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.