News stories from Saturday September 6, 1975
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The United States Attorney in Sacramento, Dwayne Keyes, said the government had no evidence "thus far" of a conspiracy to assassinate President Ford. He said, however, that the owner of the .45 caliber pistol knew that Lynette Fromme had the gun. Mr. Keyes would not identify the owner of the gun, who is a man, or explain fully how Miss Fromme got possession of the gun that she pointed at Mr. Ford Friday afternoon as he walked from his hotel in Sacramento to the State Capitol to address the California legislature. [New York Times]
- Senior federal law enforcement officials said in Washington that the episode in which a woman pointed a gun at President Ford was expected to reopen the controversy over the degree to which federal agencies may intrude on personal privacy and civil liberties to protect the President and preserve order. At dispute is whether the government has the right to maintain dossiers and keep track of persons with a history of violence or persons who make violent threats against the government, but not against the President or other individuals. The Secret Service declined to say whether security around Mr. Ford had been increased since the assassination attempt in Sacramento. Security precautions around Mr. Ford appeared to be normal when he arrived to play golf at the Burning Tree Country Club near Washington. [New York Times]
- Fifty persons were reported injured and nearly 200 arrested, in a night of rioting in white working class suburbs of Louisville, Ky., following the start of school busing of black and white schoolchildren between the city and suburbs. The National Guard were called into the city. [New York Times]
- Verbal and mathematical aptitude scores of college-bound high school graduates dropped this year by the biggest margin in at least two decades, according to the College Entrance Examination Board. The tests, which are standardized measures of reasoning ability, are scored on a scale of 200 to 800 and are used by most colleges as one way to evaluate academic ability. The board gave its Scholastic Aptitude Test to one million 1975 graduates and found that the average verbal score declined by 10 points to 434. The average mathematical score dropped eight points to 472. [New York Times]
- A violent earthquake killed at least 1,000 people in eastern Turkey, the governor of Diyarbakir Province said. Local officials said the number of deaths might be much higher when rescue teams reached remote mountain villages. Rescue workers reported that the quake, which occurred at noon, toppled buildings and touched off fires along the Anatolian Fault. Further shocks continued past midnight. [New York Times]
- President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines said that informal talks with the United States have begun on his proposal to give his country more control over the major American air and navy bases there. Mr. Marcos stressed in an interview that his objective was to put the bases under Philippine sovereignty and to turn them into "economically productive facilities" as well as military installations. But American officials, while sympathetic to the proposal, say they are still not sure exactly what Mr. Marcos wants and believe there may be difficult bargaining ahead. The two major American bases in the Philippines are Clark Air Base, the largest American military installation outside the United States, and Subic Bay Navy Base, the most important naval base in the Western Pacific. [New York Times]