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Liane presents a sound montage from the 35th annual Smithsonian Kite Festival from yesterday's event on The Mall in Washington, DC.

The fine art of "hacking," or elaborate practical joking, is a storied tradition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Students at M.I.T. have perched a life-size police car on top of a domed building, wrapped an enormous jock strap around the athletic center, and performed a host of other diabolical pranks. Liane speaks with the school's Assistant Safety Officer, David Barber, who is in charge of dismantling these pranks the next day.

NPR's Mary Ann Akers reports from Chicago on the city school board's new safety policy. It requires that students released from jail or juvenile detention, be evaluated to determine whether they should be allowed to return to their regular school or be sent to an alternative school. The school board says the policy intends to protect other students from violence. Akers visits the "Second Chance" alternative school in South Chicago.

Part II in a week-long series of essays from prospective college students. Today we hear from Ambar Espinoza, of University High School in West Los Angeles, who tells about growing up in a single-parent family. Read the essays online.

NPR's Barbara Bradley reports the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court ruling that penalized operators of an anti-abortion website for listing the names of abortion doctors. The appeals court said the threat to the doctors was not explicit enough to justify censure.

NPR's Richard Gonzales brings us up to date on the energy crunch that is creating serious problems for the biggest state economy.

Detroit winced today when it learned fewer than a million people were counted as living in the city. The census results are a blow to both civic pride and Detroit's budget. Some say the numbers only catch the Motor City making a big U-turn toward vitality, as Quinn Klinefelter from member station WDET reports.

We hear opinions from some Californians about the approval of higher electricity prices.

A U.S. District Court judge has ordered the University of Michigan to stop considering race as a factor in its admissions. Robert Siegel talks about the case with Jeffrey Rosen, associate professor of law at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

NPR's Nina Totenberg reports on today's arguments before the Supreme Court on whether states may legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes, despite federal laws against it.