Buildings evacuated at 3 US universities after bomb warnings

Three universities in New York and Rhode Island evacuated parts of their campuses on Sunday after receiving bomb threats inside several buildings.

In a series of tweets, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, told students, staff and visitors to immediately leave some university buildings and avoid the central campus after local police received a phone warning of bombs being placed in those buildings.

"Please don't call Cornell Police unless you have an emergency," the private university, which has 21,000 students, said.

After receiving a phone bomb threat, Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, evacuated a number of buildings, a university spokesperson said in an email.

Columbia University, which has 31,000 students, evacuated several buildings on its New York City campus after receiving bomb warnings.

She said on Twitter, more than two hours later, that the NYPD had found the threats not to be credible and the buildings had reopened.

On Friday, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, received bomb threats that later turned out to be unreliable.

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