China and the United States in the past year have unveiled new regulations that force some news media organizations that receive government funding to register as government entities. Amid the regulatory changes, China Wednesday ordered three foreign reporters to leave the country because of complaints over a headline that appeared in their newspaper. Here’s an overview of the changing media laws, and the fallout for journalists.

Why did Beijing expel the American reporters?

China’s foreign ministry said Wednesday that the Wall Street Journal’s decision to publish an opinion column with the headline “China is the Real Sick Man of Asia,” was “racially discriminatory” and tried to discredit China’s efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak. The editorial was written by an American academic in the newspaper’s opinion section, but the foreign ministry said: “Chinese people do not welcome media that speak racially discriminatory languages … as such, it is decided today, the press credentials of three WSJ journalists will be revoked.” 

Beijing said the decision to force the reporters to leave the country was not linked to the State Department’s ruling on restricting Chinese news organizations operating in the U.S. earlier this week.

Why did the U.S. State Department designate five Chinese news agencies as foreign government entities?

The State Department said Tuesday that Xinhua, China Radio, China Daily, CGTN and The People’s Daily will be officially treated as extensions of China’s government, subjecting employees to similar rules that foreign diplomats operate under. U.S. officials say the designation reflects the reality that these are not editorially independent newsrooms, but are controlled by the Chinese government. Chinese officials rejected the decision and said Chinese media covers news objectively.

Why is the State Department making this change now?

U.S. officials have been warning for years about China’s expanding operations targeting foreign countries, and in recent months have taken action. U.S. officials have announced prosecutions of academics who did not report receiving money from Chinese-government-linked institutions, named Chinese military hackers who allegedly stole personal records of millions of Americans, and accused Chinese technology companies of stealing intellectual property. The director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, said this month that China is threatening U.S. security by exploiting the openness of the American economy and society.

Are VOA, BBC, DW and other state-funded broadcasters subject to the same State Department regulations on government funding?

News organizations that receive government funding and also maintain editorially independent newsrooms are not subjected to the new State Department regulations because they have policies and structures to protect their editorial independence. For example, at the BBC, the organization’s charter commits it to pursuing “due impartiality” in all of its output. At VOA, the founding charter and editorial firewall keep its journalists independent and prevent government officials from interfering in news decisions.

…

From: MeNeedIt

The U.N. human rights office is calling for an independent, impartial and thorough investigation into the massacre of 23 people in a village in Cameroon’s Northwest Anglophone region on February 14.

More information has emerged since this shocking attack occurred.  U.N. human rights monitors on the ground report 15 children, nine under the age of five were killed.  They say two pregnant women also were among the victims.  One has since died of her injuries in hospital.

U.N. human rights spokesman, Rupert Colville, says the facts are still sketchy.  But he tells VOA witnesses say 40 armed men and members of the security and defense forces attacked the village.

“The authorities claim there was gunfire coming out of the village towards them — towards the defense forces and gendarmes,” he said. “Our understanding is that two houses in particular were targeted.  But the upshot of that — the number of children killed, and pregnant women is really horrifying.”  

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and clashes between security and defense forces and armed separatist groups have escalated since 2016.  That was when a separatist insurgency erupted in the minority English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon against the dominant French-speaking government.

In the aftermath of the massacre, the Cameroonian government has announced it would mount an investigation into the killings and would make the findings public.  The U.N. human rights office urges the authorities to ensure the independence and impartiality of the investigation and to hold those responsible to account.  

In the meantime, the United Nations reports 2.3 million people in Cameroon urgently need food, shelter, non-food items, and protection because of the crisis in the Northwest and Southwest.  It adds the majority of those in need remain within these two regions.  

U.N. aid agencies are urgently appealing for $317 million so they can carry out their life-saving mission this year.

…

From: MeNeedIt

Former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been questioned for his role in financing international Islamist groups, according to the country’s attorney general.

“We have organizations like Hamas in our country and it has its offices,” said Abdullahi Ibrahim, a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri. Ibrahim participated in the country’s 1960s revolution and ran for president against al-Bashir in 2010. However, he added that there are some groups in Sudan who see Hamas as a legitimate political movement. 

“This is the reason why I say we are getting ready to get into semantics,” he said. “I don’t want my people to get into this semantic quagmire. But if Bashir’s regime [was] money laundering through them [Hamas], that stands out as a crime and worthy of looking into.”

Sudan is still designated as a state sponsor of terrorism due to the past administration’s support of terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Hamas is a militant group that has sought to destroy Israel.

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

What Are Sudan’s Prospects for Removal From US Terrorism List?

Sudan was added to the US list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1993 over charges by Washington that then-President Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist government was supporting terrorism

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

Hamas Official Threatens More Explosive Balloons Into Israel

The resumption of flammable balloons and other explosive devices flown across the border broke a month of calm that has largely prevailed since Hamas suspended its weekly protests along the Israeli-Gaza frontier

In December, al-Bashir was sentenced to two years in a correctional facility for corruption and money laundering charges.

Last week, Sudanese officials announced the ousted leader will be transferred to the International Criminal Court to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in the Darfur region. 

“We have a very clear-cut accusation against this man. He is wanted by the ICC,” Ibrahim said.

The move by the Supreme Council, Sudan’s ruling body, which is currently controlled by the military, was hailed by international observers as an important decision. Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, told VOA’s English-to-Africa TV show “Africa 54” that the civilian government took a bold step that wouldn’t be possible without consulting with the military.

The fact that the military changed its position to make a compromise, Hudson said, “catapults Sudan from the country that was leading the international coalition against the court to serve up to the court its biggest and most important case to date in one fell swoop. It really is a complete 180 on the part of the Sudanese government. I think a shot in the arm, as they say, for international justice.”

Ibrahim agrees that the military has reversed its position on the issue. “The military was the one that was rather opposed in clear-cut terms earlier. But now I don’t know whether it is about [Head of the Supreme Council] Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s movement to soothe,” he said. “I think they are more inclined to come to terms with the civilian leaders. Now they don’t have any qualms about this.”

Civilian or military rule?

In April, pro-democracy demonstrators toppled al-Bashir and demanded civilian rule. But Ibrahim said what happened last year was a compromise because recent diplomatic announcements, including the meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were spearheaded by al-Burhan. The meeting faced a backlash from pro-Bashir groups.

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

Meeting of Sudanese Leader, Netanyahu Sparks Criticism in Khartoum

For religious leaders and some officials in Sudan, Israel remains a sensitive issue; hundreds of protesters rallied in Khartoum Tuesday, condemning the meeting and the idea of normalization of ties

“The structure that we have now is a product of a compromise. That tug of war and it is not a compromise between revolutionaries of different persuasions. It is a situation in which the revolution gave birth to counterrevolution simultaneously,” he said. “Some people consider difficulties like taking this kind of arbitrary decision as a sign of weakness. No, it is a sign of struggle. We will be free if we come to grips with the reality that on that day in April, we had a revolution and a counterrevolution.”  

‘Comprehensive peace’

It is not yet clear when the 76-year-old former president will be sent to the International Criminal Court , and Hudson said that the Sudanese are “a few steps away” from seeing him at the Hague. He added that handing al-Bashir over to the ICC paves the way for the peace talks between the government and the armed movements and signals willingness to cooperate with the court.

Hudson said that it is “part of a larger peace deal that the government is trying to secure with the remaining armed movements in the country. So it’s really dependent upon that kind of comprehensive peace.” 

‘New Sudan’

Nevertheless, the transitional government’s steps to mend international relationships, including outreach to the United States, the United Nations and Israel, are a historic break from past policies, Hudson added. 

“It is a completely new Sudan. It’s a Sudan that takes justice and accountability and the rule of law seriously for the first time in more than a generation. Obviously, we want to see justice delivered for the many, victims of atrocity crimes in Darfur. More than 2 million people continue to be displaced inside and outside the country. More than 300,000 people were murdered during that conflict in Darfur.”

Still, the progress isn’t without resistance, as al-Bashir loyalists protested against handing him over to the ICC.  

That, Hudson said, is “the last gasp of a fading regime.”

This story originated in the Africa division with reporting contributions from English to Africa’sEsther Githui Ewart.

…

From: MeNeedIt

U.S. President Donald Trump has announced pardons for several high-profile individuals convicted of fraud. He has also commuted the prison sentence of former Governor Rod Blagojevich. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the president’s acts of clemency on Tuesday sparked controversy.

…

From: MeNeedIt

The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will waive federal contracting laws to speed construction of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Department of Homeland Security said waiving procurement regulations will allow 177 miles (283 kilometers) of wall to be built more quickly in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The 10 waived laws include requirements for having open competition, justifying selections and receiving all bonding from a contractor before any work can begin.

The acting Homeland Security secretary, Chad Wolf, is exercising authority under a 2005 law that gives him sweeping powers to waive laws for building border barriers.

“We hope that will accelerate some of the construction that’s going along the Southwest border,” Wolf told Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday.

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

Trump to Transfer $3.8B From Military to Fund Border Wall

The Trump administration is transferring $3.8 billion in recently passed military funding to finance construction of the president’s long-sought US-Mexico border wall

Secretaries under President Donald Trump have issued 16 waivers, and President George W. Bush issued five, but Tuesday’s announcement marks the first time that waivers have applied to federal procurement rules. Previously they were used to waive environmental impact reviews.
Full Coverage: Immigration

The Trump administration said it expects the waivers will allow 94 miles (150 kilometers) of wall to be built this year, bringing the Republican president closer to his pledge of about 450 miles (720 kilometers) since taking office and making it one of his top domestic priorities. It said the other 83 miles (133 kilometers) covered by the waivers may get built this year.

“Under the president’s leadership, we are building more wall, faster than ever before,” the department said in a statement.

The move is expected to spark criticism that the Trump administration is overstepping its authority, but legal challenges have failed. In 2018, a federal judge in San Diego rejected arguments by California and environmental advocacy groups that the secretary’s broad powers should have an expiration date. An appeals court upheld the ruling last year.

Congress gave the secretary power to waive laws in areas of high illegal crossings in 2005 in a package of emergency spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and minimum standards for state-issued identification cards. The Senate approved it unanimously, with support from Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The House passed it with strong bipartisan support; then-Rep. Bernie Sanders voted against it.

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

Winds Topple US Border Wall Being Built; It Falls in Mexico

Authorities say a portion of border wall being built in California toppled in strong winds and fell on a busy street on the Mexican side

The waivers, to be published in the Federal Register, apply to projects that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will award in six of nine Border Patrol sectors on the Mexican border: San Diego and El Centro in California; Yuma and Tucson in Arizona; El Paso, which spans New Mexico and west Texas, and Del Rio, Texas.

The administration said the waivers will apply to contractors that have already been vetted. In May, the Army Corps named 12 companies to compete for Pentagon-funded contracts.

The Army Corps is tasked with awarding $6.1 billion that the Department of Defense transferred for wall construction last year after Congress gave Trump only a fraction of the money. The administration has been able to spend that money during legal challenges.

…

From: MeNeedIt

The worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years has reached South Sudan, a country where roughly half the population already faces hunger after years of civil war, officials announced Tuesday.

Around 2,000 locusts were spotted inside the country, Agriculture Minister Onyoti Adigo told reporters. Authorities will try to control the outbreak, he added.

The locusts have been seen in Eastern Equatoria state near the borders with Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. All have been affected by the outbreak that has been influenced by the changing climate in the region.

The situation in those three countries “remains extremely alarming,” the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in its latest Locust Watch update Monday. Locusts also have reached Sudan, Eritrea, Tanzania and more recently Uganda.

The soil in South Sudan’s Eastern Equatoria has a sandy nature that allows the locusts to lay eggs easily, said Meshack Malo, country representative with the FAO.

At this stage “if we are not able to deal with them … it will be a problem,” he said.

South Sudan is even less prepared than other countries in the region for a locust outbreak, and its people are arguably more vulnerable. More than 5 million people are severely food insecure, the U.N. humanitarian office says in its latest assessment, and some 860,000 children are malnourished.

Five years of civil war shattered South Sudan’s economy, and lingering insecurity since a 2018 peace deal continues to endanger humanitarians trying to distribute aid. Another local aid worker was shot and killed last week, the U.N. said Tuesday.

The locusts have traveled across the region in swarms the size of major cities. Experts say their only effective control is aerial spraying with pesticides, but U.N. and local authorities have said more aircraft and pesticides are required. A handful of planes have been active in Kenya and Ethiopia.

The U.N. has said $76 million is needed immediately. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a visit to Ethiopia said the U.S. would donate another $8 million to the effort. That follows an earlier $800,000.

The number of overall locusts could grow up to 500 times by June, when drier weather begins, experts have said. Until then, the fear is that more rains in the coming weeks will bring fresh vegetation to feed a new generation of the voracious insects.

South Sudanese ministers called for a collective regional response to the outbreak that threatens to devastate crops and pasturage.

…

From: MeNeedIt

…

From: MeNeedIt

Roger Stone, a longtime friend of President Donald Trump, lost his bid to delay his sentencing, a federal judge said on Tuesday.

Stone is due to be sentenced on Thursday after he was found guilty in November of seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering.

A lawyer for Stone on Tuesday argued that Thursday’s sentencing hearing should be postponed until after U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson rules on a request he made for a new trial.

Jackson rejected the proposed delay during a short conference call with lawyers on Tuesday, saying Stone’s proposal would not be prudent and is not required by law.

The judge said the longtime Republican operative would not need to begin serving his sentence until she rules on his request for a new trial.

Stone’s sentencing on Thursday is expected to draw widespread interest, after senior officials at the Justice Department last week pulled back on an earlier sentencing recommendation by career prosecutors to keep Stone’s prison term within the U.S. sentencing guidelines of seven to nine years.

The intervention by Attorney General William Barr prompted all four career prosecutors who tried the case to withdraw, with one of them resigning from the department entirely.

In the new sentencing memo, the department said it viewed a sentence of between seven and nine years as excessive, but left it to the judge’s discretion what prison term would be appropriate.

Since then, Trump has used Twitter to attack the four prosecutors, as well as Jackson, who previously oversaw cases involving Trump’s other political allies including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Jackson did not comment during Tuesday’s 15-minute conference call on the prosecutor withdrawals or the political furor over Stone’s case.

…

From: MeNeedIt

Kellye Nakahara Wallett, a film and television actress best known for playing Lt. Nurse Kellye Yamato on “M-A-S-H,” has died at age 72.

Son William Wallett told The Associated Press that Wallett died Sunday after a brief battle with cancer. She was at her home in Pasadena, California, surrounded by family and friends.

A native of O’ahu, Hawaii, who was listed as Kellye Nakahara while in “M-A-S-H,” Wallett also appeared in the film “Clue” and in John Hughes’ “She’s Having a Baby.” More recently, she worked as a watercolor artist and was involved in the local arts community. She is survived by her husband, David Wallett; two children and four grandchildren.

“M-A-S-H,” the acclaimed sitcom set during the Korean War, ran from 1972-83. Nurse Kellye carries a secret crush on the show’s major character, the womanizing surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, played by Alan Alda. In a memorable scene, Kellye reveals her feelings, scolding Hawkeye for having his “eyes … on every nurse” except her.

“For your information,” she tells him, “I happen to have a fantastic sense of humor, a bubbly personality and I am warm and sensitive like you wouldn’t believe. I also sing and play the guitar and I’m learning to tap dance. And on top of all that, I happen to be cute as hell.”
 

…

From: MeNeedIt

Former U.S. labor leader Owen Bieber, one of the country’s most outspoken anti-apartheid activists who also backed Poland’s Solidarity labor movement, has died at 90.

A longtime union member, Bieber took over as the head of the United Auto Workers Union in 1983, securing good wages, job security and other benefits for blue-collar auto workers at a time of recession and rising global competition.

He rallied the UAW behind the Solidarity movement in Poland and was a fierce critic of apartheid in South Africa. He traveled to the country, speaking out against racism and imprisonment of labor activists, smuggling photographs of tortured prisoners out of the country back to the U.S.

Bieber was arrested demonstrating outside the South African Embassy in Washington. He hosted Nelson Mandela in Detroit, Michigan, after the South African political leader’s release from prison in 1990.
 

…

From: MeNeedIt

Novelist Charles Portis, a favorite among critics and writers for such shaggy dog stories as “Norwood” and “Gringos” and a bounty for Hollywood whose droll, bloody Western “True Grit” was a best-seller twice adapted into Oscar nominated films, died Monday at age 86.

Portis, a former newspaper reporter who apparently learned enough to swear off talking to the media, had been suffering from Alzheimer’s in recent years. His brother, Jonathan Portis, told The Associated Press that he died in a hospice in Little Rock, Arkansas, his longtime residence.

Charles Portis was among the most admired authors to nearly vanish from public consciousness in his own lifetime. His fans included Tom Wolfe, Roy Blount Jr. and Larry McMurtry, and he was often compared to Mark Twain for his plainspoken humor and wry perspective. 

Unpredictable detours

Portis saw the world from the ground up, from bars and shacks and trailer homes, and few spun wilder and funnier stories. In a Portis novel, usually set in the South and south of the border, characters embarked on journeys that took the most unpredictable detours.

In “Norwood,” an ex-Marine from Texas heads East in a suspicious car to collect a suspicious debt, but winds up on a bus with a circus dwarf, a chicken and a girl he just met.

“The Dog of the South” finds one Ray Midge driving from Arkansas to Honduras in search of his wife, his credit cards and his Ford Torino.

In “Gringos,” an expatriate in Mexico with a taste for order finds himself amid hippies, end-of-the-world cultists and disappearing friends.

Saturday Evening Post

The public knew Portis best for “True Grit,” the quest of Arkansas teen Mattie Ross to avenge her father’s murder. The novel was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1968 and was soon adapted (and softened) as a film showcase for John Wayne, who starred as Rooster Cogburn, the drunken, one-eyed marshal Mattie enlists to find the killer. The role brought Wayne his first Academy Award and was revived by the actor, much less successfully, in the sequel “Rooster Cogburn”

Rooster was so strong a character that a new generation of filmgoers and Oscar voters welcomed him back. In 2010, the Coen brothers worked up a less glossy, more faithful “True Grit,” featuring Jeff Bridges as Rooster and newcomer Hallie Seinfeld as Mattie. The film received 10 nominations, including best actor for Bridges, and brought new attention to Portis and his novel, which topped the trade paperback list of The New York Times.

“No living Southern writer captures the spoken idioms of the South as artfully as Portis does,” Mississippi native Donna Tartt wrote in an afterword for a 2005 reissue of the novel.

Born in Arkansas

Portis was born in 1933 in El Dorado, Arkansas, one of four children of a school superintendent and a housewife whom Portis thought could have been a writer herself.

As a kid, he loved comic books and movies and the stories he learned from his family. In a brief memoir written for The Atlantic Monthly, he recalled growing up in a community where the ratio was about “two Baptist churches or one Methodist church per gin. It usually took about three gins to support a Presbyterian church, and a community with, say, four before you found enough tepid idolators to form an Episcopal congregation.”

He was a natural raconteur who credited his stint in the Marines with giving him time to read. After leaving the service, he graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1958 with a degree in journalism and for the next few years was a newspaper man, starting as a night police reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal and finishing as London bureau chief for the New York Herald Tribune.

Worked with Tom Wolfe

Fellow Tribune staffers included Wolfe, who regarded Portis as “the original laconic cutup” and a fellow rebel against the boundaries of journalism, and Nora Ephron, who would remember her colleague as a sociable man with a reluctance to use a telephone.

His interview subjects included Malcolm X and J.D. Salinger, whom Portis encountered on an airplane. He was also a first-hand observer of the civil rights movement. 

In 1963, he covered a riot and the police beating of black people in Birmingham, Alabama. Around the same time, he reported on a Ku Klux Klan meeting, a dullish occasion after which “the grand dragon of Mississippi disappeared grandly into the Southern night, his car engine hitting on about three cylinders.”

Anxious to write novels, Portis left the paper in 1964 and from Arkansas completed “Norwood,” published two years later and adapted for a 1970 movie of the same name starring Glen Campbell and Joe Namath.

Portis placed his stories in familiar territory. He knew his way around Texas and Mexico and worked enough with women stringers from the Ozarks in Arkansas to draw upon them for Mattie’s narrative voice in “True Grit.” He eventually settled in Little Rock, where he reportedly spent years working on a novel that was never released. “Gringos,” his fifth and last novel, came out in 1991.

Living in open seclusion

Portis published short fiction in The Atlantic during the 1990s, but was mostly forgotten before admiring essays in Esquire and the New York Observer by Ron Rosenbaum were noticed by publishing director Tracy Carns of the Overlook Press, which reissued all of Portis’ novels.

Some of his journalism, short stories and travel writings were published in the 2012 anthology “Escape Velocity.”

In recent years, the author lived in open seclusion, a regular around Little Rock who drove a pickup truck, enjoyed an occasional beer and stepped away from reporters. He did turn up to collect The Oxford American’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in Southern Literature and was known to answer the occasional letter from a reader. But otherwise Portis seemed to honor Mattie’s code in “True Grit” for how to deal with journalists.

“I do not fool around with newspapers,” Mattie says. ”The paper editors are great ones for reaping where they have not sown. Another game they have is to send reporters out to talk to you and get your stories free. I know the young reporters are not paid well and I would not mind helping those boys out with their ‘scoops’ if they could ever get anything right.”

…

From: MeNeedIt

An adviser to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who had discussed the benefits of forced contraception quit Monday, saying “media hysteria” about his old online posts meant he had become a distraction for the government.

Earlier, Johnson’s spokesman repeatedly refused to comment when asked about Andrew Sabisky, whose appointment drew widespread criticism after the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported statements made in his name online in 2014 and 2016.

In addition to posts on contraception, Sabisky also said data showed the U.S. black population had lower IQ than white people, and, in a 2016 interview with digital publication Schools Week, discussed the benefits of genetic selection.

Media reported Sabisky was hired following an unusual appeal earlier this year from Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings for “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” to help bring new ideas to Britain’s government.

His resignation is a blow to that effort, which had attracted criticism from those who said Cummings was sidestepping normal government recruitment processes.

“The media hysteria about my old stuff online is mad but I wanted to help (the government) not be a distraction,” Sabisky said on Twitter.

“Accordingly I’ve decided to resign as a contractor … I signed up to do real work, not be in the middle of a giant character assassination: if I can’t do the work properly there’s no point.”

Sabisky, who has referred to himself as a “super forecaster,” said he hoped Johnson’s office hired more people with “good geopolitical forecasting track records” and that the “media learn to stop selective quoting.”

Both the opposition Labour Party and at least two of Johnson’s own Conservatives had called for him to be fired.

“Andrew Sabisky’s presence in No.10 is a poor reflection on the government and there is no way to defend it. He needs to go. ‘Weirdos’ and ‘misfits’ are all very well, but please can they not gratuitously cause offense,” Conservative lawmaker William Wragg wrote on Twitter before Sabisky resigned.

Online posts

An account in Sabisky’s name made the comments about black IQ in a reply to a 2014 blog post written by an American professor discussing education disabilities in the United States.

In 2016, replying to a blog post written by Cummings, an account in Sabisky’s name said:

“One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty. Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue.”

Johnson’s spokesman earlier repeatedly refused to comment on whether Johnson shared Sabisky’s views, saying only that the prime minister’s own views were well known. He would not confirm the nature of Sabisky’s role.
 

…

From: MeNeedIt