President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would impose a 5 percent tariff on all goods entering from Mexico unless it stopped the flow of illegal immigration to the United States, a dramatic escalation of his border threats that could have sweeping implications for both economies.
The White House plans to begin levying the import penalties on June 10 and ratchet the penalties higher if the migrant flow isn’t halted. Trump said he would remove the tariffs only if all illegal migration across the border ceased, though other White House officials said they would be looking only for Mexico to take major action.

At least four bystanders were killed and four U.S. troops injured on Friday when a suicide car bomb targeted a passing U.S. convoy in the Afghan capital, U.S. and Afghan officials said.
It was the second suicide attack in Kabul in the past two days, following a blast Thursday at a military academy that killed six.
Police spokesman Ferdous Faramarz said three other bystanders were also wounded in Friday’s attack. Col. David Butler, a spokesman for the U.S. military, said the U.S. injuries were very minor.
After the attack, photos circulating on social media showed tall plumes of smoke rising over eastern Kabul, which is also home to a number of U.S., NATO and Afghan security complexes.

The United States warned European allies with sanctions earlier this month in response to the creation of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, or Instex, a financial mechanism, created by the United Kingdom, France and Germany to evade U.S. economic penalties on Tehran.
“I urge you to carefully consider the potential sanctions exposure of Instex,” Sigal Mandelker, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, wrote in a May 7 letter to Instex President Per Fischer obtained by Bloomberg. “Engaging in activities that run afoul of U.S. sanctions can result in severe consequences, including a loss of access to the U.S. financial system.”

The leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip publicly admitted on Thursday that the terrorist group was getting military and financial backing from Iran.
“We have developed our capabilities,” the Israeli news site Mako quoted Yahya Sinwar saying at a Hamas rally in Gaza, “and we have received financial and military support from Iran.”
“We will only continue to improve our capabilities,” he pledged, and admitted, “If Iran didn’t support us in recent years, we wouldn’t have achieved what we achieved.”
Sinwar stated that the Grad rockets fired at Israel during the latest round of fighting in early May were of “Iranian manufacture.”

A Hungarian Jewish group that detects and fights anti-Semitism announced on Wednesday that it was creating a security service to monitor Budapest’s historic Jewish quarter.
“To prevent anti-Semitic atrocities, the Foundation for Action and Defense decided to create a kind of ‘self-organized security service,’ ” posted the organization on its Facebook page.
Known by its initials in Hungarian, the TEV was founded in 2012 to report and combat anti-Semitism in Hungary.
The head of the Jewish Heritage of Hungary Public Endowment board, György Szabó, told the Népszava news site that verbal insults, including “Heil Hitler,” towards Jews by drunk tourists have happened frequently.

After returning from a trip to the U.S. southern border, Republican Rep. Doug Collins issues a challenge to Democrats to come to the table and fix the crisis.
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In the midst of his whirlwind week-long Florida governor’s business development mission to Israel with more than 100 delegation participants, Gov. Ron DeSantis visited the Gush Etzion region, just south of Jerusalem and over the Green Line. His purpose was to meet with community leaders and small-business owners who are on the front lines as targets of the anti-Israel BDS movement.

As Israel heads to the polls on Sept. 17, the fate of the release of the Trump administration’s entire Mideast peace plan for the Israelis and the Palestinians remains to be seen, an administration official told JNS on Thursday.
“The Bahrain workshop will go on as scheduled, June 25-26,” said the official in an email. “As far as the rest of the plan/rollout, we’ve long said that we will release the plan when the timing is right.”
The White House declined to note exactly when that time may be.
Kushner said in April that the so-called “deal of the century” would be released after Ramadan, which concludes on June 4.
The Bahrain workshop is the first part of the peace proposal rollout and is expected to deal with revitalizing the Palestinian economy.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly ordered the execution of several top officials in March after they were unable to reach an agreement with President Trump at a second summit between the two leaders earlier this year.
Bloomberg News reported Thursday citing a South Korean newspaper that Kim Hyok Chol, North Korea’s special envoy to the U.S., was executed in March along with four other North Korean foreign ministry officials involved in the Hanoi, Vietnam, summit.
A fifth official, Kim Jong Un’s top deputy, Kim Yong Chol, has reportedly been sentenced to hard labor, according to the newspaper.
Read more at The Hill.

In a stunning and first-ever circumstance in the history of the State of Israel, there will be a second Knesset election held this year. The blame for these additional elections, which are estimated to be costing the state around $500 million, has been placed on a number of doorsteps, including that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the Israel Beiteinu Party Avigdor Lieberman and the ultra-Orthodox, depending on who you ask.
After the 21st Knesset voted to disband itself and go to elections, Netanyahu appeared upset, insisting that it was unnecessary, and that Lieberman was to blame for the impasse in coalition negotiations. For his part, Lieberman gave a press conference on Thursday and laid the blame at the feet of Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox parties.