Calgary, Alberta
Washed away: Southern Alberta is underwater after getting more rain in 48 hours last week than it usually does in a month. In Calgary, where two rivers meet, some neighborhoods were under five feet of water, submerging cars. About 75,000 residents were evacuated, and the government declared a state of emergency. With the Bow River looking “like an ocean” and the Elbow River overflowing its dam, Mayor Naheed Nenshi asked residents to check on each other. “There is nothing preventing you from knocking on your neighbor’s door,” Nenshi said. As the waters receded, officials were worried about contaminated water, damaged infrastructure, and a mosquito infestation.
Villahermosa, Mexico
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Braggart arrested: Former Tabasco state Gov. Andrés Granier was arrested this week on suspicion of embezzlement after the whole country heard him boasting of his shopping sprees. On a tape leaked to radio last month, Granier says he has 400 pairs of shoes, 300 suits, and 1,000 shirts bought at luxury stores in New York and Los Angeles—so many that he can’t even fit them in the closets of his many vacation homes. Granier said he was drunk when that recording was made and that he was simply exaggerating. His successor as governor, though, announced this month that nearly $150 million in state funds is missing. Granier is a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, and his case is being seen as a test of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s commitment to rooting out the party’s long legacy of corruption.
Lake Nicaragua, Nicaragua
Take that, Panama: A Chinese businessman has won a 50-year concession to build a canal in Nicaragua to rival the Panama Canal. Wang Jing says his $40 billion project will connect the Caribbean with the Pacific by way of Lake Nicaragua. At 178 miles long, the waterway would be three times longer than the Panama Canal and has drawn opposition from environmentalists, who say it would threaten the country’s main supply of drinking water as well as crocodile breeding grounds. President Daniel Ortega, who pushed approval of the project through his docile National Assembly, says it will generate tens of thousands of jobs for the impoverished country. China’s biggest state-owned construction company is scheduled to start digging next year and to finish the canal by 2020.
Rio de Janeiro
Scrap the system: In an effort to appease raging anti-government protesters, President Dilma Rousseff has proposed rewriting the Brazilian Constitution. More than 1 million people thronged streets in Rio, São Paulo, and other cities last week demanding that the government stop spending money on stadiums for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics and start providing services for the poor. Rousseff called for a national referendum on sweeping reforms, including channeling all oil revenue into schools, investing in public transport, and creating a new constitutional assembly to overhaul the corrupt political system. But such a referendum would have to be approved by the current, dysfunctional National Congress, which has refused for years to bring the oil and transport proposals to a vote.
