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600 Evacuated From Yekaterinburg College After Bomb Threat 'Joke'

Police on Monday detained a Yekaterinburg college student for e-mailing the college's director a bomb threat that prompted the evacuation of 600 faculty members and students.

The director of the Urals College of Technology and Entrepreneurship checked his e-mail at 9 a.m. on Monday morning to find an e-mail saying 200 kilograms of explosives had been placed underneath the building, Valery Gorelykh, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry's branch in Yekaterinburg, told Interfax.

The sender, whom police soon determined to be a student, threatened to detonate the explosives unless he was given $1 million.

Bomb experts and a sniffer dog are currently searching the building for the explosives, though the detained student has told police he issued the bomb threat as a joke, RIA-Novosti reported.

An investigation is still under way.

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