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.