Good morning! This week, we talk about a massive power outage in São Paulo, Brazil’s main urban center. How Congress is putting pressure on public accounts. And what is happening to Brazil’s exports to Argentina.
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Storm slams São Paulo, causes major power outage
A massive storm hit the state of São Paulo on Friday. Winds of over 150 kilometers per hour killed seven people, wreaked havoc in several cities, and left millions without electricity for hours.
Driving the news. Enel informed on Monday that 24 percent of the consumers under its responsibility were still without power — more than 60 hours after the outages began. This comprises about 800,000 homes, about 500,000 of which are in São Paulo city alone.
Why it matters. The crisis unleashed by the storm shows how ill-prepared the country’s largest and most developed urban center is to deal with extreme climate events.
Uh-oh. Extreme rainfall has become more common in several parts of the country. The number of days with more than 80 millimeters of rain...