March 15, 2000 – CBS World News Roundup – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
March 15, 2000 – Big day, on the road to the 2000 White House. Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W Bush have clinched the nominations of their parties for the US presidential contest. As their victories were announced, the two candidates began campaigning in earnest, with a series of sharp attacks on each other. Both men have won the support of enough party delegates in the six latest primaries to ensure that they will face each other in November.The primaries – in Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas – were largely a formality, with Mr Gore and Mr Bush standing unopposed for their party’s nominations.
In other news – More than a dozen cars of Amtrak’s Southewest Chief careened off the rails 15 miles south of Topeka Kansas. No one was killed. Of the 155 people on board the train, some 32 people were taken to area hospitals with injuries and the good news was none of those was thought to be life threatening. The train was bound from Chicago to Los Angeles when the accident occurred.
And a new phrase was making its way into the vocabulary: Identity Theft. Each year thousands of people literally lose their identities and lots of money to thieves who steal credit cards and social security numbers. The FTC disclosed that often the victims are totally unaware when someone opens up a credit card account in their name and runs up debts, with the victim only finding out when they apply for a mortgage or other loan and find a string of unpaid debts on their credit reports. The Treasury, holding a two-day summit on the subject of Identity Theft was looking for a new approach to the rapidly spiraling out of control crisis hitting consumers.
And that’s a tiny fraction of what happened, this March 15, 2000 as reported by The CBS World News Roundup.
