NATIONAL BRIEFS

THE SOUTHWEST: Youth swept away in flooding

A teen was swept away in a drainage wash in the Las Vegas area, and two people were rescued from a van stranded in high water in suburban Phoenix after heavy rains flooded ditches and roads. Family and friends gathered Thursday in Henderson, southeast of the Vegas Strip, to look for William Mootz, 17, who disappeared in a flood channel the day before. The wash had filled quickly after a Wednesday morning downpour. Mootz was hanging out with friends and apparently didn't intend to get into the Pittman Wash, which meanders past a shopping mall and his high school. "I think they were just going out there to look at the raging water in the washes," Henderson police spokesman Keith Paul said. In Scottsdale, Ariz., flooded roads led to a dramatic rescue Thursday morning. A driver and her disabled passenger had to be pulled from a medical transport van that was stranded in a flooded wash. Firefighters used a ladder truck to help the driver and passenger climb out of the van.

GEORGIA: Black college in financial distress

Morris Brown College in Atlanta, one of the nation's oldest black colleges, is facing foreclosure next month, and an auction of assets is set for Sept. 4. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports enrollment is down to about 50 students, from more than 3,000 in past years. Former Atlanta City councilman and Morris Brown graduate Derrick Boazman called the development "heartbreaking." The school plans a prayer vigil Saturday, at which plans to move the school forward will be discussed, said Benjamin Harrison of the 6th District A.M.E. Church, which oversees the school.

SOUTH DAKOTA: Land sale delay heartens Sioux

The planned auction of nearly 2,000 acres of land in the Black Hills that American Indian tribes consider sacred has been canceled, though it wasn't immediately clear why. Brock Auction Co. planned to auction five tracts of land owned by local residents Leonard and Margaret Reynolds on Saturday, but a message on the auction house's website Thursday said it had been canceled. "There are a lot of things we don't know at this point," Rosebud Sioux Tribe spokesman Alfred Walking Bull said. "If there was a change of heart, we're definitely thankful for that." Tribes of the Great Sioux Nation consider the site key to their creation story and are trying to purchase the land, which they call Pe' Sla.