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NPR's Melissa Block reports on French chef Alain Ducasse and his new restaurant, where every detail counts. Ducasse is the only chef to earn a three-star rating at two different establishments, so New York gourmets have been eagerly awaiting the opening of Alain Ducasse at the Essex House. It's the city's most expensive restaurant where one meal averages about one hundred and sixty dollars. And it limits its number of customers with just two lunches per week, dinner Monday through Friday, and just one seating per meal.

Al Qaeda's alleged Persian Gulf operations chief, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is now a U.S. captive, providing authorities a fresh chance to gather intelligence on possible terrorist efforts, U.S. officials say. Al-Nashiri, a suspected mastermind of the U.S.S. Cole bombing, is the latest senior lieutenant of Osama bin Laden to be captured. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.

NPR's David Welna reports from St. Paul that all eyes are on Minnesota's senate race, where White House-backed Republican Norm Coleman is being challenged by former vice president Walter Mondale. Mondale stepped in to lead a speedy campaign after Minnesota Democratic senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash. Coleman has retooled his campaign to opposed Mondale, and polls are unclear on who leads this tight race. Both men are expected to flex their eligibility at today's debate.

In the final installment in our series on California's Central Valley, NPR's Richard Gonzales reports that working conditions for farm workers have not improved much in the last 50 years. Half of the valley's farm laborers are illegal immigrants, and they work for farm labor contractors and growers who take advantage of their illegal status. The system creates vague lines of responsibility for how and whether workers are paid and who is responsible if someone gets hurt. Ultimately it creates an underclass of low-skilled workers who -- unlike immigrants in the past -- have little chance to improve their lives.

TEMPLE GRANDIN is one of the nation's top designers of livestock facilities. She is also autistic. In her book, Thinking in Pictures: and other reports from my life with Autism she describes how her inner-autistic world has led her to develop animal empathy. She is currently an assistant professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Her new book is published by Doubleday 1995. Grandin was the subject of Oliver Sack's 1993 New Yorker article "An Anthropologist on Mars."

2: Former Executive Editor of The New York Times JAMES RESTON. He died this week at the age of 86, from cancer. He spent fifty years with The New York Times. He began as a reporter in London in 1940, covering the war. He was also Washington bureau chief, executive editor, and columnist. He retired in 1989 at the age of 80. In 1991 he wrote a new memoir, called Deadline (Random House). (REBROADCAST from 10

A government study released today says that driving a cab is the most dangerous job in America. The second most dangerous job is being a sheriff. NPR's Melissa Block reports on how people who hold these jobs are reacting to this news. She talks with one New York cab driver who was held up at gunpoint several years ago says for three months after the attack he was too scared to drive his cab; now he never drives it at night. And a sheriff in Washington State says he's not surprised sheriffs have the second highest on-job homicide rate; he says there's a continual struggle to make the job safer, and more funding is the answer.

NPR's Chitra Ragavan reports on a ruling from the Supreme Court today on the issue of how federal prison sentences are imposed. The case involved the sentences of former Los Angeles policemen Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell, convicted in the 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney King. At issue was whether the trial judge exceeded his authority when he sentenced the two to a shorter time in prison than specified by U-S guidelines. Today, justices voted unanimously to have a federal trial judge reconsider the validity of giving both ex-officers stiffer sentences. Koon and Powell are now free. Had the nation's highest court upheld a federal appeals court ruling against them, each man would have faced returning to prison for up to fifty- seven more months.

NPR's Anne Garrels reports from Moscow on why President Boris Yeltsin gets only grudging support from Russians. With only a few days left before the election on Sunday, June 16th, voters appear to be favoring Yeltsin over his communist rival Gennady Zyuganov (gehn-NAH-dee zyoo-GAH-noff). Yeltsin supporters back him because they think he is the lesser of two evils. They worry he has garnered too much power, that he hasn't done enough to protect Russians from the hardships caused by the fall of the Soviet Union, and that he might embarrass the nation through some personality flaw.

NPR's Joe Palca reports that physicists have found evidence challenging the assumption that fundamental particles called "top quarks" can't be divided into yet smaller structures. Researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., were surprised to find indications that quarks have internal structures. If this turns out to be true, it would contradict the Standard Model that physicists have long used to explain the basic structure of all matter. 17. MAYBE VOOM -- A reading from "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" by Dr. Seuss. The cat, you'll remember, comes back to reveal another cat under his hat, who has another cat under his hat, who has another cat, and so-on. The cats get smaller until there's only VOOM left.