Election Day crowds expected despite record early votingVoters in Downtown Fort Myers ready for 2024 Election
Election Day crowds expected despite record early voting Election Day is nearly upon us. At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, the polls will be closed, and our team will bring you the results.
DOWNTOWN FORT MYERS Voters in Downtown Fort Myers ready for 2024 Election A lot can change in four years. During the 2020 election, many voters masked up as they cast their ballots, and the pandemic was at the top of many voters’ minds.
PUNTA GORDA Punta Gorda residents frustrated by hurricane debris delays Many people in parts of southwest Florida feel like they’ve dealt with more than their fair share of storm damage lately.
Miracle Moment: A rosy outlook following surprise diagnosis It’s time for Miracle Moment. Today, we meet a toddler diagnosed with a disease without known prevention or cure.
Poll workers ready for Election Day rush in Collier County Poll workers gear up for a busy Tuesday in Collier County; some have been there for a while, and this year marks their first time working at a polling place for others.
CAPE CORAL Voters decide: Will Cape Coral City Council members stay or go? Stipends, Jaycee Park and new developments have been topics of concern in the City of Cape Coral for months now.
MATLACHA Lee County residents still dealing with damage from hurricanes Hurricane recovery has been an ongoing project here in Southwest Florida since Hurricane Ian.
FGCU Former FGCU golfer Frankie Capan III makes PGA Tour After playing two seasons on the Korn Ferry Tour, former FGCU golfer Frankie Capan III is moving up to the PGA Tour.
Parents cast their votes for Lee County school superintendent With just hours now until the election, WINK News wants to highlight a few local races that haven’t gotten as much attention. One of them is the election of Lee County’s next superintendent of schools.
NORTH FORT MYERS Former Dollar General employee accused of stealing $7,000 in returns A woman has been arrested after defrauding a Dollar General in North Fort Myers.
FORT MYERS BEACH The Tropics and Red Tide; what happens if or when they interact? The Tropics are active despite the fact that there’s less than a month left in hurricane season. But how will a system interact with red tide?
CAPE CORAL Police investigate gunfire at Cape Coral rental home The bullet holes left behind by shots heard in a normally quiet Cape Coral neighborhood scared one woman into buying security cameras for her home.
CAPE CORAL Bimini Basin residents face housing challenges Time is running out for the families who live in one Cape Coral community to find places to call home.
Harris and Trump make a furious final push before Election Day A presidential campaign that has careened through a felony trial, an incumbent president being pushed off the ticket and multiple assassination attempts comes down to a final sprint across a handful of states on Election Day eve.
Using AI to detect pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death in the United States. That’s due in part to the limited testing available for early detection.
Election Day crowds expected despite record early voting Election Day is nearly upon us. At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, the polls will be closed, and our team will bring you the results.
DOWNTOWN FORT MYERS Voters in Downtown Fort Myers ready for 2024 Election A lot can change in four years. During the 2020 election, many voters masked up as they cast their ballots, and the pandemic was at the top of many voters’ minds.
PUNTA GORDA Punta Gorda residents frustrated by hurricane debris delays Many people in parts of southwest Florida feel like they’ve dealt with more than their fair share of storm damage lately.
Miracle Moment: A rosy outlook following surprise diagnosis It’s time for Miracle Moment. Today, we meet a toddler diagnosed with a disease without known prevention or cure.
Poll workers ready for Election Day rush in Collier County Poll workers gear up for a busy Tuesday in Collier County; some have been there for a while, and this year marks their first time working at a polling place for others.
CAPE CORAL Voters decide: Will Cape Coral City Council members stay or go? Stipends, Jaycee Park and new developments have been topics of concern in the City of Cape Coral for months now.
MATLACHA Lee County residents still dealing with damage from hurricanes Hurricane recovery has been an ongoing project here in Southwest Florida since Hurricane Ian.
FGCU Former FGCU golfer Frankie Capan III makes PGA Tour After playing two seasons on the Korn Ferry Tour, former FGCU golfer Frankie Capan III is moving up to the PGA Tour.
Parents cast their votes for Lee County school superintendent With just hours now until the election, WINK News wants to highlight a few local races that haven’t gotten as much attention. One of them is the election of Lee County’s next superintendent of schools.
NORTH FORT MYERS Former Dollar General employee accused of stealing $7,000 in returns A woman has been arrested after defrauding a Dollar General in North Fort Myers.
FORT MYERS BEACH The Tropics and Red Tide; what happens if or when they interact? The Tropics are active despite the fact that there’s less than a month left in hurricane season. But how will a system interact with red tide?
CAPE CORAL Police investigate gunfire at Cape Coral rental home The bullet holes left behind by shots heard in a normally quiet Cape Coral neighborhood scared one woman into buying security cameras for her home.
CAPE CORAL Bimini Basin residents face housing challenges Time is running out for the families who live in one Cape Coral community to find places to call home.
Harris and Trump make a furious final push before Election Day A presidential campaign that has careened through a felony trial, an incumbent president being pushed off the ticket and multiple assassination attempts comes down to a final sprint across a handful of states on Election Day eve.
Using AI to detect pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death in the United States. That’s due in part to the limited testing available for early detection.
Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee on the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan, Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Olivier Douliery/Pool via AP) Senior Pentagon officials said Wednesday the collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces in August could be traced to a 2020 U.S. agreement with the Taliban that promised a complete U.S. troop withdrawal. Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee that once the U.S. troop presence was pushed below 2,500 as part of President Joe Biden’s decision in April to complete a total withdrawal by September, the unraveling of the U.S.-backed Afghan government accelerated. “The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military — psychological more than anything else, but we set a date-certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” McKenzie said. He was referring to a Feb. 29, 2020, agreement that the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in which the U.S. promised to fully withdraw its troops by May 2021 and the Taliban committed to several conditions, including stopping attacks on American and coalition forces. The stated objective was to promote a peace negotiation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but that diplomatic effort never gained traction before Biden took office in January. McKenzie said he also had believed “for quite a while” that if the United States reduced the number of its military advisers in Afghanistan below 2,500, the Kabul government inevitably would collapse “and that the military would follow.” He said in addition to the morale-depleting effects of the Doha agreement, the troop reduction ordered by Biden in April was ”the other nail in the coffin” for the 20-year war effort because it blinded the U.S. military to conditions inside the Afghan army, “because our advisers were no longer down there with those units.” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, testifying alongside McKenzie, said he agreed with McKenzie’s analysis. He added that the Doha agreement also committed the United States to ending airstrikes against the Taliban, “so the Taliban got stronger, they increased their offensive operations against the Afghan security forces, and the Afghans were losing a lot of people on a weekly basis.” Wednesday’s hearing was politically charged, with Republicans seeking to cast Biden as wrongheaded on Afghanistan, and Democrats pointing to what they called ill-advised decisions during the Trump years. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said a day earlier in a similar hearing in the Senate that the war in Afghanistan was a “strategic failure,” and he repeated that on Wednesday. Milley told the Senate committee, when pressed Tuesday, that it had been his personal opinion that at least 2,500 U.S. troops were needed to guard against a collapse of the Kabul government and a return to Taliban rule. Defying U.S. intelligence assessments, the Afghan government and its U.S.-trained army collapsed in mid-August, allowing the Taliban, which had ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, to capture Kabul with what Milley described as a couple of hundred men on motorcycles, without a shot being fired. That triggered a frantic U.S. effort to evacuate American civilians, Afghan allies and others from Kabul airport. This week’s House and Senate hearings marked the start of what is likely to be an extended congressional review of the U.S. failures in Afghanistan, after years of limited congressional oversight of the war and the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars it consumed. “The Republicans’ sudden interest in Afghanistan is plain old politics,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, who supported Biden’s decision to end U.S. involvement there. Tuesday’s hearing also was contentious at times, as Republicans sought to portray Biden as having ignored advice from military officers and mischaracterized the military options he was presented last spring and summer. In a blunt assessment of a war that cost 2,461 American lives, Milley said the result was years in the making. “Outcomes in a war like this, an outcome that is a strategic failure — the enemy is in charge in Kabul, there’s no way else to describe that — that is a cumulative effect of 20 years,” he said Tuesday, adding that lessons need to be learned, including whether the U.S. military made the Afghans overly dependent on American technology in a mistaken effort to make the Afghan army look like the American army. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas asked Milley why he did not choose to resign after his advice was rejected. Milley, who was appointed to his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Donald Trump and retained by Biden, said it was his responsibility to provide the commander in chief with his best advice. “The president doesn’t have to agree with that advice,” Milley said. “He doesn’t have to make those decisions just because we are generals. And it would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to resign just because my advice was not taken.” Milley cited “a very real possibility” that al-Qaida or the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate could reconstitute in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and present a terrorist threat to the United States in the next 12 to 36 months.