CAPE CORAL Concern over water shortage in Cape Coral Concern is flowing through Cape Coral as neighbors are seeing their canal levels low and their wells run dry.
FORT MYERS FSW softball swinging for success in the postseason Now their focus shifts to states which means the newbies are looking to the experienced sophomores for advice.
BONITA SPRINGS Young SWFL tennis player competing with professionals You may not know her name now, but you might want remember it because 16-year-old Cookie Jarvis-Tredgett is already competing with professionals.
NORTH NAPLES ‘It’s all about connection,’ Statement Peace makes jewelry with sustainability in mind The brand Statement Peace, once started inside founder Jessica Lee’s home, is now in 2,700 stores across the country
Pine Manor 2 arrested for firing gun at birthday party in Pine Manor A party ended with two people behind bars.
FORT MYERS Shooting investigation on busy Fort Myers street Police are conducting a shooting investigation that involves a traffic crash near Michigan Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard.
FGCU New FGCU athletic director Colin Hargis ready to build on department’s success New FGCU athletic director Colin Hargis talks about the department’s future amid the age of NIL and the transfer portal.
FORT MYERS More middle-aged women being treated for acne You probably thought you broke up with it after high school, but acne is rearing it’s ugly blackheads in adult women.
Lee County student ran up and hit teacher in head, report shows The report says a 13-year-old student ran up and smacked a teacher in the head because multiple classmates offered him money to do so.
NAPLES Collier Planning Commission continues discussion for apartments near Fiddler’s Creek The developer of Fiddler’s Creek wants to build hundreds of luxury apartments on a slice of a 600 acre-plus property known as section 29.
CAPE CORAL Fatigue sets in for third day of FEMA hearings Flying several hours to come to a FEMA code compliance hearing in Cape Coral is the reality for John Gasparini from Maryland.
Prescription drug shortages lead to higher prices There are currently more than 250 medications on the nation’s drug shortage list, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. The organization says 2023 marked the worst year for shortages in about a decade.
Mental health resources to help children Here are some resources to help you navigate the mental health system when it comes to help for children. Park Royal Park Royal does not have in-patient options for youth; however, the facility’s launched a new intensive outpatient program for 14 to 17-year-olds. It typically last several weeks or months, and offers three to five […]
NAPLES Video: FWC releases bobcat after rehab stint at Naples Zoo Wildlife officials released a bobcat back into the wild after recovering from a broken leg at Naples Zoo for eight weeks.
Single-member vs. at-large voting debate intensifies in Lee County Three members of Southwest Florida’s state Legislature delegation hosted a public forum May 1 at Lehigh Acres Municipal Services Improvement District, established by the state in 2015.
CAPE CORAL Concern over water shortage in Cape Coral Concern is flowing through Cape Coral as neighbors are seeing their canal levels low and their wells run dry.
FORT MYERS FSW softball swinging for success in the postseason Now their focus shifts to states which means the newbies are looking to the experienced sophomores for advice.
BONITA SPRINGS Young SWFL tennis player competing with professionals You may not know her name now, but you might want remember it because 16-year-old Cookie Jarvis-Tredgett is already competing with professionals.
NORTH NAPLES ‘It’s all about connection,’ Statement Peace makes jewelry with sustainability in mind The brand Statement Peace, once started inside founder Jessica Lee’s home, is now in 2,700 stores across the country
Pine Manor 2 arrested for firing gun at birthday party in Pine Manor A party ended with two people behind bars.
FORT MYERS Shooting investigation on busy Fort Myers street Police are conducting a shooting investigation that involves a traffic crash near Michigan Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard.
FGCU New FGCU athletic director Colin Hargis ready to build on department’s success New FGCU athletic director Colin Hargis talks about the department’s future amid the age of NIL and the transfer portal.
FORT MYERS More middle-aged women being treated for acne You probably thought you broke up with it after high school, but acne is rearing it’s ugly blackheads in adult women.
Lee County student ran up and hit teacher in head, report shows The report says a 13-year-old student ran up and smacked a teacher in the head because multiple classmates offered him money to do so.
NAPLES Collier Planning Commission continues discussion for apartments near Fiddler’s Creek The developer of Fiddler’s Creek wants to build hundreds of luxury apartments on a slice of a 600 acre-plus property known as section 29.
CAPE CORAL Fatigue sets in for third day of FEMA hearings Flying several hours to come to a FEMA code compliance hearing in Cape Coral is the reality for John Gasparini from Maryland.
Prescription drug shortages lead to higher prices There are currently more than 250 medications on the nation’s drug shortage list, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. The organization says 2023 marked the worst year for shortages in about a decade.
Mental health resources to help children Here are some resources to help you navigate the mental health system when it comes to help for children. Park Royal Park Royal does not have in-patient options for youth; however, the facility’s launched a new intensive outpatient program for 14 to 17-year-olds. It typically last several weeks or months, and offers three to five […]
NAPLES Video: FWC releases bobcat after rehab stint at Naples Zoo Wildlife officials released a bobcat back into the wild after recovering from a broken leg at Naples Zoo for eight weeks.
Single-member vs. at-large voting debate intensifies in Lee County Three members of Southwest Florida’s state Legislature delegation hosted a public forum May 1 at Lehigh Acres Municipal Services Improvement District, established by the state in 2015.
FILE – In this Aug. 17, 2018, file photo, family and friends who have lost loved ones to OxyContin and opioid overdoses leave pill bottles in protest outside the headquarters of Purdue Pharma, which is owned by the Sackler family, in Stamford, Conn. A new filing in a Massachusetts case ramps up the legal and financial pressure against the Sackler family, which owns the company that makes OxyContin. Photo via AP/Jessica Hill, File. The legal pressure on the prominent family behind the company that makes OxyContin, the prescription painkiller that helped fuel the nation’s opioid epidemic, is likely to get more intense. The Sackler family came under heavy scrutiny this week when a legal filing in a Massachusetts case asserted that family members and company executives sought to push prescriptions of the drug and downplay its risks. Those revelations are likely to be a preview of the claims in a series of expanding legal challenges. Members of the family that controls Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma are also defendants in a lawsuit brought by New York’s Suffolk County. Few, if any, other governments have sued the family so far. But Paul Hanly, a lawyer representing the county, said he expects to add the Sacklers to other opioid suits. He explained last year that he was targeting the family, known for its donations to some of the world’s great museums and universities, in part because they took “tens of billions” of dollars out of Purdue Pharma. Looming as potentially the biggest legal and financial risk for the family is a massive consolidated federal case playing out in Ohio. More than 1,000 government entities have sued Purdue, along with other drugmakers and distributors, claiming they are partly culpable for a drug overdose crisis that resulted in a record 72,000 deaths in 2017. The majority of those deaths were from legal or illicit opioids. The company documents at the heart of the Massachusetts claims also could be evidence in the Ohio lawsuits, which are being overseen by a federal judge. The allegations ramp up pressure on the industry — and perhaps the Sacklers — to reach a settlement, said Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University who studies the role of state attorneys general. Having Sackler family members named as defendants in Massachusetts “indicates that the government attorneys believe they have the ‘smoking guns’ necessary to broaden the potential liability of those at the top of the organization,” he said in an email. The allegations could tarnish a name that is best known for its generosity to museums worldwide including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has a Sackler wing, and London’s Tate Modern. The Sackler name also is on a gallery at the Smithsonian, a wing of galleries at London’s Royal Academy of Arts and a museum at Beijing’s Peking University. The family’s best known and most generous donor, Arthur M. Sackler, died nearly a decade before OxyContin was released. The Cleveland-based judge, Dan Polster, has been pushing for a settlement since he took over the federal cases a year ago, arguing that the parties involved should find ways to end this man-made crisis, rather than hold years of trials. A court order prohibits participants from discussing most aspects of settlement talks publicly. In its lawsuit filed last year, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office went after members of the Sackler family and Purdue, which is structured as a partnership and is not publicly traded. The company’s flagship drug, OxyContin, was the first of a generation of drugs that used a narcotic painkiller in a time-release form. That meant each pill had a larger amount of drug in it than other versions and could get abusers a more intense high if they defeated the time-release process. Many of the attorney general’s specific allegations — based on company documents — were blacked out at the request of Purdue and the Sackler family. The state recently filed a new version of its complaint that made public many of their allegations for the first time. The state is asserting that Richard Sackler, a son of a company founder and at the time a senior vice president for Purdue, as well as other family members pushed selling OxyContin even when they knew it could cause problems. When the drug was first sold in 1996, the filing said, Sackler told the sales force “the launch of OxyContin Tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition.” In 2007, the company and three current and former executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges that they deceived regulators, doctors and patients about the drug’s addiction risks. The company agreed to fines of $634 million. The next year, according to the Massachusetts lawsuit, the company pressed ahead with a new version of the drug designed to be harder for abusers to crush. It did so without first conducting trials and despite a warning from the company’s CEO that the new version “will not stop patients from the simple act of taking too many pills.” Purdue responded to the Massachusetts filing with a strong statement: “In a rush to vilify a single manufacturer whose medicines represent less than 2 percent of opioid pain prescriptions rather than doing the hard work of trying to solve a complex public health crisis, the complaint distorts critical facts and cynically conflates prescription opioid medications with illegal heroin and fentanyl.” A spokesman for the Sackler family declined to comment separately. Abbe Gluck, a Yale law professor who is following the federal case in Ohio, said the documents could make Purdue seem more liable or bring the Sackler family into the case in a way that presents obstacles to a settlement. But she said that might not change things for the other companies involved. “The drug companies have an interest in settling their own claims globally,” she said.