00:00 We go now to Brazil where our correspondent Baramir updates us on the weather conditions
00:04 in the South American country and the impact of the heavy rains and flooding.
00:10 The sun is out in Porto Alegre and the floodwaters are beginning to recede.
00:14 As of last night they were at 4.4 meters above normal.
00:18 This morning the level of the Guaiba River was reported at 4.2.
00:23 It's dropped to 4.06 and expected to drop below 4 meters for the first time since May
00:28 5th tonight with more sun expected tomorrow and rains coming by the end of the week.
00:34 Large sections of the city however are still flooded.
00:37 Today the mayor's office reported that one of the reasons that the Sarandim neighborhood
00:42 was so deeply hit with water levels over 2 meters high in residential neighborhoods was
00:47 that they discovered two breaks in the containment wall, one of them over 5 meters wide.
00:52 The civil defense released new numbers today.
00:55 The number of deaths from the floods has risen to 161 with 85 people still missing and 580,000
01:03 people left temporarily or even permanently homeless.
01:07 Last night in the Porto Alegre suburb of São Leopoldo which has been especially hard hit
01:12 by the floods, President Lula announced emergency grants of 5,100 reais to all 260,000 families
01:21 who've been left homeless by the floods.
01:24 As the city begins to recover from the worst flood in its history, many are blaming Mayor
01:29 Sebastião Melo who spent years arguing that they should knock down the containment wall.
01:35 Well he shut down most of the city's drainage, maintenance operations and refused to perform
01:41 maintenance on pumping stations.
01:44 Meanwhile 71,000 families still do not have electric power in the city of Porto Alegre
01:50 and the civil defense says that the waters are only going to disappear completely sometime
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