FGCU softball falls to No. 4 Florida in NCAA Tournament‘The Whale’ restaurant to break ground on new building
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball falls to No. 4 Florida in NCAA Tournament The FGCU softball team couldn’t keep up with the No. 4 Florida Gators as the Eagles drop their first Regional game 6-0 to the Gators.
FORT MYERS BEACH ‘The Whale’ restaurant to break ground on new building The Whale is a place that has shown great strength and determination.
COLLIER COUNTY Endangered Florida panther deaths surpass 2023 total in 5 months It’s taken wildlife officials just over four and a half months to report finding more dead endangered Florida panthers than in all of 2023.
FORT MYERS FMPD honors 7 officers and 2 K-9s who died in the line of duty dating back to 1930 Nine lives were given, and all nine will remain remembered. A lifetime of gratitude for the fallen officers.
Firefighter recovering from heat exhaustion after battling flames in Collier County It happened at Progress Rail, a transit corporation on Mercantile Avenue just before 5am on Friday.
FORT MYERS How do SWFL graduation rates compare to the state average? How do graduation rates for Charlotte, Lee and Collier Counties stack up against the state? WINK News crunched the numbers.
FORT MYERS Community divisive over ‘justified’ officer-involved shooting of Christopher Jordan A detective who killed an unarmed black man in a controversial shooting will be back at work on Monday.
CAPE CORAL Family submits civil complaint against Cape Coral Police Department The family of a 13-year-old boy who was struck and killed while riding his scooter has officially filed a civil complaint.
FORT MYERS Community reacts to ‘justified’ officer-involved shooting of Christopher Jordan Leaders with the NAACP are saying there is a divide between the black community and Fort Myers police.
NAPLES Inside look at $21 million Naples Players Theater, set to open at the end of May On Friday, as the theater’s 70th season approached, leaders and organizers invited WINK News for a ‘hard-hat-tour’ to showcase the new additions and construction updates.
FORT MYERS Detective who fired fatal shot at Christopher Jordan returns to work Monday Fort Myers police have confirmed to WINK News the detective who shot and killed a man inside his home will return to work Monday morning.
FORT MYERS Bishop Verot onto first state semifinals in nearly a decade A trip to the FHSAA State Semifinals has been a long time coming for the Bishop Verot Vikings who have not been since 2016.
Paul Fleming expanding Lake Park Diner, PJK restaurant concepts Lake Park Diner co-owners Smith Organics and Paul Fleming Restaurant Group anticipate 50 locations of what will be a Naples-based chain.
New construction, business growth continues near Punta Gorda Airport Development surrounding the Punta Gorda Airport continues to grow with 2.5 million square feet already developed and 1.5 million square feet planned, according to Charlotte County Economic Development Director Dave Gammon.
AREA SHELTERS AND REFUGES OF LAST RESORT CHARLOTTE COUNTY Emergency Operations Center (941) 833-4000 charlottecountyfl.gov/departments/public-safety/emergency-management/ PLEASE NOTE: Do not depend on a particular shelter or refuge. Sites may, or may not, be opened depending on the size of the storm and the predicted landfall area. *All Charlotte County shelters are pet-friendly. PORT CHARLOTTE Harold Avenue Regional Park Recreation Center, 23400 Harold Ave. […]
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball falls to No. 4 Florida in NCAA Tournament The FGCU softball team couldn’t keep up with the No. 4 Florida Gators as the Eagles drop their first Regional game 6-0 to the Gators.
FORT MYERS BEACH ‘The Whale’ restaurant to break ground on new building The Whale is a place that has shown great strength and determination.
COLLIER COUNTY Endangered Florida panther deaths surpass 2023 total in 5 months It’s taken wildlife officials just over four and a half months to report finding more dead endangered Florida panthers than in all of 2023.
FORT MYERS FMPD honors 7 officers and 2 K-9s who died in the line of duty dating back to 1930 Nine lives were given, and all nine will remain remembered. A lifetime of gratitude for the fallen officers.
Firefighter recovering from heat exhaustion after battling flames in Collier County It happened at Progress Rail, a transit corporation on Mercantile Avenue just before 5am on Friday.
FORT MYERS How do SWFL graduation rates compare to the state average? How do graduation rates for Charlotte, Lee and Collier Counties stack up against the state? WINK News crunched the numbers.
FORT MYERS Community divisive over ‘justified’ officer-involved shooting of Christopher Jordan A detective who killed an unarmed black man in a controversial shooting will be back at work on Monday.
CAPE CORAL Family submits civil complaint against Cape Coral Police Department The family of a 13-year-old boy who was struck and killed while riding his scooter has officially filed a civil complaint.
FORT MYERS Community reacts to ‘justified’ officer-involved shooting of Christopher Jordan Leaders with the NAACP are saying there is a divide between the black community and Fort Myers police.
NAPLES Inside look at $21 million Naples Players Theater, set to open at the end of May On Friday, as the theater’s 70th season approached, leaders and organizers invited WINK News for a ‘hard-hat-tour’ to showcase the new additions and construction updates.
FORT MYERS Detective who fired fatal shot at Christopher Jordan returns to work Monday Fort Myers police have confirmed to WINK News the detective who shot and killed a man inside his home will return to work Monday morning.
FORT MYERS Bishop Verot onto first state semifinals in nearly a decade A trip to the FHSAA State Semifinals has been a long time coming for the Bishop Verot Vikings who have not been since 2016.
Paul Fleming expanding Lake Park Diner, PJK restaurant concepts Lake Park Diner co-owners Smith Organics and Paul Fleming Restaurant Group anticipate 50 locations of what will be a Naples-based chain.
New construction, business growth continues near Punta Gorda Airport Development surrounding the Punta Gorda Airport continues to grow with 2.5 million square feet already developed and 1.5 million square feet planned, according to Charlotte County Economic Development Director Dave Gammon.
AREA SHELTERS AND REFUGES OF LAST RESORT CHARLOTTE COUNTY Emergency Operations Center (941) 833-4000 charlottecountyfl.gov/departments/public-safety/emergency-management/ PLEASE NOTE: Do not depend on a particular shelter or refuge. Sites may, or may not, be opened depending on the size of the storm and the predicted landfall area. *All Charlotte County shelters are pet-friendly. PORT CHARLOTTE Harold Avenue Regional Park Recreation Center, 23400 Harold Ave. […]
Social media apps With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to hear arguments next month, Florida is disputing that a 2021 state law placing restrictions on large social media platforms violates First Amendment rights. In a 50-page brief filed last week, attorneys for the state contended that platforms such as Facebook and X should be considered like telephone companies and said the First Amendment does not give platforms “constitutional license to selectively silence the speech of those they may host.” The law, in part, would prevent large platforms from banning political candidates from their sites and require companies to publish — and apply consistently — standards about issues such as banning users or blocking their content. “In hosting billions of speakers and petabytes of content, the platforms are engaged in business activity – conduct – that may be regulated in the public interest,” the state’s brief said. “The First Amendment does not afford those who host third-party speech a right to silence the hosted speakers or to treat them arbitrarily. The telephone company, internet service provider, and delivery company can all be prevented from squelching or discriminating against the speech they carry. And so can the platforms.” The state wants the Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that blocked key parts of the law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature passed after Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, blocked former President Donald Trump from their platforms after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The tech-industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association challenged the constitutionality of the law. Tallahassee-based U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction blocking the measure, and most of Hinkle’s ruling was upheld by the appeals court. Hinkle described the law as “riddled with imprecision and ambiguity.” In a November brief at the Supreme Court, lawyers for the industry groups contended the law was designed to punish social media platforms that were perceived as having a liberal viewpoint. “While the state is free to criticize websites for their decisions about what content to display, disseminate, remove or restrict, the First Amendment prohibits the state from countermanding those editorial decisions and substituting its own judgment,” the group’s brief said. “Just as Florida may not tell the New York Times what opinion pieces to publish or Fox News what interviews to air, it may not tell Facebook and YouTube what content to disseminate. When it comes to disseminating speech, decisions about what messages to include and exclude are for private parties – not the government – to make.” The Supreme Court will hear arguments Feb. 26 in the case and a challenge to a similar Texas law. In contrast to the 11th Circuit, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals supported restrictions on social media platforms in the Texas law. The Florida law (SB 7072) applies only to certain large platforms. In the brief last week, the state’s attorneys likened the platforms to what are known as “common carriers.” In addition to telephone companies, it cited telegraph companies from the 1800s. “SB 7072 does little more than require the platforms to adhere to their general business practice of holding themselves open to all comers and content, which is how common-carrier regulation has functioned for centuries,” the brief said. “The law interferes with no message merely by holding the platforms to their representations to consumers about what their censorship rules require.” The state’s attorney also wrote that the “threshold question is whether Florida’s law targets conduct or expression. And the government regulates conduct when it prevents a private entity that generally opens its doors to all speakers and speech from arbitrarily censoring those speakers. That principle is rooted in precedent, purpose, and history.” But in the November brief, lawyers for the industry groups disputed such arguments, saying there is no “common law tradition of imposing common-carrier-like regulations on private parties that disseminate curated collections of speech.” “In trying to characterize SB 7072 as common-carrier regulation, Florida cannot mean that the websites targeted for regulation already operate as common carriers, and thus are subject to some greater degree of regulation,” the group’s brief said. “Indeed, the genesis of SB 7072 was that Florida lawmakers did not like how the targeted companies were exercising discretion over which content to disseminate and how. Thus, Florida does not seek to regulate the targeted websites because they already are common carriers; it seeks to convert them into common carriers that must disseminate the messages of all comers (or at least the state’s hand-picked preferred speakers). But that is just another way to describe the state’s impermissible effort to force a different and more indiscriminate editorial policy onto companies engaged in the dissemination of speech.”