Gov. DeSantis to hold news conference in Madeira BeachBipartisan school safety legislation introduced to develop emergency parental notifications
Madeira Beach Gov. DeSantis to hold news conference in Madeira Beach Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to hold a news conference in Madeira Beach.
WINK NEWS Bipartisan school safety legislation introduced to develop emergency parental notifications New bi-partisan school safety legislation was introduced Tuesday to streamline parent communication during emergencies.
The Weather Authority Scattered rain and storms Wednesday afternoon and evening The Weather Authority is tracking scattered rain and storms throughout this Wednesday afternoon, dropping temperatures slightly.
CAMPAIGN CENTRAL Tim Walz and JD Vance face off in VP debate WINK News is campaign central, and on Tuesday night, all eyes are focused on the debate stage in New York, where the vice presidential candidates are facing off in their only debate.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte County couple rescued from rooftop by stranger Hurricane Helene battered Charlotte County with heavy rain and wind, and many neighbors watched as water flooded into their homes.
CAPE CORAL WINK Investigates: For the first time, Beattie Development owner Paul Beattie speaks out during liquidation after allegations On Tuesday for the first time, Paul Beattie, owner of Beattie Development, who a lot of people say owe them a lot of money, is speaking out.
FORT MYERS Local Rabbi and Israeli soldier speak on Iran missile attack Israeli authorities said Iran launched dozens of missiles at the country.
PORT CHARLOTTE “It was just a monster in disguise,” Port Charlotte couple cleans up after Helene Wesley and Karen Wingate will never forget what they had for dinner September 27th.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA IRS announces tax relief for those affected by Helene The IRS has just announced tax relief for people affected by Hurricane Helene.
FORT MYERS BEACH How the Fort Myers Beach community is handling Helene’s aftermath One storm hit Fort Myers Beach, but the damage is as different from block to block as the stories their homeowners tell
SOUTH FORT MYERS Submerged car in Fort Myers neighborhood has people worried A submerged car has neighbors worried that their pond will become polluted. One neighbor told WINK News that the vehicle has been in the pond since Hurricane Helene.
Collier County expands mosquito control district The Collier Mosquito Control District is expanding to different areas, and new tools are being used to keep the mosquito population under control as more standing water remains following Hurricane Helene.
CAPE CORAL Memorial benches being removed from Jaycee Park in Cape Coral After years of discussions, the City of Cape Coral will start to remove items from Jaycee Park as part of ongoing improvements.
ST. JAMES CITY How residents of St. James City are coping after Helene Once known for sunsets and dolphins, the tiny island community of St. James City is once again cleaning up after a hurricane.
CHARLOTTE HARBOR Charlotte County woman and dog rescued from home during Helene Amidst the rising waters of Hurricane Helene, a woman and her dog sought safety atop the kitchen counter inside their Charlotte County home.
Madeira Beach Gov. DeSantis to hold news conference in Madeira Beach Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to hold a news conference in Madeira Beach.
WINK NEWS Bipartisan school safety legislation introduced to develop emergency parental notifications New bi-partisan school safety legislation was introduced Tuesday to streamline parent communication during emergencies.
The Weather Authority Scattered rain and storms Wednesday afternoon and evening The Weather Authority is tracking scattered rain and storms throughout this Wednesday afternoon, dropping temperatures slightly.
CAMPAIGN CENTRAL Tim Walz and JD Vance face off in VP debate WINK News is campaign central, and on Tuesday night, all eyes are focused on the debate stage in New York, where the vice presidential candidates are facing off in their only debate.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte County couple rescued from rooftop by stranger Hurricane Helene battered Charlotte County with heavy rain and wind, and many neighbors watched as water flooded into their homes.
CAPE CORAL WINK Investigates: For the first time, Beattie Development owner Paul Beattie speaks out during liquidation after allegations On Tuesday for the first time, Paul Beattie, owner of Beattie Development, who a lot of people say owe them a lot of money, is speaking out.
FORT MYERS Local Rabbi and Israeli soldier speak on Iran missile attack Israeli authorities said Iran launched dozens of missiles at the country.
PORT CHARLOTTE “It was just a monster in disguise,” Port Charlotte couple cleans up after Helene Wesley and Karen Wingate will never forget what they had for dinner September 27th.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA IRS announces tax relief for those affected by Helene The IRS has just announced tax relief for people affected by Hurricane Helene.
FORT MYERS BEACH How the Fort Myers Beach community is handling Helene’s aftermath One storm hit Fort Myers Beach, but the damage is as different from block to block as the stories their homeowners tell
SOUTH FORT MYERS Submerged car in Fort Myers neighborhood has people worried A submerged car has neighbors worried that their pond will become polluted. One neighbor told WINK News that the vehicle has been in the pond since Hurricane Helene.
Collier County expands mosquito control district The Collier Mosquito Control District is expanding to different areas, and new tools are being used to keep the mosquito population under control as more standing water remains following Hurricane Helene.
CAPE CORAL Memorial benches being removed from Jaycee Park in Cape Coral After years of discussions, the City of Cape Coral will start to remove items from Jaycee Park as part of ongoing improvements.
ST. JAMES CITY How residents of St. James City are coping after Helene Once known for sunsets and dolphins, the tiny island community of St. James City is once again cleaning up after a hurricane.
CHARLOTTE HARBOR Charlotte County woman and dog rescued from home during Helene Amidst the rising waters of Hurricane Helene, a woman and her dog sought safety atop the kitchen counter inside their Charlotte County home.
Vaughan Leiberum/ Flickr/ MGN EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) – The United Kingdom’s stunning vote to depart the European Union could end in the breakup of the U.K. itself. While majorities of voters in England and Wales backed the campaign to leave the 28-nation bloc, the U.K.’s two other regions of Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay. Hot on the heels of Friday’s results, nationalist leaders in both countries vowed to leave the U.K. if that is required price to keep their homelands fully connected to Europe. Scotland, where nationalists already in power narrowly lost a 2014 independence referendum, appears poised to be first out the U.K. door if its English neighbors don’t manage a negotiated U-turn to remain inside the EU. Most analysts dismiss that prospect. “Scotland faces the prospect of being taken out of the EU against our will. I regard that as democratically unacceptable,” said Scotland’s leader, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. More than 60 percent of Scots voted to remain in the EU, compared with 48 percent of voters in the U.K. overall, reflecting Scots’ belief that EU membership provides a moderating influence on political life in a U.K. traditionally dominated by the vastly more numerous English. Sturgeon emphasized that her administration would aim first to help negotiate a compromise between the British government in London and EU chiefs in Brussels “to secure our continuing place in the EU and the single market.” But she said such hopes appeared unlikely to prevail, and made a second Scottish independence referendum “now highly likely.” She said such a vote would have to be held before the United Kingdom formally exited the EU, which could happen as soon as 2018. Scotland in September 2014 voted 55 percent to 45 percent to reject independence. But leading members of Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party said they were confident that many voters who rejected independence two years ago were ready to switch allegiance given England’s decisive embrace of euroskepticism. “People in Scotland are quite simply stunned,” said party lawmaker John Nicolson. He said Britain’s traditional big three parties – the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats – all argued two years ago that U.K. membership was the only way to keep Scotland securely within the EU. “Clearly they’ve misled the Scottish people,” he said. Next door, Irish nationalists in the long-disputed U.K. region of Northern Ireland say the British vote has reignited their demands for an all-island referendum to reunite the two parts of Ireland after 95 years of partition. They argue that a British withdrawal from the EU would force authorities in both parts of Ireland to renew customs and security controls on what would become the U.K.’s only land border with an EU state, the Republic of Ireland. Sinn Fein, already in power in Northern Ireland’s 9-year-old unity government and positioned to become the Republic of Ireland’s top opposition party, insists that the hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens who live in Northern Ireland must be given a chance to vote for their own U.K. escape. In Dublin, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny convened an emergency Cabinet meeting as Ireland’s stock market suffered the biggest market falls in Europe, reflecting the fact that Ireland’s main trading partner is Britain. Kenny emerged saying his government’s top priority was to minimize damage to Ireland’s exports-driven economy, not to open old wounds in Northern Ireland. Kenny and Britain’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Theresa Villiers, agreed that Northern Ireland’s U.S.-brokered 1998 peace accord contained a provision for staging an all-Ireland vote on reunification in event of popular demand. But both asserted that decades of opinion polling and election results had demonstrated that such a demand was too weak to merit a vote anytime soon. Kenny said his government would support an Irish unity referendum only if analysts could document “a serious movement of a majority of people to a situation where they would want to join the republic. There is no such evidence.” “There are much more serious issues to deal with in the medium term,” he said, citing the need to protect Ireland’s decades-old agreement to maintain special travel and trade relations with Britain, an agreement that predates both nations’ 1973 entry to the then-European Economic Community. “That’s where our focus is.” And Villiers, who joined Conservative Party rebels in opposing Prime Minister David Cameron’s push to remain in the EU, called a potential Irish referendum “a divisive distraction.” She noted that “remain” won with just 56 percent of the vote in Northern Ireland, the biggest per-capita recipient of EU aid in the U.K. Left unmentioned was the ever-present sectarian rivalry of Northern Ireland, where a decade of delicately balanced peace has followed three decades of bloodshed that left nearly 3,700 dead. While Sinn Fein led the Catholic minority in seeking to remain in the EU, the top Protestant-backed party campaigned to reject it. As a result, Catholic areas staunchly backed “remain,” Protestant areas “leave.” Sinn Fein usually is an EU critic, but this time it backed the “remain” campaign because of the risk that Ireland’s nearly invisible border could become a daily economic, social and security obstacle again. Sinn Fein’s overarching goal is to overturn the 1921 division of the island, when Irish rebels in the south fought a successful war of independence from the U.K. but pro-British Protestants anchored in industrial Belfast received a new northern state that remained within the U.K. Martin McGuinness, the former Irish Republican Army commander who is Sinn Fein’s co-leader of the Northern Ireland government, said Irish nationalists in the north – representing more than 40 percent of the population – would demand a chance to test public support for Irish unity versus continued U.K. membership. McGuinness said the prospect of reintroducing security checks along Northern Ireland’s meandering 310-mile (500-kilometer) border, barely a decade after the outlawed IRA renounced violence and British security forces were withdrawn from border forts, should be avoided at all costs. “Anybody who doesn’t think this is big stuff needs to get their head around it. This is huge for us,” McGuinness said. “I do have great concerns about the future.” In Scotland, high-profile opponents of independence forecast that Cameron’s backfiring referendum would end in the U.K.’s own fracture. “Scotland will seek independence now,” said “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, who donated 1 million pounds to anti-independence campaigners two years ago. “Cameron’s legacy will be breaking up two unions,” she said in a tweet. “Neither needed to happen.”