Second Storm Heads Towards East Coast.
With at least 300,000 people still without power after a weekend Nor'easter, residents from Pennsylvania to Maine are bracing for a second storm expected to roll into the region late today. The weekend storm left nine dead, initially knocked out power to almost 2 million, caused flooding in southern coastal states, and dumped up to three feet of snow in some areas (see photos). Both are Nor'easters - storms driven by cold and dry Arctic air coming down from Canada that meet warm and moist air travelling up the coast from the Gulf, creating a powerful mix capable of dumping precipitation from the Mid-Atlantic to the Northeast. Tuesday's storm is expected to drop up to 18 inches of snow - the National Weather Service issued a severe winter storm watch lasting through Wednesday.
On an interesting note, the weekend storm uncovered a Revolutionary-era shipwreck on a Maine beach.
Pushback on Tariffs.
Top congressional Republicans broke with the Trump administration,
coming out against tariffs on foreign imports of steel and aluminum. President Trump said he was considering tariffs of 25% for steel imports and 10% for aluminum imports last week. House Speaker Paul Ryan (WI-01) said
he was worried that a trade war - if other countries retaliated with their own tariffs on other goods like beef or planes - may erase economic gains from the recent tax reform package. The administration has defended its authority to levy the tariffs, saying the deteriorating domestic industries were a
national security issue - though Congress could preempt a tariff through legislation. President Trump also signaled he'd be open to modifying the tariff for Mexico and Canada depending on their
willingness to deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement (or NAFTA), which is being renegotiated.
Yellow Fever in Brazil.
Brazil is racing to stay ahead of what could be one of the
largest outbreaks of Yellow Fever in decades, attempting to vaccinate nearly 23 million people to keep the virus out of its major cities. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention
raised its travel alert after a number of foreign travelers died from contracting the virus (see where
Yellow Fever lives). The virus, which normally infects a few hundred people per year, primarily spreading from mosquitoes to farmers and loggers in the Amazon basin - but in 2016, the virus began spreading towards the country's eastern mega-cities
through monkeys. About 86% of Brazil's
200 million people live in the country's urban areas - roughly 20% of those live in slums, or
favelas. Officials fear if the outbreak spreads to the slums, death rates - which normally hover around 5% - could skyrocket.
