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President Clinton urged what he called a "spirit of reconciliation" today in a speech at a prayer breakfast at the White House. As NPR's Mara Liasson reports, Mr. Clinton called on Americans to heal divisions caused by politics, race and other factors. The president said his top priorities for his second term are education, welfare, family values, the economy and foreign policy.

In an effort to keep out drugs and weapons, many U.S. schools now conduct random searches of students and their belongings. Twice this year, school security guards conducting these random searches happened to select sixteen-year-old Matt Smith for investigation, and he found the experience unsettling. Now, he is suing the Norfolk, Virginia school district on constitutional grounds. NPR's Adam Hochberg reports.

A story in the Washington Post stating that the Chinese Embassy might have been used to help raise foreign donations for the Democratic Party has led to renewed calls by some Republicans for the Justice Department to assign an independent counsel to investigate the campaign contributions case. However, the Justice Department said it had yet to find anything that would warrant taking such a step. NPR's Peter Overby reports.

Texaco provided the details of its plan to increase minority employment today and Jesse Jackson called an end to a boycott of the company's gas stations. The company pledged to increase both the percentage of minorities employed by the company...and the number of minorities in upper management positions. Texaco recently agreed to pay $170 million to settle a class-action discrimination suit. NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.

A focus of Watergate-era reforms was to limit the role of big money in political campaigns. But in recent years, with the rapid growth of unlimited so-called ``soft money,'' parties have been pressured to abandon their small-donor bases and go after easier-to-get large contributions. But these big donations have caused lots of headaches for Democrats in particular, and both parties say they want to rebuild their relationship with small givers. NPR's Peter Overby reports.

Arthur Butz, an engineering professor at Northwestern University, just outside Chicago, is an outspoken proponent of the view that the Nazi slaughter of millions of European Jews never happened. His beliefs, and the fact that they're published on a World Wide Web page affiliated with Northwestern, have raised old questions of free speech in a new medium. NPR's Rick Karr reports.

NPR's Martha Raddatz reports that former Maine senator William Cohen appeared today before a friendly Senate Armed Services Committee for hearings on his nomination to be defense secretary. Cohen, a Republican joining a Democratic administration, called for bipartisanship on defense issues. He said the United States should not be the policeman of the world, but that it should not shirk its responsibilities either. Cohen's nomination was then overwhelmingly approved by the Senate.

Storms and towering sea swells continued to stymie the clean-up today of an oil spill that has spread along Japan's rugged west coast. NPR's Julie McCarthy reports that the operation to mop up the more than 1 million barrels of oil that a Russian tanker spilled when it split in two earlier this month has suffered both natural and man-made setbacks.

Reporter Karen Michel profiles this sculptor who uses ordinary hobbyist's clay. There is a retrospective of his work traveling now--Lucero says he likes to create art "that stares back at you." His work is creative, the early work reveals the inspiration of his New Mexico upbringing...he spends his time developing ideas and buys over the counter glazes.

- Daniel talks with Cybill Fix, a reporter with the Charleston Post and Courier, about the announcement today by two female cadets at the Citadel that they are dropping out of the military school because they feel unwelcome as women and because the school has not lived up to its promise to protect them from harassment. Last year, a highly publicized Supreme Court ruling forced the school to accept women against its will.