A recent UN Human Rights Council report has exposed the US, UK, and France's role in the destruction of Yemen, prompting conversations about the accountability of those responsible for the carnage.

Renowned activist, press freedom advocate, and Nobel Laureate Tawakul Karman once told the Yemen Times that "a day will come when all human rights violators pay for what they did to Yemen." This statement was made years before the US, UK, and France enabled a Saudi-led coalition to ravage Yemen's entire civilian population through a host of criminal actions.

Thanks to a UN report released on Tuesday this week, we may be closer to seeing some accountability for the criminal actions of all human rights violators who have used the people of Yemen in a cruel, geopolitical chess game to further their own agenda. But will Western governments be held accountable, or is this yet another case of wishful thinking?

Own a rifle? Got a scope to go with it? The U.S. government might soon know who you are, where you live and how to reach you.

That's because the government wants Apple and Google to hand over names, phone numbers and other identifying data of at least 10,000 users of a single gun scope app, Forbes has discovered. It's an unprecedented move: Never before has a case been disclosed in which American investigators demanded personal data of users of a single app from Apple and Google. And never has an order been made public where the feds have asked the Silicon Valley giants for info on so many thousands of people in one go.

According to an application for a court order filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on September 5, investigators want information on users of Obsidian 4, a tool used to control rifle scopes made by night-vision specialist American Technologies Network Corp. The app allows gun owners to get a live stream, take video and calibrate their gun scope from an Android or iPhone device. According to the Google Play page for Obsidian 4, it has more than 10,000 downloads. Apple doesn't provide download numbers, so it's unclear how many iPhone owners could be swept up in this latest government data grab.

Now that James Comey's corruption of the FBI has been exposed, the country awaits the next report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz. This one will deal with government misrepresentations to the special court that grants secret surveillance warrants on foreign agents in the United States.

To launch a counter-intelligence investigation on an American citizen, like Carter Page, the Department of Justice applies to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. All warrants require accuracy and integrity, but those to the FISA court should meet an even-higher standard. Why? Because, unlike criminal warrants, FISA warrants remain hidden. The goal is to "spy on spies," not haul them into court, so the application will remain secret, never challenged by a defense attorney at trial.

That's why the DoJ and FBI must certify, in writing, that the FISA application is truthful and complete and that the evidence it presents has been thoroughly vetted by the bureau. That's what the Obama administration's top law-enforcement officials did when they wanted to spy on Carter Page. It is becoming increasingly clear they were lying.

The United States' B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb may face an 18 month delay during production, with the W88 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead facing a shorter delay, a top National Nuclear Security Administration official confirmed Wednesday.

The B61-12 life-extension program consolidates and replaces the older B61-3, -4, -7 and -10 variants, while the W88 Alteration 370 is meant to replace the arming, fuzing and firing subsystem for the W88 warhead for the Trident II sub-launched ballistic missile. The two are among five major modernization programs underway at the agency.

Both had been due for production in 2020, but neither will have their first production units delivered on time, according to Charles Verdon, the National Nuclear Security Administration's deputy administrator for defense programs. NNSA is working with the Defense Department to minimize the delays, but Congress has been informed both will be ready "roughly around the same time," Verdon said at the at the 2019 Defense News Conference.

The issue stems from off-the-shelf parts used in both weapons. Both systems are planned to work for 20-30 years, and heavy stress testing of the parts raised questions for NNSA officials about whether the parts would survive for three decades. Rather than risk the pieces failing years in the future, officials decided to seek replacements now and delay moving forward with the program.

Vital questions about perhaps the worst alleged presidential scandal in US history remain unanswered.

It must again be emphasized: It is hard, if not impossible, to think of a more toxic allegation in American presidential history than the one leveled against candidate, and then president, Donald Trump, that he "colluded" with the Kremlin in order to win the 2016 presidential election, and, still more, that Vladimir Putin's regime, "America's No. 1 threat," had compromising material on Trump that made him its "puppet." Or a more fraudulent accusation.

Even leaving aside the misperception that Russia is the primary threat to the US in world affairs, no aspect of this allegation has turned out to be true, as should have been evident from the outset. Major aspects of the now infamous Steele Dossier, on which much of the allegation was based, were themselves not merely "unverified" but plainly implausible.

Was it plausible, for example, that Trump, a longtime owner and operator of international hotels, would commit an indiscreet act in a Moscow hotel that he did not own or control? Or that, as Steele also claimed, high-level Kremlin sources had fed him damning anti-Trump information even though their vigilant boss, Putin, wanted Trump to win the election? Nonetheless, the American mainstream media and other important elements of the US political establishment relied on Steele's allegations for nearly three years, even heroizing him, and some still do, explicitly or implicitly.

Not surprisingly, former special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of "collusion" between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. No credible evidence has been produced that Russia's "interference" affected the result of the 2016 presidential election in any significant way. Nor was Russian "meddling" in the election anything akin to a "digital Pearl Harbor," as widely asserted, and it was certainly far less and less intrusive than President Bill Clinton's political and financial "interference" undertaken to assure the reelection of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996.

Nonetheless, Russiagate's core allegation persists, like a legend, in US political life, in media commentary, in financial solicitations by some Democratic candidates for Congress, and, as is clear from my own discussions, in the minds of otherwise well-informed people.

The only way to dispel, to excoriate, such a legend is to learn and expose how it began, by whom, when, and why.

News on Syria has turned humdrum, with a few exceptions, at least for the Western media. Other, more important, news is claiming the attention of Fox and CNN. But let me cite one piece of news in recent weeks that should be getting more mainstream attention — the very reason it is not.

After months of hitting its head against the wall, the Syrian Arabs Army's Idlib offensive has finally started yielding tangible results. A classic military advance, a pincer movement from both the left and right, has taken the major rebel stronghold of Khan Shaykhun.

This serves as both a strategic and a propaganda victory, as this town was the site of the infamous so-called poison gas attack back in 2017. It also serves to question the legitimacy and efficacy of NATO and one of its key members.

The capture of the town resulted in all rebels south of the town being squeezed into a pocket. Many escaped at the last moment, but one group, manning the Turkish observation post at Murak, steadfastly refused to leave or surrender to Syrian forces. This was expected, as the Turkish government has said many times that even if the worst came to the worst, its troops would never leave their posts.

US Special Envoy for the Middle East Jason Greenblatt, one of the key figures behind the so-called Trump 'Deal of the Century' plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, announced his resignation on Thursday. Avi Berkowitz, a 30-year-old attorney and political advisor, is expected to replace him.

Greenblatt, 53, who has worked on the peace plan since late 2017 alongside Trump advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, said he would resign after the plan is made public, which US officials have said wouldn't happen before the Israeli legislative elections, set for later this month.

Earlier, Benny Gantz, leader of Israel's largest opposition party, accused the prime minister of "trying to delegitimise" the democratic process by preparing his supporters not to accept the results of the upcoming election if the Likud Party loses.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused political opponents opposed to an initiative to place cameras in polling stations of trying "to steal the election."

"It is no coincidence that Benny Gantz and [Blue and White's Yair] Lapid oppose cameras, because they want the election to be stolen," Netanyahu said, speaking to reporters on Friday in London, his remarks quoted by The Times of Israel.

"Placing cameras prevents stolen elections," Netanyahu insisted, According to the prime minister, given the widespread prevalence of surveillance cameras in other areas of Israeli society, such as kindergartens, it was curious that "all of a sudden the one place where it is prevented is in the voting hall."

Planes with former detainees landed in Moscow and Kiev, concluding the long-awaited prisoner swap. The action was hailed as the first step in mending the 'dead-end' relations between the neighbors and was praised internationally.

Despite many delays and setbacks, the swap finally happened on Saturday. The government plane carrying the released Russians landed in Moscow this afternoon. The jet with the freed Ukrainians earlier touched down in Kiev.

The long-awaited prisoner exchange "has been completed," Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova confirmed. She hailed the event as "a historical mass-scale humanitarian action," confirming the swap was "35-for-35."

It followed months of painstaking behind-the-scenes negotiations at various levels. At one point, even the presidents of the two nations were involved, as Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the matter with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky over the phone.

There were some "provocations" and other challenges throughout the talks, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova said. But in the end, "the political will and meticulous work delivers results."

Attorney General William Barr is calling for an end to nationwide injunctions, which have become recurrent obstacles in the way of President Trump's agenda.

With the frequency of judges' orders blocking the enforcement of federal laws and policies on the rise, Barr's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal escalates the Justice Department's fight to check this facet of the judicial branch's power.

Nationwide injunctions, he wrote, "create an unfair, one-way system in which the democratically accountable government must fend off case after case to put its policy into effect, while those challenging the policy need only find a single sympathetic judge."

Barr alluded to the framers of the Constitution, asserting they never intended the courts to "act as a 'council of revision' with sweeping authority to reach beyond concrete controversies and rule on the legality of actions taken by the political branches."