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The Labour party's support for not withdrawing from the European Medicines Agency is the subject of an argument after Prime Minister's Questions in the British parliament. Labour leader Keir Starmer confronts prime minister Boris Johnson in parliament after Johnson reminds Labour that it had on repeated occasions called for the UK not to withdraw from the European Medicines Agency.  The UK vaccination drive is far ahead of the vaccination drive in European Union countries including France and Germany, because of British initiative in boldly betting money on vaccine supplies with pharmaceutical companies, and earlier approval by the UK health regulatory authority. Here is the comment in the House of Commons by Boris Johnson- "If we had listened to (Starmer), we would still be at the starting blocks because he wanted to stay in the European Medicines Agency and said so four times from that dispatch box." Starmer disputes the statement. The Times cites Hansard, the official record of the House of Commons. It records that Starmer questioned why Britain would want to withdraw from the Medicines Agency in Jan. 2017. In 2018 Labour party supported an Amendment to the Trade Bill that called for the UK to seek participation in the European Medicines Agency. Germany, Spain and France are hit hard by the second wave of the coronavirus and the lack of adequate vaccine supplies is causing grief in European Union. The EU president Von der Leyen, another European Union style bureaucrat, seen as having bungled the handling of vaccine supply. ...

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Marc Gagnon of Quebec meets Waco of Hokkaido on travels together. He makes maple syrup in Tobetsu for a store he opens in Sapporo. Hokkaido sets up his work in the forests of Hokkaido with plans for 200 maple trees in 2007. NHK looks at a remarkable couple and the work making maple syrup using Canadian technology in the forests of Hokkaido, Japan in the NHK series "We are at Home."

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Governor Andrew Cuomo's personal reflections on his father Mario Cuomo, his ex wife Kerry Kennedy, girlfriend Sandra Lee of the Food Network, on politics, gun control, and the extreme left of the Democratic Party. His view of effective politics that has a positive impact on people's lives is that it takes the energy of an Olympic athlete to compete.

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UK prime minister Boris Johnson suggests that vaccine pass may become mandatory at airports, sports events and other settings.

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Matthew Slaughter of the Tuck School, Dartmouth, says that the principle of comparitive advantage should determine what America exports and imports. Under comparitive advantage each country concentrates its energies on the particular goods and services that it does better than other countries. Free trade operates under the idea of comparitive advantage, but in practice it is quite different than its textbook economic counterpart. It is constantly changing as new countries or industries in different countries try to upset the existing pattern. Under a textbook example Airbus should not exist because Boeing was the most efficient manufacturer upto that time, and new entrants in a industry are nurtured for years with support from the governments of their countries. And in some situations the governments may exclude certain companies or industries from support such as Komatsu and construction equipment in postwar Japan, and Infosys and software outsourcing in India, and still survive and grow. Under comparitive advantage Japan should still be importing construction equipment from Caterpillar in the US, and there would be no serious competition in that industry. This would work to the detriment of the principle of competition in free trade which is just as important to free trade as the idea of comparitive advantage, with new entrants in an industry upsetting the old way of doing things and creating price/quality improvements. Slaughter simply pulls back off the shelf the old idea of comparitive advantage without seriously considering its real life aspects. Without dealing with trade distortion from currency manipulation, from the impact on jobs, without considering the continuing critical role of manufacturing in developed economies to provide the standards of living for a large middle class, and creating the kind of society that people of developed countries aspire to. He mentions GE's Immelt and the President's Council on Jobs, but makes no effort to engage Immelt 's statement in his recent op-ed article in the Washington Post, that the concept of transitioning from a export-oriented economic powerhouse to a services led consumption based economy could be done without loss of jobs, prosperity and prestige, was fundamentally wrong. He has only one line for manufacturing's role in America's economy. This line says knowledge intensive industries such as education and software are just as important as manufacturing, but fails to mention that manufacturing has received less attention in recent decades. In so doing he is discounting his own profession of concern for the high rate of joblessness in the U.S., and the need for a new focus on manufacturing in the U.S. to reverse that trend. By saying that imports are not a sign of failure but can raise standards of living, and leaving it at that, Slaughter does not acknowledge that consumer debt that US consumers have taken on in the process certainly affects future prospects for the US economy. And he makes no mention of the need for rebalancing the world economy, which is exactly how free trade should work ideally. Countries that have high imports export more to rebalance the world trading system, as currency valuations are allowed to adjust makig their exports more attractive. By not taking into account the realities of free trade, and the need for practical measures to rebalance without policy induced distortions by state run economies, Slaughter ignores the idea of free trade that works as it should and for all countries. The irony is that Immelt's own committment to jobs and competitiveness has been questioned in online blogs and most recently by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal on January 26, 2011, titled "The Misallocators." That editorial refers to the outsize role of GE Capital in GE's earnings during the past decade, and the lack of credibility of a focus on competitiveness and jobs that this creates for GE. It mentions the loss of 34,000 GE jobs in the US during the last decade. ...

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US president Biden's $2 trillion Families and Workers plan, for early childhood education, paid leave, healthcare and climate change investment, is coming up for a vote in Congress. Paid leave that also includes maternity leave and leave that would help women return to the workforce, has been added back to the bill. Community college aid was earlier removed from the package with resistance from private colleges that expect to lose tuition paying students, even though male students are falling dangerously behind in attending college without government support. The Biden administration is facing resistance from just a couple of Democratic Congressmen- about five led by a Congressman from New Jersey, and 2 Senators from Arizona and West Virginia- on community college government aid that helps young American men and women from the working class and on paid leave that helps women. Many Republicans have supported taking this action for renewal of America on serious issues that face the country, making it likely that these issues will only become more pressing in the next three years. Sometimes as is happening today some isolated or eccentric situations can block major legislation for the good of the country such as the makeup of a Congressional seat in New Jersey with large pockets of conservative Republicans who oppose spending, and conservative instincts of two Democratic senators from Arizona and West Virginia. This WSJ report looks at Biden's position that deterrence when filing tax returns will generate close to $400 billion and not $150 billion that the Congressional Budget Office says is its estimate. To accomplish this Biden plans to spend $80 billon in large investments to increase the resources of America's tax collecting agency. Much of this was never done and policies geared to where large corporations never paid their fair share of taxes. The first step was to prevent outshoring of headquarters to reduce taxes- and this was achieved in the first year of the Biden Administration with over 100 countries agreeing on a corporate minimium tax. In the same way president Biden now seeks to correct other flaws in the tax system so that much needed investments can be made by generating new revenue not just in infrastructure, but for renewal of America through renewal of support for women, children, and America's working classes. Much of that was badly neglected by different  administrations over the last three decades.     ...

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Gemany face a serious challenge from Portugal and the teamwork of Christiano Ronaldo, Bruno Hernandez, Bernardo Silva, Diogo Jota in Euro 2021 soccer on June 19.

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New restrictions in parts of New York, Queens and Brooklyn soon after schools reopened. Certain zip codes will have schools closed as a second wave is expected.

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 Roger Stone, an adviser to president Trump, is indicted in the Mueller investigation for his connections to the Wikileaks campaign to discredit Democratic Party leaders including Mr. Podesta and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hacked Emails of the two leaders were hacked and passed onto Wikileaks Julian Assange, who then released sensitive emails to the media in batches at critical moments in the election campaign of 2016.

This report provides details of the emails showing contacts between Roger Stone and Wikileaks, with Stone's contacts with Bannon, who headed the Trump campaign. Stone was arrested in Fort Lauderdale on July 25, 2019, and released on bail.

This shows how the campaign unfolded and how Wikileaks leaked emails damaged the Democrats campaign effort by damaging the credibility of Hillary Rodham Clinton, referred to as HRH in the emails and of Mr. Podesta, leading to the questions about the Clinton Foundation.

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WSJ talks to Adam Grant, Prof. of Organizational Psychology at Wharton School of Business, on the importance of experimenting with different ideas. For every decision A and implementing it one forgets that there were other decisions that could have been made B, C, D or E, and each one offered new ways to experiment and try out new ideas. Grant is author of the book-" Think Again - The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know." Here he talks about how some CEO's used the pandemic (a problem) as an opportunity to experiment with new ideas on work to create productive happier workplaces. Others were too afraid to experiment. Grant says research data shows people are more likely to stay in a hybrid structure, because it gives them flexibility. From the productive workplace perspective this means people have to develop new skills and new muscle in a kind of experiment. This is what he says many CEO's are fearful to try out, now that they are reverting to the old workplace in the office-to what they know.  His biggest fear is that the experimentation that covid brought to us will stop. He sees four days of focused work a week or six hours of concentration in work a day, as way better than 8 hours of distracted work or five unmotivated days. Not just personal bonds are necessary says Grant, clear roles and goals are needed. And people need to be excited about what they are doing, which is possible he has found when they know the work has meaning for people who they are serving. ...

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Details of the Brexit Agreement reached by Boris Johnson for the UK with the European Union. The Times offers answers to questions about the final agreement and what it means.

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Approval process by government is now much stricter and the approval process takes longer for new wind turbines. A leading renewable energy developer BayWa re. estimates 45% of the old turbines installed 20 years ago would not be approved under today's stricter standards. As these become unprofitable a lot of new turbines have to replace older ones. After years of gains suddenly in 3 years the wind power capacity installed each year is dropping sharply, and is in deep trouble. Especially because wind energy plays a big role in Germany, accounting for 25% of total electricity production in 2019, solar only has 10%. For all of Germany only 290 MW was installed in first half of 2019, 80% drop from same period 2018.  In 2018 2800 MW of wind turbines were installed, and that was down from 5000MW in 2017. Problems in addition to stricter approval standards is the resistance from the public which fears wind turbines close to residential areas could affect health of residents. In Bavaria 10H ban is imposed on new installations, requiring 10 times the height of the wind turbine as minimum distance from homes. Other issues are wildlife and the impact on  birds in the area. 300 turbines for 1200 MW are blocked for this reason. Other reasons are military concerns, FM radio beacons. It used to take 10 months for approval. Now the process is so long that the technology itself has changed by that time. Commercial risks are growing for operators in this environment as new costly regulations come into place. A regulation in Brandenburg requires payment of 10,000 euros to neighboring municipalities per wind turbine. Subsidy eligibility is also being cut. ...

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The European Union's 750 billion euro recovery fund for the pandemic is stalled as it needs approval of all member states. Hungary and Poland have objected to some of the conditions that relate to the rule of law for access to the aid. They see this as unfairly treating their countries. Germany is looking for a compromise.