LA Schools Will Reopen Wednesday

Some 640,000 kids in the nation's second-largest school district won't be getting a second terror-related day off from school. Officials in the Los Angeles Unified School District say all 900 schools have been inspected following an emailed threat that has now been discredited by the FBI and they plan to reopen for classes Wednesday morning, reports the Los Angeles Times. A similar threat, supposedly from Islamic radicals, was received by officials in New York City, who rejected it as a hoax almost immediately. Gawker reports that both emails, which threatened attacks involving bombs, guns, and nerve gas, came from a profanely named server associated with the message board "8chan."

Officials trying to trace the emails say they were routed through Germany but probably didn't originate there, the Times reports. School board officials, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck defend the decision to close down schools, saying the threat was specific enough to be taken seriously, KTLA reports. "When parents make their determination about the decisions that were made today," Beck says, "I would ask them to look at it this way: If you knew what the superintendent and the school board knew at 5:30 this morning, when the decision had to be made, would you have sent your child to school? Every parent I've asked said, no, of course not." (More Los Angeles stories.)