高级英语听力 lesson 9

Lesson Nine

  Section One: News in Brief

  Tapescript

  1. There was an assassination 1 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 2 wounds when the

  gunman burst from the brushes where he had apparently 3 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 4 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 6 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 7 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 5 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 8.  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 9 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 11 and how a gunman armed with an illegally

  manufactured revolver broke through the security cordon 12 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 13 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 14,

  eyewitnesses 15 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 16 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 17 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 18 as Gibson gave the lengthy 19 orientation 20 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 21 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 22, 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 23 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 24, mentally, physically 25, 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 26, 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 27.

         '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 10.'

         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 28 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 29.  Plans

    are already under way to expand the Farm Hands program to

    Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Vermont.