Month: October 2026

By Jeffrey Lindblom

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    DEARBORN, Michigan (WXYZ) — A fish species so sensitive to pollution it vanished from the lower Rouge River more than 100 years ago has been found again — and environmental groups say it is a sign that decades of cleanup and restoration work are paying off.

Ashley Flintoff, executive director of Friends of the Rouge, said her team netted six greenside darters in the murky waters at Ford Field Park on Sept. 17.

“The Rouge River has suffered from decades and decades of legacy pollution and contamination. I think this is our way of bringing back the river and speaking up for the river,” Flintoff said.

The discovery sparked an immediate reaction.

“Screaming so loud, passersby’s looked over and were like, ‘what do you have in there?'” Flintoff said.

Flintoff describes the greenside darter as “intolerant” of its surroundings.

“Meaning that they are very sensitive to pollution and to habitat,” Flintoff said.

She believes industrialization pollution initially forced the fish to flee — as machinery boomed and contaminated the waters. The Rouge River actually caught fire for a period in 1969, a moment that partially contributed to the push to pass the Clean Water Act.

“The river is so polluted nothing could live in it at the point,” Flintoff said.

Before the area was industrialized, the river would have supported more plant and wildlife — including ducks, bugs, other animals and 55 different species of fish. That same Sept. 17 outing also set a new record for Friends of the Rouge: the group documented 21 species of fish in the river — the most it has ever recorded in a single survey, surpassing a previous high of 19.

“It tells us the work that has been done over the past 40 years in this watershed is really doing its job,” Flintoff said.

The organization is also marking its 40th anniversary.

Parkgoers Norma Zurawski and her mother Casey were pleased to hear about the find.

“I love fish,” Norma Zurawski said.

“It’s very cool that those efforts that people are making are actually working,” Casey Zurawski said.

Flintoff said millions of dollars spent on water quality and habitat projects are paying off. She also credited the community for doing its part to help keep the 127 river miles of the Rouge clean and healthy, alongside the organization’s own restoration and stormwater mitigation efforts.

“There are ways for humanity and nature to coexist and we can have a healthy and thriving river,” Flintoff said.

The six fish were released after being documented. The ones found appear to have the capacity to breed, raising the possibility that more greenside darters could return to the lower Rouge River.

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This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Scripps editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Noelle Lilley

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    NEW YORK (WCBS) — Black female artists are taking the spotlight for the first time in an exhibition of its size at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library in Harlem.

Opening in September is a new exhibition called “Forging Ahead: Recent Acquisitions.” The idea for an all-Black women exhibition came to curators Tammi Lawson and La Tanya Autry when they noticed a gap in their collection: Black women.

Lawson and Autry set out to fix that, creating an exhibition of photographs, sculptures, collage art, paintings and more from 21 Black female artists from across the African Diaspora.

The works on display include the late Nona Faustine’s “Mitochondria,” an intimate photo series chronicling three generations of Black women in her own family and highlighting the power and pain of matriarchs. Faustine passed away in 2025 after a five-year battle with cancer, according to her family.

Although much of the Schomburg Center’s work is rooted in our history, curators say this exhibition is a chance to support our present and our future. Many of those featured are working artists from the New York City area.

Curators say Black women artists need more financial support and press coverage.

“Black women, despite all our obstacles and erasure, we forge ahead … [Black women artists] need money, they need resources because we’re underrepresented across galleries, auction houses and museums,” Lawson said. “There was a study that was done, the [Burns Halpert report], and it showed that only less than 1% of museum collections have Black women artists.”

Lawson is a Bertha Franklin Feder award-winning librarian and Curator of the Art and Artifacts Division at the Schomburg Center.

The exhibition is open through the end of March 2027, which is also Women’s History Month.

“People should know more than one Black woman artist. Often they can’t name one, but they should know several,” Autry said. “So, I’m hoping the show is helping push in that direction and will change the world.”

Autry is a former Yale University Art Gallery fellow and the inaugural Curator of Art and Civil Rights at Mississippi Museum of Art. She currently is the Associate Curator for the Photographs and Prints Division at the Center.

Since 1925, the Schomburg Center has operated within the NYPL system as a way to commemorate and honor the achievements and historical contributions of the Black community globally.

To enter, visitors will need a library card, and any New Yorker can access the original works of Black scholars and artists like Langston Hughes and James Baldwin or check out rare books, artifacts or historical documents on Black history from around the world.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Liam Clymer

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    BURTON, Michigan (WJRT) — A local farm is shutting down parts of its production as rising diesel and part prices make it harder to turn a profit.

Kelly Walker was born on Walker Farm. That’s why it’s been so tough to say goodbye to parts of his production.

“The bottom line is you’re trying to make it profitable so you can be here next year, but you know, sometimes the fight gets to be too much,” Walker said.

As the war in Iran has caused the price of diesel fuel to skyrocket to a record $6.27 per gallon on average nationwide, he said he doesn’t really have a choice.

Much of modern farming equipment runs on diesel and high prices mean high costs going into each crop.

“You’re not going to work for a dollar an hour,” Walker said.

For Walker, that meant closing down his greenhouses and ceasing production of some products that the community came to expect for decades — flowers and vegetable plants — because they became harder to make a profit on.

He’s now bumped up the price of sweet corn, a fan favorite crop, 30 cents just to try and break even.

“Sweet corn is a high input. With diesel fuel and with fertilizer, it takes a lot more,” Walker said.

But even with reduced production and investment in more affordable, in-demand crops, called commodity crops, Walker said rising agricultural part prices from tariffs between the U.S. and Canada are salt in the wound.

“It just follows you, that same problem follows you. The diesel fuel, the price of chemicals, the parts, it all follows you,” Walker said.

Walker said he wants consumers to know he’s not trying to hurt their wallets, he’s just trying to stay in business.

Farm Business Management Educator with MSU Extension Jonathan LaPorte said that while farmers are the ones feeling the brunt of the production costs now, they’ll hit consumers soon enough and last for a while.

“If you’ve ever watched a little kid at the top of a a snow slope, going up, they’re like, ‘Oh, this is cool.’ But then they start going down and they’re like, ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to go down this fast,'” he said. “A lot of these costs, they’re quick to go up. They’re all excited when they’re going to go up high, but then when they’ve got to come down, they’re a little bit slow.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By A.J. Bayatpour

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    MILWAUKEE (WDJT) — Typically, there’s no going back when someone selects their favorite sports team. For Drew Dodge, however, his baseball fandom gradually began to flip more than a decade ago.

Now, that change is reflected on his body. Dodge went to a Milwaukee tattoo parlor Thursday and had an artist cover a nearly 30-year-old Chicago Cubs tattoo with new Milwaukee Brewers ink.

The new tattoo features the Brewers’ ball-in-glove logo, as well as the Italian racing sausage. It covers the Cubs’ alternate logo, a walking bear inside a red ‘C.’

“It was more just kind of for fun, like, you know what? I changed teams. I’m gonna put the Brewers on there,” Dodge told CBS 58 Friday. “And I’m gonna add the racing sausage because who else has that?”

Dodge lives in Harvard, Illinois, which is just across the state line from Lake Geneva. He said it was mostly by default that he grew up with the Cubs as his childhood team.

“You grow up in Illinois, you’re either a Cubs fan or a Sox fan,” Dodge said. “You don’t have much of a choice. It’s what you do. It’s what everybody does.”

Dodge said he got the Cubs tattoo in Wisconsin Dells at the age of 18.

However, Dodge said in the years that followed, he found himself attending more and more Brewers games. Coming to Milwaukee for big league baseball proved to be much more convenient, and over time, his attachment to the Brew Crew grew.

“As I got to go to Milwaukee more and Wisconsin more, I really loved Milwaukee, loved the stadium,” he said. “And, honestly, getting to Wrigley is a hassle.”

While Dodge said the Brewers had been his favorite team for more than a decade, he left the Cubs tattoo in place on the back of his left shoulder.

Eventually, he got tired of the questions and comments when he’d go to various beaches on Lake Michigan.

“I go to Kenosha, I go to Racine beaches, and I have my shirt off and I’m a Cubs fan, people rag on you a little bit,” Dodge said. “Not that I care about the hate; I mean, you should see the TikTok right now of people hating me.”

Dodge made the appointment for Thursday at Planet Artz near downtown Milwaukee. Laz Gein was the artist.

“We’re kind of known here at Planet Artz for coverups,” Gein said. “That’s kind of our thing here.”

Gein moved to Milwaukee from Australia on a visa back in February. Fittingly, it was a different sports connection that put Milwaukee on his radar.

“I’m Greek, and we all love Giannis [Antetokounmpo], being Greek,” Gein said. “I love the people, first. The people are great, so friendly, so nice and welcoming. I love the culture, the sport culture.”

Gein said this particular job came with some challenges. Trying to cover the blue and red Cubs logo with blue and yellow for the Brewers meant it’d be hard to keep some of the red from showing through the yellow parts of the logo.

Because of that, a future appointment might be in order. Still, both Gein and Dodge said they’re pleased with the final product.

“The lighter colors over the darker colors are definitely a challenge,” Gein said. “So I might need to give it one more go just to dense it up a little.”

Gein posted video of the tattoo job on his social media accounts. Almost immediately, comments began coming in accusing Dodge of being a fair-weather fan.

“I’m a [Cleveland] Browns fan, people,” Dodge noted. “They haven’t won anything ever, so I’m not possibly a bandwagon fan.”

Dodge said he doesn’t mind the blowback. After all, as someone who grew up a Cubs fan on the Illinois-Wisconsin border, he understood the decision would create some controversy.

“I like the hate. I think it’s fun,” he said. “That’s what’s great about sports. People are passionate, right? So, be passionate, hate on it, but go Brewers.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.