(Reuters) – More than 1.4 million homes and businesses were without power in the eastern half of the United States and Texas on Friday as winter storms battered much of the country, according to data from . That was down from a total of around 1.5 million customers that lost power as utilities – mostly in the U.S. Southeast – restore power after the storms moved on from their service territories. Most outages were in North Carolina, with over 187,000 customers without power, followed by Virginia, Tennessee, Maine and New York. More than a dozen other states east of the Mississippi River plus W…