Airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen are responsible for the majority of civilians killed in the country's ongoing conflict, the UN has found, while calling for an international investigation into the coalition's violations there.

"OHCHR has documented incidents in which air strikes by the coalition forces had an impact on localities with a high concentration of civilians, including markets and residential areas, as well as on events such as wedding ceremonies, frequently incurring high casualties and causing substantive infrastructural damage," the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a report.

"The cases monitored by the Office indicate that air strikes were the single largest cause of casualties," the report published on Thursday states. "The prolonged duration of the conflict has strongly heightened the disastrous risk of a systemic collapse of Yemen."

The Kremlin website has confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation about Ukraine with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday 23rd August 2016.

"President of Russia Vladimir Putin updated his colleagues on the crude provocation by Ukraine, which sent a group of subversives in early August to stage terrorist attacks in Russia. Kiev's use of such forceful measures is directly harming the Minsk process and
cooperation within the Normandy format."

Labour leadership candidate Owen Smith has vowed to stop the government triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the official process to bring Britain out of the EU, unless a second referendum is held on the final Brexit deal.

The leadership challenger said on Wednesday the party wants to stay in the EU and that he will hold a second referendum if he becomes prime minister.

Smith's comments have sparked a backlash among Brexiteers, who described it as a snub to the 35 percent of Labour members who opted to leave the EU.

Britain voted to leave the EU by 52 percent to 48 percent on June 23 after a heated referendum campaign which exposed sharp divisions throughout the country.

France could be responsible for the 2013 Ghouta chemical weapons attack along with several other countries with similar motives and capabilities, former envoy to the UN James Paul told Sputnik.

"Many hawkish parties keen for a Syrian intervention might have seen a black operation using such weapons as a logical move," Paul said on Wednesday. "France could have been one such party, Britain another, the United States a third. But the list is long."

Representative of the Syrian Republic to the UN, Bashar al-Jaafery told Sputnik in an exclusive interview this week that there was evidence suggesting the involvement of France in the these attacks.

Paul cautioned that there were other suspects with motives to try and embroil the United States in a full-scale war with Syria.

The US has agreed to help Turkey capture the border city of Jarablus in Syria to appease Ankara, which was concerned it would fall to Kurdish fighters. US warplanes are carrying out airstrikes in support of the operation, a Pentagon official said. On Wednesday, Turkey sent special forces and tanks to seize the border city of Jarablus in northwestern Syria from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), which has been in control of it since 2013.

Turkish artillery has been pounding targets in Syria for two days and Turkish warplanes are providing aerial support for the troops on the ground in their first foray into Syrian airspace since November of last year, when a Turkish fighter jet shot down a Russian bomber near the Syrian-Turkish border.

US drones based at Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey are assisting the operation by carrying out surveillance missions over the combat zone, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing US officials. American military advisers on the Turkish side of the border are reportedly helping to plan the offensive. "We are syncing up with the Turks," a senior US official told the WSJ. "We have full visibility on what they are doing." American A-10 'Warthog' ground attack aircraft and F-16 figher jets are carrying out airstrikes in support of the Turkish ground operation, a Pentagon official told Reuters.

The coordinated attack is meant to capture Jarablus and hand it over to Turkish-backed Syrian rebels before Syrian Kurdish forces can take it, the report said. The Kurds recently took the city Manbij south of Jarablus and have been pushing north.

The ruling of the Court of Arbitration for Sport on the Russian Paralympic team ban is cynical and immoral, President Vladimir Putin has said, adding that Russia will not accept accusations of doping without proof.

Speaking to the Russian Olympic team - which has recently returned from the Rio 2016 Games - Putin congratulated the athletes on their performance. With Russia's track and field team banned from this summer's Olympics, the nation still finished fourth in the medal standings, behind the US, Great Britain and China. The country won 19 gold, 18 silver and 19 bronze medals.

"I want to thank all of you [the Olympic team] for passing a severe test with dignity. You have shown the highest skill, displayed endurance, and confirmed the strong position of Russia in the world of sport," Putin said.

The president added that Russia will hold a competition similar to the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games for the athletes who have been banned. "I'd like to address our Paralympic team: we will support you and will hold a special competition where you will show your skills," Putin said. The prizes and compensation will be equivalent to those at the Rio Paralympic Games, he said.

Some 2,000 members of the American Postal Workers Union have gathered in Miami where they are officially opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Along with Florida Representative Alan Grayson, they hope to send a message to presidential candidates. The 200,000-member strong American Postal Workers Union (APWU) hopes to use its sway to deter Congress from considering the deal during the lame duck period between November's presidential elections and President Obama's last day in office in January.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has become a hotly contested issue in the 2016 campaign. While both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have both denounced the proposal, President Barack Obama has yet to abandon the unpopular ship. The members of the postal workers union are calling on Hillary Clinton, the APWU's endorsed candidate, to discourage Congress and the Senate from passing the bill during the lame duck session.

APWU President Mark Diamondstein explained the workers' concerns, telling RT "The people of this country are sick of these trade deals that enrich multinational companies at the expense of workers here and everywhere else... We are going to demand that this TPP and trade deals like it will be killed." TPP would open US borders to products from 12 other countries without trade or tax barriers. However, for members of the APWU, whose annual pay scale starts at roughly $29,000, opening trade to this many nations could be disastrous.

Florida Congressman Alan Grayson explained the importance of blocking the TPP for average Americans, saying "I'm telling you right now if this goes through, it's curtains for the middle class of America. We will never, ever, ever be able to recover from this."

Pyongyang has dubbed its recent missile test the "greatest success and victory" and threatened the US "with nuclear hammers of justice," state media reports, adding that the North has all the resources necessary to battle US "nuclear hegemony."

"A test-fire of strategic submarine-launched ballistic missile was successfully conducted under the guidance of" North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the statement from KCNA news agency said.

Kim "appreciated the test-fire as the greatest success and victory.... The SLBM [Submarine-launched ballistic missile] test-fire was successfully carried out without any adverse impact on neighboring countries."

The North Korean state news agency added that the leader was "watching the trajectory of the ballistic missile," which was given the name Pukguksong.

"The US vicious nuclear threat and blackmail against the DPRK only resulted in bolstering up its nuclear attack capability hour by hour and the US mainland and the operational theatre in the Pacific are now within the striking range of the KPA, no matter how hard the US tries to deny it," the agency quoted Kim as saying.

Once again, Pyongyang threatened its rivals, in particular the "US imperialists" and the "South Korean puppet group," which are currently staging a joint military exercise "aiming at a preemptive nuclear strike at the DPRK with huge nuclear strategic assets involved," according to the article.

So Turkish President, a.k.a. Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan is about to make a high-profile visit to Tehran - the date has not yet been set - to essentially kick start the ATM (Ankara-Tehran-Moscow) coalition in Syria.

Anyone as much as hinting at such a massive geopolitical tectonic shift a few weeks ago would be branded a madman. So how did the impossible happen?

A major strategic game-changer- Russia using an airfield in Iran to send bombers against jihadis in Syria - had already taken place, with its aftermath spectacularly misreported by the usual, clueless US corporate media suspects.

Then, there's what Turkey's Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, said last Saturday in Istanbul: "The most important priority for us is to stop the bloodshed [in Syria] as soon as possible." The rest are irrelevant "details."

Yildirim added Ankara now agrees with Moscow that Bashar al-Assad "could" - and that's the operative word - stay in power during a political transition (although that's still highly debatable). Ankara's drive to normalize relations with Moscow had an 'important share' in this 'policy shift'.

The 'policy shift' is a direct consequence of the failed military coup in Turkey. Russian cyber-surveillance aces - in action 24/7 after the downing of the Su-24 last November - reportedly informed Turkish intelligence a few hours before the fact. NATO, as the record shows, was mum.

Even minimalist optics suggests 'Sultan' Erdogan was extremely upset that Washington was not exactly displeased with the coup. He knows how vast swathes of the Beltway despise him - blaming him for not being serious in the fight against ISIS and for bombing the YPG Kurds - Pentagon allies - in Syria. The record does show Erdogan has mostly ignored ISIS - allowing non-stop free border crossing for ISIS goons as well as letting Turkish business interests (if not his own family) profit from ISIS' stolen Syrian oil.

Compared to Washington's attitude Moscow, on the other hand, warning Erdogan about serious, concrete facts on the ground in the nick of time. And for Erdogan, that was highly personal; the putschists reportedly sent a commando to kill him when he was still in Marmaris.

Fast forward to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif's surprise visit two weeks ago to Ankara. Zarif and his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu did discuss serious options by which the budding ATM coalition could come up with a viable exit strategy in Syria. One week later Cavusoglu went to Tehran and talked again to Zarif for five hours.

It's an uphill battle - but doable. Tehran knows very well IRGC officers as well as Hezbollah, Iraqi and Afghan fighters were killed in the Syrian war theater, and that shall not be in vain. Ankara for its part knows it cannot afford to remain forever trapped in an ideological dead end.

A flurry of Iranian statements over the last few days have all but confirmed the point made in an article I wrote for The Duran.

The Russian deployment to Shahid Nojeh base near Hamadan was first and foremost intended to be a political statement of support by Russia for Iran. This is what I said in my article which I wrote on 16th August 2016:

"This is primarily a political not a military act. TU-22M3s have the range to strike anywhere in Syria from their bases in southern Russia and have repeatedly shown their capacity to do so. There is no operational reason for them to fly to Syria from Hamadan. That Russia has chosen to fly its TU-22M3s out of Hamadan is therefore a political statement by Russia that Russia and Iran are military allies in the joint fight against Islamist terrorism in Syria."