News stories from Saturday March 9, 1974

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

Seven of President Nixon's former associates, charged with covering up the Watergate burglary, pleaded not guilty before Chief Judge John Sirica in Federal District Court in Washington. They entered the courtroom through a jeering crowd of about 250 persons that was held back by the police. Among the seven, John Ehrlichman and Charles Colson also pleaded not guilty to charges brought last Thursday arising from the Sept. 3, 1971, burglary of the office of Dr. Daniel Ellsberg's former psychiatrist. The five others at the arraignment were John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, Kenneth Parkinson, Robert Mardian and Gordon Strachan. [New York Times] A poll taken immediately after the voting in last Tuesday's special congressional election in Ohio strongly suggests that Watergate has cost the Republicans the support of the independent voters. It also indicates that a substantial number of Democrats who broke away to vote for President Nixon In 1972, making possible his landslide victory, have returned to their traditional voting patterns. The poll was taken for the Democratic National Committee in the first district of Ohio, in which Thomas Luken, a Democrat, defeated Willis Gradison, a Republican. [New York Times] With President Nixon's popularity pear its nadir and with former Nixon aides and other associates being indicted, tried or sentenced with growing frequency, it has become increasingly apparent in recent weeks that Vice President Ford has emerged as the one national Republican political leader around whom the party faithful are beginning to rally. [New York Times] Growing up in America for Michael and Robert Meeropol was not quite the same as for most young people because they carried a searing childhood memory. Michael is 31 years old today, his brother is 26. They are the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. The brothers believe that the time has come for them to emerge from obscurity to try to clear the names of their parents, who they believe were innocent. [New York Times] A major Arab split seems to have developed over Egypt's insistence that the American effort to bring about military disengagement with Israel would be matched by a relaxation of Arab oil restrictions. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, has announced that she will be represented at the meting of Arab producers in Cairo today and has made an official statement supporting an end of the embargo against the United States. Egyptian officials said categorically that the oil ministers' conference would be held in Cairo today. In Algiers, the Energy Minister said that the oil producers had been officially asked to meet in Libya on Wednesday. [New York Times] America's campuses, rocked by unrest in the 1960s, are being shaken again by a new crisis: A frenzied "slave market" in recruiting and paying college athletes. Many educators warn that the crisis is approaching a public scandal, and they attribute it to a national mania in the 1970s to "win at any cost." [New York Times]