Vox Sentences: For a few hours today, Bill Gates wasn't the world's richest man

The strongest hurricane ever recorded; Obama's plan to save Puerto Rico; and Bill Gates temporarily overtaken by the founder of Zara.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

If hurricanes went above Category 5, Patricia would be a Category 7

NOAA via Getty Images

• Hurricane Patricia, which is the largest hurricane ever recorded, is set to make landfall today on the western coast of Mexico.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• How strong is Patricia? It's a Category 5 storm because that's as far as the scale goes. If the scale went further, it would be a Category 7.

  [Ryan Maue via Twitter]

• How strong is Patricia? Between Wednesday night and Friday morning, its winds intensified by 140 mph. (That's a record.)

  [The Washington Post / Jason Samenow]

• How strong is Patricia? On the Dvorak scale for hurricane intensity (based on temperature differences within the storm), which goes up to 8.0, Patricia is an 8.3.

  [Slate / Eric Holthaus]

• How strong is Patricia? It's posting sustained winds of 200 mph — which some meteorologists have maintained is the theoretical maximum for hurricane speeds on Earth.

  [LiveScience ]

• How strong is Patricia? This is how it looks from the International Space Station.

  [Scott Kelly via Twitter]

• The closest we've ever seen to a storm like this is 2013's Typhoon Haiyan (which might have hit 200 mph, but wasn't measured by aircraft). It killed 6,000 people.

  [The Washington Post / Jason Samenow]

Saving Puerto Rico

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• As you may recall, Puerto Rico started to default on its $72 billion in debts in August. Things have not improved since then.

  [CNBC / Dawn Giel]

• The territory is in danger of running out of cash entirely at the end of November, at which point it will have to decide between defaulting on government-guaranteed debts, and ceasing provision of basic services and pensions.

  [Bloomberg / Michelle Kaske]

• The Obama administration is warning that unless something is done to let Puerto Rico restructure its debts, it could be facing a "humanitarian crisis."

  [CNBC / Everett Rosenfeld]

• To that end, it's asking Congress to pass a bill that would let Puerto Rico, as a territory, declare bankruptcy.

  [New York Times / Mary Williams Walsh, Michael Corkery and Julie Hirschfeld]

• A bill has already been introduced in Congress that would let Puerto Rico's public corporations — like utilities — declare bankruptcy, just like their counterparts in US states can. But the Obama plan would go further and allow an entire territory to declare bankruptcy — something states can't do.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Unfortunately for Puerto Rico, Congress appears to be skeptical that it should do either of those things. Republicans, in particular, appear to be concerned that allowing bankruptcy would screw over the creditors holding Puerto Rico debt — hedge funds and pension funds.

  [Washington Post / Michael A. Fletcher]

• Puerto Rico is hoping to restore itself through organ-donation tourism (its high homicide rate means there are a lot of organs to go around). That … probably won't be enough.

  [Reuters / Jessica DiNapoli]

• Vox's Matt Yglesias explains how Puerto Rico got into this mess (and why it isn't exactly Puerto Rico's fault).

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

Amancio Ortega, the (temporary) new Bill Gates

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

• For a few hours today, Bill Gates was not the richest man in the world. He was dethroned by Spanish clothing tycoon Amancio Ortega, founder of Zara.

  [Business Insider / Mike Bird]

• Ortega's good fortune was due to the stock market: his company Inditex (which owns Zara) hit a three-year high today as the Spanish stock market rallied after the European Central Bank indicated it might try quantitative easing in the Eurozone.

  [Investing.com]

• Sadly for Ortega, Microsoft stock surged shortly thereafter and Gates reclaimed his spot.

  [Reuters / Elisabeth O'Leary]

• That still leaves Ortega as the second-richest man in the world — not to mention the richest man in fashion by far. He's earned a fortune from mass-appeal mall retail — a far greater fortune han those accumulated by haute couture designers.

  [Racked / Cameron Wolf]

• Ortega has a helluva rags-to-riches-story — he started his business in 1963, with the equivalent of $25. This 2001 profile in Forbes is a great early look at the man and the brand.

  [Forbes / Richard Heller]

• Zara has since become the biggest fashion chain on earth. It was a pioneer in the world of "fast fashion" — clothing chains that take mere weeks to get a trend from runways to stores (thanks to high-velocity, low-quality manufacturing), with inventory that turns over frequently.

  [New York Times / Suzy Hansen]

• From a business perspective, Zara is a revelation: proof that you can disrupt an industry not just by putting out a better product, but by radically improving the process by which the product is made.

  [The Atlantic / Derek Thompson]

• But from a labor-rights and environmental perspective, fast fashion is a disaster.

  [Racked / Erika Adams]

MISCELLANEOUS

Toya Graham was dubbed the "hero mom" of the Baltimore riots. Job and scholarship offers flowed in. But months later, very little has changed. [Washington Post / Terrence McCoy]

• TV casts are finally getting more diverse. Why aren't writers' rooms?

  [Slate / Aisha Harris]

• A number of Tea Party groups function in a manner more than a little reminiscent of Ponzi schemes.

  [NYT / Eric Lipton and Jennifer Steinhauer]

• BBC commentary on Kim Jong Il's birthday, mashed up with BBC footage of Queen Elizabeth II's birthday.

  [Chris Blattman]

• Hamilton, as analyzed by Talib Kweli.

  [NY Mag / Talib Kweli]

VERBATIM

"What motivated you when you turned into a vampire bat and ruined American foreign policy forever?" [The Washington Post / Alexandra Petri]

• "In the beginning all the Peanuts kids were, as Al Capp, the creator of Li’l Abner, observed, 'good mean little bastards eager to hurt each other.'"

  [The Atlantic / Sarah Boxer]

• "They actually wished others to cruise in utilitarian autonomous vehicles, more than they wanted to buy utilitarian autonomous vehicles themselves."

  [Jean-Francois Bonnefon et al via Technology Review]

• "There was a stage, when I was 3 or 4, where my mom thought I might grow up to be a serial killer."

  [US Magazine / Stephanie Webber]

• "I finally gurgled some approximation of 'thanks' in response, but what I really wanted to say was: 'How dare you make me make such a life-altering decision on the day of the season finale of Empire?'"

  [Cosmopolitan / Jazmine Hughes]

WATCH THIS

We know how to end poverty. So why don't we? [YouTube / Dylan Matthews, Joe Posner, Joss Fong]

Vox / Joe Posner, Joss Fong

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