Royal Palm Coast Realtor Association breaks ground on new Fort Myers headquartersCharlotte County drug trafficker sentenced to 10 years
Royal Palm Coast Realtor Association breaks ground on new Fort Myers headquarters As Royal Palm Coast Realtor Association’s president pointed out, about 1,000 people are still moving to Florida every day, and many of them are finding their way to Southwest Florida.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte County drug trafficker sentenced to 10 years A Charlotte County man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for drug trafficking.
lehigh acres ‘How to sign away parental rights?’; Lehigh Acres woman accused of killing her 4-month-old baby The Lee County Sheriff’s Office has arrested a woman accused of killing her 4-month-old baby.
Punta Gorda Man accused of indecent exposure at school bus stop in Punta Gorda The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office has arrested a man accused of indecent exposure at a school bus stop in Punta Gorda.
estero Firefighters to perform 76-acre prescribed burn at Koreshan State Park San Carlos Park Fire Protection & Rescue Service District will perform a 76-acre prescribed burn at Koreshan State Park.
Tim Aten Knows: 2 new eateries coming to East Naples After operating La Rosa Pizzeria for more than 15 years, owners Bill and Alda Rosa decided to sell their local business and restaurant space.
the weather authority Warmer with sun and clouds for your Friday plans The Weather Authority is tracking a warmer day ahead, with a mixture of sun and clouds expected this Friday afternoon.
FDOT opens all lanes of Caloosahatchee Bridge year ahead of construction schedule The Florida Department of Transportation announced all lanes of the Caloosahatchee Bridge are open, a year ahead of its original pedestrian sidewalk project estimate.
NAPLES 12-year-old collecting donations for the needy during the holidays A 12-year-old Naples boy isn’t worried about what he’s getting for Christmas. Instead, he’s working on his 6th annual “Holiday Sock Drive.”
Fort Myers man facing homelessness before the holidays A 75-year-old man is on the brink of homelessness despite working over 80 hours a week.
NAPLES Adoptee uses non-profit to provide suitcases for foster children This holiday season, a Naples woman is on a mission to bring foster children something many take for granted: a suitcase filled with dignity.
MARCO ISLAND City of Marco Island discusses lead awareness during city council meeting The city of Marco Island sent out 4900 letters to residents warning them that their pipes could contain plastic or lead.
NAPLES The future of electric planes in Southwest Florida Features of living near an airport include persistent headache-inducing engine rumbles and foul-smelling jet fuel, but electric planes could play a part in the solution.
PORT CHARLOTTE Neighbors awaiting answers on Port Charlotte Beach Park repairs Neighbors said a contractor hired by the Florida Division of Emergency Management mishandled the boats at Port Charlotte Beach Park.
FGCU introduces new technology for cognitive health screenings Ten minutes. That’s all it takes for doctors to assess how well you remember, how quickly you learn things, and how your brain is working overall.
Royal Palm Coast Realtor Association breaks ground on new Fort Myers headquarters As Royal Palm Coast Realtor Association’s president pointed out, about 1,000 people are still moving to Florida every day, and many of them are finding their way to Southwest Florida.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte County drug trafficker sentenced to 10 years A Charlotte County man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for drug trafficking.
lehigh acres ‘How to sign away parental rights?’; Lehigh Acres woman accused of killing her 4-month-old baby The Lee County Sheriff’s Office has arrested a woman accused of killing her 4-month-old baby.
Punta Gorda Man accused of indecent exposure at school bus stop in Punta Gorda The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office has arrested a man accused of indecent exposure at a school bus stop in Punta Gorda.
estero Firefighters to perform 76-acre prescribed burn at Koreshan State Park San Carlos Park Fire Protection & Rescue Service District will perform a 76-acre prescribed burn at Koreshan State Park.
Tim Aten Knows: 2 new eateries coming to East Naples After operating La Rosa Pizzeria for more than 15 years, owners Bill and Alda Rosa decided to sell their local business and restaurant space.
the weather authority Warmer with sun and clouds for your Friday plans The Weather Authority is tracking a warmer day ahead, with a mixture of sun and clouds expected this Friday afternoon.
FDOT opens all lanes of Caloosahatchee Bridge year ahead of construction schedule The Florida Department of Transportation announced all lanes of the Caloosahatchee Bridge are open, a year ahead of its original pedestrian sidewalk project estimate.
NAPLES 12-year-old collecting donations for the needy during the holidays A 12-year-old Naples boy isn’t worried about what he’s getting for Christmas. Instead, he’s working on his 6th annual “Holiday Sock Drive.”
Fort Myers man facing homelessness before the holidays A 75-year-old man is on the brink of homelessness despite working over 80 hours a week.
NAPLES Adoptee uses non-profit to provide suitcases for foster children This holiday season, a Naples woman is on a mission to bring foster children something many take for granted: a suitcase filled with dignity.
MARCO ISLAND City of Marco Island discusses lead awareness during city council meeting The city of Marco Island sent out 4900 letters to residents warning them that their pipes could contain plastic or lead.
NAPLES The future of electric planes in Southwest Florida Features of living near an airport include persistent headache-inducing engine rumbles and foul-smelling jet fuel, but electric planes could play a part in the solution.
PORT CHARLOTTE Neighbors awaiting answers on Port Charlotte Beach Park repairs Neighbors said a contractor hired by the Florida Division of Emergency Management mishandled the boats at Port Charlotte Beach Park.
FGCU introduces new technology for cognitive health screenings Ten minutes. That’s all it takes for doctors to assess how well you remember, how quickly you learn things, and how your brain is working overall.
In this photo taken from video, civil evacuees sit in a bus in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Bezimenne, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, Saturday, April 30, 2022. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed that an evacuation is underway of civilians at a steel plant in the bombed-out city of Mariupol. Zelenskyy said on social media Sunday that a group of 100 people are on their way from Azovstal steelworks to Ukrainian-controlled territory. (AP Photo) The first group of civilians trapped for weeks inside a steel plant in Mariupol under Russian siege was expected to reach a Ukrainian-controlled city on Monday, as a new attempt was launched to allow people sheltering elsewhere in the city to leave. Video posted online Sunday by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with small children climbing over a steep pile of rubble from the sprawling Azovstal steel plant and eventually boarding a bus. The evacuation, if successful, would represent rare progress in easing the human cost of the almost 10-week war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol. Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the port city on the Sea of Azov and other places have broken down. People fleeing Russian-occupied areas in the past have said their vehicles were fired on, and Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of shelling agreed-upon evacuation routes. At least some of the people evacuated from the plant were apparently taken to a village controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, though Russian state media reported they would be allowed to continue on to Ukrainian-held territory if they wanted to. In the past, Ukrainian officials have accused Moscow’s troops of forcibly relocating civilians from areas they have captured to Russia; Moscow has said the people wanted to go to Russia. More than 100 civilians were expected to arrive in Zaporizhzhia on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday. “Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed green corridor has started working,” Zelenskyy said in a pre-recorded address published on his Telegram messaging channel. While official evacuations have often faltered, many people have managed to flee Mariupol under their own steam. Anastasiia Dembytska took advantage of the brief cease-fire around the evacuation of civilians from the steel plant to leave with her daughter, nephew and dog. She told The Associated Press she could see the steel plant from her window when she dared to look outside. “We could see the rockets flying” and clouds of smoke over the plant, she said. She said she had to navigate many checkpoints on the journey to Zaporizhzhia and waited 18 hours near the city before being allowed to pass. Like many Mariupol residents, Dembytska and her family survived by cooking on a makeshift stove and drinking well water under near-constant bombardment. “I was scared, then I got used to it,” her 14-year-old daughter Vladyslava said. A defender of the steel plant said Russian forces resumed shelling the plant Sunday as soon as the civilians were evacuated. Denys Shlega, commander of the 12th Operational Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard, said in a televised interview Sunday night that several hundred civilians are still trapped alongside nearly 500 wounded soldiers and “numerous” dead bodies. “Several dozen small children are still in the bunkers underneath the plant,” Shlega said. As many as 100,000 people may still be in Mariupol, including an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters beneath the sprawling, Soviet-era steel plant — the only part of the city not occupied by the Russians. A siege of Mariupol since the early days of the war has trapped civilians with scarce access to food, water, medicine and electricity. A Russian airstrike hit a maternity hospital early in the conflict, and hundreds of people were reported killed when a theater was bombed. The city, which had a pre-war population of more than 400,000, is a key Russian target because its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops for fighting elsewhere in the Donbas, now Russia’s main focus. A Ukrainian officer at the steel plant urged groups like the U.N. and the Red Cross to also ensure the evacuation of wounded fighters at the plant, though he acknowledged that reaching some of the injured is difficult. “There’s rubble. We have no special equipment. It’s hard for soldiers to pick up slabs weighing tons only with their arms,” Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, told the AP in an interview. “We hear voices of people who are still alive” inside shattered buildings. U.N. humanitarian spokesman Saviano Abreu said civilians arriving in Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol, would get immediate support, including psychological services. A Doctors Without Borders team was waiting for the U.N. convoy at a reception center for displaced people in the city. In his nightly address Sunday, Zelenskyy accused Moscow of waging “a war of extermination,” saying Russian shelling had hit food, grain and fertilizer warehouses, and residential neighborhoods in the city of Kharkiv, in the Donbas and other regions. More than 350,000 people have been evacuated from combat zones thanks to humanitarian corridors pre-agreed with Moscow, he said, adding the “organization of humanitarian corridors is one of the elements of the negotiation process which is ongoing.” In Zaporizhzhia, residents ignored air raid sirens to visit cemeteries on Sunday, the Orthodox Christian day of the dead. “If our dead could rise and see this, they would say, ‘It’s not possible, they’re worse than the Germans,’” Hennadiy Bondarenko, 61, said while marking the day with his family at a picnic table among the graves. “All our dead would join the fighting, including the Cossacks.” Meanwhile, Russian forces embarked on a major military operation to seize the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, after failing to capture Kyiv. A full picture of the battle unfolding in eastern Ukraine is hard to capture. The fighting makes it dangerous for reporters to move around, and both sides have introduced tight restrictions on reporting from the combat zone. Western officials say Russia is advancing slowly in its eastern offensive and has captured some villages, but is inflicting heavy civilian casualties through indiscriminate bombing. Ukrainian forces are fighting their offensive village-by-village while civilians flee airstrikes and artillery shelling. The British Defense Ministry said in a daily briefing Monday that it believes more than a quarter of all the fighting units Russia has deployed in Ukraine are now “combat ineffective” — unable to fight because of loss of troops or equipment. The British military believes Russia committed over 120 so-called “battalion tactical groups” into the war since February, which represents 65% of all of Moscow’s combat strength. Ukraine’s military claimed Monday to have destroyed two small Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea. Drone footage posted online showed what the Ukrainians described as two Russian Raptor boats exploding after being struck by missiles. The AP could not immediately independently confirm the strikes. Hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance have flowed into Ukraine during the war, but Russia’s vast armories mean Ukraine still needs massive support. Zelenskyy has appealed to the West for more weapons and tougher economic sanctions on Russia. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other U.S. lawmakers visited Zelenskyy on Saturday to show American support. European Union energy ministers were meeting Monday to discuss a new set of sanctions, which could include restrictions on Russian oil — though Russia-dependent members of the 27-nation bloc including Hungary and Slovakia are wary of taking tough action. ___ Varenytsia reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Jon Gambrell and Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.