucks and is likely to miss the remainder of the first round due to a left knee injury, sources told Yahoo Sports' Vincent Goodwill.
The Pistons star will be listed as day-to-day for the duration of the series and there's a "slim chance" Griffin will play when it shifts to Detroit on Saturday, a source told Goodwill.
"I have to do what our organization, our training staff, our doctors think is best - and that's the bottom line," Griffin said postgame, according to Rod Beard of The Detroit News.
Griffin left Detroit's second-last regular-season game after just 18 minutes due to the injury. The 30-year-old missed four of the team's last seven regular-season contests, including the finale against the New York Knicks, which the Pistons needed to win to secure a postseason berth.
The former No. 1 overall pick averaged a career-high 24.5 points this season to go along with 7.5 boards and 5.4 assists to lead Detroit to its second playoff appearance in the last 10 years.
Griffin is in the second season of a five-year, $171-million max contract he originally signed with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Just a week after the Seattle City Council passed a head tax, charging big businesses $275 per employee, cities and agencies throughout Pierce County are banding together to do the opposite.
Officials from Pierce County and its various cities announced Tuesday that they each plan to create a job tax credit to the tune of $275 — the same amount that Seattle aims to tax its largest businesses (per employee, annually). Businesses will receive the credit if they create a minimum of five family-wage jobs for fi...
“We are more than happy to reward (businesses) for the best thing they do, which is to create family-wage jobs,” he said.
The idea comes on the heels of other outreach from Pierce County organizations pointing out that the region does not have a head tax. They even made a video about it.
Among county officials on hand for the Tuesday afternoon announcement was Bruce Dammeier, Pierce County executive; Victoria Woodards, City of Tacoma mayor; Mark Martinez, Pierce County Building & Construction Trades Council executive secretary; Bruce Kendall, Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County presiden...
Former Tacoma Mayor and current Seattle Chamber of Commerce CEO Marilyn Strickland voiced her opposition to Seattle’s head tax before and after the vote.
Meanwhile, several Seattle businesses, including Amazon, are preparing an initiative that would repeal the head tax. They would need just under 22,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan signed the law in effect on May 16; it’ll go into effect on Jan. 1, 2019.
UPDATE: Rod Doran ended Day 3 with 309,000 in chips. There are only 746 players remaining — 693 of which make the money. Day 4 begins 2 p.m. Peoria time Friday with an hour left in level 15, with blinds are 2,000/4,000 with a 500 ante.
Poker is unique. In not many places can amateurs compete equally alongside professionals on a game’s biggest stage.
Peoria native Rod Doran put his day job as chief mechanic for the Peoria Fire Department on hold for a few days and slid into the role of poker player at the World Series of Poker’s Main Event in Las Vegas.
The 48-year-old Marquette Heights resident is one of 1,864 players who returns to the Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino at 2 p.m. Peoria time Thursday for Day 3 of the world’s most prestigious no-limit hold-em tournament. The 1984 Richwoods grad started the day with 64,900 in chips, or about 40 big blinds.
Doran earned his way into the main event by topping the standings of a 12-tournament series coordinated by a local poker club. This is the fourth year of the club has sent a player to the main event, and Doran has been in contention each year.
Finally able to make the trip to Vegas and play in the Main Event, he isn’t just happy to walk the strip, visit the Bellagio fountains and load up on crab legs at the Rio buffet. He’s in Day 3, just one day from walking away with cash.
Doran was helped there during Day 2 with a pretty important river card against a pretty impressive opponent. Doran opened in early position with pocket kings, and German pro George Danzer, who this year won two WSOP events, called in late position before the two took a flop of 9-4-4. Danzer then called a Doran continua...
Then came a king on the river. Money card. Doran fired a third bet.
“He just started looking at me and shifting his eyes,” Doran said.
Danzer raised all-in, only to see Doran snap call and reveal the bad news. Danzer had pocket nines for a flopped full house, ending his run at the Vegas series after which he sits second in the Player of the Year standings.
Doran woke up Thursday with his stomach turning, already nervous about Thursday. He showered and headed over to the Rio with his girlfriend for breakfast before another important — and long — day.
Already Doran has played 20 hours of poker in the event, with another 10 scheduled for Thursday. And if he survives, he’ll play 10 more on Friday. A mental and physical test for a mechanic who’s spent two-plus decades climbing into bed at 9:30 or 10 p.m.
But through the tough opponents and long days and stomach-churning anticipation, Doran still realizes he now sits where few do. Where many desire.
Follow along with Doran, plus other area players by clicking here.
Previous Previous post: WSOP Main Event: The field combines; who’s in Day 3?
Photo submitted by AUSRA A closeup view of what solar generating panels look like. They are long glass reflectors which can be individually adjusted to focus the sunlight on a tube full of water overhead, heating the water to produce steam, which drives a turbine to generate electric power.
The company building a factory to create solar generating plants in Las Vegas doesn’t just have its eyes on southern Nevada.
John O’Donnell, executive vice president of AUSRA, says the open, sun-drenched valleys of the north have excellent potential even though they have much harsher winters than the south.
O’Donnell said the higher elevation in Northern Nevada even gives solar thermal generators a boost in efficiency. He said a solar plant at 5,000 feet can be up to 10 percent more efficient than a sea level plant for the same reason people sunburn quicker at Tahoe than San Diego – the thinner air lets more sunlight reac...

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