Midday Roundup: L.A., N.Y. defend opposite reactions to twin hoaxes

Hoax hindsight. Officials with the Los Angeles Unified School District are fielding criticism of their decision to close schools Tuesday over a terror threat that turned out to be a hoax. New York City public schools received a similar threat but kept school in session on Tuesday. But New York school authorities had several advantages, L.A. officials pointed out, the biggest of which was knowing about the warning in California, which made a hoax seem more likely. Though the emails containing the threats were sent at the same time, L.A. district officials saw the message first because it arrived at 10 p.m. PST Monday. It got to New York at 1 a.m. Tuesday and wasn’t seen until later that morning. L.A. Police Chief Charlie Beck said school officials there didn’t know about the New York email until after they decided to cancel classes for the day. Given the recent terror attacks in nearby San Bernardino, Beck said the decision to call off schools in L.A. was understandable and showed great courage.

Another year funded. The House reached a compromise on a spending deal Tuesday night to fund the government through 2016. Though the bill increases the federal deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars and extends unfunded but popular tax credits, Republicans won one important victory: The bill lifts a decades-old ban on U.S. crude oil exports. The White House also supports the legislation, which is expected to pass in the House later this week.

Cautious optimism. The Federal Reserve Board is expected to announce today the first increase in interest rates since 2006. The rate has been basically zero for the last seven years. Though the economy is recovering slowly from the Great Recession, raising interest rates will help the Fed guard against future downturns. If the economy tanks again while interest rates are nil, the Fed can’t do anything to help stimulate it. Stock prices rose this morning ahead of the announcement, signaling that investors see the interest rate hike as a vote of confidence in the economy.

Classified information. A review by the intelligence community confirms at least two of Hillary Clinton’s emails were indeed top secret when they landed on her private server. One of them isstill top secret. Those emails reportedly contained intelligence on the movement of North Korean nuclear missiles and a U.S. drone strike. The State Department has denied that any of Clinton’s emails were top secret during her tenure as secretary of state. The Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees are now looking into whether the State Department leaked false reports that the emails were nottop secret to protect Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid.

Teen convict. A jury found 16-year-old Philip Chism guilty Tuesday of raping and murdering his math teacher, Colleen Ritzer, at his high school in Salem, Mass. Two years ago, Ritzer, 24, asked Chism to stay after school and tried to befriend him. Chism became upset, and Ritzer left the classroom, witnesses testified. He followed her into the bathroom, where he stabbed her with a box cutter and raped her. Her body was found in woods near the school. Chism’s attorneys argued he suffered from severe mental illness, but the prosecution said his crime was premeditated and he knew what he was doing. He faces life in prison, but will be eligible for parole because he is a juvenile.

WORLD Radio’s Mary Reichard contributed to this report.