It's like fighting violent floods with a sandbag levy.
The river provided a constant song, gentle swimming holes, violent floods.
Still, so many lives had been spared in the violent flood of water that some residents had hope that the sea had not turned against them.
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Unrelenting rains for much of the weekend complicated the search for scores of people still missing after violent floods stirred mudslides that ripped through hillside communities around Rio de Janeiro, killing more than 600 people since last week.
The debris plunged into the river, and a great mass of water "overwhelmed with a sudden and violent flood all that was on the banks as far as the city of Geneva," more than 40 miles across the lake.
The official death toll from one of the worst natural disasters in Brazil's history is now 598, with some 260 confirmed dead in the Teresópolis region where torrential rain storms triggered violent floods and landslides that scythed through villages, farms and condominiums.
In a follow-up report released last week, the panel identified short-term consequences like shrinking glaciers, vanishing coral reefs and changing seasons, and it warned of much bigger problems down the road -- rising oceans, violent floods and the spread of diseases like cholera and malaria, especially in poorer countries that are least able to defend themselves.
Increasing storms, violent floods, fluctuating global temperatures, unstable energy costs and global water shortages.
The torrent of violent news flooding into American TV screens in recent months was used to boost his own campaign at the expense of Democrats.
For many people, Monday was the first day back on the job after Hurricane Sandy swept through the region, making landfall last Monday night with violent winds, flooding and rains.
