ALVA Woodpeckers build home in Alva woman’s house You may have heard of squatters, but this woman is dealing with squawkers. Who needs a rooster to wake up when you have woodpeckers?
FORT MYERS Man claims he was trapped in a high-rise for 5 days A 77-year-old man wants justice after he claims he spent days trapped on the 24th floor of a high-rise apartment building.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte Correctional prisoner arrested for death of another inmate State Attorney Amira Fox convened a grand jury, which decided to move forward with a case against a Charlotte Correctional inmate.
SANIBEL Construction near Dairy Queen eagle nest on Sanibel raises concerns While many eagle nests may be a bit difficult to see, one nest has always been a favorite for Sanibel residents and tourists.
The environmental effects of artificial sweeteners Experts are studying how the foods we eat affect the environment, especially after we flush our waste down the toilet.
Victim reacts to man exposing himself to her Ring camera You get a notification on your phone from your ring camera app that someone is at the door, only to find out it is someone exposing themselves. It’s the last thing victim Maria Kivi wanted or expected to see last week.
LEE COUNTY The art of capturing your eye and drawing you in How do you capture young, hip, trendy, fun, movers and shakers, all in a pose? We take you behind the scenes of a Gulfshore Life cover shoot.
FORT MYERS The lives of two SJC Boxers changed in the ring Two SJC Boxers, Mario Nunez and Arbon Kurtishi, help each other in the ring as each of them had their lives changed because of boxing.
FORT MYERS Chlamydia cases rising sharply in Lee County If you think about a crowded space- something with more than 250 people- if it’s in Lee county, statistically one person has chlamydia.
SANIBEL Sanibel resort day passes hope to get more business on the island A pass will allow vacationers to hang out at a Sanibel beach club for a day in hopes of drumming up some business.
Voting equipment tested ahead of Lee County elections Voting equipment is being tested in Lee County. This is to ensure all ballots are printed and counted correctly for the upcoming election.
Collier County teen assaulted after leaving party The teen has been charged and the sheriff’s office said they’re aware that many believe felony charges are in order, but under Florida law, there are very specific criteria that must be met for felony charges to be filed.
WINK weather team watching tropical wave over Atlantic Ocean The Weather Authority is watching a tropical disturbance over the Central Atlantic Ocean.
CAPE CORAL Cape Coral drug bust leads investigators to fake fentanyl, cash and guns Cape Coral man arrest on drug charges. Investigators said they found, guns, drugs, and more than $32,000 in Richard Riley’s home.
NAPLES Naples youth flag football team to compete in Ohio tournament This weekend, the Naples Lunatics Green will compete in the Superhero Sports tournament in Canton, Ohio.
ALVA Woodpeckers build home in Alva woman’s house You may have heard of squatters, but this woman is dealing with squawkers. Who needs a rooster to wake up when you have woodpeckers?
FORT MYERS Man claims he was trapped in a high-rise for 5 days A 77-year-old man wants justice after he claims he spent days trapped on the 24th floor of a high-rise apartment building.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte Correctional prisoner arrested for death of another inmate State Attorney Amira Fox convened a grand jury, which decided to move forward with a case against a Charlotte Correctional inmate.
SANIBEL Construction near Dairy Queen eagle nest on Sanibel raises concerns While many eagle nests may be a bit difficult to see, one nest has always been a favorite for Sanibel residents and tourists.
The environmental effects of artificial sweeteners Experts are studying how the foods we eat affect the environment, especially after we flush our waste down the toilet.
Victim reacts to man exposing himself to her Ring camera You get a notification on your phone from your ring camera app that someone is at the door, only to find out it is someone exposing themselves. It’s the last thing victim Maria Kivi wanted or expected to see last week.
LEE COUNTY The art of capturing your eye and drawing you in How do you capture young, hip, trendy, fun, movers and shakers, all in a pose? We take you behind the scenes of a Gulfshore Life cover shoot.
FORT MYERS The lives of two SJC Boxers changed in the ring Two SJC Boxers, Mario Nunez and Arbon Kurtishi, help each other in the ring as each of them had their lives changed because of boxing.
FORT MYERS Chlamydia cases rising sharply in Lee County If you think about a crowded space- something with more than 250 people- if it’s in Lee county, statistically one person has chlamydia.
SANIBEL Sanibel resort day passes hope to get more business on the island A pass will allow vacationers to hang out at a Sanibel beach club for a day in hopes of drumming up some business.
Voting equipment tested ahead of Lee County elections Voting equipment is being tested in Lee County. This is to ensure all ballots are printed and counted correctly for the upcoming election.
Collier County teen assaulted after leaving party The teen has been charged and the sheriff’s office said they’re aware that many believe felony charges are in order, but under Florida law, there are very specific criteria that must be met for felony charges to be filed.
WINK weather team watching tropical wave over Atlantic Ocean The Weather Authority is watching a tropical disturbance over the Central Atlantic Ocean.
CAPE CORAL Cape Coral drug bust leads investigators to fake fentanyl, cash and guns Cape Coral man arrest on drug charges. Investigators said they found, guns, drugs, and more than $32,000 in Richard Riley’s home.
NAPLES Naples youth flag football team to compete in Ohio tournament This weekend, the Naples Lunatics Green will compete in the Superhero Sports tournament in Canton, Ohio.
MGN WASHINGTON (AP) – Striving to end a cycle of crisis, congressional leaders and the White House united Tuesday behind an ambitious budget and debt deal aimed at restoring a semblance of order to Capitol Hill and ending the threat of government shutdowns and defaults until well after a new president takes office. The outgoing House speaker, Republican John Boehner of Ohio, prepared to push the deal through his unruly chamber on Wednesday as his last act before departing Congress at the end of the week. All but forced to resign under conservative pressure, Boehner was nonetheless going out on his own terms. The budget deal stands as an in-your-face rebuttal to his hardline antagonists, on Capitol Hill and off, who angrily oppose spending increases and compromises with Democratic President Barack Obama. They seethed but acknowledged they were powerless to stop an agreement all but certain to pass with votes from Democrats and a sizable number of Republicans. Boehner brushed off their complaints, declaring that he intended to make good on his promise to leave a “clean barn” for his successor, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who is set to get the GOP nomination for speaker on Wednesday and win election on the House floor the day after that. “I didn’t want him to walk into a dirty barn full of you-know-what. So I’ve done my best to try to clean it up,” a good-humored Boehner told reporters after a closed-door gathering of House Republicans, his last such weekly meeting after nearly five years as speaker and a quarter-century on Capitol Hill. During the meeting, Republican lawmakers had a parting gift for Boehner: a golf cart with Ohio license plates reading “MR SPKR”. Boehner told them he had a gift in return: the budget deal. The deal would boost military spending as sought by defense hawks, even as it would take away the threat of “fiscal cliffs” by a GOP-led Congress in the middle of a campaign season where Republicans are aiming for the White House and trying to hang onto their slim Senate majority. Struck over recent days in closely held talks with White House officials and top House and Senate leader of both parties, the agreement would raise the government debt ceiling until March 2017, removing the threat of an unprecedented and market-rupturing national default just days from now. At the same time it would set the budget of the government through the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years and ease punishing spending caps by providing $80 billion more for military and domestic programs, paid for with a hodge-podge of spending cuts and revenue increases touching areas from tax compliance to spectrum auctions. The deal would also avert a looming shortfall in the Social Security disability trust fund that threatened to slash benefits, and head off an unprecedented increase in Medicare premiums for outpatient care for about 15 million beneficiaries. Obama said the budget deal “reflects our values” and responsibly pays for investments in the middle class and national security. “It’s an actual bipartisan compromise, which hasn’t been happening in Washington a lot lately,” the president said. Said Vice President Joe Biden: “It will prevent us from lurching from crisis to crisis.” Congressional Democrats have pushed for months for such a deal, bottling up routine spending bills in an effort to produce negotiations that would result in increased domestic spending. With resignation, one of the conservative rebels, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, complained of the deal and Boehner: “We can’t stop it. He’s in league with the Democrats.” But Massie also said that “it’s a long game” and that conservatives are winning the war after forcing Boehner to resign and cowing his heir apparent, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, into dropping his candidacy. That caused a power vacuum that threw the House into pandemonium for much of this month, until GOP leaders prevailed upon a reluctant Ryan, the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, to seek the speakership. Despite conservative anger over the budget deal, hard-liners sounded reluctant to take their fury out on Ryan, who claimed to have no role in the agreement and indeed criticized how it came about. “I think this process stinks. This is not the way to do the people’s business,” Ryan said. “Under new management, we’re not going to do the people’s business this way.” Several GOP critics pointed out that the deal bears striking similarities to a pact that Ryan fashioned two years ago in concert with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to ease automatic spending cuts for the 2014-15 budget years. They labeled the new deal “Ryan-Murray 2.0,” and outside conservative groups such as Tea Party Patriots and Heritage Action for America promptly issued press releases lambasting it and calling on lawmakers to reject it. “Here we go again: John Boehner wants to make his last capitulation to President Obama his worst,” Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin fumed. In the past such pressures have thrown Congress into disarray, producing a partial government shutdown two years ago as conservatives clamored to end Obama’s health care law and causing a near-shutdown of the Homeland Security Department earlier this year over Obama’s immigration policies. This week, at least, that dynamic has been turned on its head. In addition to moving toward passage of the bipartisan budget deal, the House was expected to vote late Tuesday to revive the federal Export-Import Bank, supposedly killed off earlier in the year by conservatives who attacked it as corporate welfare. It’s not clear whether the marginalization of the most conservative forces in Congress will last – or if it simply took a lame-duck speaker with nothing to lose to bring temporary order to Capitol Hill. “It may have taken Boehner to actually be told he’s not going to stay as speaker to have the ability and the power to do this now,” said Democratic Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland.