北外英语高级听力
听力作为英语学习中的输入环节,必须得到足够的重视,用科学的方法提高七年级学生的英语听力水平,才能为听力测试保驾护航,为英语语言交际打下坚实的基础。下面小编为大家分享北外英语高级听力，希望对大家有用。
The House began debate today on a three-year bill to combat trafficking and use of illegal drugs. The measure has the support of most representatives and House Speaker Thomas O'Neill says he expects it to pass by tomorrow. Among other things, the bill would increase penalties for violators, provide money to increase drug enforcement and coast guard personnel, and require drug producing countries to establish eradication programs as a condition of US support for development loans.
A cultural exchange between the US and the Soviet Union may face an American boycott unless US News and World Report correspondent, Nicholas Daniloff, is freed from a Moscow jail. An American style town meeting is scheduled to take place in Latvia next week, but the two hundred seventy Americans due to take part say they won't go if Daniloff remains in jail. They add the decision is a personal one and is not being made by the Reagan Administration in retaliation for the Daniloff detention.
Egyptian and Israeli negotiators have reached agreement on resolving the Taba border dispute, clearing the way for a summit between the two countries to begin tomorrow. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres will meet in Alexandria. Details of the Taba agreement have not been made available.
The United States House of Representatives is debating an omnibus drug bill and expects to pass the measure tomorrow. Though the bill has attracted strong bipartisan support, NPR's Cokey Roberts reports the debate on the issue points up the differences between political parties.
When Congress returned from the Fourth of July recess, House Speaker Tip O'Neill said there was only one thing members were talking about in the cloak-room: drugs. The Democrats quickly pulled together chairmen from twelve different committees to draft a drug package. Then, stung by criticism that they were acting in a partisan fashion, the Democratic leaders invited the Republicans to join them in the newly declared war on drugs. So, when the bill came to the House floor today, the party leaders led off debate. Texas Democrat Jim Wright.
"It's time to declare an all-out war, to mobilize our forces, public and private, national and local, in a total coordinated assault upon this menace, which is draining our economy of some two hundred and thirty billion dollars this year, slowly rotting away the fabric of our society, seducing and killing our young. That it will take money is hardly debatable. We can't fight artillery with spitballs."
The question of just how much money this measure will cost has not been answered to the satisfaction of all members. Democrats say it's one and half billion dollars over three years, with almost seven hundred thousand for next year. Republicans claim the price tag will run higher and are trying to emphasize other aspects of the drug battle, aspects which they think play better in Republican campaigns. Minority leader Robert Michel.
"The ultimate cure for the drug epidemic must come from within the heart of each individual faced with the temptation of taking drugs. It is ultimately a problem of character, of will power, of family and community, and concern, and personal pride."
Among other items, the bill before the House increases penalties for most drug related crimes, sets the minimum jail term of twenty years for drug trafficking and manufacturing, authorizes money for the drug enforcement administration and prison construction, beefs up the ability of the coast guard and customs service to stop drugs coming into this country, and creates programs for drug education. The various sections of the measure give House members ample opportunity to speak on an issue where they want their voices heard. Maryland Democratic Barbara McCulsky was nominated for the Senate yesterday. Today, she spoke to the part of the bill which funds drug eradication programs in foreign countries.
"When we fought yellow fever, we didn't go at it one mosquito at a time. We went right to the swamp. That's what the Foreign Affairs section of this legislation will do. It will go to the swamps, or where cocaine is either grown, refined, or manufactured."
Republican Henson Moore is running for the Senate in Louisiana. He spoke to the part of the drug bill which changes the trade laws for countries which deal in drugs.
"We're moving to stop something; it's absolutely idiotic. It needs to be stopped: this situation of where a country can sell legally to us on the one hand and illegally to us under the table, selling drugs in this country poisoning our young people and our population."
Today in China, in Nanjing, balloons, firecrackers and lion dancers mark the dedication of the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies. For the first time since World War II, Chinese and American students will attend a graduate institution in China that is administered jointly by academic organizations that are worlds apart figuratively and literally. NPR's Susan Stanberg reports.
Cross-cultural encounters can be extremely enriching; cross-cultural encounters can be utterly absurd.
"Let's see. That would be eighty-seven. So, ... ba-shi-qi-nian-qian, ... let's see, ... equal ... proposition equal, ..."
Here's what that American was trying to say in Chinese.
"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation ... a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
Now you don't have to be dealing with classic American oratory to run into problems. In planning for the Center for Chinese and American Studies, there was much debate as to whether the new auditorium on the Nanjing campus should have a flat or sloped floor. If the floor were flat, the auditorium could be used for dances, for parties, but a sloped floor would be better for listening, for viewing films and slides.
"The argument finally won out that for practical reasons a flat floor would be best because it ... it really would make it a multi-purpose room. You wouldn't have to fix the furniture."
Stephen Muller is President of Johns Hopkins University, the US end of this Sino-American joint venture in learning.
"So, a flat floor was built. Only the Chinese in building it finally ended up with a flat floor but at two different levels, one higher than the other. So, if you want to use it for dances, you either have to have very short women with very tall men or vice versa."
Twenty-four Americans and thirty-six Chinese of mixed heights are the first students at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. Nanjing used to be Nanking, by the way, back in the days when Beijing was Peking. The Americans will take classes in Chinese history, economics, trade, politics, all from Chinese faculty. The Chinese will study the US with American university professors. Johns Hopkins President Stephen Muller says this is advanced study work. All the Chinese students are proficient in English; all the Americans have master's degrees plus fluency in Chinese.
"The twenty-four Americans come from about eighteen colleges and universities. No one institution in this country produces that many people of this character; so that's a beginning. Nanjing is not the place; the Center is not the place to go, if you want a doctorate in Chinese history or Chinese language or Chinese literature or whatever. This is a pre-professional program."
Which means the men and women who spend the year at the Nanjing Center will end up as diplomats or business people in one another's country.
"Our hope is that the Americans, to speak about those, who are going to be incidentally rooming with Chinese roommates, which is a very interesting thing the Chinese agree to, that the Americans will not only bring a year of living in China, a year of having studied with Chinese faculty and hearing the Chinese view of Chinese foreign policy in economics and so on, that they will also have the kind of friends among Chinese roughly their age who are going to be dealing with the United States. That will slowly, over the years, create a real network, if you will, if people who, because they've had this common experience, can deal with each other very easily and, you know, be kind of a rallying point-an old boy, old girl network, as it were."
Hopkins President Muller admits that a simple exchange program-Chinese students coming to the US, and American students going to China-would involve far fewer headaches than running jointly an academic institution on foreign soil. Plus the success of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center depends on undependables, like continuing sweet Sino-American relations and being able to attract funding. And there's this wrinkle."
"Some of the people who will study there, without any question, will probably come from or afterwards enter the intelligence community. That it's really desirable that people who do that have that kind of background. We're very honest about that, but it's so easy to denounce the whole thing as an espionage center, or something. You know, there's a lot of fragility in this thing."
Stephen Muller is President of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies was dedicated today in China. I'm Susan Stanberg.
"How do you say good luck in Chinese?"
"Don't know. I don't know Chinese."
"You'd better learn."
"That's a phrase I should know. Yes."
Lesson 6
The Senate has voted to override President Reagan's veto of sanctions against South Africa by a decisive seventy-eight to twenty-one. As the House has already voted to override, the sanctions now become law. NPR's Linda Wertheimer reports. "American civil rights leaders, including Mrs. Caretta Scott King, watched the Senate debate from the Senate family gallery as members argued not so much about sanctions and the efficacy of sanctions, more about the choice between affirming the bill already passed by congress or supporting the President."
American food aid to southern African countries could be cut off if South Africa carries out its threat to ban imports of US grain. Foreign Minister Pic Botha said if US sanctions were imposed, his government would stop imports and would not allow its transport service to carry US grain to neighboring countries.
The White House today denied that it planted misleading stories in the American news media as part of a plan to topple Libyan leader Muammar Quddafi. The Washington Post reported this morning that stories were leaked this summer alleging Quddafi was resuming his support for terrorist activities, even though National Security Adviser John Poindexter knew otherwise. Today, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Poindexter denied the administration had involved the media in an anti-Quddafi campaign but Speakes left open the possibility a disinformation campaign was conducted in other countries.
The question in Washington today is this: Did the federal government try to scare Libya's Colonel Muammar Quddafi in August by way of a disinformation campaign in the American media? The Washington Post Bob Woodward reports today that there was an elaborate disinformation program set up by the White House to convince Quddafi that the United States was about to attack again, or that he might be ousted in a coup. The White House today denies that officials tried to mislead Quddafi by using the American media. NPR's Bill Busenburg has our first report on the controversy.
The story starts on August 25th when the Wall Street Journal ran a front page story saying that Libya and the United States were once again on a collision course. Quoting multiple official sources, the paper said Quddafi was plotting new terrorist attacks and the Reagan Administration was preparing to teach him another lesson. The Journal reported that the Pentagon was completing plans for a new and wider bombing of Libya in case the President ordered it.
That story caused a flurry of press attention. Officials in Washington and at the western White House in California were asked if it was true. "The story was authoritative," said the White House spokesman Larry Speakes. Based on that official confirmation, other news organizations, including the New York Times , the Washington Post , NPR and the major TV networks, all ran stories suggesting Libya should watch out. US naval maneuvers then taking place in the Mediterranean might be used as a cover for more attacks on Libya as in the past.
Today's Washington Post , however, quotes from an August 14th secret White House plan, adopted eleven days before the Wall Street Journal story. It was outlined in a memo written by the President's National Security Advisor John Poindexter. That plan called for a strategy of real and illusory events, using a disinformation program to make Quddafi think the United States was about to move against him militarily. Here are some examples the Post cites, suggesting disinformation was used domestically: Number one, while some US officials told the press Quddafi was stepping up his terrorist plans, President Reagan was being told in a memo that Quddafi was temporarily quiescent, in other words, that he wasn't active. Number two, while some officials were telling the press of internal infighting in Libya to oust Quddafi, US officials really believed he was firmly in power and that CIA's efforts to oust him were not working. Number three, while officials were telling the press the Pentagon was planning new attacks, in fact nothing new was being done. Existing contingency plans were several months old, and the naval maneuvers were just maneuvers. The Post says this policy of deception was approved at a National Security Planning Group meeting chaired by President Reagan and his top aides.
Two new studies were published today on the links between television coverage of suicide and subsequent teenage suicide rates. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that both studies suggest that some teenagers might be more likely to take their own lives after seeing TV programs dealing with suicide. NPR's Lorie Garrett reports.
The first suicide study, done by a team from the University of California in San Diego, examines television news coverage of suicides. David Philips and Lundy Carseson looked at forty-five suicide stories carried on network news-casts between 1973 and '79. The researchers then compared the incidence of teen suicides in those years to the dates of broadcast of these stories. David Philips says news coverage of suicides definitely prompted an increase in the number of teens in America who took their lives.
"The more TV programs that carry a story, the greater they increase in teen suicides just afterwards."
The suicide increase among teens was compared by Philips to adult suicide trends.
"The teen suicides go up by about 2.91 teen suicides per story. And adult suicides go up by, I think, around two adult suicides per story. The increase for teens, the percentage increase for teens is very, very much larger than the percentage increase for adults. It's about, I think, fourteen or fifteen times as big a response for teens percentagewise as it is for adults."
The TV news coverage appears to have prompted a greater increase than is seen around other well-known periods of adolescent depression, such as holidays, personal birthdays, the start of school and winter. Philips could not find any specific types of stories that seem to trigger a greater response among depressed teens. Philips says it seems to simply be the word "suicide" and the knowledge that somebody actively executed the act that pushes buttons in depressed teenagers. Psychiatrists call this "imitative behavior."
"What my study showed was that there seems to be imitation not only of relatively bland behavior like dress, dressing or hairstyles, but there seems to be imitation of really quite deviant behavior as well. The teenagers imitate apparently across the board, not just suicides, but everything else as well."
In a separate study, Madeline Gould and David Shaeffer of Columbia University found that made-for-television movies about suicide also stimulated imitative behavior. Even though the movies were intended to portray the problem of teen suicide and offered, in some cases, suicide hot line numbers and advice on counselling, the team believes the four network movies prompted eighty teen suicides. One of the made-for-TV movies examined by the Columbia University team was a CBS production. George Schweitzer, a CBS's Vice President, is well aware of this research. He says, "It is terribly unfortunate that any teens took their lives after the broadcast, but if they had it to do over," says Schweitzer, "CBS would still run the movie."
"Studies like these do not measure the most, what we think is the most important thing, which I don't think can be measured, and that is the hundreds and hundreds and probably thousands of teenagers who were positively moved by these kinds of broadcasts."
Moved to call suicide hot lines, moved to seek counseling, and moved to discuss their depressions with family members. Schweitzer does not dispute today's studies: some teens may moved to suicide.
"But ignoring the issue for fear of that, I think, would be far more disastrous than addressing important social issues to help create awareness and again to have a positive effect."
But researcher David Philips suggests the media could decrease the teen suicide problem by avoiding some suicide stories all together and changing the way the others are covered. For example, says Philips, "Don't make suicide seem heroic." He cites the story of a young Czechoslovakian dissident who set himself on fire. But the dissident action was taken to draw attention to government repression in Czechoslovakia. Should the news media really have ignored such a story? "I think it's a really difficult question. There are all these goods on all sides of the issue. And thank God, I don't have to be the one to disentangle that issue."
One prominent expert in this field said the young people moved to take their lives, following a news story or movie, are particularly vulnerable, suicidal individuals. In the absence of television stories, some other events in their lives might well have triggered their actions. So while most psychiatrists agree there is an imitative component to teenage suicides, that tendency, they say, should not lead society to repress information. On the contrary, some say we are now facing a major epidemic of adolescent suicide in America. We must publicize and confront the problem. Last year some fifty-five hundred adolescents between fifteen and twenty-four years of age took their lives. At least ten times that tried. Some estimates are that 275 thousand teens attempted suicide last year. The rate of teenage suicide in America has tripled since 1955.
Lesson 7
Both House and Senate negotiators today approved sweeping immigration legislation that could grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens who entered the country before 1982. The bill, as worked out in five hours of closed-door negotiations, would establish a system of fines against employers who hire illegal immigrants. It would also make those who came to the US illegally but have established roots in this country eligible for amnesty.
The Supreme Court today agreed to decide if Illinois can require minors wanting abortions to notify their parents or obtain judicial consent. The justices will review the decision striking down a 1983 law, which required some girls to wait twenty-four hours after telling their parents they wanted an abortion.
It was announced today that the winner of this year's Noble Peace Prize is Elie Wiesel. He has written twenty-five books on his experiences in a Nazi prison of war camp and on the Holocaust. And he's been a human rights activist for thirty years. NPR's Mike Shuster reports. "Wiesel was sleeping in his Manhattan apartment when he received the word at five o'clock this morning from the Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway. Wiesel said he was flabbergasted at the news, and later at a press conference, he said he would dedicate his Prize to the survivors of the Holocaust and their children. "The honor is not mine alone. It belongs to all the survivors who have tried to do something with their pain, with their memory, with their silence, with their life." Wiesel, fifty-eight, is a native of Rumania. As a teenager, he and his family were sent to a Nazi death camp. He and two sisters survived; his mother, father, and younger sister did not. After the War, Wiesel went first to France, then to the United States. He is credited with the first use of the word 'Holocaust' to describe the Nazi extermination of the Jews."
A House-Senate Conference Committee has agreed to an immigration reform bill. The measure, which had died in the final days of the last two Congresses, now looks as though it will become law. NPR's Cokie Roberts reports.
One of the chief advocates of the immigration bill, New York Democrat Charles Schumer, says that this year immigration became a white hat issue, that the forces fighting against the measures finally had a force on the opposite side of equal rate public opinion. The opponents of immigration reform have always been many: Hispanics in Congress and in the country have opposed the part of the bill most lawmakers consider key-punishment for employers who knowingly hire illegals. The measure, passed at a conference today, would provide civil penalties and criminal penalties for those who repeatedly hire illegal aliens. Hispanics worry the employer sanctions would cause discrimination against anyone with an accent or Spanish name, whether legal or not. The new bill includes strong anti-discrimination language for employers who do refuse to hire any Hispanics while still allowing someone to hire a citizen before an alien. To appease Hispanics and others, the immigration bill includes amnesty for aliens who have been in this country for five years. Many border state representatives fought against the legalization provisions, saying that millions of people could eventually become citizens and bring their relatives to this country. All those people could bankrupt the state's social services, said the representatives, but the idea of deporting all of those people seemed impractical as well as inhumane to most members of Congress. And aliens who came to this country before 1982 will be able to apply for legalization. The other major controversial area of the immigration bill is the farm worker program. Agricultural interests wanted to be able to bring workers into this country to harvest crops without being subjected to employer sanctions, but the trade unions opposed this section of the bill. Finally, a compromise was reached where up to three hundred and fifty thousand farm workers could come into this country, but their rights would be protected and they would also be able to apply for legalization if they met certain conditions. The elements of the final immigration package have been there all along, but this year, say the key lawmakers around this legislation, the Congress was ready to act on them. The combination of horror stories about people coming over the borders and editorials about congressional inability to act made members of Congress decide the time had come to enact immigration reform. But supporters of reform warn the end is not here yet. The conference report must still pass both houses of Congress, and a Senate filibuster is always a possibility. I'm Cokie Roberts at the Capitol.
Many photography shops are quite busy this time of the year. People back from vacation are dropping off rolls of film and hoping for the best. But commentator Tom Baudet learned a long time ago he was better off not hoping.
I've been told that I take lousy pictures. It's not that my shots aren't technically OK; it's just that my pictures seem to bring out the worst in people. I hope that's not a sign of something. I usually end up throwing half the pictures I take. It's not that they're deceiving. Not at all; they're just too honest. It's true what they say that a camera never lies, but you certainly can lie to a camera. We do it all the time; at least we exaggerate a little to a lens. The first thing you'll usually hear when you point a camera at someone is, "Wait, I'm not ready." Well, so you wait while they brush the crumbs off their chin, put out a cigarette, or throw an arm around the person next to them like they've been standing that way all day. Well, you get your picture, but it's blown all out of proportion. Everybody's having a little more fun than they really were and liking each other more than they actually do. We're all guilty of this one time or another. You're with your sweetheart travelling somewhere. You've been walking and complaining about the price of the room, the blister on your heel and the rude waitress at the cafe. But then, you stop somebody on the street, hand them your camera, and put on your very best having-a-wonderful-time smile. Well, ten years later you'll look at that picture in a scrapbook and remember what a great trip it was, whether it was or not. For it's natural thing to do: plant little seeds of contentment in our lives in case we doubt we ever had any. Well, it's good practice to take an opportunity to mug up to a camera. There never seems to be a camera around for the real special times: that make-up embrace after a long and dangerous discussion, the look on your face as you hold the phone and hear you got that promotion, the quiet ride home from the hospital after learning those suspicious lumps were benign and something to watch but not worry about. Those are the memories that should be preserved, to be remembered and relied upon when harder times take hold. Those times when a photographer like me will catch you at a party with a loneliness on your face that you didn't think would show or bitterness tugging at your lips during a conversation you didn't intend to be overheard. Well, we all slip up like this sometimes, and sooner or later we get caught with our guards down. I think that's why I end up with pictures like that, I like it when people leave their guards down. We all know our best sides, and it's nice to keep that face forward whenever we can. But I don't mind having pictures of the other sides. Either way they all look just like people to me.
Writer Tom Baudet. He lives in Homer, Alaska.
Lesson 8
Two years of sensitive negotiations paid off today as seventy former Cuban political prisoners arrived in the United States. All of the prisoners had served least ten years in Cuban jails, and some had been in prison since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. The release was arranged in part by French underwater explorer, Jacques Cousteau, and a delegation of American Roman Catholic bishops.
President Reagan today unveiled plans for nine hundred million dollar plan to reduce drug abuse in the United States. It includes half a billion dollars for stepping up drug enforcement along US borders, especially in the southwest. The plan also calls for mandatory drug testing for some federal workers. NPR's Brenda Wilson reports. "As part of his national crusade against drugs, President Reagan signed an executive order today requiring federal workers in sensitive positions to undergo drug tests. The order covers employees who have access to classified information, presidentially appointed officials, law enforcement officials, and any federal worker engaged in activities which affect public health and safety or national security. But heads of government agencies may order additional workers to take the test. Federal employees who are found to have continued to use illegal drugs after a second test will be automatically fired. The overall rug testing program is expected to cost fifty-six million dollars, but administration officials could not get even a ballpark figure of how many workers may be included in the mandatory program. I'm Brenda Wilson."
Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres is in Washington for talks with US leaders, including President Reagan. Earlier Peres met with Secretary of State George Shultz. Afterwards, the two told reporters that the Soviet Union will have no role in Middle East peace talks, because it has no diplomatic ties with Israel and does not permit free emigration of Soviet Jews.
Israel's Prime Minister Shimon Peres is in Washington D. C. this week to confer with high-level US officials. His visit follows his summit with Egyptian President Mubarak last week. This afternoon, the Israeli leader and President Reagan met at the White House. NPR's Elizabeth Colton reports.
Israel's Peres comes to Washington only weeks before he is scheduled to step down from the Prime Minister's post and exchange roles with the current Foreign Minister, Yitzhak Shamir. This rotation was arranged two years ago as part of Israel's coalition national unity government. But what was expected to be little more than a farewell visit for Prime Minister Peres has now taken on a new importance because of Peres' recent achievements towards bringing peace between Israelis and Arabs. At the White House this afternoon President Reagan said that the Middle East peace process was the major topic for discussion. And he praised Prime Minister Peres' efforts in that direction.
"We noted favorable trends in the Middle East, not just the longing for peace by the Israeli and Arab peoples, but constructive actions taken by leaders in the region to breathe new life into the peace process. No one has done more than Prime Minister Peres to that end. His vision, his statesmanship, and his tenacity are greatly appreciated here." President Reagan said that other items on the agenda of his meeting with Prime Minister Peres were American economic aid to Israel, international terrorism, and Soviet Jewry. The President assured the Israeli leader that the plight of Soviet Jewry will remain an important topic in all the talks between the US and the Soviets. I'm Elizabeth Colton in Washington.
A chapbook arrived in the mail a while back from the Northeastern Ohio University's College of Medicine. The chapbook, a small pamphlet of collected poetry, contains works by students, part of the school's "Human Values in Medicine" program. NPR's Susan Stanberg leafed through the poems.
The selected works by finalists in the "William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition," named for America's great poet-physician, the New Jersey country doctor who used to scroll drafts of poems on pages of his prescription pads. William Carlos Williams wrote short, sometimes, and to the quick.
This is just to say I have eaten the plums
That were in the ice box,
And which you were probably saving for breakfast.
Forgive me; they were delicious,
So sweet and so cold.
"Let me read it again."
And he did. William Carlos Williams, who died in 1963, has been an inspiration to patients and physicians. So, it's fitting that the Northeastern Ohio University's College of Medicine should name its poetry competition for him. Now, at the beginning of its fifth year, the competition is open to all medical students in this country, but just one percent of them, a few hundred or so, entered the competition.
"I'm sure a lot more are closet poets and aren't willing yet to submit. We hope they do." Martin Cohn, director of the Human Values in Medicine's program at the College of Medicine, says that students' poetry centers around several themes.
"I guess it falls into categories that all poets write about, including lovers and friends and sorrowful kinds of situations, but then there is also the experience that they're most intimate with, which is medical school itself, which is also a theme, and also relationships with patients."
Poetry by ten medical students is presented in the chapbook, accompanied by biographical notes on each of the poets. Kurt Beal, at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, describes himself this way.
"I write to remember, to find, to uncover, to unfold. I have learned that poetry is music. And I write because I cannot sing."
Martin Cohn has some samples of poems from the chapbook. P.C. Bowman of the Medical College of Virginia School of Medicine wrote "Cartographer about his Wife."
When I watch you watching yourselves in the mirror,
Undress not with caution but with care,
Peeling the swimsuit from shoulders and breasts,
Exposing the belly flat from its vortex to the ribs,
Ordered as architecture. The hip swell
That breaks my geometer's heart.
It is a map of some impossible country,
Whose turns widen to vistas and stations
So sudden that I cannot breathe or comprehend
How I have wandered there and kept my life.
"Wonderful poem."
"Ya."
"But he doesn't have to be a doctor to have written it."
"No. That's true."
"Give us one that could only be written by a doctor."
"OK. There is a poem, another one on anatomy, that was written by Diane Roston, who, as the other poets, has a very interesting background. She danced for a number of years in a regional company and also had taken courses in journalism. And she writes of an experience with a cadaver, and the life of this cadaver. And she ends the poem with the following verse.
Now student to anatomy.
Cleave and mark this slab
Of thirty-one-year-old caucasian female flesh,
Limbs, thorax, cranium, muscle by rigid muscle.
Disassemble this motorcycle victim's every part,
As if so gray a matter never wore a flashing ruby dress.
"I notice there's so much of that in this poetry by the medical students, the reminders to themselves of humanity here. It's not just arteries; it's not just anatomy. There are humans."
"That's right. And we feel we're just trying to do our part to encourage them to remember. Many students shuck off we arts and humanities when they enter medical school, and even if we can keep them involved, even if it's a thread of involvement, or vicarious involvement by reading, not necessarily writing-that's what we are trying to do."
At the Northeastern Ohio University's College of Medicine, Martin Cohn says there's no evidence that the making of poetry produces better medicine, but he has to believe it helps the students understand themselves and their patients better. And so the William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition continues. I'm Susan Stanberg.
This is just to say I have eaten the plums
That were in the ice box
And which you were probably saving for breakfast.
Forgive me; they were delicious,
So sweet and so cold.
Listen09
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 prayer meeting. Gandhi was not injured. Six people received minor wounds when the gunman burst from the brushes where he had apparently hidden prior to the ceremony 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.
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 question, of course, is this: Is Jess Moore leaving his job and taking a year off work because of the Challenger accident? Moore came under 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 problems with the shuttle rocket's O-rings, the same O-rings that eventually caused the Challenger accident. That testimony flatly contradicted what Moore's been saying all along: that he did not know the O-ring problems were serious until after the Challenger exploded. Congressional sources who've interviewed Moore told me that they have no way of knowing just Who's telling the truth, Moore, or Moore's former assistant. But one top congressional aide who met with Morre recently says the NASA veteran's been depressed since the Challenger 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 before the accident, and he needs a rest.' I'm Daniel Zwerdling in Washington."
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 incident 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 arrangements 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 undetected 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 cremated there. The area was searched immediately; but security men failed to spot the gunman, who was hiding on top of a concrete shelter 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 surrender." Police say he's not connected with any terrorist organization; nor is he part of the Sikh movement which murdered Mr. Gandhi's mother, Indira, two years ago. Humphrey Hoxley, BBC, Delhi.
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, especially 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 metropolitan area, spent a day working on Hall Gibson's fruit and vegetable farm located in the Upstate New York town of Brewster. The contingent 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 Jessie. She was picking yellow low-acid 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 on farms for periods ranging from a week to several 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 number of crops. My bok choy crop-the best I've ever had-was rescued 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 he program has a broader impact.
"It's not just the labor that helps those farmers; it's the appreciative consumers. They suddenly realize after an hour of picking raspberries and scratching their own arms on the bramble, they understand 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 antagonized 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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President Reagan said today he will veto a defense spending bill if it is approved, as expected, by the House. Speaking to a private group in Washington today, the President said he was concerned about provisions in the bill that would ban nuclear testing and cut funding for his Star Wars defense system. The President also charged that the Soviet-backed ban on nuclear testing is "a backdoor to a nuclear freeze." And he accused the Soviets of a major propaganda campaign on the testing issue.
Israeli warplanes bombed suspected Palestinian guerrilla bases in Southeast Beirut today. Police said the bomb set at least four targets on fire. There are reports that two people were wounded in the attacks.
At a news conference in Pretoria today, South African Foreign Minister Pic Botha called international sanctions against his country "a mad perverse action" that will put many blacks out of work. But Botha said the South African government "accepts the challenge to overcome the effect of sanctions."
White House spokesman Larry Speakes said today President Reagan will veto on Friday a sanctions bill passed by Congress, but he admitted it will be tough to sustain the veto.
On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up four and a half points, closing at 1797.81. Trading was moderate, one hundred thirty-two million shares.
Israeli warplanes today bombed four suspected Palestinian guerrilla bases in Lebanon. Reports from Beirut say at least two people were wounded and a number of fires started in the four villages. From Jerusalem, Jerry Cheslow filed this report which was subject to censorship by Israeli authorities.
According to the Israeli army spokesman, the targets were bases belonging to two pro-Syrian Palestinian guerrilla organizations. Israeli military sources say one of the targets was a staging base for raids against northern Israel. Lebanese radio stations reported that at least two people were wounded in the attack south of Beirut and that Beirut International Airport was closed for half an hour. Israeli military sources stress that the air raid had nothing to do with this week's tensions along Israel's border with Lebanon. They were between the Shi'ite Muslim Hizbullah (Party of God) Militia and the Israeli-backed South Lebanese Army Militia. Over the past two weeks, large Hizbullah forces stormed dozens of South Lebanese Army positions. Israeli military sources say that at least fifteen South Lebanese Army men and some fifty members of Hizbullah were killed. According to the sources the attacks also badly damaged the morale of the South Lebanese Army, and this led Israel to deploy a large force along its border with Lebanon. The force included troops, armor and artillery, and according to knowledgeable observers it was equipped for offensive action against Hizbullah. Senior Israeli defense sources say that Hizbullah was trying to take over all of southern Lebanon. Hizbullah has also been attacking Unifil, the UN force in Southern Lebanon. Over the past six weeks, four French Unifil troops were killed by Hizbullah, and just this morning a French UN base was rocketed in Southern Lebanon. There were no casualty, but some of its soldiers were blown off their seats. And the sources said that Hizbullah's domination of Southern Lebanon would be a direct threat to Israel. Some of its men who were killed were wearing kerchiefs with the words "Onward to Jerusalem" printed on them. But since the Israeli troops deployed along the border three days ago, there have been no Hizbullah attacks on the South Lebanese Army. By nightfall here in the Middle East, the Israeli troops had returned to their bases. For National Public Radio, I'm Jerry Cheslow in Jerusalem.
This week, Californian wine workers vote on a contract proposal from winery owners. The workers have now been on strike for six weeks. The contract proposal calls for cuts in wages and cuts in benefits. The prospects for rank and file approval seem slim. A central issue of the strike is the economic well-being of the California wine industry. William Drummond reports.
A gondola containing tons of freshly picked Chardenay grapes is dumped into a hopper as the process begins for bottling the 1986 vintage. The harvest has continued despite the fact that more than two thousand winery workers have struck twelve of the biggest wineries in Northern and Central California. Relying on automated plants and non-union labor, members of the Winery Owners' Association have succeeded in carrying on what looks like business is usual. But out on the picket line, union worker Pat Scoley is anything but pleased.
"I guess they're doing all right. If they aren't, they want us to think they are. I hope to hell they aren't, between you and me."
The union contract expired at the end of July, which is the beginning of the harvest, the time when wine makers usually need all the help they can get. But many plants are like the Charles Krug Winery, which has been completely automated. Owner Peter Mondaby says the strike has no effect on producing the product.
"We feel that we can go on indefinitely, because there's a lot of people who want to work. And it's only a question of training these people and, of course, with the system that we have, very well computerized, that they can fit in with a reasonable amount of training, that they can fit in. So, I mean, we're not concerned about it."
Actually, the heavy rainfall several days ago in the Napa Valley seemed to disturb the owners more than the strike. Mondaby produces around a million cases a year, super premium brands under the Charles Krug label, mid-range premium wines and jug wines. Mondaby says the industry took a beating during the last several years because of cheap wine imports from Europe. Even though Americans today are drinking more wine chiefly in the form of wine coolers, wine makers say there's not that much profit in the coolers, and they're still in a financial pinch.
"I feel that the industry has hit its low point and now in on the uptrend. Of course, it's not an uptrend that you will see overnight, but it is a healthy uptrend in a gradual growth manner now. But I wouldn't necessarily say a greater profitability because the profit is very, very marginal. The volume is there, it's true, but the profit is very, very marginal.
Mondaby's marginal profit argument does not win much support among striking workers, like Hannah Stockton, who works in the bottling plant at Christian Brothers.
"I don't believe it, 'because I read the paper every day, and I listen to the news. I mean, there has been increase in sale. I mean, ... I believe three or four years back, we had a slump in the industry. But wine is coming back. Now they are coming out with wine coolers; they are making money. We don't want a raise; we just want to keep what we've got."
Wages for workers in the winery industry range from around eight dollars to fifteen dollars an hour. The union was willing to give up a slight reduction in wages, but refused to accept cuts in the pension and health benefits. The employers reportedly want a twenty percent reduction in the wages and benefits package. Winery owners say the union has to recognize that overall costs have increased.
"Not only is your gross down; the competition has forced us to increase marketing and advertising, which is further eroding whatever margin was there."
David Spualding is general manager of a winery in Calistoga. Spaulding Vineyards is tiny compared to Charles Krug and Gallo, and Spaulding Vineyards is not on strike, but David Spaulding says he faces the same market forces as the big guys.
"I think the big problem is the same problem that faces agriculture all over this country; and that is surplus. You know we are producing more and producing it more efficiently, and we have a production that exceeds the demand in the market."
Spaulding says wine coolers have taken up some of the over-production, but not all of it. As for the union leaders, they don't think it's good idea to give back wages and benefits when the demand for the product is on the increase. Winery workers are voting all this week on the wages and benefits cuts proposed by management. Jerry Davis is an official of the union.
"From the people I talked to today and what the negotiating committee is stating, we ask a NO vote on this proposal."
The results are expected to be known by Thursday. For National Public Radio, I'm William Drummond reporting.
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Texas Air announced today that it will buy the troubled People Express Airlines for about a hundred and twenty-five million dollars. The proposed deal would allow most People Express employees to keep their jobs, although the company will eventually lose its identity and become part of Texas Air. Federal officials must approve the merger. Texas Air is also trying to buy Eastern Airlines.
A rally on Wall Street today after six consecutive losing sessions, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day up nearly nine points, to close at seventeen sixty-seven point fifty-eight.
What's being called a "Freedom Flight" of seventy former Cuban Political prisoners landed in Miami today to an ecstatic reception by thousands of relatives and well-wishers. The plane also carried forty-one relatives of former prisoners. The flight culminated nearly two years of negotiations with the Castro regime.
Texas Air Corporation today announced that it has agreed to buy People Express Airlines for one hundred twenty-five million dollars in securities. Texas Air already owns Continental Airlines and New York Air. It is in the process of acquiring Eastern Airlines. People Express, one of the first no-frills, low-fare air carriers, has been in financial trouble lately. It was forced to shut down its subsidiary, Frontier Airlines. Texas Air now says it will acquire Frontier's assets as part of its deal with People Express. Joining us now from New York, NPR's business reporter Barbara Mantel.
"Barbara, it is said this is a very attractive low price, this one hundred twenty-five million dollars in securities. Besides that, why does Texas Air want People Express?"
"Well, Frank Lorenzo, who is Chairman of Texas Air, will get airplanes from People Express, which he might need. He will get the lowest cost work-force in the industry at People Express. He will get a new terminal at Newark, New Jersey that People Express is building. He'll get flights to London, and he will get control over competition. People Express competes heavily, especially in the northeast corridor, with Texas Air."
"This issue of competition has been a sticking point before for the Department of Transportation when two airlines wanted to get together. How will Texas Air get around it this time?"
"Well, they might not, Texas Air wanted to acquire East ..., or wants to acquire, Eastern Airline, and the Department of Transportation said, 'No, not unless you sell more landing slots, more slots in the northeast corridor to Pan Am so that we'll have some competition there.' And Texas Air agreed to that just last week. That may happen again here. The Department of Transportation may require that Texas Air sell some slots or some gates to another airline to ensure that there is still competition in the northeast part of the marketplace. But Texas Air has some leverage here with the Department of Transportation because People Express is a failing company. And the Department of Transportation may feel, 'Well, we'll let them buy People Express and keep it running, rather than let it fail and lose all those jobs."
"Mm hm. Now, if the deal is approved by the Department of Transportation, what is it likely to mean for consumers? If there's less competition the fares could possibly go up."
"Well, yes. You would think that when you move from two competitors in a market to just one airliner that prices would just have to go up. But I want you to keep in mind that unrestricted fares of the kind People Express offered, you know, wholesale unrestricted fares, were being eliminated and phased out anyway, because they were not profitable. And the Department of Transportation theory here is that if you allow mergers to take place, or many mergers to take place, you might create more efficiencies and low costs, leading possibly to lower fares. And also the Department of Transportation believes that there's a lot of potential competition in the marketplace. Airlines can move planes around and buy gates, and so that if an airline in a particular market segment was making a lot of money and raising prices excessively, other airlines would move in and prices would be brought down through competition. So that it's a nice theory, the theory of potential competition keeping prices in line, but it's sort of a new idea and it's not clear that that's really the way it would work."
"Thanks." From New York, NPR's Barbara Mantel.
"My audiences have been very devoted over the years throughout the country. And they've expanded and grown and the country audience has been just as kind and as supportive as the folk audience has been."
"I was thinking though, nonetheless, when I put on this album, 'The Last of the True Believers,' especially the title cut, that I heard more country there than I'd perhaps heard before."
"Well, I guess it has ... I've moved in that direction, mainly because I am playing with the band more. My natural roots are there in country and hillbilly music. And so I think that just comes out more when you put the band with it."
"I want to ask you some questions, please, about this album, about the ... not so much what's on the inside right now, but what's on the outside-a picture on the front of you in front of a Woolworth store, someplace, I guess, in Texas or Tennessee, and ..."
"Houston, Texas."
"In Houston, Texas? Is it the Woolworth store that has the hardwood floor still and the parakeets in the back and that sort of thing?"
"Well, this one that we shot this in front of in Houston Texas is one of the largest ones in the country. It's a two-storey and it's got the escalator that does a little pinging noise every couple of minutes. And it takes up a whole city block."
"But, why a cover photo in front of Woolworth's?"
"Well, that comes from the song 'Love at the Five and Dime,' which was a song that Cathy Mattea also cut this year and had my first, you know, top five country hit with. And it deals with the Woolworth store."
"There is, on the cover, you are holding a book, and you can't really see. ... What is the name of the book on the cover you're holding?"
"In the Kindness of Strangers, the latest Tennessee Williams' biography."
"And on the back is Larry McMurtrie's book about a cattle drive around the turn of the century, Lonesome Dove ."
"He's my main prose hero."
"Now, why? Why would you do that? Why would you pose with a book?"
"Well, I have, my audience consists of a lot of young people between the ages of, maybe you know, fourteen and twenty-five. And I read a lot, and I also write short stories and have written a novel. And I just feel like young people are missing out because they don't read books. And any time I have the opportunity to influence the young person to pick up a book and read it, I would try to do that."
"When you hear these lyrics, when the words come to you, are you hearing the stanzas as poetry or as music?"
"Well, I'm hearing them as music. Lyrics usually come to me, and songs come to me as a total picture. And the music and the lyrics come at the same time. Sometimes they shoot me straight up in bed, you know, in the middle of the night. The Wing and the Wheel' is a very special song to me. It's probably my favorite song that I've ever written. And that song was inspired at the Vancouver Folk Festival by two people who are from Managua, Nicaragua. They have a duo call Duo Guar Buranco. And just about four o'clock in the morning, I was sitting in my hotel room and listening to them sing in the room next door, and looking out the window at this little fingernail moon hanging out over the Vancouver Bay, and that song just came flowing, you know, and was inspired by those two people."
"Now, that sounds easy."
"Well, it IS easy. If you listen to yourself and you listen to the inspiration that's bringing on that particular song, it's easy. It's just a matter of getting up and writing it down."
Nancy Griffith, talking with us in WPLN in Nashville. She is continuing her national tour with the Everly Brothers. Her latest album is called "The Last of the True Believers."
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American reporter Nicholas Daniloff is in Frankfurt, West Germany, on his way home from Moscow after being detained for a month on espionage charges. President Reagan in Kansas City on a campaign swing announced Daniloff's release, denying that any trade had been agreed to in order to win his freedom. Asked by reporters if he blinked in staring down Soviet leader Gorbachev over the Daniloff affair, the President said they blinked. The agreement to release Daniloff came after a three-hour meeting last night in New York between Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. No details of the agreement have been released, and it is not known if Daniloff's freedom is the first step in a trade involving accused Soviet spy Gennadi Zakharov. When he arrived in Frankfurt, Daniloff thanked President Reagan, Secretary of State Shultz, and other US officials for "dotting all the i's and crossing the t's" that permitted him to be in Frankfurt tonight.
The House of Representatives is expected to vote soon to override President Reagan's veto of a bill imposing economic sanctions against South Africa. NPR's Cokie Roberts reports that the President has promised to expand economic sanctions on his own in hopes of getting Congress to sustain his veto. "Both houses of Congress passed the economic sanctions against South Africa by wide enough margins to override a presidential veto. And it's expected the House will easily garner the two-thirds vote necessary for override. So it's in the Senate the President is concentrating his efforts. Today President Reagan sent a long letter to majority leader Robert Dole, restating his opposition to 'punitive sanctions that harm the victims of apartheid.' The letter went on to outline an executive order the President plans to sign which would impose some but not all of the sanctions passed by Congress. For example, there'd be a ban on some new investments in South Africa, but not all and a ban on some imports from South Africa, but not as many as called for by Congress. The President hopes the executive order will win over the fourteen additional senators he needs to sustain his veto. The Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said today that Congress would simply come back next year with tougher sanctions if the veto is sustained. I'm Cokie Roberts at the Capitol."
American reporter Nicholas Daniloff was freed today in Moscow. He flew into Frankfurt, West Germany this afternoon and spoke with reporters gathered at the airport.
"It's wonderful to be back in the West. I think it's obvious to everybody what has happened over this last month. I was arrested without an arrest warrant. A case was fabricated against me with a narrow political purpose of giving the Soviet Union some political leverage over the case of Gennadi Zakharov in New York. The KGB did not punish me; the KGB punished itself. I cannot tell you anything about any other arrangements. All I know is that I am free in the West, very grateful, delighted to see you." Nicholas Daniloff.
When Daniloff left the Soviet Union today he had been detained there for thirty-one days, facing a possible trial on espionage charges. Daniloff left Moscow only hours after Secretary of State Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze met last night in New York in the latest of four negotiating sessions concerning the fate of the American journalist. But so far no details have emerged about the arrangements that brought Daniloff his freedom. NPR's Mike Shuster has more from New York.
Reporters in Moscow who had been staking out the American Embassy there first got wind this morning that Daniloff might be released, after he left the Embassy in a car and flashed the "V for Victory" sign. Apparently Daniloff was simply informed that he could leave, and his passport was returned to him. He was then taken to the airport along with his wife, and soon thereafter boarded a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, West Germany. The official American announcement of his release came from President Reagan mid-day today as he was campaigning in Kansas City, Missouri.
"I have something of a news announcement I would like to make, that in case you haven't heard it already, that at twelve o'clock, twelve o'clock Central time, a Lufthansa Airliner, left Moscow bound for Frankfurt West Germany, and on board are Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Daniloff."
So far though neither the White House nor the State Department has said anything about the specific agreements that ended the negotiations on Daniloff. And lacking any fuller explanation from the government, many questions remain. First, what will happen to the Russian scientist Gennadi Zakharov whose arrest last month in New York for spying led to Daniloff's detention? No date has been set for Zakharov's trial in Brooklyn, and a representative of the Justice Department in Brooklyn said today the US attorney there was waiting for instructions on the handling of Zakharov's case. There have been suggestions that Zakharov might be returned to the Soviet Union at a later date in exchange for one or more jailed Soviet dissidents. There is also the question of the American decision to expel twenty-five Soviet personnel from their United Nations Mission here. Several have already left New York and the deadline for the expulsion of the rest is Wednesday. The Soviets have threatened to retaliate if the order is not rescinded. There is no word whether the agreement that freed Daniloff includes anything on the twenty-five Soviets, which naturally leads to the final question: Has Daniloff's release today brought the United States and the Soviet Union any closer to a summit meeting? Secretaqry Shultz has said that a summit could not take place without Daniloff gaining his freedom. That has now been removed as an impediment to a summit, but the Soviets have called the Zakharov case and the matter of the twenty-five Soviet diplomats obstacles to a summit as well. Until the details are made public of the agreement Shultz and Shevardnadze worked out, it will not be known what the prospects for a summit truly are. This is Mike Shuster in New York.
One year ago this month, a powerful earthquake in Mexico City killed more than nine thousand people. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs because of the massive damage. Among those hardest hit by the quake were women garment workers, who worked in sweatshops concentrated in the heart of Mexico City. One year after the earthquake, Lucie Conger reports that some of the forty thousand seamstresses who lost their jobs are changing their attitudes about work.
On the fifth floor of a small office building in the heart of downtown, some thirty garment workers are back at work. Just as before the earthquake they're working on an assembly line. Each woman is specialized in one operation, like sewing cuffs or putting buttonholes on a fancy cocktail dress. But there the similarities with their past work end. The women here on Uruguay Street are running their own cooperative with machines they got from their former employer in a settlement when he closed his factory which was damaged by the earthquake. About fifteen groups of women have former cooperatives, setting up shop with equipment they received instead of an indemnification when factory owners shut down their former places of work. Running their own business has meant big changes for these women. All thirty-five women in this cooperative agree that they prefer working without a boss looking over their shoulder. For Juana Arias, who used to cut patterns for dresses, not having a boss has given her the chance to develop new skills.
"Well, sometimes it's my job to solve some problems. I decide when to buy things. For example, when we run out of thread and needles, that's my job to decide on things that are needed."
At the same time, since they set up the cooperative five months ago, the women have had the chance to realize that the old system of working for the patron or boss man had its good points. At the cooperative, the women only get paid when they complete a factory order. Last Friday came and went without a pay-check. Their income is low now, because they're assembling dresses instead of earning more by producing ready-made dresses of their own design. There are other concerns as well. While the seamstresses are grateful for the loans and technical assistance that they're getting from a Catholic church foundation, they worry about repaying the loans and keeping up with operation expenses like rent and phone bills. And leaving behind the tradition of having a boss is a difficult transition for Mexican women who are accustomed from childhood to responding to male authority figures. Paula Socer, a leader at another seamstresses' cooperative.
"They don't like us to tell them what to do. Since we are all owners, they think that we each can do what we want."
Other garment workers are still working under the patron. But after the earthquake, many of the women began to question their position at work when they saw some factory owners moving more quickly to salvage machinery and cash boxes than to rescue trapped workers. Dramatic events like these moved some four thousand seamstresses to join the September 19th Garment Worker's Union. The women blocked traffic and marched to the presidential palace before getting official recognition as an independent union not forced to affiliate with the ruling party. Through the union, the seamstresses are demanding that factory owners respect the law by giving overtime pay for extra work, allowing workers to take vacation, and providing standard benefits. So far, nine factory owners have signed agreements with the union to guarantee workers' rights. But the union continues to face hurdles. Maria Hernandez worked in an illegal, clandestine sweatshop before the earthquake and is now press chief for the union.
"The bosses and the soldout unions are always pressuring the women who work here, threatening them, saying that they're going to close down the business, but that if they continue to organize, one day something is going to happen to their family. And then they start firing people. They offer them money to turn in the ones who are organizing, to tell them who the leaders are."
Manuela Purras is a seamstress who was fired in May for organizing the thirty-five women at the factory where she had worked for thirteen years. Today she's operating a small business on the edge of the empty paved lot where the union has its offices in temporary quarters provided by the municipal government. Here, alongside a busy thoroughfare, Manuela spends her days cooking tacos and selling them to passers-by to make a living until she can go back to work. The union is fighting to get Manuela and her co-workers reinstated in their jobs. Manuela Purras:
"We've joined the union mostly because we want to see improvements in our working conditions. I think that it will help us. Well, economically it is helping us, and legally too, because at least until now it's not one of those soldout unions."
The garment workers still have an uphill battle to fight, to secure a decent living for themselves and their children. In the year since the earthquake, they've made important strides in assuring that they get a fair shake. University students, lawyers and feminists have joined the seamstresses in their fight to set new terms at the work place. The creation of new organizations, like cooperatives and unions, and the forging of new alliances between educated elites and popular groups may be the most lasting legacy wrought from the devastation left by the earthquake. For National Public Radio, this is Lucie Conger in Mexico City.