European Commission President Jean-Claude Jucnker has “sent the spread crazy” by likening Italy to
Greece and “could have spared us the comparison”, Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo
Salvini, leader of the anti-migrant Euroskeptic League party, s… © ANSA
Archives for April 2019
LOOK: Derek Carr posts hilarious photo of him and Marshawn Lynch to social media
LOOK: Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr is wearing fake dreads while practicing a hand off with running back Marshawn Lynch.
Jurors brought to tears as Jordan Edwards’ family, teachers remember smile, promise of teen slain by cop
Jordan Edwards was known for his smile.
After the teen’s death, one of his teachers set a motto for the Mesquite High School classroom: “Smile like Jordan.”
Students refused to sit at Jordan’s desk. His football locker was transformed into a shrine.
“Everyone knew him from smiling. He gets that from me,” his father, Odell Edwards, said Tuesday, smiling.
It was the father’s testimony that brought many of the jurors to tears after they had convicted former Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver in the 15-year-old’s murder.
Oliver, 38, was found not guilty, however, on two counts of aggravated assault for firing his rifle into the car full of teens.
He faces up to life in prison when testimony resumes Wednesday.
Odell Edwards said he blames himself for his son’s death; he was the one who let the teen go to a party the night of April 29, 2017.
Jordan, his brothers Kevon Edwards and Vidal Allen, and two friends rode together in Odell Edwards’ Chevrolet Impala to the Balch Springs house party.
“I blame myself a lot because I shouldn’t have let them go to the party,” Odell Edwards said, voice cracking.
Several jurors wiped their eyes while the elder Edwards spoke. One put her head down.
“It’s just not the same without Jordan around,” he said.
He described what it was like to get a phone call from Allen, who was driving when Oliver fired into the car full of teenagers as they left the party.
“Dad, Jordan’s been shot,” Edwards recalled Allen say.
Edwards told his son to stop the car and “do whatever the police say.” Then the call went silent.
“I just hopped in my truck. I drove all over Mesquite looking for my sons,” he said.
Jordan’s mother, Charmaine Edwards, also blames herself, because she wasn’t home that night to be the strict parent and tell the boys they couldn’t go.
She said that Allen also feels at fault. Jordan had asked to drive them home and if he been in the driver’s seat and not the passenger, he would be alive, Allen told his mother.
The brothers were inseparable, the family said.
The pair sold candy at their high school for spending money. And after the slaying, Allen changed his football jersey to No. 11, which had been Jordan’s.
“That was my baby brother. We did everything together,” Allen testified earlier in the trial. “We always had each other’s back, no matter what.”
Much of the punishment phase of the trial Tuesday focused on life before Jordan’s murder.
Six high school teachers and the Mesquite High School football coach raved about the teen. Most said a variation of the same thing: They wanted a classroom full of Jordans.
“You wish you had 31 of those kids like Jordan in that class,” said Robert Howig, Jordan’s computer teacher.
“I would love to have a classroom of Jordans,” said algebra teacher Anna Lee Polk.
“I would be happy with a whole class of him,” said Jenna Williams, an English teacher.
Alli Clements, Spanish teacher at Mesquite High School, testifies about Jordan Edwards during the sentencing phase of fired Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver. (Rose Baca/Staff Photographer)
The teachers recounted the sorrow classmates felt after Jordan’s death and their own dismay about the way he died.
“That’s not what we expected for his life, not what we’d expect for a kid like that,” said Alli Clements, his Spanish teacher.
Football coach Jeff Fleener also testified Tuesday, but before he did, he gathered his team in the film room just after the guilty verdict was announced.
The coach’s message was clear: “Praise God. Justice for Jordan.”
“It’s been weighing heavy on these kids,” Fleener said. “With the trial, all those same feelings and emotions came back up. It was tense yesterday afternoon and this morning, being worried about what the verdict might be.”
When they heard the verdict, the players erupted with emotions.
“Tears, hugging and some joy, too,” Fleener said. “I think for these young people, the only other things they’ve been able to compare it to, all the other trials that were like this, they haven’t gone this way.”
Fleener left after his team talk for the courthouse.
On the stand, he described meeting Jordan. Normally, it takes Fleener awhile to learn everyone’s names, but Jordan stood out, he said.
The teen stayed after practice to work out and when the coach walked into the workout room, Jordan hopped up, held out his hand and introduced himself.
Jordan “flashed that smile,” Fleener said. “He had that big of an impact on me, on the team and everybody who knew him.”
Staff writer Corbett Smith contributed to this report.
Jurors brought to tears as Jordan Edwards’ family, teachers remember smile, promise of teen slain by cop
Arts This Week: ‘Casanova’s Europe,’ ‘Greece Through the Lens of Robert McCabe,’ ‘Crazy Rich Asians’
This week, explore art from exotic locales with Jared Bowen as he tours Casanova’s Europe, the Greek Consulate General in Boston, and the lavish lifestyles of “Crazy Rich Asians.”
“Casanova’s Europe: Art, Pleasure, and Power in the 18th Century,” on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through October 8
Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Witness the splendor of 18th century European art through the lens of one of history’s most infamous figures: Giacomo Casanova. Inspired by his extensive 12-volume autobiography The Story of My Life, “Casanova’s Europe: Art, Pleasure, and Power in the 18th Century” brings together a collection of more than 250 costumes, furniture, paintings, and sculptures that Casanova could have encountered in his travels across Europe. Discover how this notorious womanizer and social climber charmed and conned his was through Venice, Paris, and London in what Jared describes as “a decadent show brimming with some of the greatest riches in 18th century art & lifestyle.”
“Greece Through the Lens of Robert McCabe: 1954-1965,”a collection of the artist’s photography is now on permanent view at the Consulate General of Greece in Boston
Courtesy of the Greek Consulate General in Boston
The Greek Consulate General in Boston has installed an unprecedented, permanent photography exhibition featuring the work of Robert McCabe, a onetime National Geographic Society photographer with more than 60 years’ experience in the field. The work centers around McCabe’s summer in Greece in the 1954, in which he documents an untouristed Greek landscape and historic landmarks. Jared describes the work as “a wistful look at the way it was.”
“Crazy Rich Asians,” in theaters now
Sanja Bucko, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Adapted from Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel, “Crazy Rich Asians” tells the story of Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), a young woman who travels to a wedding in Singapore with her longtime boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding), only to find out that he is one the country’s wealthiest and most sought-after bachelors. Caught off guard, Chu must navigate the trappings of her partner’s wealth and exacting family in a film that features Hollywood’s first all-Asian cast in 25 years. “Lovingly adapted and deliciously told, the film is everything you want in a summer movie,” says Jared. “A wealth of fun, romance, and adventure to the unexpected.”
Are you a globetrotting art connoisseur? Tell Jared about it on FacebookorTwitter!
Boris: May’s Brexit plans ‘crazy’
LONDON — Theresa May’s plans to form a “customs partnership” with the EU after Brexit are “crazy,” and must be ditched, the foreign secretary has said in the clearest public attack yet on the prime minister’s authority.
Boris Johnson told the Daily Mail that May was attempting to create a “crazy system” which would break the key Brexit campaign pledge to “take back control” of Britain’s trading system from the EU.
“If you have the new customs partnership, you have a crazy system whereby you end up collecting the tariffs on behalf of the EU at the U.K. frontier,” Johnson told the Mail.
“If the EU decides to impose punitive tariffs on something the U.K. wants to bring in cheaply, there’s nothing you can do. That’s not taking back control of your trade policy, it’s not taking back control of your laws, it’s not taking back control of your borders and it’s actually not taking back control of your money either, because tariffs would get paid centrally back to Brussels.”
He added: “It’s totally untried and would make it very, very difficult to do free trade deals.”
One ally of the foreign secretary told the Sun that Johnson is “completely fed up. He thinks he is the only one pushing Brexit now.”
Johnson’s comments are privately backed by other senior Brexiteers in May’s Cabinet, including the Brexit secretary David Davis and the Environment Secretary Michael Gove. However, they are at complete odds with the prime minister and her team who are still pushing for her plans to develop the “customs partnership” with the EU.
Both Johnson and Davis have reportedly threatened to resign over the issue as private Cabinet divisions over Brexit increasingly go public.
‘Max Fac’
Johnson’s preferred alternative of creating a new ‘maximum facilitation’ system would involve a new ‘trusted trader’ system, but would also produce border checks in Northern Ireland, which politicians from all side have warned would be a serious risk to the peace process in the province.
Both options would take up to five years to implement and have already been ruled out by EU officials as “magical thinking,” with the Irish government threatening to veto any deal that does not retain current loose customs relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
UK government officials have been tasked with finding a third compromise option, with a spokesman for May saying last week that the government’s policy on customs was now “evolving” as they looked at “a number of options” for resolving the issue.
Discussions about the issue, originally timetabled for a meeting of May’s inner cabinet on Thursday, have reportedly been delayed while officials seek a compromise.
Johnson’s comments, while publicly questioning May’s position, are unlikely to be judged as a breach of the cabinet’s ‘collective responsibility’ given that the government’s official policy on customs has not yet been finalised.
However, his public denouncement of plans being personally pushed by the prime minister is the clearest public test of her authority yet by a senior member of her cabinet and is likely to prompt a public response from May’s spokesman when he appears before journalists on Tuesday lunchtime.
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