Both Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the self-proclaimed people's republics in the country's southeast have agreed to prolong the ceasefire until the evening of June 30.

CEASEFIRE

Poroshenko agreed to prolong the ceasefire until 10 p.m. local time on Monday, according to the presidential website.

Earlier on Friday, the self-proclaimed prime minister of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), Aleksandr Boroday, also promised to observe a ceasefire until June 30.

However, Boroday said he doubts Kiev will fulfill its promise. "We hope that the ceasefire will be more than [Kiev's] blabbing," he said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.

The UN welcomes the extension of the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine and calls for an end to the violence in the region, the UN's press service quoted Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as saying. Ban urged all parties to abide by their promises.

Four hundred Ukrainian soldiers went over to the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), Sergey Kavtaradze, special representative of the DNR's PM, said.

"Yesterday, a military formation that amounted to 400 soldiers surrendered to 15 soldiers of the militia. The skirmish lasted for seven hours. No militia's soldiers were killed," Sergey Kavtaradze said.

A Mexican law enforcement helicopter crossed into Arizona and fired two shots near U.S. border agents in what Mexican authorities later acknowledged was a mistake, a U.S. law enforcement official said Friday.

No one was hurt in the incident, which happened at about 6 a.m. local time Thursday about 100 yards into U.S. territory as Mexican police were conducting an anti-drug operation, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Information about who authorities aboard the helicopter were targeting wasn't immediately available.

No one returned fire, and the helicopter returned to Mexico, the official said.

A candidate running to represent Michigan's 95th House district in the state legislature wants you to know that once you look past his bizarre sexual fetish and multiple felony convictions, he is a rock-ribbed conservative Republican, whose "stool of conservatism" is held up by "faith, family and freedom."

Michigan Live reported Friday that Saginaw's Jordan D. Haskins dismisses the arrests and prison time as the results of youthful indiscretion and said that he is ready to "move on from that and do what I can" to serve his state as a Republican state Representative.

"I have dreams," Haskins said to Michigan Live, "and I want to make a difference."


Haskins, 24, has served prison time in two states and is currently on parole, but there are no rules preventing him from running for the state House.

On four occasions between April of 2010 and January of 2011, Haskins broke into vehicles on public and private property, disconnected the ignition wires, then started the engine. As the wires snapped and spit sparks, Haskins would masturbate to climax in a sexualized ritual he calls "cranking."

Participants in the EU summit on Friday postponed imposing economic sanctions on Russia. The move comes a day after an advertizing campaign by two top US business lobbies warned of the negative impact on US companies.

"Preliminary consultations show that today almost no leaders of EU states find it necessary to impose trade and economic sanctions on Russia," a source in the delegation from a Western European country said with confidence to ITAR-TASS.

However the European officials carried out preparatory work on possible sanctions to implement against Russia if the situation in Ukraine demands so.

Sanctions will be most effective if the main trade partners from Europe take part, the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. The Obama Administration doesn't want to put US companies in unprofitable conditions in terms of the competition should it introduce further sanctions against Russia, he added.

The US needs the EU as a partner in enforcing economic measures as the trade volume between Russia and Europe of $330 billion is almost ten times Russia-America trade.

A healthy democracy demands transparency from its government and privacy for its citizenry. Only if we know what our government is up to can we exercise our responsibility as citizens to ratify or veto their actions at the ballot box. And only if we can be assured that our conversations are not being monitored by government officials will we have the space to develop our critical faculties, pursue intimate associations, try out new political ideas and flourish as human beings.

However, too many government officials, even in democratic states, tend to favor secrecy for their own actions and transparency from the citizenry. When asked what measures they are employing that might threaten our privacy, officials have long responded with some version of "We can't tell you, of course... but trust us." And when facing charges that they have violated the privacy of those they represent, the government invariably argue's for the narrowest definitions of privacy (your metadata isn't private) and the broadest justifications for invading it ("fighting terrorism" generally does the trick).

Because democracy depends on government transparency and personal privacy, but our representatives too often prefer the opposite, citizens, civil society and the press must be vigilant about privacy and its threats. Absent popular resistance, the tendency of government to favor secrecy and access to its citizens' most intimate information will undermine the very foundations of democracy. For its entire existence, The Nation has exercised that watchdog role for the country with courage, conviction and persistence. This volume, consisting of essays, investigations, editorials and columns dating from 1931 to 2014, illustrates the critical importance of the Fourth Estate in checking the desires of the surveillance state.

SmartWater is normally used to track criminals who steal laptops.

Police commissioners have urged the Met to put ultraviolet dye in its new water cannon in order to track people hit by the weapons, Boris Johnson's policing boss has said.

Stephen Greenhalgh, Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, told members of the London Assembly that police and crime commissioners from around the country had advocated the use of "SmartWater" in the crowd control weapon.

The substance would remain invisible until those hit by the water had an ultra-violet light shone on them, at which point it would glow fluorescent yellow and identify them as having been at a protest or other public order situation.

So now a huge Hardcore Sunnistan stretches all the way from the suburbs of Aleppo to Tikrit and from Mosul to the Jordanian/Iraqi border - the same one that dissolved in 2003 when Shock and Awe turned into Mission (Un)Accomplished.

In an eerie echo of Dick Cheney's army's footprints reverberating in the sands of Anbar province, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and their coalition of the willing (jihadis, Islamists, Ba'athists and tribal sheikhs) now pose as the "liberators" of Iraqi Sunnis from the clutches of an "evil" Shi'ite majority government in Baghdad.

In addition, ISIS also controls the PR wars. Here, a jihadi details how any sort of possible Washington "kinetic" involvement will be interpreted as an unholy alliance between the Empire and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki against the underdogs.

From a Sunni perspective, it's down with Iraq's Counter-terrorism law; down with de-Ba'athification (with the ascent of neo-Ba'athist Jaysh Rijal al-Tariqa al-Naqshbandia -- JRTN, led by former Saddam honcho Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri); down with the Interior Ministry in Baghdad going after Sunni politicians; down with protests being crushed.

At the same time, it's the return of the US-sponsored Sahwa (Sons of Iraq) -- who fiercely fought al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2007, the mother of ISIS -- and the return of assorted Shi'ite militias (Muqtada al-Sadr not only repelled the new wave of US "military advisers" -- that's how it started in Vietnam -- but also warned that his own badass Men in Black will "shake the ground" fighting ISIS.) The mid-2000s are the new normal; it's gonna be militia hell all over again.

Mesopotamia, we got a problem. Neo-Ba'athists want nothing but a secular Iraq run by Sunnis, Saddam-style (rather former neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi.) ISIS wants a Caliphate extending all across the Levant under Sharia law. Something's got to give.

What will give will be the Iraqi nation itself -- the balkanized, protracted (intended) consequence of the 2003 invasion and occupation, finally transmogrified into Jihad Central.

A long and bloody battle has been raging near the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk despite Kiev's ceasefire. Self-defense fighters claim to have killed a whole platoon of Kiev's National Guard, while the latter claim to have destroyed a militia tank.

The Ukrainian forces shelled the outskirts of Slavyansk on Friday and hit the city with artillery fire, say reports from the scene, quoted by RIA Novosti. Following heavy shelling, Ukrainian troops took over a checkpoint seized by the self-defense overnight, witnesses said.

Several shells hit civilian houses in the nearby village of Golubovka, killing a 47-year-old woman and her 26-year-old son. The two reportedly had no time to take cover from the attack as their house was hit by the first shell that fell in the area.

Intense fighting on the outskirts of Slavyansk overnight into Friday was earlier confirmed by both sides.

The long and bloody battle centered on a checkpoint manned by the National Guard - troops loyal to Kiev that in March were formed from former and serving Ukrainian troops, Maidan self-defense squads, radical groups taking part in protests and from other volunteers, many of whom come from western Ukraine. The Slavyansk self-defense claims that the checkpoint was used as a strategic point in the relentless shelling of the city by the National Guard, which they say has continued despite the ceasefire.