Monday, June 6

• President Joe Biden declared a 24-month tariff exemption for solar panels from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam — which collectively make up about 80% of annual panel imports into the United States — during an investigation into whether these Southeast Asian countries may be circumventing tariffs on goods made in China.
• South Korea and the U.S. fired eight ballistic missiles in a show of force aimed at demonstrating their readiness to respond to North Korea’s “provocations,” such as an incident a day earlier when North Korea fired eight ballistic missiles into the sea.
• The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Marinko Cavara, a member of a nationalist Bosnian-Croat party, and Alen Seranic, the Serb Republic’s minister of health and social welfare. “[E]ach sought to pursue ethnonationalist and political agendas at the expense of the democratic institutions and citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson.
• The U.S. ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan, told the Russian state news agency TASS that Russia should not close the U.S. embassy because the two world powers must continue to negotiate amid the conflict in Ukraine.
• A senior Biden administration official told news agencies that the White House was excluding Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. “The U.S. continues to maintain reservations regarding the lack of democratic space and the human rights situations” in the three countries, the official was reported as saying.
• Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) called on the Biden administration to push for “a full and transparent investigation” into the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli armed forces in May, urging the State Department to ensure accountability.
• Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg disclosed that he had tested positive for the coronavirus and was experiencing mild symptoms, the latest member of Biden’s cabinet to be infected.

Tuesday, June 7

• Vice President Kamala Harris announced $1.9 billion in private-sector funding to boost job opportunities in an effort to stem migration from Central America. Harris’s office said the funds will help create tens of thousands of jobs in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
• Allison Fluke-Ekren, an American women who led an all-female ISIS battalion, pleaded guilty in U.S. court to conspiring to provide material support to a “terrorist” organization. She faces up to 20 years in jail.
• A court in Fiji handed a $300 million superyacht allegedly owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch to U.S. authorities.
• The FBI seized the electronic data of former Marine General John Allen, who authorities say withheld “incriminating” documents and lied about his role in an illegal foreign lobbying campaign on behalf of Qatar.

Wednesday, June 8

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised to pursue accountability for the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, calling for an “independent” probe into the incident.
• Five Marines on board an Osprey aircraft were killed when it crashed in the California desert near the Arizona border. The Marine Corps did not provide any additional details regarding the cause of the crash.
• The White House announced the creation of a new Americas Health Corps, the mission of which will be to improve the skills of 500,000 health workers across the Americas. The corps will cost $100 million and partially relies on yet-to-be raised funds.
• A man named Nicholas John Roske, who was armed with a handgun and said he planned to kill conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was arrested near the justice’s home and charged with attempted murder.
• Ambassadors from China and Russia accused the U.S. of stoking tensions on the Korean Peninsula during a United Nations meeting held to explain their decisions to veto new global sanctions over North Korea’s renewed ballistic missile launches. “There are many things that the U.S. can do, such as easing sanctions on [North Korea] in certain areas, and ending joint military exercises [with South Korea]. The key is to take actions, not just talk about its readiness for dialogue with no preconditions,” said Chinese ambassador Zhang Jun.
• Biden kicked off the Summit of the Americas by announcing a proposed new economic partnership with Latin America and the Caribbean aimed at countering China’s growing influence. Biden said countries in the Americas have “to invest in making sure our trade is sustainable and responsible in creating supply chains that are more resilient, more secure and more sustainable.”
• Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler unveiled a planned overhaul of Wall Street retail stock trading rules that will require trading firms to directly compete to execute trades from retail investors in a move to make the U.S. equities market more transparent and fair.

Thursday, June 9

• The special congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol held a public hearing on the status of its probe, the first of several hearings to be held in June. The series will “provide the American people with a summary of our findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” per a statement from the panel. Most significantly, the panel members determined that former President Donald Trump was culpable for the day’s events.
• The Biden administration announced that its Palestinian Affairs Unit, which operated within the U.S. embassy in Israel, will now be redesignated as the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs, and will report directly to the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in the State Department, a signal that it is upgrading its diplomatic mission to Palestinians.
• The Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into the practices of state police in Louisiana following a spate of cases of police violence primarily targeting Black men. Kristen Clarke, the Justice Department civil rights division’s assistant attorney general, said the probe will seek to “determine whether the Louisiana State Police engages in a pattern or practice of violations of the Constitution or federal law.”
• NASA announced it will begin a study of UFOs as part of a new push towards high-risk, high-impact science. The agency will form an independent team to examine unidentified flying objects or unidentified aerial phenomena with a focus on identifying available data, how to gather more data, and how NASA can analyze the findings to advance scientific understanding of the sightings.
• The FBI arrested Ryan Kelley, 40, a Republican gubernatorial candidate for Michigan, charging him with misdemeanors in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Kelley was recorded on video outside the Capitol on the day of the riot, directing crowds into the building.

Friday, June 10

• The Labor Department released data showing that inflation in the U.S. rose to a new four-decade high in May, with consumer prices surging 8.6% last month compared to 12 months earlier, even faster than April’s year-over-year surge of 8.3%.
• On the final day of the Summit of the Americas, the White House unveiled a factsheet describing the “Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection at the Summit of the Americas,” which aims to “mobilize the entire region around bold actions that will transform our approach to managing migration.”

Saturday, June 11

• During a speech in Singapore, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin accused China of “provocative and destabilizing” military activity around Taiwan and using an increasingly “coercive and aggressive” approach to its maritime claims in the Pacific. “[China’s] moves threaten to undermine peace and stability,” Austin said. “That isn’t just a U.S. interest, it’s a matter of international concern.”

Sunday, June 12

· No news to report.

• The Food and Drug Administration said that three doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine appeared to be effective in preventing COVID-18 illness in children under 5.