Outage leaves millions without power in Brazil

SAO PAULO, Nov 10 (Reuters - A major electricity outage left tens of millions of people in Brazil's two largest cities of Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro without power on Tuesday night.

The national electricity grid operator said 17,000 megawatts of energy had been lost, equivalent to the entire consumption of Sao Paulo State.

The electricity operator in the state of Minas Gerais said the outage was caused by a problem with the Itaipu dam which lies on the border between Brazil and Paraguay.

The subway system in Sao Paulo, Brazil's financial capital, was shut down by the outage that occurred just after 10 p.m. (0000 GMT) local time, leaving thousands of people stranded. (Reporting by Stuart Grudgings, editing by Philip Barbara)