crudely written email threat to members of the Los Angeles Board of Education prompted officials to close all 900 schools in the nation’s second-largest school system Tuesday, sending parents from San Pedro to Pacoima scrambling to find day care — while New York law enforcement dismissed a nearly identical threat from the same sender as an obvious hoax

The unprecedented districtwide shutdown reflected the tense atmosphere over possible terrorist attacks less than two weeks after two Islamic radicals opened fire at a workplace party in San Bernardino, killing 14.

L.A. Unified School District Supt. Ramon Cortines said he made the decision to order the school closures because he couldn’t take a chance with the system’s 640,000 students.By evening, school officials said they had inspected all campuses and that the FBI had discredited the threat.

The simmering rivalry between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz spilled into the open Tuesday night during the final Republican presidential debate of the year, as the two senators tussled over a string of issues that served to highlight front-runner Donald Trump's discomfort with policy substance.

event here was dominated by national security and terrorism in the aftermath of the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.

But Trump, who has fueled intense controversy by proposing a ban on Muslims entering the United States, often faded into the background. He even struck an uncharacteristically conciliatory tone by pledging his commitment to the Republican Party -- putting to rest rumors of an independent run -- and holding his punches from the surging Cruz.

Temporary power supplier Aggreko (AGGK.L) has pulled out of a tender to provide generators to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro next year, the spokesman for Rio 2016 told Reuters, dealing a major blow to organizers rushing to secure an energy source for the world's largest sporting event.

The temporary power contract is a vital part of Olympic preparations, guaranteeing a stable and secure energy supply for international broadcasters, the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as back-up electricity for the venues.

The most experienced bidder pulling out on such a crucial contract is a worrying sign for Olympic organizers who are under huge pressure to cut spending as Brazil languishes in its worst recession in 25 years. The government has already warned that there is no money to cover any cost overruns.

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded. From Our Advertisers .story-link { position: relative; display: block; text-decoration: none; padding: 6px 0; min-height: 65px; min-width: 300px; } .story-link:hover { background-color: #eeeeec; } .story-kicker, .story-heading, .summary { margin: 0; padding: 0; } .thumb { position: absolute; left: 0; top: 6px; } .thumb-hover, .story-link:hover .thumb-main { display: none } .thumb-main, .story-link:hover .thumb-hover { display: block } .story-body { padding-left: 75px; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: 400; color: #000; } .story-body .story-kicker { font-family: 'nyt-franklin', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 11px; line-height: 11px; font-weight: 400; color: #5caaf3; } .story-heading { font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: 700; padding: 5px 0 0; } Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation Changing Charity Younger donors are finding new ways to give. <noscript class=&quot;MOAT-nytdfp348531439194?moatClientLevel1=31074278&amp;amp;moatClientLevel2=343740158&amp;amp;moatClientLevel3=58584518&amp;amp;moatClientLevel4=94015704638&amp;amp;moatClientSlicer1=28390358&amp;amp;moatClientSlicer2=30706478&amp;amp;zMoatPR=n

The ruling by the Government Accountability Office, which opened its investigation after a report on the agency’s practices in The New York Times, drew a bright line for federal agencies experimenting with social media about the perils of going too far to push a cause. Federal laws prohibit agencies from engaging in lobbying and propaganda.

An E.P.A. official on Tuesday disputed the finding. “We use social media tools just like all organizations to stay connected and inform people across the country about our activities,” Liz Purchia, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement. “At no point did the E.P.A. encourage the public to contact Congress or any state legislature.”

A top Army commander on Monday ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009, a move that prompted a huge manhunt in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan and landed him in nearly five years of harsh Taliban captivity.

According to Sergeant Bergdahl’s defense lawyers, the Army lawyer who presided over the preliminary hearing also recommended that he face neither jail time nor a punitive discharge and that he go before an intermediate tribunal known as a “special court-martial,” where the most severe penalty possible would be a year of confinement.

Monday’s decision rejecting that recommendation means that Sergeant Bergdahl now faces a maximum five-year penalty if ultimately convicted by a military jury of desertion, as well as potential life imprisonment on the more serious charge of misbehavior before the enemy, which in this case means endangering the troops who were sent to search for him after he disappeared.

Aamer, 48, was held over extremely serious claims - that he had led a Taliban unit and was an associate of Osama Bin Laden. The US military classified him as a threat, but he was never charged.

His lawyers say the case against him came from unreliable allegations extracted during torture and that his treatment at the US military base in Cuba raises serious questions about the legality and morality of the so-called war on terror.

The Saudi national lived in London for five years, settling with a British wife - but says he found it hard to be a practising Muslim in the UK.

Donald Trump&nbsp;began his Monday facing a spate of unflattering headlines, with Sen. Ted Cruz&nbsp;(R-Tex.) having officially snatched the top position in Iowa from the real estate tycoon. Then came the midday release of a national poll from Monmouth University, which showed Trump posting his most massive lead since entering the 2016 contest in June.

Trump crushes the Republican field with 41% support, the poll finds, with Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio&nbsp;of Florida and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson far behind. Cruz garners 14% of Republican voters, while Rubio claims 10% and Carson wins 9%.

Further behind are Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former frontrunner Jeb Bush at 3%, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, businesswoman Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky earn 2% each. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sits at 1%.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino has approved the purchase of 44 billion pesos (US$932 million) worth of military equipment to help boost maritime security capability as tensions simmer in the South China Sea.

Defence Undersecretary Fernando Manalo made the announcement Saturday after the government received the first two of a dozen new South Korean-made light fighter jets to enhance the country’s air defence capabilities.

Aquino authorised the multi-year contract to purchase two frigates, eight amphibious assault vehicles, three anti-submarine helicopters, two long-range patrol aircraft, three aerial radars, munitions for the fighters and close support planes, Manalo said.

The weather's been positively toasty across much of the east coast over the past several days, especially for a December. In New York, Sunday temperatures shattered a 30-year-old record, hitting 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And the month has been chock-full of 60-plus days.

So what's going on? Is this a climate change thing, or a welcome boon from the ongoing El Nino tropical weather event? The answer actually lies with a buzzword from 2014's equally extreme temperatures: the polar vortex.

Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service, said last week the band of cold air surrounding the arctic -- called the "Arctic Oscillation" -- is particularly tight right now. During the polar vortex, pressure changes in that band of air caused it to slow and slip down towards America, bringing with it a wave of Arctic air that led to well below zero temperatures.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Planned Parenthood sued Ohio's health director on Sunday in a dispute over how the organization's affiliates handle the disposal of fetal tissue in the state.

The organization is accusing the state's health department of changing the interpretation of a fetal tissue disposal rule without notice and then unfairly targeting Planned Parenthood, violating its due process and equal protection rights.

he federal lawsuit filed in Columbus follows an investigation by the state's attorney general into the organization's three facilities in Ohio that provide abortions.

The Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet giant, is making an ambitious play to reshape media coverage of its home country, taking aim at what company executives call the “negative” portrayal of China in the Western media.

As the backbone of this effort, Alibaba agreed on Friday to buy the media assets of the SCMP Group, including one of Hong Kong’s most influential English language daily newspapers, The South China Morning Post. Alibaba is acquiring an award-winning newspaper that for decades has reported aggressively on subjects that China’s state-run media outlets are forbidden to cover, like political scandals and human-rights cases.

Alibaba said the deal was fueled by a desire to improve China’s image and offer an alternative to what it calls the biased lens of Western news outlets. While Alibaba said the Chinese government had no role in its deal to buy the Hong Kong newspaper, the company’s position aligns closely with that of the Communist Party, which has grown increasingly critical of the way Western news organizations cover China.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell has scheduled a news conference Sunday to discuss the fatal shooting by sheriff’s deputies of a man wielding a gun at a busy Lynwood intersection, an incident caught on a dramatic video that has sparked protests in the neighborhood.

The sheriff and homicide detectives will discuss the shooting at a news conference at 11 a.m. at the Hall of Justice downtown. A group of civil rights organizations are planning their own news conference and are calling for a meeting with McDonnell.

The activists they want the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the shooting and launch a broader probe into the use of force by the Sheriff’s Department.

Saudi Arabian women voted for the first time on Saturday in local council elections and also stood as candidates, a step hailed by some activists in the Islamic patriarchy as a historic change, but by others as merely symbolic.

"As a first step it is a great achievement. Now we feel we are part of society, that we contribute," said Sara Ahmed, 30, a physiotherapist entering a polling station in north Riyadh. "We talk a lot about it, it's a historic day for us."

This incremental expansion of voting rights has spurred some Saudis to hope the Al Saud ruling family, which appoints the national government, will eventually carry out further reforms to open up the political system.

"The problem's not solved because of this accord, but make no mistake, the Paris agreement establishes the enduring framework the world needs to solve the climate crisis," the president said late Saturday in a speech from the White House's Cabinet Room. "It creates the mechanism, the architecture, for us to continually tackle this problem in an effective way."

But who benefits from the new "architecture" the accord creates? And what will the deal cost for others?

On its face, the plan agreed to on Saturday affects just about every nation. It requires countries to limit the rise in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. It also sets an even more ambitious goal to slow the warming further -- down to just 1.5 degrees Celsius. (In the years since global industrialization, the world's temperature has already risen 1 degree Celsius.)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the newly passed international climate change agreement as a major achievement that could help turn the tide on global warming, but got a quick reminder that Republicans will fight it all the way.

Obama said the climate agreement made Saturday night by almost 200 nations "can be a turning point for the world" and credited his administration for playing a key role. He and Kerry predicted it would prompt widespread spending on clean energy and help stem carbon pollution blamed for global warming.

The immediate reaction of leading Republican critics was a stark reminder of the conflict that lies ahead.

First, the good news: On Saturday afternoon, world leaders ratified a universal pact to slow global warming, ending a decades-long political stalemate and, according to the best possible science, lowering the risk of ecological collapse.

The decisive moment arrived inside a high-security airplane hangar on the outskirts of Paris, where delegates from nearly 200 nations fought over the deal line-by-line for two weeks. Finally, the French foreign minister called an all-hands meeting, and asked if there were any objections to the final 31-page agreement.

Seeing and hearing none, he banged a tiny green gavel, sealing the deal into international law. The room erupted in a man-on-the-moon-like moment of rapturous applause. The online world followed.

Something unique makes humans the top species of the planet. It’s not our exceptional brain size, but our ability to imagine the future. This skill trains us to think unlike other animals and ultimately triumph over them. And, yet, a limitation of this unique ability might also spell our doom.

At a meeting in Paris, world leaders are scratching their heads about how we can deal with the imminent threat posed by global warming. Our energy-thirsty civilization is guzzling fossil fuels at an unsustainable rate and we are soon to run out our carbon budget. If we don’t act now, disastrous consequences are predicted: rising sea levels, extreme weather events, easy-to-spread infections and so on.

But, as Arnold Schwarzenegger makes it clear, despite our ability to dream up dystopia, “Stuff that happens in the future does not mean anything to people.” It’s a limitation that could seriously hinder a successful outcome in Paris.

Fewer than one-fifth of middle schools — and half of high schools — are teaching all of the sex education topics recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a new study reveals.

The CDC report found that, for every age group, the least likely topics to be taught were how to get and use condoms.

The results, from the 2013-14 school year, did not surprise Stephanie Zaza, the director of the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health, who oversaw the survey administration. "As far back as I can recall," she says of the low rates of compliance, "it's been pretty flat."

Bringing Syrian refugees to the U.S. has become an especially contentious issue. In Canada, however, they're being welcomed with open arms.

Roughly 600 Syrians from refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon will arrive by plane in Canada this evening. They're the first of 25,000 Syrians the new Canadian government wants to resettle by the end of February.

Toronto's major newspaper, the Toronto Star, gave them an emotional welcome on the front page of Thursday's edition. It reads, in part: "You're with family now. ... "You're in Canada now, with all the rights and protections and possibilities that confers. "You'll find the place a little bigger than Damascus or Aleppo, and a whole lot chillier. But friendly for all that. We're a city that cherishes its diversity — it's our strength. Canadians have been watching your country being torn apart, and know that you've been through a terrifying, heartbreaking nightmare. But that is behind you now. And we're eager to help you get a fresh start."

A former Oklahoma City police officer was convicted Thursday of raping and sexually victimizing eight women on his police beat in a minority, low-income neighborhood.

Daniel Holtzclaw, who turned 29 Thursday, sobbed as the verdict was read aloud. Jurors convicted him on 18 counts involving eight of the 13 women who had accused him; the jury acquitted him on another 18 counts.

CBS affiliate KWTV reported the jury deliberated for 45 hours before finding Holtzclaw guilty on four counts of first-degree rape, one count of second-degree rape, six counts of sexual battery, four counts of forcible sodomy and three counts of procuring lewd acts.