Top 10
Neighborhood Times takes a look at the top national stories of 2005 - as voted by Associated Press members - and compares how and if they had an effect closer to home.
By PAUL SWIDER
Published January 4, 2006
1. Hurricane Katrina: Bayfront Medical Center sent a Bayflite helicopter and crew to New Orleans for six days to offer relief. According to Red Cross of Tampa Bay, about 200 Hurricane Katrina evacuees came to South Pinellas of about 10,000 total for Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties. South Pinellas had about 200 people volunteer to help the displaced and to travel to the affected areas. For the region, about $5-million was donated to help victims of Katrina and Rita.
2. Papal transition: John Paul II's death marked the passing of the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and ended a 26-year pontificate, third longest in history. According to the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg, which serves the entire Tampa Bay area, 15 percent of the total population is Catholic. It includes 78 parishes and missions, 280 priests, six high schools and 31 elementary schools serving 16,000 students.
3. Iraq: News from Iraq ranged from grim, including waves of suicide bombings, to the promising, Iraqis voting for new leaders. The U.S. military death toll reached the 2,000 mark. Forty-two Florida soldiers left for war in 2005 and did not return home alive. Of that number, 10 were from the Tampa Bay area. Of the estimated $231-billion spent to date on the war in Iraq, about $12.2-billion derives from Florida taxpayers. Thus far, the war has cost Americans about $923 per person.
4. Supreme Court: The court declined to rule on the validity of state laws that ban all felons from voting, even after they have served their sentences. This marked the third time in the past year that the court has passed up the issue of felons' voting rights.
5. Oil prices: Crude oil prices hit an all-time peak of almost $71 a barrel in August before subsiding. The price per gallon hit $2.99 in Tampa Bay on Sept. 7.
6. London bombings: Attacks on three rush-hour subway trains and a bus killed 56 people on July 7, 2005, including four bombers with ties to Islamic militants. Several Tampa Bay area companies with operations in London reported that although their U.K. colleagues may have been inconvenienced by the bombings, they were unharmed. Smith & Nephew Inc.'s corporate headquarters are in central London. Others doing business in the United Kingdom are Danka Business Systems PLC and Tech Data Corp.
7. Asian quake: A massive earthquake near the Pakistan-India border killed more than 87,000 and left more than 3-million homeless. Mohammed Sultan, director of the Islamic Society of Tampa Bay, said his organization raised $11,000 in aid. There are more than 220 Pakistani families in the Tampa Bay area, according to Tasneem Nensey, president of the Pakistani American Association of Tampa Bay.
8. Terri Schiavo: A family feud escalated into a wrenching national debate as the husband of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo struggled and finally succeeded in getting clearance to remove the feeding tube that had kept her alive for 15 years. On the local front, Cross Bayou Elementary School students were moved to the Gus A. Stavros Institute as a result of the nearby protests. Pinellas Park police also were forced to work additional hours.
9. CIA leak: Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted and several prominent journalists were entangled in complex offshoots as a special prosecutor investigated the Bush administration's leaking of Valerie Plame's CIA status to the news media in 2003. As far as we know, there is no local connection to this story.
10. Bush's struggles: Multiple factors, including public doubts about Iraq, a flawed response to Hurricane Katrina and a failed Supreme Court nomination, drove President Bush's national approval ratings below 40 percent, the lowest of his presidency. Locally, St. Pete for Peace organizers held weekly protests at BayWalk. Protesters usually held signs critical of the war and Bush and that extolled the virtues of free speech.
Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Information from Times files and the Associated Press was used in this report.