BREAKING NEWS 2 teens identified in Franklin Lock Park drowning

FORT MYERS, Fla. – They come in all shapes and sizes. Some like them with toppings and some with fillings.  The donut is one of the most famous pastries and today is all about celebrating the tasty treat.

Kara Barefoot stopped by the WINK News studio to tell us how Peace, Love, & Little Donuts is celebrating.

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ALVA, Fla. — A vehicle crash has blocked westbound State Road 80 near the intersection with River Hall Parkway in eastern Lee County, the Florida Highway Patrol said.

At least one person is injured, according to the FHP. No further information is immediately available.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. employers drastically slowed their hiring in May, adding just 38,000 jobs, the fewest in more than five years and a sign of concern after the economy barely grew in the first three months of the year.

The much-weaker-than-expected figure raised doubts that the Federal Reserve will increase the short-term interest rate it controls at its next meeting in mid-June or perhaps even at its subsequent meeting in late July. Many analysts had expected an increase by July.

At the same time, the unemployment rate tumbled to 4.7 percent in May from 5 percent, the Labor Department said Friday, its lowest point since November 2007. The rate fell for a problematic reason: Nearly a half-million jobless Americans stopped looking for work and so were no longer counted as unemployed.

“The shockingly low payrolls gain in May provides further evidence that the economy is showing clear signs of slowing,” said Laura Rosner, an economist at BNP Paribas.

The report also spilled into the presidential race, with the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, referring to it on Twitter as a “terrible jobs report” and a “bombshell.” The figure comes just days after President Obama touted his economic record in Elkhart, Indiana.

An ally of Fed Chair Janet Yellen who has been a longtime skeptic of raising interest rates signaled Friday that the Fed should be in no hurry to act, especially after the bleak U.S. jobs report.

The official, Lael Brainard, a Fed board member, said that other economic developments have also muddied the picture of the U.S. economy. And Brainard pointed to additional risks, including possible market turmoil if Britain votes later this month to leave the European Union.

In its report Friday, besides issuing the downbeat May employment data, the government downgraded its estimate of job growth for March and April by a combined 59,000.

Job gains have now averaged just 116,000 in the past three months, down sharply from an average of 230,000 in the 12 months that ended in April.

Investors reacted to the report by selling stocks and buying bonds, which tend to hold up better during times of economic weakness. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 59 points, or 0.6 percent, in early trading. And the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.71 percent from 1.80 percent the day before, a significant drop.

The May job gain was lowered by the Verizon workers’ strike, which depressed hiring in the telecom sector by 34,000.

Still, job losses were widespread: Manufacturers cut 10,000 positions, while construction firms cut 15,000. Temporary help firms shed 21,000 jobs. Retailers, hotels and restaurants added jobs, but at a slower pace than recent months.

Retail hiring has lagged for the past two months, likely in part a reflection of the shift to online shopping from physical stores. Construction hiring was strong earlier this year, thanks to milder winter weather. That might have pulled forward by a couple of months hiring that normally would have taken place in April and May.

The proportion of adults working or looking for work dropped in May to 62.6 percent, near four-decade lows. Millions of Americans had come back into the labor market over the fall and winter, but that trend has partially reversed in April and May.

The government has estimated that the economy grew at just a 0.8 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter.

Yet Friday’s dismal jobs report was a surprise in part because most recent economic reports have been encouraging: Consumer spending surged in April. Americans ramped up purchases of autos and other big-ticket items, like appliances.

Home sales and construction have also increased. Sales of new homes reached an eight-year high in April.

Even manufacturing, which has suffered from weak growth overseas and a strong dollar that has depressed exports, is showing signs of stabilizing. Factory activity expanded in May for a third straight month, according to a survey of purchasing managers.

Most economists expect growth will rebound in the April-June quarter to about a 2.5 percent annual pace.

But Patrick O’Keefe, director of economic research at the accounting firm CohnReznick, isn’t so bullish on the economy’s trajectory.

“Jobs growth is decelerating,” he said. “It’s not turning negative, but it is slowing down…. This is a mature recovery. Its pace is levelling off.”

In December, after months of economic improvement, the Fed raised its benchmark short-term rate after pegging it near zero for seven years. In March, officials indicated that they expected just two additional increases this year.

Yellen has long made it clear that she studies a “dashboard” of job market data to help assess the economy’s health, rather than a single number such as hiring or unemployment.

Fed officials may not keep investors guessing for long: Yellen will speak Monday in a closely watched address that may show how she has interpreted Friday’s report.

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BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – Four people wanted in the fatal beating of a transgender man at a Vermont homeless encampment were arrested in San Diego following a nationwide manhunt.

San Diego police Sgt. Michael Tansey tells The Burlington Free Press that the four suspects wanted on suspicion of second-degree murder in the May 23 attack on Amos Beede were apprehended late Thursday. They were last known to be in Roswell, New Mexico.

Burlington police publicly identified the suspects as Erik Averill, Myia Barber, Allison Gee and Jordan Paul on Thursday afternoon.

Tansey says the group will be held until authorities in Burlington bring charges against them and seek their extradition from California. They have yet to be assigned attorneys who could comment.

Tips provided by Burlington police led San Diego detectives to the suspects, who were found at a park in the city.

Beede died on May 28. Police initially said they were investigating whether Beede’s gender identity contributed to his death, but there was no mention of that Thursday.

Beede’s family posted a statement on the website of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer advocacy group Pride Center of Vermont that said contrary to earlier reports he was not homeless. The statement said Beede’s being transgender was an important part of his life. It said he was a “friend to many” who went to the homeless camp to support others in need.

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FORT MYERS, Fla.- Vacations are a great time to visit a new city, celebrate an anniversary, or just give yourself a well-deserved break from the office.

Vacations supposed to be a time for you to relax and unwind, but they can throw you off track with your nutrition and fitness goals. WINK News Fitness Expert Mike Drumm stopped by the studio with his tips to help you stay on track with your nutrition while having fun on vacation.

Mike’s Fitness Tips

  • Commit to be fit.
  • Plan for your surroundings.
  • Nutrition is Key.

Mike’s Travel Workout

  • Body weight squats (x10)
  • Push-ups with knee to elbow (x5)
  • Band biceps curls (x10)
  • Jump rope (x10)

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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) – Donald Trump supporters leaving the presidential candidate’s rally in San Jose were pounced by protesters, some of whom threw punches and eggs.

A dozen or more people were hit and car windows were broken. Trump hats grabbed from supporters were set on fire on the ground. One least one woman was pelted with an egg.

Police stood their ground at first but after about 90 minutes moved into the remaining crowd to break it up and make arrests. At least four people were taken into custody, though police didn’t release total arrest figures Thursday night. One officer was assaulted, police Sgt. Enrique Garcia said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries and no major property damage, police said.

The crowd, which had numbered over 300 just after the rally, thinned significantly as the night went on, but those that remained near the San Jose Convention Center were rowdy and angry.

Some banged on the cars of Trump supporters as they left the rally and chased after those on foot to frighten them.

Police were keeping their distance from the crowd as the scuffles played out, but keeping them from getting any closer to the convention center.

“Our police officers have done an extremely courageous and professional job so far,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told The Associated Press by phone. “We’re all still holding our breath to see the outcome of this dangerous and explosive situation.”

The mayor, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments had to deal with.

“At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” Liccardo said.

Such protests are unlikely to be repeated on Friday when Trump holds a rally at the airport in the much smaller and more conservative city of Redding about 150 miles north of Sacramento.

Clinton and Democratic opponent Bernie Sanders will also make campaign stops in the state on Friday in California as they look to Tuesday’s California Primary.

Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, spoke for about 50 minutes at the rally, sniping at Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and calling her speech on foreign policy earlier in the day “pathetic” and “sad to watch.”

Protesters before the speech included Adam Rivas, a 22-year-old community college student who was born and raised in San Jose, was holding a spray-painted sign that read “Dump Trump.”

Rivas said he was particularly disturbed by Trump’s remarks about Mexicans.

“For any one Mexican here he bashes, there are about 20 Mexicans out there who are hard-working and just doing their job,” he said.

Trump supporter Debbie Tracey, a U.S. Navy veteran from San Jose, she came to hear Trump speak, she left his rally with two hats a T-shirt and a handful of signs that said “Veterans for Trump.”

Passing in front of a wall of protesters, many chanting in Spanish, she said she supported Trump’s call for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I’ll go help build the wall because if you are going to come to this country, land of opportunity, you should be here legally,” she said.

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FORT MYERS, Fla. — Lee County School District Superintendent Dr. Greg Adkins touted improved SAT and ACT scores and but acknowledged declining graduation rates as he spoke Friday in his first State of the Schools address at the Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre in Fort Myers.

Adkins, less than nine months into the job, has faced no shortage of adversity in recent weeks as a bathroom sex scandal at South Fort Myers High School drew national attention. His address Friday referenced a safety and security task force the district will put into place for the 2016-17 school year.

“These have been a very difficult, difficult last few weeks for the school district,” Adkins said. “We’ve experienced heartbreaking tragedy this week alone which impacts of all us in the school community.”

The past days have brought headlines about the abduction of a San Carlos Park Elementary School student and the death of a Fort Myers High School student who was hit by a car while trying to board his school bus. Adkins nonetheless struck optimistic tones, touching on plans for four new schools in the next six years and the hiring of 500 teachers for next year.

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DEBARY, Fla. (AP) – A construction worker has been arrested after authorities say he buried his boss in dirt using a front-end loader.

Citing an arrest report, the Orlando Sentinel reports 32-year-old Erick Cox of Sanford was charged Wednesday with aggravated battery.

Witnesses say Cox was arguing with 57-year-old Perry Byrd of Orlando at a construction site in DeBary when Cox dumped two loads of dirt onto Byrd, pinning him to the ground.

The report says Cox then began hitting Byrd in the head with a 6-foot aluminum level. Byrd was knocked unconscious and sustained a “large” cut.

Cox told investigators that Byrd had threatened him and ended up on the ground, where Cox says he accidentally buried Byrd’s leg in dirt while reaching for his keys.

It’s unclear whether Cox has an attorney.

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BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) – Several Republican U.S. Senate candidates squared off Thursday night in South Florida in hopes of catching fire in a nationally watched race in which none has risen above the pack.

Each talked more about his experience rather than attacking one another. Yet they did share the same wish in seeing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, along with whoever wins the Democratic Senate nomination, defeated come November.

The forum had been billed as the first to feature all five major Senate GOP candidates on the same stage, but developer Carlos Beruff backed out earlier in the day because of a scheduling conflict. They are all battling for the seat being vacated by outgoing Sen. Marco Rubio.

That left Florida Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, businessman Tom Wilcox and Congressmen David Jolly and Ron DeSantis to make their cases before a large crowd inside a Marriott hotel ballroom in Boca Raton.

Lopez-Cantera described himself as a “Florida Republican and not a Washington, D.C., Republican” because he and Gov. Rick Scott have teamed up to cut taxes, brought millions of jobs to the state and paid down the state debt.

“When we say we are going to do something, we deliver,” Lopez-Cantera said. “It’s not about red-meat rhetoric; it’s about results.”

DeSantis, who has declined his congressional pension, criticized the culture of “crony capitalism” in Washington and pledged to push for term limits for those serving in Congress.

He promised to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law and rid the economy of government regulations and bureaucratic red tape. “Our own government is shooting our economy in the foot,” he said.

Wilcox pitched himself as an outsider who said Washington has too many career politicians and that he would bring his “real world experience” as a former Green Beret, CIA officer and businessman to the Senate.

“I’m the only one with real-world experience,” he said. “I’m running out of frustration, not aspiration.”

He said Washington needs a return to “citizen government” and needs to kick out career politicians by imposing term limits and banning lawmakers for life from becoming lobbyists.

Jolly, a fifth generation Floridian and son of a preacher, spoke of his experience in Congress as a plus, saying Senate candidates must have “a vision for governing – not for rhetoric.”

Elected in a special election in 2014, Jolly spoke of his achievements in Congress to reform the Veterans Administration, the federal flood insurance program and Congress. “This is a job interview, so let’s get someone” who can do the job, he said.

Jolly gained national attention recently when he was featured on CBS’ 60 Minutes promoting the “Stop Act,” a bill he’s championing that would prohibit members of Congress from directly soliciting campaign contributions.

The GOP primary is Aug. 30, but the race remains wide open with no clear front-runner. In the Democratic contest, the two major contenders are Congressmen Patrick Murphy and Alan Grayson. A Quinnipiac University poll released last month found that at least one in five likely voters was undecided about the Senate contenders.

The race is a worrisome one for the national Republican Party because a loss could mean losing control of the Senate.

So concerned was the GOP last week that Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, asked Sen. Rubio to reconsider running for re-election. Even presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump chimed in last week when he tweeted “Run Marco!”

Rubio chose not to run last year after embarking on his unsuccessful presidential run. He suspended his campaign on March 15, the same night he lost the Florida primary to Trump.

Thursday night’s forum was organized by America First, led by Margi Helschien, a political consultant and former vice chairwoman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party.

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PARIS (AP) – The swollen Seine River kept rising Friday, spilling into Paris streets and forcing one landmark after another to shut down as it surged to its highest levels in nearly 35 years. Across the city, museums, parks and cemeteries were being closed as the city braced for possible evacuations.

The Seine was expected to peak in Paris sometime later Friday at about 5 meters (16 feet, 3 inches) above normal. Authorities shut the Louvre museum, the national library, the Orsay museum and the Grand Palais, Paris’ striking glass-and-steel topped exhibition center.

“We evaluate the situation for all the (cultural) buildings nearly hour-by-hour,” said Culture Minister Audrey Azouley, speaking to journalists outside the world-famous Louvre. “We don’t know yet the evolution of the level of the Seine River in Paris.”

At the Louvre, home to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” curators were scrambling to move some 250,000 artworks from basement storage areas at risk of flooding to safer areas upstairs.

Nearly a week of heavy rain has led to serious flooding across a swathe of Europe, leaving 16 people dead and others missing.

Although the rain has tapered off in some areas, floodwaters are still climbing and could take weeks to clear. Traffic in the French capital was snarled as flooding choked roads and several Paris railway stations shut down.

Basements and apartments in the capital’s well-to-do 16th district began to flood Friday afternoon as the river crept higher, and authorities were preparing possible evacuations in a park and islands on Paris’ western edge.

French authorities activated preliminary plans to transfer the French presidency, ministries and other sensitive sites to secure places in case of flooding. The SGDSN security agency says the French presidency and the prime minister’s office are not immediately threatened but the National Assembly and the Foreign Ministry were at greater risk.

In addition to the Louvre, the Orsay museum, home to a renowned collection of impressionist art on the left bank of the Seine, was also closed Friday as was the Grand Palais, which draws 2.5 million visitors a year.

The Louvre said the museum had not taken such precautions in its modern history – since its 1993 renovation at the very least. Disappointed tourists were being turned away but most were understanding.

“It’s good that they are evacuating the paintings. It’s a shame that we couldn’t see them today, but it’s right that they do these things,” said Carlos Santiago, visiting from Mexico.

Elsewhere in Europe, authorities were counting the cost of the floods as they waded through muddy streets and waterlogged homes.

German authorities said the body of a 65-year-old man was found in the town of Simbach am Inn and a 72-year-old man died of a heart attack after being rescued from a raging stream in the village of Triftern, bringing the country’s death toll from recent flooding to 11.

France’s Interior Ministry also reported the death of a 74-year-old man who fell from his horse and drowned in a river in the Seine-et-Marne region east of Paris, the second death in France.

In eastern Romania, two people died and 200 people were evacuated from their homes as floods swept the area, including one man ripped from his bicycle by a torrent of water in the eastern village of Ruginesti.

In Belgium, rescue workers found the body of a beekeeper swept away by rising waters while trying to protect his hives in the village of Harsin.

The German Insurance Association estimates this week’s flooding has caused some 450 million euros ($500 million) in damage in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg alone.

The foul weather has added to the major travel disruptions France is already experiencing after weeks of strikes and protests by workers upset over the government’s proposed labor reforms. French rail company SNCF said the strikes had led to the cancellation of 40 percent of the country’s high-speed trains.

French energy company Enedis said more than 20,000 customers were without power to the east and south of Paris.

Paris measures Seine water levels using an unusual method called the Austerlitz scale, which compares the surface level with an underwater sensor at the Austerlitz Bridge, said regional environment director Jerome Goellner.

In normal times, the river level is between 1 meter and 2 meters (3 feet, 3 inches to 6 ½ feet) on the Austerlitz scale, he said, a historical system used out so one flood can be compared to another. But a piece of trash trapped in the sensor led authorities to undercount the rise of the Seine this week, he said.

The Seine so far has risen about 4.5 meters (15 feet) from its typical position following days of heavy rain. Goellner says it’s not possible to put a precise time on the peak expected Friday but “we’re near the maximum.”

Extreme rainfall, such as that hitting France, has increased worldwide and especially in Europe because of man-made climate change, four different scientists told The Associated Press on Friday. They said downpours like this are one of the clearest signals of global warming.

Record-breaking rainfall in Europe has increased 31 percent from 1980 to 2010, when compared to the previous 80 years, according to a 2015 Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research study.

“These increasing trends have already been measured and are now affecting every storm that forms, including recent storms in France,” said Gerald Meehl, a climate scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research,

With leading Paris museums closed, the surging currents were a tourist attraction in themselves. Prakash Amritraj of India, a 42-year-old visiting with his wife and two children, took selfies on the Mirabeau Bridge in western Paris.

“I had never thought of possible floods in Paris city center. In India, we have the monsoon, but here! It’s not supposed to happen!” he said.

While he sympathized with all those affected, he appreciated the flooding from a different perspective.

“It’s kind of beautiful, in a way,” he said.

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