No charges filed in Collier County child abuse caseElevate Kava Bar, offering an alternative nightlife experience, to open near FGCU
NAPLES No charges filed in Collier County child abuse case The state attorney’s office will not file charges against a Collier County woman accused of child abuse.
ESTERO Elevate Kava Bar, offering an alternative nightlife experience, to open near FGCU University Village near Florida Gulf Coast University will soon be home to a new kava bar.
Hope Card program protects victims of domestic violence in Lee County Lee County has implemented the Hope Card Program, a new statewide initiative to help victims of domestic violence.
Woman in custody following Charlotte County fatal shooting According to the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office, a woman is in custody after a fatal shooting at a home in Charlotte County.
NCH offers new process to improve blood flow Getting a stent to improve blood flow to the heart is a very common procedure. In some cases, the issue comes back as scar tissue forms around the stent.
92.5 FOX News launches 10th annual ‘10,000 for the Troops’ campaign in support of deployed U.S. military personnel Sun Broadcasting’s 92.5 FOX News Radio announced the launch of its 10th annual “10,000 for the Troops” campaign, which is in partnership with the Military Support Program at Lee Memorial Health Systems.
FORT MYERS Tired of traffic trouble spots? Now is your chance to weigh in on changes Voice your thoughts on what Southwest Florida roads need improving.
Punta Gorda Council discusses proposed new $16M City Hall Punta Gorda City Council got sticker shock Dec. 4 when they learned that a new City Hall building with a design chosen by former council members would cost close to $16 million.
Department of Labor seeks to distribute $4.7M in wages owed to Florida workers With year-end approaching, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor is working to return $4,737,110 in wages it recovered to almost 7,500 Florida workers who earned them.
GLADES COUNTY Florida panther struck by vehicle in Glades County; 32nd death in 2024 A 7-to-8-month-old panther was killed by a vehicle in Glades County, increasing the death toll of the endangered species to 32 for 2024.
FORT MYERS Commissioner Hamman: Caloosahatchee bridge project to be completed soon The pedestrian walkway project on the Caloosahatchee bridge in Fort Myers is on schedule and is expected to be completed before Christmas Day.
WINK NEWS Citizens Property Insurance passes important milestone in depopulation program This is a sign our insurance crisis in Florida is recovering. Citizens, designed to be Floridian’s last resort insurer, is shrinking.
WINK NEWS Expect warmer temperatures for your Thursday plans The Weather Authority is tracking increased temperatures. Thursday is in the 50s, and the warming trend is continuing into the weekend.
WINK NEWS Smoke from prescribed burns this Thursday The Weather Authority is tracking smoke in the air Thursday morning. If you notice smoke, it’s likely from recent prescribed burns.
LEHIGH ACRES Firefighters break open submerged car in Lehigh Acres Firefighters break open a submerged car and appear to rescue someone stuck inside in Lehigh Acres overnight.
NAPLES No charges filed in Collier County child abuse case The state attorney’s office will not file charges against a Collier County woman accused of child abuse.
ESTERO Elevate Kava Bar, offering an alternative nightlife experience, to open near FGCU University Village near Florida Gulf Coast University will soon be home to a new kava bar.
Hope Card program protects victims of domestic violence in Lee County Lee County has implemented the Hope Card Program, a new statewide initiative to help victims of domestic violence.
Woman in custody following Charlotte County fatal shooting According to the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office, a woman is in custody after a fatal shooting at a home in Charlotte County.
NCH offers new process to improve blood flow Getting a stent to improve blood flow to the heart is a very common procedure. In some cases, the issue comes back as scar tissue forms around the stent.
92.5 FOX News launches 10th annual ‘10,000 for the Troops’ campaign in support of deployed U.S. military personnel Sun Broadcasting’s 92.5 FOX News Radio announced the launch of its 10th annual “10,000 for the Troops” campaign, which is in partnership with the Military Support Program at Lee Memorial Health Systems.
FORT MYERS Tired of traffic trouble spots? Now is your chance to weigh in on changes Voice your thoughts on what Southwest Florida roads need improving.
Punta Gorda Council discusses proposed new $16M City Hall Punta Gorda City Council got sticker shock Dec. 4 when they learned that a new City Hall building with a design chosen by former council members would cost close to $16 million.
Department of Labor seeks to distribute $4.7M in wages owed to Florida workers With year-end approaching, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor is working to return $4,737,110 in wages it recovered to almost 7,500 Florida workers who earned them.
GLADES COUNTY Florida panther struck by vehicle in Glades County; 32nd death in 2024 A 7-to-8-month-old panther was killed by a vehicle in Glades County, increasing the death toll of the endangered species to 32 for 2024.
FORT MYERS Commissioner Hamman: Caloosahatchee bridge project to be completed soon The pedestrian walkway project on the Caloosahatchee bridge in Fort Myers is on schedule and is expected to be completed before Christmas Day.
WINK NEWS Citizens Property Insurance passes important milestone in depopulation program This is a sign our insurance crisis in Florida is recovering. Citizens, designed to be Floridian’s last resort insurer, is shrinking.
WINK NEWS Expect warmer temperatures for your Thursday plans The Weather Authority is tracking increased temperatures. Thursday is in the 50s, and the warming trend is continuing into the weekend.
WINK NEWS Smoke from prescribed burns this Thursday The Weather Authority is tracking smoke in the air Thursday morning. If you notice smoke, it’s likely from recent prescribed burns.
LEHIGH ACRES Firefighters break open submerged car in Lehigh Acres Firefighters break open a submerged car and appear to rescue someone stuck inside in Lehigh Acres overnight.
Credit: The Associated Press Alexei Navalny, the fiercest foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests, died in prison Friday, Russian authorities said. He was 47. Navalny, who was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism, felt unwell after a walk, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service, and lost consciousness. An ambulance arrived to try to revive him, but he died. It said the cause of death was “being established.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was informed of Navalny’s death and the prison service would look into it in line with standard procedures. Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the politician’s team had no confirmation of his death so far and that his lawyer was traveling to the town where he was held. Navalny had been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption, organized major anti-Kremlin protests and ran for public office. He had since received three prison sentences, all of which he rejected as politically motivated. Shortly after Navalny’s death was reported, the Russian SOTA social media channel shared images of the opposition politician reportedly in court yesterday. In the footage, Navalny is seen standing up and is laughing and joking with the judge via video link. Navalny was moved in December from a prison in central Russia to a “special regime” penal colony — the highest security level of prisons in the country — above the Artic Circle. His allies decried the transfer to a colony in the town of Kharp, in a region about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow, as yet another attempt to force Navalny into silence. In Putin’s Russia, political opponents often faded amid factional disputes or went into exile after imprisonment, suspected poisonings or other heavy repression. But Navalny grew consistently stronger and reached the apex of the opposition through grit, bravado and an acute understanding of how social media could circumvent the Kremlin’s suffocation of independent news outlets. He faced each setback — whether it was a physical assault or imprisonment — with an intense devotion, confronting dangers with a sardonic wit. That drove him to the bold and fateful move of returning from Germany to Russia and certain arrest. Navalny was born in Butyn, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) outside Moscow. He received a law degree from People’s Friendship University in 1998 and did a fellowship at Yale in 2010. He gained attention by focusing on corruption in Russia’s murky mix of politicians and businesses; one of his early moves was to buy a stake in Russian oil and gas companies to become an activist shareholder and push for transparency. By concentrating on corruption, Navalny’s work had a pocketbook appeal to Russians’ widespread sense of being cheated, and he carried stronger resonance than more abstract and philosophical concerns about democratic ideals and human rights. He was convicted in 2013 of embezzlement on what he called a politically motivated prosecution and was sentenced to five years in prison, but the prosecutor’s office later surprisingly demanded his release pending appeal. A higher court later gave him a suspended sentence. The day before the sentence, Navalny had registered as a candidate for Moscow mayor. The opposition saw his release as the result of large protests in the capital of his sentence, but many observers attributed it to a desire by authorities to add a tinge of legitimacy to the mayoral election. Navalny finished second, an impressive performance against the incumbent who had the backing of Putin’s political machine and was popular for improving the capital’s infrastructure and aesthetics. Navalny’s popularity increased after the leading charismatic politician, Boris Nemtsov, was shot and killed in 2015 on a bridge near the Kremlin. Whenever Putin spoke about Navalny, he made it a point to never mention the activist by name, referring to him as “that person” or similar wording, in an apparent effort to diminish his importance. Even in opposition circles, Navalny was often viewed as having a overly nationalist streak for supporting the rights of ethnic Russians — he supported the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Moscow in 2014 although most nations viewed it as illegal — but he was able to mostly override those reservations with the power of investigations conducted by his Fund for Fighting Corruption. Although state-controlled TV channels ignored Navalny, his investigations resonated with younger Russians via YouTube videos and posts on his website and social media accounts. The strategy helped him reach into the hinterlands far from the political and cultural centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg and establish a strong network of regional offices. His work broadened from focusing on corruption to wholescale criticism of the political system under Putin, who has led Russia for over two decades. He was a central galvanizing figure in protests of unprecedented size against dubious national election results and the exclusion of independent candidates. Navalny understood that he could get attention with a pithy phrase and potent image. His description of Putin’s power-base United Russia as “the party of crooks and thieves” gained instant popularity; a lengthy investigation into then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s lavish country getaway boiled down to the complex’s well-appointed duck house. Soon, comical yellow duck toys became a popular way to mock the premier. He often tweeted sarcastic remarks from police custody or courtrooms on the many occasions he was arrested. In 2017, after an assailant threw green-hued disinfectant in his face, seriously damaging one of his eyes, Navalny joked in a video blog that people were comparing him to the comic-book character The Hulk. Much worse was to come. While serving a jail sentence in 2019 for involvement in an election protest, he was taken to the hospital with an illness that authorities said was an allergic reaction, but some doctors said it appeared to be poisoning. A year later, on Aug. 20, 2020, he became severely ill on a flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he was organizing opposition candidates. He collapsed in the aisle while returning from the bathroom, and the plane made an emergency landing in the city of Omsk, where he spent two days in a hospital while supporters begged doctors to allow him to be taken to Germany for treatment. Once in Germany, doctors determined he had been poisoned with a strain of Novichok – similar to the nerve agent that nearly killed former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018 and resulted in the death of another woman. Navalny was in a medically induced coma for about two weeks, then labored to recover speech and movement for several more weeks. His first communication while recovering showed his defiant wit — an Instagram post saying that breathing on one’s own is “a remarkable process that is underestimated by many. Strongly recommended.” The Kremlin vehemently rejected it was behind the poisoning, but Navalny challenged the denial with an audacious move — essentially a deadly serious prank phone call. He released the recording of a call he said he made to an alleged member of a group of officers of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who purportedly carried out the poisoning and then tried to cover it up. The FSB dismissed the recording as fake. Russian authorities then raised the stakes, announcing that during his time in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of a suspended sentence in one of his embezzlement convictions and that he would be arrested if he returned home. Remaining abroad wasn’t in his nature. Navalny and his wife boarded a plane for Moscow on Jan. 17, 2021. On arrival, he told waiting journalists that he was pleased to be back and walked to passport control and into custody. In just over two weeks, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to 2½ years in prison. The events sparked massive protests that reached to Russia’s farthest corners and saw more than 10,000 people detained by police. As part of a massive crackdown against the opposition that followed, a Moscow court in 2021 outlawed Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and about 40 regional offices as extremist, a verdict that exposed members of his team to prosecution. When Putin sent troops to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Navalny strongly condemned the war in social media posts from prison and during his court appearances. Less than a month after the start of the war, he was sentenced to an additional nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court in a case he and his supporters rejected as fabricated. The investigators immediately launched a new probe, and in August 2023 Navalny was convicted on charges of extremism and sentenced to 19 years in prison. After the verdict, Navalny said he understands that he’s “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime.” A documentary called “Navalny” that detailed his career, his near-fatal poisoning and his return to Moscow won an Academy Award for best documentary in March 2023. “Alexei, the world has not forgotten your vital message to us all: We must not be afraid to oppose dictators and authoritarianism wherever it rears its head,” director David Roher said in accepting the Oscar. Navalny’s wife also spoke at the award ceremony, saying: “My husband is in prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison just for defending democracy. Alexei, I am dreaming of the day you will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love.” Besides his wife, Navalny is survived by a son and a daughter.