高级英语听力 lesson 9

（单词翻译）

Lesson Nine

  Section One: News in Brief

  Tapescript
  1. There was an assassination¹ 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 minor² wounds when the
  gunman burst from the brushes where he had apparently³ 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 investigation⁴ 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 testimony⁶ 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 depressed⁷ 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-
  fore⁵ 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 lapse⁸.  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 Ministry⁹ 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, collapsed¹¹ and how a gunman armed with an illegally
  manufactured revolver broke through the security cordon¹² 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 commemorate¹³ 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 spotted¹⁴,
  eyewitnesses¹⁵ 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 dwellers¹⁶ 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 unemployed¹⁷ 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
  attentively¹⁸ as Gibson gave the lengthy¹⁹ orientation²⁰ 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 incentives²¹ 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 turnips²², 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 pints²³ 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 therapeutic²⁴, mentally, physically²⁵, 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 labor²⁶, 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 demon²⁷.
         '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 gem¹⁰.'
         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 labors²⁸ 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 Jersey²⁹.  Plans
    are already under way to expand the Farm Hands program to
    Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Vermont.