The International Monetary Fund said Thursday its executive board will meet in the “coming weeks” to discuss the failure of the Venezuelan government to provide updated figures on its troubled economy.

Spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters that IMF officials have held recent conversation with Venezuelan officials about the issue, but refused to say whether any deadline had been given to Caracas to come up with the data.

Economist Asdrubal Oliveros of the Caracas-based firm Econalitica tweeted last week that IMF gave Venezuelan Central Bank until November 30.

“I will not confirm the deadline but I will confirm the discussions,” Rice said during his biweekly press conference. “I don’t have a specific date to announce for the board, but we would expect that to happen in the coming weeks for the board to meet.”

When it issued a declaration of censure against Venezuela back in May, the IMF said its executive board would meet six months later to assess progress.

The censure carried no immediate penalties, but it could eventually lead to Venezuela’s expulsion from the international coalition of nations created to promote economic stability.

Venezuela’s Central Bank hasn’t published official economic figures since 2004.

For the last decade, Venezuela hasn’t let the IMF publish a review of its economic indicators, required of all its member countries.

Venezuela’s currency has lost almost all its value as the country’s deep economic crisis has led to one of the worst cases of hyperinflation ever seen.
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In Singapore, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has offered the Trump administration’s support for Southeast Asia’s digital and urban infrastructure development. In his remarks at the U.S. ASEAN Summit, Pence announced the new “U.S.-ASEAN Smart Cities Partnership.”

“This effort will spur renewed American investment in the region’s digital infrastructure, advancing prosperity and security in Southeast Asia,” Pence said, adding that it will enhance Washington’s cooperation on cybersecurity with the regional bloc.

Smart Cities is a buzzword among ASEAN member countries as they face two mega trends, urbanization and digitalization. Southeast Asian nations are rapidly increasing in population, and a large portion of their people are gravitating toward cities, creating multiple challenges ranging from traffic congestion, water and air quality, to digital security.

Speaking to reporters, Pence called ASEAN an “extraordinary part of the world filled with remarkable people” and highlighted the administration’s desire for greater economic engagement with the regional bloc. He said the U.S. has only “begun to explore the way that our investments and the economies of this region can contribute to growth and jobs and opportunity in the United States.”

​ASEAN smart cities network

Singapore, as the chair of ASEAN, proposed the creation of a network of 26 Southeast Asian smart cities in April 2018. The country is known for being very innovative in terms of incorporating digital technology in urban planning, and other Southeast Asian nations are eager to emulate that success.

The ASEAN Smart Cities Network is envisioned as a collaborative platform where up to three cities per ASEAN country work toward a common goal of smart and sustainable urban development that maximizes digital technology.

Tan Chee Haw, Singapore’s chief Smart City officer explains the three pillars with which digital technology will improve the lives of citizens. One is the digital economy, which is about “creating a vibrant and innovative digital economy that can create new jobs, opportunities to help people and businesses.” Second is the digital government concept, to transform the way that governments deliver services that is “citizen-centric.” The third is “digital society” which focuses on ensuring all segments of the population to be digital ready and can benefit from these initiatives.

US technology and innovation

The United States is still seen by the region as a leader in innovation and a natural partner in the smart cities initiative.

“The most advanced technologies do come from the U.S.,” said Lim Tai Wei, senior research fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. ASEAN countries would like to know how “they can work with American companies and partners in order to strengthen ASEAN’s position as a network of smart cities,” he said.

The partnership will offer opportunities for American companies to develop urban digital infrastructure ranging from payment mechanisms to smart transit systems.

The head of Southeast Asia for the consultancy group Control Risks, Angela Mancini is skeptical on how much the United States can actually offer, considering “it has its own challenges with infrastructure and technology.”

Free and open Indo-Pacific

The Smart Cities Partnership is part of what Pence said is proof of the U.S. commitment to the Indo-Pacific region, which he calls “steadfast and enduring.” He stressed that Washington “seeks collaboration, not control, and we are proud to call ASEAN our strategic partner.”

On the security front, Pence stressed Washington’s commitment to “uphold the freedom of the seas and skies, where we stand shoulder to shoulder with you for freedom of navigation and our determination to ensure that your nations are securing your sovereign borders.”

Pence said the Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision “excludes no nation.” However, a big part of the strategy is aimed to protect freedom of navigation, particularly in light of China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. “We all agree that empire and aggression have no place in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

Pence said the Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision “excludes no nation.” However, a big part of the strategy is aimed to protect freedom of navigation, particularly in light of China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea.

Stephen Nagy, professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo, believes the Trump administration has stepped up its military commitment to the region. Nagy said, “I do think there’s a lot of evidence that the United States will make a bigger commitment.”

The U.S. government will want “partnerships,” he said, and Australia and Japan are “increasing their burden” to ensure the United States is not only the one helping ASEAN’s security.

An urban region

The United Nations reported that two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. Already home to 53 percent of the world’s urban population, Asia will see this proportion expand to 64 percent by 2050.

The 26 Southeast Asian pilot smart cities are Bandar Seri Begawan, Bangkok, Banyuwangi, Battambang, Cebu City, Chonburi, Da Nang, Davao City, DKI Jakarta, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Johor Bahru, Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur, Kuching, Luang Prabang, Makassar, Mandalay, Manila, Naypyidaw, Phnom Penh, Phuket, Siem Reap, Singapore, Vientiane, and Yangon.

VOA’s Nike Ching, Ahadian Utama and Ralph Jennings contributed to this report.
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The United Kingdom and the European Union have agreed on a deal that will give London’s vast financial center only a basic level of access to the bloc’s markets after Brexit. 

The agreement will be based on the EU’s existing system of financial market access known as equivalence — a watered-down relationship that officials in Brussels have said all along is the best arrangement that Britain can expect. 

The EU grants equivalence to many countries and has so far not agreed to Britain’s demands for major concessions such as offering broader access and safeguards on withdrawing access, neither of which is mentioned in the draft deal. 

“It is appalling,” said Graham Bishop, a former banker and consultant who has advised EU institutions on financial services. The draft text “is particularly vague but emphasizes the EU’s ability to take decisions in its own interests. … This is code for the UK being a pure rule taker.” 

Britain’s decision to leave the EU has undermined London’s position as the leading international finance hub. Britain’s financial services sector, the biggest source of its exports and tax revenue, has been struggling to find a way to preserve the existing flow of trading after it leaves the EU. 

Many top bankers fear Brexit will slowly undermine London’s position. Global banks have already reorganized some operations ahead of Britain’s departure from the European Union, due on March 29. 

Currently, inside the EU, banks and insurers in Britain enjoy unfettered access to customers across the bloc in all financial activities. 

No commercial bank lending

Equivalence, however, covers a more limited range of business and excludes major activities such as commercial bank lending. Law firm Hogan Lovells has estimated that equivalence rules cover just a quarter of all EU cross-border financial services business. 

Such an arrangement would give Britain a similar level of access to the EU as major U.S. and Japanese firms, while tying it to many EU finance rules for years to come. 

Many bankers and politicians have been hoping London could secure a preferential deal giving it deep access to the bloc’s markets. 

Under current equivalence rules, access is patchy and can be cut off by the EU within 30 days in some cases. Britain had called for a far longer notice period. 

The draft deal is likely to persuade banks, insurers and asset managers to stick with plans to move some activities to the EU to ensure they maintain access to the bloc’s markets. 

Britain is currently home to the world’s largest number of banks, and about 6 trillion euros ($6.79 trillion) or 37 percent of Europe’s financial assets are managed in the U.K. capital, almost twice the amount of its nearest rival, Paris. 

London also dominates Europe’s 5.2 trillion-euro investment banking industry. 

Rachel Kent, a lawyer at Hogan Lovells who has advised companies on future trading relations with the EU, said the draft deal did not rule out improved equivalence in the future. 

“I don’t see that any doors have been closed,” she said. “It is probably as much as we could hope for at this stage.” 
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This is part of “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters series exploring climate change’s impact on sea creatures and the people who depend on them. 

A priest in a white robe swung an incense burner, leading the way for thousands of marchers as they crammed into a winding cobblestone alley decorated with candy-colored streamers in Lisbon’s ancient Alfama neighborhood. 

Behind the priest, six men carried a life-sized statue of St. Anthony, Lisbon’s patron saint, born more than 800 years ago. The musky incense swirled together with the smoke from orange-hot charcoals grilling whole sardines a few streets away. 

The procession moved along, leaving behind just the smell of the sardines. 

In this city, June is the month to celebrate the saints. Almost every neighborhood throws a party, known as an arraial. 

Some are just a scattering of makeshift tables in alleyways. Others cover several blocks and are jammed with tourists and locals alike. The saints are quickly forgotten in the din of pumping pop music, brass bands, chattering families, indiscreet lovers and flirty teens. The sardines are not. They’re the star of every party. 

The fish are so popular here, fisheries managers estimate that the Portuguese collectively eat 13 sardines every second during a typical June — about 34 million fish for the month. 

But as climate change warms the seas and inland estuaries, sardines are getting harder to catch. Just a week before the festival, authorities postponed sardine fishing in some ports out of a fear that the diminishing population, vulnerable to changes in the Atlantic’s water temperatures, was being overfished. 

In the last few decades, the world’s oceans have undergone the most rapid warming on record. Currents have shifted. These changes are for the most part invisible. But this hidden climate change has had a disturbing impact on marine life — in effect, creating an epic underwater refugee crisis. 

Effect on communities

Drawing on decades of maritime temperature readings, fisheries records and other little-used data, Reuters has undertaken an extensive exploration of the disrupted deep. A team of reporters has discovered that from the waters off the East Coast of the United States to the shores of West Africa, marine creatures are fleeing for their lives, and the communities that depend on them are facing turbulence as a result. 

Here in Lisbon, the decline of the country’s most beloved fish tugs at the Portuguese soul. A nation on Europe’s western edge, Portugal has always turned toward the sea. For centuries, it has sent its people onto the sometimes treacherous oceans, from famous explorers like Ferdinand Magellan and Vasco da Gama to little-known fishermen who left weeping wives on the shore. 

The St. Anthony’s festival commemorates a 13th-century priest who, church doctrine says, once drew a bay full of fish to hear his sermon. It is the capital’s biggest, most joyous celebration of the year. 

At the bottom of the track where two bright yellow funicular trains begin and end an 800-foot vertiginous trip through the Bica neighborhood, a social club and a local cafe set up for the festival. Mostly locals were present, though a few German and French tourists have found their way to the party. 

Four friends sat around a wobbly plastic table perched outside the G.D. Zip Zip social club. There was just enough room for others to walk past and get to the homemade grill where the sardines were being cooked. Three of the friends had sardine skeletons and heads heaped on their plates. They talked about the fish that’s as iconic in Portugal in the summer as a hamburger on the grill in America. 

This year, however, because of limits on fishing, the available fish were mostly frozen. 

“We listen to it all year round that maybe this year, we will not have sardines,” Helena Melo said. 

Fifteen feet up the hill, Jorge Rito, who has been cooking for the club every June for five years, wiped his watering eyes with the back of his hand. He’d just gotten another order and tossed a dozen whole sardines onto the grill in neat rows. 

As he flipped the silvery fish, each seven or eight inches long, a burst of smoke rose from the charcoal, and he wiped his eyes again. 

“Worried? Yes, of course,” he said, removing the fish from the grill and placing them onto a platter. “It is important for our finances, our economies, for us.” 

 

Youngest sardines vulnerable 

 

Just as the next generation of humans may pay the highest price for climate change, the youngest generation of sardines is at risk. 

Susana Garrido, a sardine researcher with the Portuguese Oceanic and Atmospheric Institute in Lisbon, said larval sardines are especially vulnerable to climate change when compared with other similar pelagic species, such as larval anchovies, which are capable of living in a wider range of temperatures. 

Deep seawater upwelling dominates the waters off the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula and keeps the coastal waters cool. But small differences in temperature, especially when sardines are young, can have a significant impact on whether the fish larva dies or grows to maturity, Garrido said. 

Other researchers had tested how well adult sardines survived in a variety of conditions, and there was little evidence that environmental variables such as food abundance and water temperature affected the full-grown fish, she said. So she focused on the larval stage of the species. 

“We did a bunch of experiments varying salinity and all of these other variables, and they survived quite well,” she said. “It was when you change temperature that everything, yes, fell apart. So they have a very narrow range of temperatures where survival is good.” 

Garrido said a recently completed stock assessment showed that the larval sardine population was extremely low. 

“This is getting very serious,” she said. 

The Portuguese sardine population started to fall about a decade ago, even though there were plenty of adults at the time to sustain large catches. And around the same time, southerly species, such as chub and horse mackerel, slowly moved in. 

Chub mackerel, a subtropical species that was once found only in southern Portugal, is now caught all the way up the coast. 

“Probably as a consequence of warming, it is now invading the main spawning area of sardines,” Garrido said. 

Larger forces at work

Alexandra Silva, who works down the hall from Garrido, has been managing the Portuguese sardine stock assessment since the late 1990s — pivotal work that the organization uses to decide the size of the sardine catch. 

When she started, the northern population of the species was in trouble following a period of strong upwelling that brought unusually cold water to the surface. The southern stock, however, was relatively healthy. And in the early years of the century, the species recovered. 

It was not to last. These days, without large numbers of larvae growing to maturity, the population is near collapse all along the coast from Galicia in Spain to the southern end of the Portuguese coast. 

All officials can do is cut down on the fishing. But larger forces, especially climate change, are now affecting the stock in ways that fisheries managers cannot control, the two said. 

Regulators have tried. 

Starting in 2004, they blocked fishing during the spring, when sardines spawn. And for a while, that seemed to work. 

Between 2004 and 2011, the stock remained relatively healthy, with landings ranging from about 55,000 to 70,000 tons, even if the population seemed to be dipping. (From the 1930s to the 1960s, and as recently as the 1980s, fishermen landed more than 110,000 tons in a year.) 

In 2009, the Portuguese proudly announced that the Marine Stewardship Council, an independent monitoring body, had designated the species healthy and sustainable. That year, Portuguese fishermen landed 64,000 tons of the fish. By 2012, however, that number had dropped to 35,000 tons, and the country lost its sustainable certification.  

Since then, fisheries managers have restricted the number of days a week that fishermen can catch sardines, as well as the size of the catch. They’ve also restricted fishing to six months during a year. 

Last year, the catch was limited to about 14,000 tons. 

Further cuts ahead

Earlier this year, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, a forum of scientists that advises governments about fisheries management, warned that it would take at least 15 years to restore the stock at current fishing levels.  

After the report, European Union regulators permitted fishermen along the Iberian coast to continue at the current 16,100-ton level. But it also required Portugal, which gets the bulk of the quota, and Spain to submit a plan to restore the stock in October, which may well lead to further quota cuts. 

Fisheries manager Jorge Abrantes handles landings for Peniche, a sleepy fishing town about 60 miles north of Lisbon. He doesn’t think the fishing industry is the culprit. 

For example, Portuguese government stock assessments indicated that the sardine population had decreased by 10 percent to 25 percent in just a few months. Abrantes argued that the dip clearly wasn’t caused by fishermen pulling sardines from the sea, because no sardine nets were in the water during that period. Instead, he said, there are just not enough juvenile sardines to replenish the population. 

In Peniche, fishermen Erbes Martins and Joao Dias sat among piles of nets on a bright but chilly February morning. The two 75-year-old men would have preferred to be fishing for sardines. But the fish were spawning, so they were not allowed to catch them. 

Sure, there were other fish they could catch, but it wasn’t worth it, they say. 

 

Horse mackerel, or carapau in Portuguese, one of the southerly species that now thrive all along the coast, is abundant but doesn’t sell for much at market, Dias said. 

 

“We can’t fish for sardines in October, November, December, January, February, March — six months,” Dias said. “And carapau just doesn’t pay the bills.” 

He said the restrictions on fishing sardines were keeping a new generation from going to sea, because they can’t make enough money. 

 

“When we die,” he said, “no one is going to do the work.” 

‘I would miss this’ 

Lisbon’s Graca neighborhood sits at the highest point in the capital, its pastel homes looking down over the city’s six other hills. For the St. Anthony festival, two stages were set up for music, along with about 20 temporary food and drink stalls. 

 

Luis Diogo Sr., his wife, Rita, and their two children, Luis Jr. and Vera, came out to join the party. Luis Sr. looked across a picnic table at his son, who was well into his third plate of sardines. 

“This is a country between Spain and the sea, so we went to the sea very soon in our history,” he said. The talk turned to the present, and the dwindling catch of the city’s favorite seafood. 

Luis Jr. didn’t pay much attention to his father. He was too focused on his sardines. 

 

“I would miss this very much,” the 17-year-old said, wiping his lips clean after polishing off the last sardine on his plate. 
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The Trump administration is adding new names to a list of Cuban tourist attractions that Americans are barred from visiting.

 

The 26 names range from the new five-star Iberostar Grand Packard and Paseo del Prado hotels in Old Havana to modest shopping centers in beachside resorts far from the capital. All are barred because they are owned by Cuba’s military business conglomerate, GAESA.

 

Travel to Cuba remains legal. Hundreds of U.S. commercial flights and cruise ships deliver hundreds of thousands of Americans to the island each year. And nothing prevents the government from funding its security apparatus with money spent at facilities that aren’t owned by GAESA and banned by the U.S. But the sanctions appear to have dampened interest in travel to Cuba, which has dropped dramatically this year.

 

 
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The ride-sharing and delivery company Uber continues to lose money, with growth slowing as it prepares to go public some time next year.

The San Francisco-based company announced it lost just over $1 billion from July through September, a 20 percent increase from the previous quarter.

Uber’s revenue rose 38 percent in the third quarter from a year ago to $2.95 billion, down from a gain of 51 percent in the second quarter.

Uber is seeking to expand in freight hauling, food delivery and electric bikes and scooters, as growth in its now-decade-old ride-hailing business dwindles.

Uber is intent on showing it can still grow enough to become profitable and satisfy investors in an initial public offering.

“We had another strong quarter for a business of our size and global scope,” said Nelson Chai, Uber’s chief financial officer, who joined the company in September after the job had been vacant for three years. He emphasized the “high-potential markets in India and the Middle East, where we continue to solidify our leadership position.”
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