By Albin Joseph

After a series of economic slowdowns, two of the world’s major economies, namely Japan and the United Kingdom, have plunged into recession recently. Japan has been displaced from its position as the third largest economy by Germany. The United Kingdom fell into recession at a critical juncture when the elections are just a few months away. This poses severe challenges to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose primary commitment to the nation was to promote the overall economic growth of the kingdom.

A recession is defined as two consecutive contractions in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country. If there is a dip in GDP growth for a continuous six months, then it’s termed a Recession; Japan’s economy contracted by 0.4% and that of the UK by 0.3% in the last three months of 2023. There was a steady decline in the economies of these two nations throughout the course of 2023. From July to September 2023, Japan’s economy witnessed a de-growth of 3.3%, and the UK’s economy had a slump of 0.1%. Going by these numbers, it’s obvious that these two economies are under the grip of Recession.

The cost of living in the UK has risen considerably, major sectors like manufacturing and construction have not been performing well, and the British Pound has been on a weakening trend against the US Dollar during the past six months. During 2023, the UK’s economy grew by a meagre 0.1%, which is the weakest growth ever since the 2009 financial crisis. All eyes are set on the next UK budget that UK Finance Minister (Chancellor of the Exchequer) Jeremy Hunt is to present in a couple of weeks. The budget is expected to bring in concrete measures to curb inflation and propel overall economic growth.

Japan was relegated to fourth place in terms of GDP which totaled $4.2 trillion in 2023, whereas Germany assumed third place with its GDP estimated at $:4.5 trillion. A weaker Japanese yen is the major reason attributed to the slump in Japan’s economic growth. Moreover, there has been a slowdown in business, which leads to a lack of wage increments and layoffs. This lead to a fall in domestic demand, which made people curtail their expenses and hold on to their earnings.

A decline in population growth and an ageing population have affected the overall GDP, as well as the productivity of Japan. Traditionally, both Japanese and German economies were powered by small and medium-scale industries that were renowned for their high productivity. Of late, Japan’s productivity took a beating because of its shortage of qualitative labour, whereas Germany managed to keep its productivity intact by endorsing immigration, which led to overall population growth as well. By immigration, Germany’s population grew to 85 million in 2023. This not only made up for the low birthrate in Germany but also fueled the overall growth in GDP. Japan could overcome its labour shortage by endorsing immigration, but the country has its own reservations in the formulation of policies on this front.

Though this recession wouldn’t last long, it’s quite obvious that whenever major economies plunge into recession, it will have a ripple effect across the world, at least in the short run. The Euro zone has revised its growth forecast for 2024 from 1.2% to 0.8%, and it remains to be seen whether other countries will follow suit.

The author is a Member of Loka Kerala Sabha

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The Malabar exercise this year is especially significant with the participation of Australia, thus covering all member of the Quad, an informal group of the four largest democracies in the Indo-Pacific region.

This is also the first military-level engagement among all the four member countries , primarily focusing on checking China’s increasing military muscle-flexing.

US Navy ship USS John S McCain (Guided-missile destroyer), Australian Navy Ship HMAS Ballarat (long- range frigate) and Japan Maritime Self Defence Ship ( JMSDF) Ship JS Onami (destroyer) are participating along with Navy units.

Malabar exercise is a multilateral naval exercise that includes simulated war games and combat manoeuvres. It started in 1992 between the Indian and US navies. Japan joined in 2015.
This year, the exercise will be held in two phases, the first from November 3 to 6 off the coast near Vishakapatnam and the second from November 17 to 20 in the Arabian Sea.

According to the Defence Ministry, the exercise this year has been planned on a ‘non-contact- at sea’ format in view of the covid-19 pandemic. This means there will be no contact among military personnel of the four countries.

China is rattled by participation of four leading global powers in the annual exercise. It said that the drill should be conducive to regional peace. They worry that the annual war game is an attempt to contain its influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

The exercise comes at a time when the ties of all the four participating countries with China are under strain. Especially India is locked in the worst border deadlock with China in decades.

US and Australia’s relations with China have deteriorated recently over a range of issues including the Covid-19 pandemic and economic sanctions.

Japan meanwhile has a dispute with China over ownership of islands in the East China Sea.

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The UAE’s achievements in the space sector will receive another boost as it launches the MeznSat satellite on a Russian Soyuz rocket soon, WAM reported.

MeznSat is among the satellites owned and operated by the UAE. According to the UAE Space Agency, MeznSat is being developed by young Emirati citizens from Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi and the American University in Ras Al Khaimah, who will also monitor and analyse data sent to the mainland station at the YahSat lab in Khalifa University and the sub-land station at American University.

During the project’s announcement, Dr. Eng. Mohammed Nasser Al Ahbabi, Director-General of the Agency, stressed that MeznSat will play a key role in analysing the atmosphere and providing information and photos that will help understand many issues facing our planet.

Satellites so far

The nation has been successfully making efforts to develop satellites for the past one decade, with the participation of many talented young UAE nationals, and in partnership with local and international entities.

The UAE owns many high-capacity satellites. The first was ‘DubaiSat-1’ launched in 2008 by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre to monitor climate change.

In 2013, DubaiSat-2 was launched for observation and monitoring purposes. Emirati engineers from the MBRSC contributed to its development.

Yah-1 satellite, launched by the Al Yah Satellite Communications Company in 2011, had objectives such as broadcasting TV programmes and providing other commercial services for 62 million viewers.

In 2012, Yah-2 was launched to provide YahClick satellite internet services to various corporations and individuals in the Middle East, African, and Central and Southwest Asia.

In 2018 came Yah-3 to offer equivalent services in South America and West Africa.

Nayif-1 was the first nano-metric satellite and the first ‘CubeSat’ Emirati educational satellite, which was launched in 2017 from India for educational purposes. It was developed by a group of students from the American University of Sharjah and the MBRSC.

‘KhalifaSat’, launched from the Tanegashima Space Centre in Japan in October 2018, was the first satellite to be completely developed and manufactured in the UAE.

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More than 170 countries are in talks to participate in the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) Facility, which aims to speed vaccine development and secure doses for all countries and distribute them to the most high-risk segment of each population.

The plan, which is co-led by the WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the vaccine alliance, was of interest to some members of the Trump administration and is backed by traditional US allies, including Japan, Germany and the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union.

But the United States will not participate, in part because the White House does not want to work with the WHO, which President Donald Trump has criticised over what he characterised as its “China-centric” response to the pandemic.

“The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organisations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organisation and China,” said Judd Deere, a spokesman for the White House.

The Covax decision, which has not been previously reported, is effectively a doubling down by the administration on its bet that the United States will win the vaccine race. It eliminates the chance to secure doses from a pool of promising vaccine candidates – a potentially risky strategy.

“America is taking a huge gamble by taking a go-it-alone strategy,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University.

Kendall Hoyt, an assistant professor at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, said it was akin to opting out of an insurance policy.

The United States could be pursuing bilateral deals with drug companies and simultaneously participating in Covax, she said, increasing its odds of getting some doses of the first safe vaccine. “Just from a simple risk management perspective, this [Covax decision] is shortsighted,” she said.

The US move will also shape what happens elsewhere. The idea behind Covax is to discourage hoarding and focus on vaccinating high-risk people in every country first, a strategy that could lead to better health outcomes and lower costs, experts said.

US nonparticipation makes that harder. “When the US says it is not going to participate in any sort of multilateral effort to secure vaccines, it’s a real blow,” said Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

“The behaviour of countries when it comes to vaccines in this pandemic will have political repercussions beyond public health,” she said. “It’s about, are you a reliable partner, or, at the end of the day, are you going to keep all your toys for yourself?”

Some members of the Trump administration were interested in a more cooperative approach but were ultimately overruled.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun had interest in exploring some type of role in Covax, a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision-making.

But there was resistance in some corners of the government and a belief that the United States has enough coronavirus vaccine candidates in advanced clinical trials that it can go it alone, according to the official and a former senior administration official who learned about it in private discussions.

The question of who wins the race for a safe vaccine will largely influence how the administration’s ‘America first’ approach to the issue plays out.

An unlikely worst-case scenario, experts said, is that none of the U.S. vaccine candidates are viable, leaving the United States with no option since it has shunned the Covax effort.

Another possibility is that a US vaccine does pan out, but the country hoards doses, vaccinating a large number of Americans, including those at low risk, while leaving other countries without.

Experts in health security see at least two problems with this strategy: The first is that a new vaccine is unlikely to offer complete protection to all people, meaning that a portion of the US population will still be vulnerable to imported cases – especially as tourism and trade resume.

The second, related problem is that a US recovery depends on economic recovery elsewhere. If large parts of the world are still in lockdown, the global economy is smarting and supply chains are disrupted, the United States will not be able to bounce back.

Proponents of a multilateral approach to global public health would like to see all countries coordinate through Covax. Perhaps unsurprisingly, interest is strongest from poor countries, while some larger economies are cutting deals directly with drugmakers.

WHO officials have argued that countries need not choose — they can pursue both strategies by signing bilateral deals and also joining Covax.

“By joining the facility at the same time that you do bilateral deals, you’re actually betting on a larger number of vaccine candidates,” Mariângela Simao, a WHO assistant director for drug and vaccine access, said at an August 17 briefing.

If nothing else, the United States could pledge surplus vaccine doses to Covax to ensure they are distributed in a rational and equitable way, experts said.

Some cautioned against a focus on ‘winning’ the race. Given the complexity of supply chains, vaccine development will necessarily be a global effort, regardless of whether countries want to cooperate.

The decision to steer clear of Covax comes at a time of tremendous change for health diplomacy.

The United States has long been the biggest donor to the WHO and a major funder of vaccine initiatives.

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump praised both China and the WHO for their handling of the outbreak. But as the crisis intensified in the United States, he turned on the UN health agency.

In April, he announced a freeze on new US funding. Not long after, the State Department started stripping references to the WHO from fact sheets and rerouting funds to other programs.

By July, the administration had sent a letter signalling its intent to withdraw from the WHO.

But untangling the United States from the agency it helped found and shape is not simple — and the terms of the separation are still being assessed.

It is not yet clear, for instance, whether a US withdrawal means the United States will just stop its contributions to the WHO or whether it will stop funding any initiative linked to the agency in any way.

For instance, the White House no longer wants to work with the WHO, but the United States is a major supporter of Gavi, which co-leads the Covax project.

Asked to comment on the Covax decision, a State Department spokeswoman pointed to US funding for Gavi, as well as money for such programs as UNICEF and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the White House could still reverse course and join Covax, or at least let the Senate fund through Gavi – a political workaround.

“This just shows how awkward, contradictory and self-defeating all of this,” he said. “For the U.S. to terminate its relationship with the WHO in the middle of a pandemic is going to create an endless stream of self-defeating moments.”

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The world’s third largest economy was already ailing when the virus outbreak struck towards the end of last year. The fallout has since gradually worsened both in COVID-19 cases and social distancing restrictions.

Japanese media reported that the latest drop was the worst since World War II. The previous worst contraction was in 2009, during the global financial crisis of 2008-09.

The economy shrank 0.6% in the January- March period, and contracted 1.8 % in the October- December period last year, indicating that Japan slipped into recession in the first quarter of this year. Recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction.

For the April-June period, Japan’s exports dropped at a whopping annual rate of 56%, while private consumption dipped at an annual rate of nearly 29%.

That was without any full shutdown of businesses to contain coronavirus outbreaks, which have worsened in the past month, pushing the total number of confirmed cases to over 56,000.

Analysts say the economy is expected to recover gradually, once the impacts of pandemic reduce. Japan’s export-dependent e

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The nation held its breath on July 19 along with the entire region, as the Probe took off from Land of Rising Sun, aboard a Mitsubishi H-IIA rocket in the first mission to the red planet by any West Asian, Arab or Muslim majority country.
Further details about the mission will be announced in a press conference that will take place in Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre Monday at 13:00 on July 20

The Hope Probe blasted off from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre at 01:58 Monday morning, the Probe then was successfully released from the rocket at 02:55, and its solar panels were turned on to ensure at 03:00, then the panels were set to face the sun properly.

The UAE Space Agency and Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre have announced that the first transmission was received at 03:11am. The team of the Ground Control Station has analyzed the data to ensure that the solar panels are facing the sun properly.
The Ground Control Team is monitoring the functions of the Probe to ensure that all systems are working properly.

It will take seven months to travel the 493 million km, it is expected to reach its Mar’s orbit in February 2021 marking the 50th anniversary of the UAE. The launch of the probe was delayed two time due to unstable weather conditions, the July 20th was chosen as the third launch date.

The Hope Probe team will communicate and share findings with the global Mars science community on key questions that no other mission has addressed before.

Once it enters Mars’ orbit in the first quarter of 2021, the Hope probe will mark the UAE’s 50th anniversary. The probe will travel 493 million kilometers into space in a journey that will take seven months, and will orbit the Red Planet for one full Martian year of 687 days to provide the first truly global picture of the Martian atmosphere. The Hope probe will be the first to study the Martian climate throughout daily and seasonal cycles. It will observe the weather phenomena in Mars such as the massive famous dust storms that have been known to engulf the Red Planet, as compared to the short and localized dust storms on earth.

The Mars Hope probe will examine the interaction between the upper and lower layers of the Martian atmosphere and causes of the Red Planet’s surface corrosion, as well as study why Mars is losing its upper atmosphere.

Exploring connections between today’s Martian weather and the ancient climate of the Red Planet will give deeper insights into the past and future of Earth and the potential of life on Mars and other distant planets.

The probe will gather and send back new Mars data to the Science Data Center in the UAE via different ground stations spread around the world. The data will be catalogued and analyzed by the Emirates Mars Mission science team, and shared for free with the international Mars science community as a service to human knowledge.

The insights and data gained from understanding the Martian climate will add new dimensions to human knowledge about how atmospheres work, which will help scientists and researchers evaluate distant worlds for conditions that might support life. Understanding the geographical and climate changes of Mars and the other planets will help us gain deeper insights to find solutions for key challenges facing mankind on earth.

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The cost of the Hope Mars Mission is among the lowest in the world at US$ 200 million compared with similar programmes, said UAE Minister of Cabinet Affairs Mohammad bin Abdullah Al Gergawi.
At a media briefing in Dubai on June 7, Al Gergawi elaborated the achievements of the Emirates Mars Mission team. This includes development of 200 new designs, manufacturing of 66 pieces of the probe components in the UAE, publishing 51 research papers on the project, and benefitting over 60,000 participants through EMM’s scientific and academic programmes.
“Today, the mission reached another milestone, when the spacecraft was positioned on to the rocket that will send it into space,” he said. “Commitment to deadlines is an approach that the UAE is following in all its plans and projects.”
The Mission’s success, Al Gergawi said, is in line with the UAE’s success in containing the coronavirus.
The Hope Probe is set to lift off on July 15 at 00:51:27 UAE time from the Tanegashima Space Centre, Japan. The probe is anticipated to enter the Mars orbit in February 2021, coinciding with the UAE’s Golden Jubilee celebrations.

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