Lesson Nine

Section One: News in Brief

Tapescript
1. There was an assassination attempt against Indian Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi today. A man fired several shots at Gandhi and other
Indian leaders participating in an open-air praver meeting. Gandhi
was not injured. Six people received minor wounds when the
gunman burst from the brushes where he had apparently hidden pri-
or to the cerem4Dny.to avoid security checks. He surrendered when
guards surrounded.him. Those in charge of Gandhi's security have
been suspended, and an investigation is under way.

2. Jess Moore, NASA's top official in charge of the shuttle program
when Challenger exploded, announced today he's leaving his new
post as Director of the Johnson Space Center. Moore will take a
leave of absence and then be reassigned to NASA headquarters in
Washington. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reports. 'The obvious ques-
tion, of course, is this: Is Jess Moore leaving his job and taking a
year off work because of the Challenger accident? Moore came un-
der quite a bit of pressure before a congressional committee early
this summer when his former assistant testified that he told Moore in
detail almost a year ago that there were serious proble'ms with the,
shuttle rocket's 0-rings, the same 0-rings that eventually caused
the Challenger accident. That testimony flatly contradicted what
Moore's been saying all along: that he did not know the 0-ring
problems were serious until after the Challenger exploded. Congres-
sional sources who've interviewed Moore told me that they have no
way of knowing just who's telling the truth, Moore, or Moore's for-
mer assistant. But one top congressional aide who met with Moore
recently says the NASA veteran's been depressed since the Chal-
lenger blew up. He says, 'Moore doesn't have the edge he used to.
He's hollow inside, just like a lot of guys at NASA who worked on
the shuttle. ' 'Jess Moore,' the aide says, 'is not the man he was be-
fore the accident, and he needs a rest.' I'm Daniel Zwerdling in
Washington."

Section Two: News in Detail

Tapescript
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi survived an assassination
attempt in New Delhi today. The assailant fired a succession of shots
at Gandhi, who was attending a Hindu prayer service with his wife
and Indian President Zail Singh. Official sources have called the in-
cident a major security lapse. Witnesses say Gandhi told security
guards two times he had heard gun shots; the security forces
reportedly dismissed the noise as motorcycle backfire. It was over
half an hour later that police finally surrounded and captured the
gunman. Six people were injured during the arrest. The BBC's
Humphrey Hoxley reports.

'An official statement from the Home Ministry said that those
police officials who were directly responsible for the security ar-
rangements for Mr. Gandhi have been suspended from duty. Senior
officials in the Ministry say that a top-level investigation is under
way to determine why the security around the Prime Minister, who's
meant to be one of the most closely protected government leaders in
the world, collapsed and how a gunman armed with an illegally
manufactured revolver broke through the security cordon undetect-
ed to get within a few feet of the Prime Minister. Police say the
gunman who's in his twenties may even have fired at Mr. Gandhi
and his party as they were approaching the area to commemorate the
birthday of the independence leader Mohandas Gandhi, who is cre-
mated there. The area was searched immediately; but security men
failed to spot the gunman, who was hiding on top of a concrete shel-
ter hidden among thick green vines. The man opened fire again when
Mr. Gandhi was leaving half an hour later. But when he was spotted,
eyewitnesses say, he threw up his arms and shouted in Hindi, "I sur-
render.' Police say he's not connected with any terrorist organiza-
tion., nor is he part of the Sikh movement which murdered Mr.
Gandhi's mother, Indira, two years ago. Humphrey Hoxley, BB4C,
Delhi.

@tion Three: Special Report

Tapescript
It is not just the weather with which farmers contend; there are
higher costs for growing food and lower prices when selling it. And
these combined to make farming an increasingly difficult life, espec-
ially for small family farms. In New York, a new organization called
'Farm Hands' is trying to help struggling farms in the region by
linking city dwellers with farmers. As John Kailish reports, the
scheme seems to benefit both.
Last week, two actors, a housewife, a tour guide, a dog walker
and an unemployed social worker, all from the New York metropoli-
tan area, spent a day working on Hall Gibson's fruit and vegetable
farm located in the Upstate New York town of Brewster. The con-
tingent also included two four-year-olds. The group listened
attentively as Gibson gave the lengthy orientation talk complete with
aerial photographs of his 125-acre farm. 'This area was called part
of the New York milk shed. One of the big incentives to producing
milk in this area was the founding of the Borden plant.' After the
orientation talk the group walked to a five-acre field that was lined
with rows of tomatoes and turnips, eggplants and cabbage. Gibson
gave some brief picking instructions to two women who were going
to harvest cherry tomatoes. 'If they are split like this, throw them
,away or eat them.' "OK.' The transplanted urbanites picked six
bushels of tomatoes and sixty pints of raspberries over the course of
several hours. The farmhands were perfect strangers when they left
Manhattan, but out in the field in Putnam County, they had no
trouble striking up conversations that included such heady topics as
romance in television.
Laura Moore, a housewife and part-time teacher from
Brooklyn, has made four trips to area farms with her daughter
She was picking yellow lowacid tomatoes as she explained

why she enjoys the Farm Hands program.
"It's therapeutic, mentally, physically, and it's exhilarating. This
is my way of getting out, escaping the city life for a while. I love the
city. But in the fresh air, you get a feeling that you are really living."
In addition to the one-day farm outings, Farm Hands also
places individuals ( . farms for periods ranging from a week to sev-
eral months. In exchange for their labor, participants get a minimum
wage, room and board, or produce to take back with them to the
city. In its first year of operation, Farm Hands has placed twenty
people on farms for a period of two months or longer. More than
two hundred people have gone on the one-day work intensives or
the field trips that are often more play than work. Hall Gibson has
had four long term farm-hands this summer. At the moment, he's
benefiting from the hard work of a twenty- eight-year-old New
York City painter named Debby Fisher. Because Gibson's farm is
organic, weeds are a major problem. Farmer Gibson says that when
Debby Fisher clears weeds from the fields, she works like a demon.
'She's been just driven to rescue crops and she's rescued a num-
ber of crops. My bok choy crop - the best I've ever had - was res-
cued by her. Debby is a gem.'
The Farm Hands program was founded by
twenty-seven-year-old Wendy Dubid, an enthusiastic advocate of
linking farms and cities. In an interview at a farmers' market in New
York city, Dubid said Farm Hands may mean cheap labors for
farmers, but she maintains the program has a broader impact.
"It's not just the labor that helps those farmers; it's the appre-
ciative consumers. They suddenly realize after an hour of picking
raspberries and scratching their own arms on the bramble, they un-
derstand the farm reality and the value of food, and may become
valuable consumers and customers for those farmers.'
Dubid says there was only one Farm Hand placement that did
not work out this year, a fifteen-year-old football player who an-
tagonized his host family in Upstate New York. Farmhands are
currently working in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. Plans
are already under way to expand the Farm Hands program to
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Vermont.

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