World News Quick Take

■ United States

Agency's computers lost

The office in charge of protecting technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies is missing 20 desktop computers, at least 14 of which have been used for classified information, the Energy Department inspector general reported on Friday. This is the 13th time in a little over four years that an audit has found the National Nuclear Security Agency, whose national laboratories and factories do most of the work in designing and building nuclear warheads, has lost control over computers used in working on the bombs. Aside from computers it cannot find, the department is also using computers not listed in its inventory.

■ United States

Fake volcano erupts

An imitation volcano in a hotel and water park's swimming pool developed delusions of grandeur, forcing guests to flee to the parking lot in their bare feet and swimsuits. The 6.1m-tall plastic volcano at the Edgewater Hotel and Waterpark in Duluth, Minnesota, started belching black smoke and shooting flames on Thursday. The hotel manager said a malfunctioning internal speaker ignited the fire. Firefighters helped put out the fire, but not before part of the volcano melted. The displaced swimmers were given blankets and directed to nearby restaurants.

A 12-year-old boy in Adrian, Michigan, who has collected more than 150 vacuum cleaners is learning to identify them by sound. "I'm getting pretty good at it," Kyle Krichbaum told the Detroit Free Press. Kyle has been in Hollywood taping a game-show pilot where he had to correctly identify vacuum models, the newspaper said on Saturday. Kyle's parents, Randy and MaryLynn Krichbaum, said their son played with a toy vacuum constantly as a toddler. "At first we thought it was something he would grow out of because babies like noisy things," MaryLynn Krichbaum said. Kyle's hobby also landed him a guest appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

■ Argentina

Floods kill seven

Rising rivers in three rain-soaked provinces have forced some 38,000 people to flee their homes as police on Saturday reported seven deaths from the flooding. Civil defense officials said Santa Fe Province remained the hardest-hit area, with about 30,000 evacuees in and around the provincial capital of Santa Fe and the cities of Rosario and Canada de Gomez. Among newly reported victims on Saturday, coast guard officials said a woman's body was recovered from the rain-swollen Parana River. That brought to three the number dead after a house tumbled into the river on Friday, sweeping the woman and two men to their deaths. The bodies of the two men were recovered on Friday.