Schools around the nation

SACRAMENTO

Possible pipe bomb forces school evacuation

A suspected pipe bomb was found Thursday at a city high school, forcing the evacuation of about 2,300 students, school officials said. Police took two teen-agers into custody.

Investigators say they believe the 5-inch object was a carbon dioxide cartridge fashioned into an explosive. They were still trying to determine its destructive potential late Thursday.

A student at C.K. McClatchy High School told a vice principal at about 11:15 a.m. that another student had what he believed was a pipe bomb, school district spokeswoman Maria Lopez said.

Vice Principal Bob Sandoval notified campus police, then pulled the student out of class, Lopez said.

Campus police suspected the object the student carried in his pants pocket was an explosive, evacuated the school about noon and called city police, Sacramento police spokeswoman Michele Quattrin said.

City police took the student carrying the device and a teen they believe gave it to him into custody, Quattrin said. Both were charged with possession of a destructive device.

The evacuated students returned to class about 1:15 p.m.

Lopez said it is "hard to say" whether there is any connection between the timing of Thursday's event and a deadly shooting spree Tuesday at a school in Littleton.

"This is the first time that something like this has happened and I don't know what triggered these kids," Lopez said.

TENNESSEE

Police to search students' possessions

WOODBURY — Cannon County High school officials plan to have police search students' possessions Friday morning after a girl who was taunted threatened to get even with gunfire.

The girl was ridiculed by about three students Thursday in the school's courtyard, Woodbury Police Officer Tony Burnett told radio station WBRY. He said the girl threatened to return Friday and shoot everybody in the courtyard.

As a result of the threat, School Superintendent Barbara Parker has ordered that only two school entrances be open and the police search each student's possessions.

Students wearing loose clothing that could conceal a weapon will be told to return home and change clothes, Parker said. If a student leaves the school during the day he won't be allowed to return.

Thursday's threat drew extra alarm from school officials because it follows Tuesday's massacre in Littleton.

Woodbury is about 50 miles southeast of Nashville.

PENNSYLVANIA

High school closed today over rumors

NEWTOWN — A Bucks County high school will be closed today because of rumored threats of violence, one of a number of incidents across the state apparently related to the massacre at a Colorado high school, school officials and authorities said.

"Due to unsubstantiated rumors circulating in the high school that contained the threat of potential violence, Council Rock High will be closed," principal David Yates said Thursday. Authorities said a security sweep of the school, which has an enrollment of about 2,400, would be conducted today as a precaution.

The scheduled closure of Council Rock is the latest in a string of threats against schools and public buildings that authorities deemed apparent copycat crimes inspired by a bombing and shooting rampage in Littleton.

Also on Thursday, school officials said students at Tri-Valley Senior High School in Valley View, Schuylkill County, were dismissed at 11 a.m. because of a "school emergency." Unidentified sources told radio station WKOK in Sunbury that the early dismissal was connected to a threat of violence.

Parents of Council Rock students said they have heard of other students talking about starting up a version of the so-called "Trench Coat Mafia," the name of the group of outcasts the two suspects in the Colorado shooting belonged to.

GERMANY

Newspapers delve into Hitler connection

BONN — The news that the Littleton school shooters dabbled in Nazi symbols struck a chord Thursday in a nation still trying to come to grips with its past. A German tabloid headline called them "Hitler's murderous children."

"The killers lived in Nazi madness," screamed Bild, Germany's most read daily, across a front page juxtaposing photos of Hitler and the two teenage gunmen. "Their bloodbath was intended as homage to the dictator's 110th birthday."

"Decades later, Adolf Hitler, that horrible dictator, is still causing suffering and death," Bild said.

Express, a Cologne daily, likened the shooters to "sinister Gestapo men" because they wore black trench coats.

In a country always uneasy about its own neo-Nazi problems, several German newspapers ran columns with experts trying to explain the shootings.

"They chose Adolf Hitler because he is the most famous symbol of horror, of blind destruction," Express quoted psychologist Arnd Stein as saying. "They were messed up, not Nazis out of conviction."

Most commentators, however, said the real problem was Americans' refusal to tighten gun control laws.

Compiled from staff and wire reports.