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Moscow (CNSNews.com) – Playing both sides of one of the Mideast’s most bitter rivalries, President Vladimir Putin offered this week to supply Saudi Arabia with Russia’s most advanced air defense systems following a drone attack on Saudi oil infrastructure which the U.S. is blaming on Iran.

Putin was in Ankara on Monday for Syria-focused talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. During a joint press conference, Putin was asked about the September 14 drone strike.

He responded by suggesting that Saudi Arabia should purchase Russian S-300 or S-400 air defense systems – as the governments of the two men he sat alongside have done.

“In order to protect them and the country, we are ready to provide the necessary assistance to Saudi Arabia,” he said through a translator. “All the political leaders of Saudi Arabia have to do is take a wise decision, as Iran did by buying the S-300 missile system, and as President Erdogan did when he bought Russia’s latest S-400 Triumph anti-aircraft system.”

“They would offer reliable protection for any Saudi infrastructure facilities,” Putin added.

Apparently enjoying the moment, Rouhani asked with a laugh, “So do they need to buy the S-300 or the S-400?”

“It’s up to them to decide,” Putin replied.

Although lighthearted in tone, the comments raised eyebrows, as Russia is viewed as an ally of Iran, yet the U.S. administration is accusing Iran of being behind the Saudi drone attack – a charge Tehran denies. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have claimed responsibility for the incident.

Putin was also likely taking a veiled dig at the U.S., which has long supplied Saudi Arabia with Patriot and other missile defense systems.

The S-400 is a surface-to air-missile system capable of targeting aircraft, drones, and missiles within a 400 kilometer (250 mile) range and at an altitude of up to 30 kilometers (18 miles). The U.S. geopolitical intelligence firm Stratfor recently described it as “one of the best all-around” missile defense systems.

Over the past several years, Moscow has supplied the system to U.S. adversaries and allies alike, with recent customers including China, Turkey, and India. Russia also operates its own S-400 systems in Syria, in support of the Assad regime.

Tehran notably does not have the S-400, although Russia in 2016 controversially provided Iran with its predecessor, the S-300. Bloomberg reported last May that Russia turned down an Iranian request for S-400s over concerns the move could further destabilize the region. Russia denied the report, stating it has never received a request from Iran for S-400s.

While Putin sales pitch to Saudi Arabia was visibly lighthearted, the Kremlin’s interest in selling Riyadh the S-400 is serious. The two governments have been discussing a possible S-400 purchase for years.

When King Salman’s visited Moscow in October 2017 the two countries were said to have reached a deal on the purchase, but nearly two years later they have yet to sign a formal contract.

Last February, Russian state news agency TASS reported that Russia and Saudi Arabia were “holding additional consultations” about a potential S-400 contract.

Putin’s remarks in Ankara come at time when Moscow is striving to maintain friendly ties with both Riyadh and Tehran, bitter regional rivals.

Although Russia has worked closely with Iran to prop up the Assad regime and has condemned the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, it has also strengthened economic ties with Saudi Arabia.

Over the past four years, Saudi Arabia has invested billions of dollars in Russia, which is eager to attract non-Western sources of foreign investment amid tense relations with the West.

Saudi Arabia announced in 2015 that it would invest $10 billion on projects in Russia. Last October Riyadh provided $500 million to a joint Russia-China investment fund and $5 billion to a Russian LNG project in the Arctic.

Since 2016 Russia and Saudi Arabia have also coordinated their energy production to keep oil prices high. In June, the two countries reached a deal to extend a cut in oil production for another nine months.

Tehran was one of the most vocal critics of Moscow and Riyadh’s oil agreement. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh expressed concern the deal-making would undermine OPEC, even warning that the oil production group “might die” if the two countries continued to strengthen their leverage over global energy production.

(CNSNews.com) – The Justice Department inspector general on Tuesday released an investigative summary involving “misconduct” by an “FBI Special Agent in Charge” for failing to report an “intimate relationship with a subordinate and for taking actions that lacked impartiality, demonstrated favoritism toward the subordinate, and contributed to the decline in staff morale.”

The summary notes that the “SAC retired during the course of the investigation.”

The special agent is not named in the one-page summary, but the situation sounds familiar.

However, former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, who had an extra-marital affair with FBI attorney Lisa Page and demonstrated a lack of impartiality in his text messages to her, did not “retire” from the FBI. He was fired, and he later sued the FBI for what he described as a politically motivated termination.

So the investigative summary released on Tuesday apparently involves another Special Agent involved in an “intimate relationship with a subordinate.”

According to the one-page summary:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) initiated an investigation of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge (SAC), now retired, based on allegations that the SAC committed misconduct by engaging in an intimate relationship with a subordinate and by taking various actions that lacked impartiality and favored the subordinate.

The SAC admitted to the OIG to having engaged in an intimate relationship with the subordinate when the SAC was supervising the subordinate. However, the SAC denied that any actions involving the subordinate lacked impartiality or demonstrated favoritism.

The OIG found that the SAC committed misconduct because the SAC failed to report the relationship to appropriate personnel as required by FBI policy. The OIG also found that several of the SAC’s actions involving the subordinate, including participating in the awards process resulting in the subordinate receiving a performance award, lacked impartiality, demonstrated favoritism, and created an appearance of bias toward the subordinate.

We further found that the SAC’s relationship with the subordinate was a contributing factor in the decline in morale among some staff.

The SAC retired during the course of the OIG investigation.

The OIG has completed its investigation and provided its report to the FBI.

The FBI ethics and policy guide, section 4.7.7.2, governs “inappropriate superior-subordinate inter-personal relationships.”

It says the superior person “has the greater…responsibility to avoid creating appearances of preferential treatment.”

However, the guide does not specifically address adulterous affairs, as the former FBI counterintelligence chief told Congress last year.

“There is no FBI policy that prohibits somebody from having an affair,” FBI Assistant Director E.W. “Bill” Priestap told House Judiciary and Oversight Committee investigators on June 5, 2018. “There’s no FBI policy that says you can’t have an affair, and if you do, you’re going to be punished.”

 

While on “The View” Friday, Sept. 13, 2019, reality TV star Kim Karashian West discussed her husband Kanye West’s “Sunday Service,” telling the ladies on set about Kanye’s pop-up services and noting that he has “had an amazing evolution of being born again and being saved by Christ.”

“Kanye started this, I think just to heal himself and made it—it was a really personal thing, and it was just friends and family,” stated Kim Kardashian West on “The View.” “And he has had an amazing evolution of being born again and being saved by Christ.”

According to The Christian Post, “West has made a dramatic change after starting up his very own church gatherings, Sunday Service and it appears his upcoming album will reflect his gospel gatherings.”

Kanye West’s upcoming album is reportedly titled “Jesus Is King.” “The tracklist for the album is completely laced with references to Jesus, God, or the Bible,” reported The Christian Post. “‘Baptized,’ ‘Sweet Jesus,’ ‘Garden,’ ‘Selah’ and ‘Water’ are some of the tracks, to name a few. West and his Sunday Service choir premiered ‘Water’ during a Sunday Service session at Coachella Easter weekend.”

The Christian Post also noted, “West began Sunday Service meetings that his wife described as a ‘spiritual Christian experience’ this year. As of now, the events happen every Sunday and include gospel music, some prayer and preaching.”

Kim Kardashian West, on “The View,” said, “You know, people always ask, ‘What are you worshipping, and what is this?’ It is a Christian service, like a musical ministry. It is – you know, they talk about Jesus and God and—”

Host Sunny Hostin interjected, asking, “Is there a minister there?”

Kim responded, “Sometimes. So, if he goes to a different church, where he has, they’ve shown up and done these surprise little pop-up Sunday Services at other little churches, so whatever pastor speaks there. And sometimes, at the one in Calabasas, he’ll have friends that are pastors that are in town get up and speak, but for the most part, it’s just a musical ministry. It doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t have like his 501(c)3 yet to make it an official church, but it is for God. And it’s a Christian church.

“I think that was— Sometimes people are like, ‘Well, what is this, and what are they doing?’ But it started off healing for him, and now it’s become something that he just really wants to share for everybody else,” stated Kim Kardashian West.

“The nonbinary pronoun ‘they’ has been added to the dictionary,” Merriam-Webster announced Tuesday.

The dictionary touted the news in a post on Twitter linking to its definitions of the word “they,” which now include:

“—used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary (see nonbinary sense c)”

The dictionary’s gender-usage definition of “nonbinary” is:

“c : relating to or being a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that is neither entirely male nor entirely female”

Merriam-Webster provides the following example of “they” used to refer to a singular (nonbinary) person:

“I knew certain things about … the person I was interviewing.… They had adopted their gender-neutral name a few years ago, when they began to consciously identify as nonbinary — that is, neither male nor female. They were in their late 20s, working as an event planner, applying to graduate school.”

“What great news!” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) declared in a Twitter post giving a “Shout out to all our non-binary fam in the world, and the activists who’ve worked hard to let us celebrate the full spectrum of humanity.”

 

Despite an independent examiner’s finding that she was merely exercising “free speech about a matter of public concern,” a Texas teacher has been fired for asking President Donald Trump to save her school from being overrun by illegal aliens.

In May, Carter-Riverside High School English teacher Georgia Clark posted a series of tweets asking President Trump for help because her school had been “taken over” by illegal alien students – including some drug dealers – local station WFAA reports:

“In a series of tweets from May that have since been deleted, Clark called on President Trump to “remove the illegals from Fort Worth.”

…

“@realdonaldtrump I do not know what do. Anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth would be greatly appreciated”

…

“Mr. President, Fort Worth Independent School District [ISD] is loaded with illegal students from Mexico. Carter-Riverside High School has been taken over by them. Drug dealers are on our campus and nothing was done to them when the drug dogs found the evidence.”

The tweets were deleted soon after posting, but not before inciting the fury which led the Fort Worth ISD board to vote to terminate Clark’s employment.

An ensuing review by an independent examiner found that Clark had simply been practicing free speech, that her firing was warranted, and that she be reinstated, WFAA reports:

“Before Labor Day, an independent examiner working on behalf of the Texas Education Agency put out a 76-page report saying that Clark’s termination, ‘is not justified, is not supported by the evidence, should not be approved and should not be upheld and that Georgia Clark’s appeal of the proposed termination be granted and that FWISD decline to terminate the employment of Georgia Clark.’

…

“The examiner found that Clark’s tweets were, ‘a private citizen’s free speech about a matter of public concern.’”

Nonetheless, on Tuesday, the Fort Worth ISD board voted unanimously to uphold Clark’s dismissal.

During the height of the controversy, Clark told WFAA that she had no regrets that she issued her plea to President Trump because she felt she was doing God’s work:

“No, I don’t. Because, frankly, God was saying you need to do this now.”