Trump pulls US out of 2015 Paris climate accord. He says he’s going to negotiate a “better deal”. Germany, France, and Italy state flatly that there is no reopening of negotiations – you’re in or you’re out.

As flat denials aren’t working, Putin says Patriotic Russians may be involved in hacking:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested “patriotic” Russian citizens might be engaged in hacking.

Such individuals might be joining “the justified fight against those speaking ill of Russia,” he said.

Like “artists” who get up and paint all day, he added, hackers spend their day attacking adversaries, he added.

Mr Putin also denied once again that his administration hacked the US election last year.

So, his people tell him that the hacking can and/or has been traced back to Russia, so he shifts to a back-up excuse.

June 1^st:

The official start of the hurricane season.

Events:
1495 – Friar John Cor records the first known batch of Scotch whisky.
1660 – Mary Dyer is hanged in Boston, Massachusetts, for defying a law banning Quakers from the colony. She is considered by some to be the last religious martyr in what would become the United States.
1890 – The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine to count census returns.
1967 – The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is released.
1980 – The Cable News Network (CNN) begins broadcasting.

Births:
1563 – Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, English statesman and spymaster (d. 1612)
1780 – Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian general (d. 1831)
1804 – Mikhail Glinka, Russian composer (d. 1857)

For some reason I didn’t make the list.