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Iraq Power goes out; when it returns nation is at war
By Times staff writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 20, 2003
SEMINOLE -- Residents of more than 4,000 homes in Seminole and nearby beach towns missed the beginning of the war because their power was out.
About 4,300 Progress Energy customers lost electricity when an underground cable malfunctioned about 9:10 p.m., said Rick Janka, a spokesman for the utility.
The outage affected parts of Seminole, Madeira Beach and Redington Beach.
It took maintenance crews an hour to fix the problem. When the power came back on at 10:10 p.m., the country was at war.
Bar with no TV a refuge
TAMPA -- One place where the war didn't dominate talk late Wednesday was Four Green Fields pub in Tampa.
Nearly 50 people sat in the thatched-roof building as the war began, most of them sipping pints of Guinness.
But because the bar has no televisions, news of the air raid in Baghdad didn't reach the Irish pub until nearly 11 p.m.
"I think that's why many of our customers came tonight," said bartender Adrian Moloney. "To get away from it for an hour or so."
Officers share raids over radios
TAMPA -- Officers at the Plant City Police Department informed one another of the war by sending messages over the computers in their patrol cars.
City dispatchers, who don't have access to a television, also got messaged by a lieutenant.
Otherwise, things remained sleepy in Plant City, save for a couple of theft and domestic violence calls.
Poll: Sermons have little impact
Americans are little influenced by sermons and religious pronouncements about war but few resent clergy activism, a poll released Wednesday found.
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found 10 percent of Americans said religious beliefs were the strongest influence on their thinking, though that increased to 17 percent among people who attend worship at least monthly. The survey questioned 1,032 adults from Thursday through Sunday and had a margin of error of 5 percentage points.
Religion has considerably more impact on issues like abortion than on whether the nation should go to war, past surveys show.
However, a third of Americans said religious leaders had at least "some influence" on them, compared with 7 percent who said they were influenced by Hollywood celebrities.
Only 15 percent of Americans thought religious leaders have been saying too much about the war while 32 percent thought they've said too little.
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