Italy, Flood | featured news

Tourists in Venice put plastic bags over their legs and residents wore rubber boots as water rose to knee-high levels in many parts of the lagoon city on Thursday. The median level of the Adriatic Sea swelled to about 1.4 meters (1.5 yards) above normal - the highest in nearly two years - sending water from the lagoon into St. Mark's Square and many narrow alleyways.

To protect Venice from periodic floods that are increasingly heightened by the double whammy of rising seas levels and sinking land, a team of Italian researchers suggests lifting up the canal-laced city by pumping seawater into the aquifers below it.

Rivers of mud unleashed by heavy rains flood parts of the Sicilian city of Messina, leaving at least 17 people dead and several still missing, Italian officials said Friday.