Police investigate homicide in front of Fort Myers beauty salonWINK Neighborhood Watch: road rage, domestic violence and camper fire
FORT MYERS Police investigate homicide in front of Fort Myers beauty salon The Fort Myers Police Department is investigating a homicide after police found a man’s dead body in the parking lot of a Fort Myers beauty salon.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA WINK Neighborhood Watch: road rage, domestic violence and camper fire This weeks segment of WINK Neighborhood watch features: An angry driver, a posterior puncture, and a family camper up in flames.
OCALA Memorial held for migrant bus crash victims A memorial was held in Ocala Friday night after a bus crash left eight people dead and 45 injured this past Tuesday.
IMMOKALEE ROAD 3 injured in deadly crash on Immokalee road The Florida Highway Patrol is currently investigating a deadly crash on Immokalee road.
NAPLES Collier deputies investigating car submerged in water The Collier County Sheriffs Office is investigating the scene of a submerged vehicle in Naples.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball reflects on season and team’s legacy FGCU softball reflects on the historic season following their elimination doubleheader Saturday as well as what made this team special.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA The Weather Authority: Scattered storms in the forecast for your Sunday Expect sun and clouds throughout the day, along with scattered rain. Some of the storms have the potential to become severe.
CAPE CORAL Do we need a federal gun database for mental illness? One family says yes One family is on a mission to create a new national gun database. It would require medical professionals to enter mental health information.
ALVA Three dead in triple drowning near the Franklin Lock in Olga The Lee County Sheriff’s Office is responding to a scene of a water rescue where three people were recovered.
PUNTA GORDA The Weather Authority helps you prepare for the hurricane season at the 2024 Charlotte County Hurricane Expo With hurricane season less than two weeks away, it’s important to start preparing.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball senior balances EMT training and Regional play Ahead of NCAA Regional play, FGCU senior outfielder Riley Oakes started EMT training as she works toward being a trauma surgeon.
PUNTA GORDA Homes For Our Troops grants veteran new home Through all the cheers and a community-wide escort, it’s a ‘welcome to your forever home for army sergeant veteran Brandon Rethmel and his family.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Beat the Heat: Stay safe during extreme weather The Weather Authority has issued a heat advisory for portions of South, Southeast, and Southwest Florida from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday.
FORT MYERS Leaders discuss possibility of shutting down Caloosahatchee Bridge Should residents endure two years of partial lane closures, or fully shut the Caloosahatchee bridge down for 10 weeks?
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball parents cherish NCAA Tournament experience The parents of the FGCU softball team are relishing seeing their daughters play in the NCAA Tournament.
FORT MYERS Police investigate homicide in front of Fort Myers beauty salon The Fort Myers Police Department is investigating a homicide after police found a man’s dead body in the parking lot of a Fort Myers beauty salon.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA WINK Neighborhood Watch: road rage, domestic violence and camper fire This weeks segment of WINK Neighborhood watch features: An angry driver, a posterior puncture, and a family camper up in flames.
OCALA Memorial held for migrant bus crash victims A memorial was held in Ocala Friday night after a bus crash left eight people dead and 45 injured this past Tuesday.
IMMOKALEE ROAD 3 injured in deadly crash on Immokalee road The Florida Highway Patrol is currently investigating a deadly crash on Immokalee road.
NAPLES Collier deputies investigating car submerged in water The Collier County Sheriffs Office is investigating the scene of a submerged vehicle in Naples.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball reflects on season and team’s legacy FGCU softball reflects on the historic season following their elimination doubleheader Saturday as well as what made this team special.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA The Weather Authority: Scattered storms in the forecast for your Sunday Expect sun and clouds throughout the day, along with scattered rain. Some of the storms have the potential to become severe.
CAPE CORAL Do we need a federal gun database for mental illness? One family says yes One family is on a mission to create a new national gun database. It would require medical professionals to enter mental health information.
ALVA Three dead in triple drowning near the Franklin Lock in Olga The Lee County Sheriff’s Office is responding to a scene of a water rescue where three people were recovered.
PUNTA GORDA The Weather Authority helps you prepare for the hurricane season at the 2024 Charlotte County Hurricane Expo With hurricane season less than two weeks away, it’s important to start preparing.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball senior balances EMT training and Regional play Ahead of NCAA Regional play, FGCU senior outfielder Riley Oakes started EMT training as she works toward being a trauma surgeon.
PUNTA GORDA Homes For Our Troops grants veteran new home Through all the cheers and a community-wide escort, it’s a ‘welcome to your forever home for army sergeant veteran Brandon Rethmel and his family.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Beat the Heat: Stay safe during extreme weather The Weather Authority has issued a heat advisory for portions of South, Southeast, and Southwest Florida from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday.
FORT MYERS Leaders discuss possibility of shutting down Caloosahatchee Bridge Should residents endure two years of partial lane closures, or fully shut the Caloosahatchee bridge down for 10 weeks?
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball parents cherish NCAA Tournament experience The parents of the FGCU softball team are relishing seeing their daughters play in the NCAA Tournament.
FILE – In this Jan. 11, 2011 file photo, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrives at Belmarsh Magistrate’s court in London for an extradition hearing. According to a cache of internal WikiLeaks files obtained by The Associated Press, Assange sought a Russian visa and staffers at his radical transparency group discussed having him skip bail and escape Britain as authorities closed in on him in late 2010. (AP Photo/Sang Tan) Julian Assange had just pulled off one of the biggest scoops in journalistic history, splaying the innards of American diplomacy across the web. But technology firms were cutting ties to his website, WikiLeaks, cable news pundits were calling for his head and a Swedish sex crime case was threatening to put him behind bars. Caught in a vise, the silver-haired Australian wrote to the Russian Consulate in London. “I, Julian Assange, hereby grant full authority to my friend, Israel Shamir, to both drop off and collect my passport, in order to get a visa,” said the letter, which was recently obtained by The Associated Press. The Nov. 30, 2010 missive is part of a much larger trove of WikiLeaks emails, chat logs, financial records, secretly recorded footage and other documents leaked to The Associated Press. The files provide both an intimate look at the radical transparency organization and an early hint of Assange’s budding relationship with Moscow. The ex-hacker’s links to the Kremlin would become increasingly salient before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when the FBI says Russia’s military intelligence agency directly supplied WikiLeaks with stolen emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and other Democratic figures. Representatives for Assange, who has been barred from internet access at his refuge inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, didn’t return repeated messages seeking details about the visa bid. Kristinn Hrafnsson, a sometime-spokesman for the group, declined to comment, calling the AP’s story “rather uninteresting.” The Russian Embassy in London said it didn’t discuss the personal details of visa applicants. WikiLeaks has repeatedly been hit by unauthorized disclosures, but the tens of thousands of files obtained by the AP may be the biggest leak yet. The AP has confirmed the authenticity of many of the documents by running them by five former WikiLeaks associates or by verifying non-public details such as bank accounts, telephone numbers or airline tickets. One of the former associates, an ex-employee, identified two of the names that frequently appeared in the documents’ metadata, “Jessica Longley” and “Jim Evans Mowing,” as pseudonyms assigned to two WikiLeaks laptops. All five former associates spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, in some cases because they didn’t want their past association with WikiLeaks to become public, and in others because they feared legal retaliation or harassment from the group’s supporters. Among other things, the documents lay out Assange’s campaign to avoid being arrested and extradited to Sweden over allegations that he sexually molested one woman and raped another during a trip to the Scandinavian country in August 2010. Assange has always denied wrongdoing in the case, which he cast as a prelude to extradition to the U.S. The Swedish prosecution jeopardized what at the time was WikiLeaks’ biggest-ever disclosure: the publication of around 250,000 U.S. State Department cables. Swedish authorities issued a warrant for his arrest on Nov. 18, just 10 days before the cables exploded across the web, with bombshell revelations about drone strikes in Yemen, American spying at the U.N. and corruption across the Arab world. Italy’s then-foreign minister, Franco Frattini, described the release as the “Sept. 11 of world diplomacy.” Enraged American politicians demanded that Assange be treated like a terrorist. Metadata suggests that it was on Nov. 29, the day after the release of the first batch of U.S. State Department files, that the letter to the Russian Consulate was drafted on the Jessica Longley computer. The AP couldn’t confirm whether or when the message was actually delivered, but the choice of Israel Shamir as a go-between was significant. Assange’s involvement with Shamir, a fringe intellectual who once said it was the duty of every Christian and Muslim to deny the Holocaust, would draw indignation when it became public. Shamir told the AP he was plagued by memory problems and couldn’t remember delivering Assange’s letter or say whether he eventually got the visa on Assange’s behalf. “I can’t possibly exclude that it happened,” Shamir said in a telephone interview. “I have a very vague memory of those things.” Shamir’s memory appeared sharper during a January, 20, 2011 interview with Russian News Service radio — a Moscow-based station now known as Life Zvuk, or Life Sound. Shamir said he’d personally brokered a Russian visa for Assange, but that it had come too late to rescue him from the sex crimes investigation. Russia “would be one of those places where he and his organization would be comfortable operating,” Shamir explained. Asked if Assange had friends in the Kremlin, Shamir smiled and said: “Let’s hope that’s the case.” Shamir often makes eyebrow-raising claims (in the same interview he said that the U.S. offered Assange $100 million not to publish the cables), but it was true that any visa for Assange would have been moot. On Nov. 30, 2010 — the date on the letter — Interpol issued a Red Notice seeking Assange’s arrest, making any relocation to Russia virtually impossible. With legal bills mounting, Assange turned himself in on Dec. 7 and his staff’s focus turned to getting him out of jail. One WikiLeaks spreadsheet listed names of potential supporters arrayed by wealth and influence; a second one titled “Get Out of Jail Free” tracked proposed bail donations and pledges for surety. As they gathered money, Assange’s allies also plotted what to do once the WikiLeaks founder was released. One document showed Guatemalan human rights lawyer Renata Avila floating the idea of jumping bail. “I will advise him to seek asylum abroad: we already contacted the Ministry of Justice in Brazil, there is a possibility to run out of the country in a Brazilian ship,” Avila told fellow WikiLeaks supporters in a memo. The document said Assange should “plan to escape and pay the bail money back to his supporters.” Avila didn’t return repeated messages seeking comment. It’s not clear whether her idea went anywhere; former Brazilian Justice Minister Eduardo Cardozo, who was serving on then-President-elect Dilma Rousseff’s transition team at the time, told the AP that he’d never heard of an Assange asylum request. Assange would eventually skip bail after exhausting his British legal campaign to block the Swedish extradition effort, darting into the Ecuadorean Embassy on June 19, 2012. The move frustrated the sex crimes prosecution, which was dropped last year, but it sparked a standoff that continues to this day, with Assange refusing to leave the embassy unless he is shielded from extradition to the U.S. Assange’s escape left many of his guarantors in the lurch. When a group of them went to court in late 2012 to reduce their bill, the escape plan went unmentioned. A lawyer for four of Assange’s supporters, Henry Blaxland, told the judge that Assange’s Ecuadorean asylum stunt caught everyone off guard. “Nobody could reasonably have foreseen that’s what he would do,” Blaxland said.