Abricots, Haiti

Sandy wreaks havoc: Before it reached the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. this week, Hurricane Sandy killed at least 53 people in Haiti and laid waste to the country’s cropland. Stores of corn and potatoes were wiped out, and banana and breadfruit trees were ripped out of the ground. “We’ll have famine in the coming days,” said Kechner Toussaint, mayor of the southwestern city of Abricots. “It’s an agricultural disaster.” Sandy also destroyed many of the tent camps that house some 370,000 victims of the 2010 earthquake. Aid workers warned that the flooding could lead to a spike in cholera, which has killed 7,400 Haitians and sickened 600,000 in the past two years.

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Brasília, Brazil

Major blackout: A blackout far bigger than those caused by Hurricane Sandy darkened northeastern Brazil last week. Some 53 million people lost power after electrical equipment connecting two substations caught fire. The blackout lasted just a few hours, but as the second one to hit the region in just over a month, it raised considerable alarm. It comes at a time when Brazil is trying to quell concerns that it lacks the infrastructure to smoothly host the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016.

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