Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has announced a ceasefire plan for government troops in the East of the country. The move comes after a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin which allegedly discussed a ceasefire.

As part of the proposed plan, Poroshenko is calling for all pro-federalization forces in the region to lay down their arms.

"The plan will begin with my order for a unilateral cease-fire," he said, while refraining from mentioning when he would give the order. Poroshenko, who was elected president in a May 25 vote boycotted by many voters in eastern Ukraine, stressed that all parties involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine must adhere to the plan, Interfax news agency reported.

The president said that Ukraine would also close its border with Russia, as the Kiev government claims that pro-federalization forces are being sent reinforcements from neighboring Russia.

"There is a big risk that criminals may take advantage of the ceasefire," Poroshenko said. He added that an amnesty would be offered to those who had not committed crimes against Ukraine during the ongoing conflict in the east of the country, while so-called "mercenaries" will be given the chance to leave the country.

Poroshenko's government believes that most of the violence in eastern Ukraine has been caused by Russian mercenaries, something which Moscow categorically denies. The Russian government has condemned the deployment of Kiev's punitive "anti-terrorist" operation in eastern Ukraine and urged the Ukrainian government to withdraw their troops on a number of occasions.

U.S. companies are reaping big benefits from the Iraqi government's battle with ISIS militias. Three sales, including some big-ticket items, announced last month will put nearly $1 billion in the pockets of American defense contractors if Congress approves the sales.

• Beechcraft Defense Co. and eight other contractors are selling 24 AT-6C Texan II aircraft, plus spares and other equipment to Iraq. That deal is worth about $790 million. The plane is used for "light attack and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance."
• AM General has a deal to send 200 of its venerable Humvees to help guard oil installations. The contract, which includes spares and equipment such as radios and machine gun mounts, is worth $101 million.
• Raytheon has a $90-million deal for seven aerostats along with 14 Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) Tower systems to be used for command and control by the Iraqi military.

These are just the latest in a string of sales of military equipment to the Iraqi government. Others have included Stinger missiles, C-130J cargo planes, drones and patrol boats.

Since 2005, the U.S. government has provided more than $14 billion in military hardware, services and training to Iraq, according to Global Post. The Iraqi government is now requesting more equipment to battle the Sunni militias, which have taken over large swaths of the country, and American contractors stand to make even more money as the fighting progresses.

Moscow expects explanations from Kiev over the intention to close the state border with Russia. Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov stated this after a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Uladzimir Makei on Monday.

"As to statements of Kiev authorities' representatives about the intention to completely close the border with Russia, I do not quite understand what case in hand is this and to what it is referred to," the minister said. "If they are going to block all channels of free movement of our citizens including labor migrants, we would like to specifically understand what exactly they mean to do."

Lavrov noted that Kiev stated about a unilateral closure of state border. "That is why it is difficult for us to comment it," the Russian top diplomat said. "We need to find out what is meant."

Sergei Lavrov also said there was nothing to talk about with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia.

If there's one person who has absolutely zero business criticizing anyone for how they're running the country, it's Dick Cheney.

This should be obvious to pretty everyone by now, but apparently the Wall Street Journal didn't get the message. Today, the paper published an editorial by Cheney and his daughter Liz in which the former Vice President blasts the "collapsing Obama doctrine" of foreign policy."

Taking the rapid advance of ISIS radicals through northern Iraq as his cue, Cheney accuses President Obama of "emboldening" America's enemies. He writes:

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is 'ending' the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality...America's enemies are not 'decimated.' They are emboldened and on the march.

As the White House weighs the possibility of taking military action in war-torn Iraq, WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning is warning that it's imperative that the American media demands unfettered access to any operations overseas.

Manning, 26, issued that call for action in an editorial published in the New York Times this weekend authored from the jail cell in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where she is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking a trove of sensitive files to the anti-secrecy site. Before being arrested and charged with dozens of crimes related to the unauthorized disclosure of those documents, Manning was deployed outside of Baghdad and for months worked as an intelligence analyst for the United States Army.

According to Manning, her experience during the Iraq War has left her believing the Pentagon has a big problem with providing access to journalists, especially those who may portray America's military actions in a way that Defense Department wouldn't particularly like.

The defeat of Eric Cantor - GOP House majority leader and a leading light of the party's neoconservative-corporatist wing - has the pundits in an uproar. They are flummoxed: what could have led to one of the biggest upsets in American political history? After all, a party majority leader hasn't been defeated - let alone in a primary! - since 1877. And who is this guy, Dave Brat, anyway - who raised around $200,000 total, but only spent half of it, while Cantor - the Chamber of Commerce's best friend - raised and spent millions?

They settled on a neat little narrative early on: the election was all about immigration, they told us, and Brat is a "Tea Party" politician with "nativist" tendencies. That explanation, however, soon fell apart when it was revealed that the Tea Party groups had done exactly nothing to help Brat: indeed the leader of Tea Party Patriots, one of the biggest national groups, wouldn't even take his phone calls.

Furthermore, it turned out Brat had campaigned not only or even primarily on the immigration issue - which only came up in the last few days of the campaign - but on what he called "crony capitalism," hitting Cantor over and over again on his subservience to corporate interests. And it wasn't the typical left-wing egalitarian demagogy that condemns any successful business for not putting "people before profits," as the old Communist Party USA slogan puts it. Brat was steamed that businessmen were going to Washington asking for special favors - subsidies - in order to boost (or maintain) their profit margins, and Cantor was a major cog in their political machine.

Those who are guilty of committing military crimes in eastern Ukraine will be punished even if they hide "at the bottom of the ocean," Investigative Committee head Sergei Bastrykin said on Wednesday.

In late May, Russia's Investigative Committee opened a criminal case on the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare in the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, where independence supporters have been fighting the Ukrainian armed forces for over a month. An investigation has been initiated against unidentified servicemen from Ukraine's National Guard and the Right Sector.

In late May, the Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested four members of the Right Sector ultra-nationalist group who were plotting attacks in Simferopol, Yalta and Sevastopol. Earlier, Russian investigators initiated a terrorism case against Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh.

White man speaking 'fluent British English' led al-Shabaab attack in Kenya that left 60 dead, witnesses claim

A white man speaking "fluent British English" led suspected al-Shabaab commandos who ransacked towns in northern Kenya leaving 60 people dead, witnesses have said.

Several people in Mpeketoni, which was attacked by as many as 40 Islamist gunmen on Sunday, told The Telegraph that the gang's leader was pale-skinned and spoke English.

One of the witnesses is a primary schoolteacher who speaks good English, unlike many people in the remote corner of Kenya near the Lamu archipelago that earlier this week became the country's latest terror target.

"I saw a white man who was speaking in fluent British English commanding the rest of the attackers," said Mary Gachoki, who lives in Mpeketoni.

Sergey Glazyev, the economic aide of Vladimir Putin, published an article outlining a plan for "undermining the economic strength of the US" in order to force Washington to stop the civil war in Ukraine. Glazyev believes that the only way of making the US give up its plans on starting a new cold war is to crash the dollar system.

In his article, published by Argumenty Nedeli, Putin's economic aide and the mastermind behind the Eurasian Economic Union, argues that Washington is trying to provoke a Russian military intervention in Ukraine, using the junta in Kiev as bait. If fulfilled, the plan will give Washington a number of important benefits. Firstly, it will allow the US to introduce new sanctions against Russia, writing off Moscow's portfolio of US Treasury bills. More important is that a new wave of sanctions will create a situation in which Russian companies won't be able to service their debts to European banks.

When a fire is raging, firefighters are called - not the arsonist who started it, especially if they return to the scene of the crime dragging a barrel of gasoline behind them. Yet, this is precisely what the US proposes - that they - the geopolitical arsonists - be allowed to return to Iraq to extinguish the threat of heavily armed sectarian militants streaming from NATO territory in Turkey and edging ever closer to Baghdad.

ISIS: Made in USA

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a creation of the United States and its Persian Gulf allies, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and recently added to the list, Kuwait. The Daily Beast in an article titled, "America's Allies Are Funding ISIS," states:The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad, was funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three U.S. allies that have dual agendas in the war on terror.