here and it is extremely quiet. jacob, i ll check back with you. sean henry is on the phone, retired assistant executive director of the fbi and president of crowd strike services. sean, what s your take here? the superintendent saying there was a threat. onniously it w onny obviously it was deemed credible when you decide to shut down over 900 schools in that district and over 100 charter schools. yeah, tamron. this decision isn t taken lightly. lots of threats come in periodically to schools and government facilities and the like. you really have to look at the totality of the circumstances here. i know when a threat like this comes in, school officials in coordination with law enforcement, they ve got to look at the totality. what is the credibility of the threat, was there specific language in that threat, perhaps they heard something previously and this was a follow-up. so you really have to look at the totality of what s occurred.
all right. first, though, big news today. the trial of the accused underwear bomber begins this morning with earnest with opens statements at the federal courthouse in droit. umar farouk abdulmutallab is charged with trying to blow up a flight on christmas day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underwear. the defendant is acting as his own attorney. cnn s deb feyerick in live in detroit, where you were the night this all developed and christmas day 2009. deb, what is the situation? reporter: well, ali, christine and carol, we can tell you that he is facing eight charges today. it carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. the charges against him, attempted murder, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and also conspiracy toy commit terrorism. the nigerian grat witt student turned accused suits bomber is acteding as his own attorney and umar farouk abdulmutallab shown he is defind. during jury selection he invoked his meant, jihad mentor, recently killed in an air