Category: CNN Regional

By Francis Page Jr.

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    August 10, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — Nearly 13 years after Houston created TIRZ 25 to spur reinvestment in Hiram Clarke and Fort Bend Houston, another important chapter is being written in Southwest Houston’s comeback story. The zone was officially created on August 7, 2013—a date that makes the timing of this latest investment almost poetic.

On Thursday, August 6, 2026, community and redevelopment leaders celebrated the presentation of a symbolic $500,000 federal check to the Hiram Clarke/Fort Bend Redevelopment Authority (HCFBRA). Congressman Al Green (TX-09) helped secure the funding through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Community-Wide Brownfields Assessment Grant Program.

In plain Houston language: before you can build something better, you need to know what is underneath the existing ground.

Brownfields are properties where actual or potential contamination can complicate redevelopment—think former gas stations, dry cleaners or older commercial sites where chemicals may have entered soil or groundwater. The $500,000 award will support property inventories, environmental assessments, redevelopment planning and community engagement.

HCFBRA says it plans to conduct 21 initial assessments, followed by deeper testing on as many as five properties if necessary. Proposed cleanup and reuse plans will also be developed, giving residents a voice as properties are evaluated for new possibilities.

For Congressman Green, the investment goes far beyond environmental testing.

“Every family deserves to live in a community where opportunity is not overshadowed by environmental hazards or years of underinvestment,” Green said.

That statement carries considerable historical weight.

The Hiram Clarke/Fort Bend redevelopment effort grew from years of community advocacy and demands for infrastructure and economic investment. Houston created TIRZ 25 in 2013, and the Hiram Clarke/Fort Bend Redevelopment Authority was formally established in 2015. Today, the zone covers approximately 6,077 acres across two counties, channeling tax-increment growth into roads, sidewalks, drainage, lighting, parks, public facilities and other economic-development improvements.

And this is not theoretical.

In 2023, HCFBRA acquired a long-vacant former gas station at 4802 W. Fuqua Street, a property that had become associated with illegal activity and neighborhood blight. The structure was demolished, contamination was assessed, and plans call for transforming the property into green space connected to Simon Minchen Park and the Sims Bayou Trail.

Now the federal grant provides an opportunity to repeat that playbook on a much larger scale.

“This grant is a chance to do more of the work our community has waited years for,” HCFBRA Executive Director LeRon Wilsonsaid.

And Hiram Clarke/Fort Bend is standing out statewide. EPA awarded more than $9.4 million in 2026 Brownfields grants across Texas, with HCFBRA receiving $500,000. The authority says it is the only greater-Houston recipient of this particular Community-Wide Brownfields Assessment Grant during the current grant cycle.

The potential multiplier is impressive. Since 1995, EPA says its Brownfields Program has provided more than $3 billion in grant funding, helping leverage more than $45 billion in cleanup and redevelopment and supporting more than 228,900 jobs. Through fiscal year 2025, every federal brownfields grant dollar awarded through major programs leveraged an average of $19.47 from public and private sources.

So don’t look at this as simply a $500,000 check.

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Look at it as seed money for possibility.

For Hiram Clarke and Fort Bend Houston, this investment represents another tool for converting yesterday’s liabilities into tomorrow’s neighborhood assets—cleaner land, stronger development opportunities, healthier communities and renewed economic confidence.

Congressman Al Green helped bring federal resources home. Now Southwest Houston has another reason to believe that revitalization is not merely being discussed.

It is being assessed, planned—and built.

For more information on the HCFBRA, go to: hiramclarkefortbend.com

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.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
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By Francis Page Jr.

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    August 10, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — Houston has lost more than a community leader. Third Ward has lost one of its fiercest champions, and generations of Houstonians have lost a woman who spent a lifetime preserving, protecting and promoting the community she loved.

Houston Style Magazine joins our city in mourning the passing of Georgia Provost, affectionately known throughout Houston as “The Mayor of Third Ward.”

It was a fitting title.

Georgia did not need to occupy City Hall to understand the meaning of public service. Her authority came from something more enduring: decades of showing up.

She showed up for Third Ward. She showed up for civic engagement. She showed up for Texas Southern University. She showed up when Houston’s historic African American neighborhoods needed a voice. And when Georgia Provost believed something needed to be said, Houston could count on her to say it.

Her legacy was also deeply connected to Provost Studios, the historic family photography business that documented generations of Black Houston.

Through the Provost lens came portraits of families, graduates, brides and grooms, business owners, civic leaders and everyday Houstonians building extraordinary lives. Those photographs became more than family keepsakes. Collectively, they form an invaluable visual archive of Houston’s African American history.

Georgia understood something Houston Style Magazine has always believed: If we do not document our own history, someone else will eventually tell our story for us.

She made sure the pictures survived.

But Georgia Provost was never content simply to document history. She participated in it.

Her civic activism, community advocacy and willingness to seek public office demonstrated an enduring belief that democracy works best when ordinary citizens refuse to remain on the sidelines.

That may ultimately be one of her greatest lessons.

Leadership isn’t always accompanied by a title.

Sometimes leadership is the woman who keeps attending the meetings.

The neighbor who keeps asking questions.

The businesswoman who keeps investing in her community.

The elder who remembers what stood on the corner before the skyscraper arrived.

And sometimes leadership is a woman whom an entire community simply begins calling “Mayor.”

On behalf of Houston Style Magazine and the Page Family, we extend our deepest condolences to the Provost family, her friends, colleagues, the Texas Southern University community, Third Ward and the countless Houstonians who knew, respected and loved her.

Buildings change. Neighborhoods evolve. Generations pass.

But people who spend their lives fighting for their communities become part of those communities forever.

Georgia Provost was one of those people.

Rest well, Georgia.

The Mayor of Third Ward has gone home — but her fingerprints, photographs and fighting spirit remain all over Houston.

— Francis Page, Jr. – Publisher & Editor Houston Style Magazine | StyleMagazine.com

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.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
4096658446

By Francis Page Jr.

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    August 10, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — Houston knows global connections. Energy, medicine, technology, trade, culture and more than 90 foreign governments represented through the city’s consular community have made the Bayou City an international crossroads. Now another seasoned diplomat is preparing to add her voice to that conversation. Houston is home to what the city describes as the nation’s third-largest consular corps.

Adi Rivka Farjon Israel has been selected to become Consul General of Israel in Houston and the Southwest, succeeding Consul General Livia Link-Raviv. Israel’s Cabinet approved Farjon’s appointment in November 2025, with Farjon expected to assume the Houston assignment in August 2026.

As of August 10, 2026, the Houston consulate’s public leadership pages were still undergoing the transition and continued to reflect portions of the outgoing administration — making Farjon’s arrival quite literally a developing Houston story.

And what a résumé she brings.

Farjon most recently headed the Central Europe Department of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Before that, she spent four years as Israel’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations and international organizations in Geneva, where the Israeli mission credited her with advancing the country’s positions at the Human Rights Council and working extensively on international women’s rights issues.

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Reflecting upon that demanding Geneva chapter, Farjon wrote, “When I started this role, I was optimistic and eager to embrace the opportunities of the multilateral arena.”

Her colleagues were equally complimentary. Israel’s Geneva mission praised Farjon’s “professionalism, passion, energy and team spirit” as she concluded the assignment in 2024.

Those qualities could serve her well in Houston.

The Consulate General of Israel to the Southwest covers Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and New Mexico, a sprawling territory encompassing energy capitals, agricultural centers, major universities, emerging technology corridors and some of America’s fastest-growing communities.

The consulate describes Israel’s relationship with the Southwest as “robust,” with continuing efforts to deepen cooperation and shared prosperity. That relationship has included decades of exchanges involving agriculture, healthcare, energy, technology, research and trade.

Houston, particularly, provides fertile ground for Farjon’s bridge-building instincts. The city has longstanding business and institutional connections with Israel, while the region’s energy and technology sectors offer natural opportunities for collaboration. The U.S. International Trade Administration has continued promoting Israeli participation in Houston’s Offshore Technology Conference, underscoring the economic possibilities surrounding energy innovation.

Yet Farjon’s story reaches beyond government offices and diplomatic receptions.

Before entering diplomacy, she worked in Israel’s nonprofit sector. She earned degrees from Tel Aviv University, including graduate work examining intercultural integration and the experiences of young immigrants in Germany. She also volunteered for years with the Tel Aviv Rape Crisis Center, educating teenagers about sexual-assault prevention and conducting empowerment programs for women and girls.

Farjon later led the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Women in Diplomacy Network, organizing engagement among Israeli and international female diplomats. Her professional interests have included civil society, gender equality, conflict resolution and mediation.

In other words, Houston is not simply receiving another diplomat with an impressive passport stamp collection.

It is welcoming a communicator.

A coalition builder.

A woman who has moved between diplomacy’s grand stages and civil society’s very human work.

And in a city where international relationships are built everywhere from boardrooms and universities to churches, synagogues, cultural institutions and neighborhood tables, that may prove to be exactly the right skill set.

Welcome to Houston, Consul General Farjon. The world already meets here. Now the conversation continues.

Official Consulate General of Israel to the Southwest: embassies.gov.il/houston/en

Adi Rivka Farjon Israel – Global Diplomacy Lab Profile:

global-diplomacy-lab.org/members/adi-rivka-farjon-israel

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.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
4096658446

By Ben Jealous

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    August 10, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — Three weeks before he was killed, Martin Luther King Jr. stood up in a high school gym in Michigan and argued with a number.

It was March of 1968. The government said unemployment in the Black community was 8.8 percent. King said it was almost twice that.

Not because anybody was cooking the books.

The country felt good about jobs that spring. The national unemployment rate was 3.6 percent, near the lowest since the Korean War. Washington called that full employment.

King was telling them the number was hiding people.

He explained how the count worked. It counted people out of work and still looking. It did not count the people who had stopped looking.

He described them plainly. People who had lost hope. People who had so many doors shut in their faces that they quit knocking.

“These people are considered the discouraged,” he said.

Add them back, he argued, and the true figure was closer to sixteen or seventeen percent.

That was fifty-eight years ago. The count still works much the same way. Presidents have come and gone. The count has not changed.

Last week the government released the July jobs report. The country lost 23,000 jobs. It corrected May and June, erasing 103,000 jobs we thought we had. Over the past year we have averaged about 34,000 new jobs a month.

Almost nobody is being hired. Outside a few industries, almost nobody is being fired either. If you have a job, you are probably safe. If you need one, the door will not open.

Then came the number that would have gotten King out of his chair.

The unemployment rate went down. It fell from 4.2 percent to 4.1 percent.

That happened because 264,000 people left the labor force. They did not find work. They stopped being counted.

You are counted as unemployed only if you have no job and you looked for one in the last four weeks. Stop looking, and you are not counted as unemployed. You are not counted at all.

Nearly six million Americans say they want a job and are not counted.

They are not lazy. They stopped looking because looking stopped working. They did not stop wanting a job. They stopped believing one was coming.

Thirty years ago I crisscrossed this country arguing against NAFTA. Corporate lobbyists said we sounded like Chicken Little. Two decades and 63,000 shuttered factories later, every exaggeration they accused us of had come true.

Those factories did not close on Black towns or White towns. They closed on both.

King saw it coming. He wrote in 1967 that there were twice as many white poor as Negro poor in America.

So, he was not just giving a speech that night. He was building something.

He had marched to desegregate the lunch counter. That fight was won. The fight left was whether a man could afford what was on it.

In December of 1967 he announced the Poor People’s Campaign. The demand was jobs or income for all.

He meant to bring the poorest families in America to Washington and set them where the country could not look away. Not only Black families. White families out of the mountains. Mexican American families. Native families. Puerto Rican families. One caravan left Chicago on May 8, 1968.

King never saw it. He was killed in Memphis on April 4.

The campaign went on without him and mostly failed. They built a camp on the National Mall and called it Resurrection City. Rain turned it to mud. Police cleared it in June. No jobs bill passed. Nobody got a guaranteed income.

But King was right about the count. He is still right. A country that stops counting people finds it easy to forget them.

There will be plenty of arguing about these numbers. Arguing has never hired anybody. Only people hire people.

So here is what I ask of you.

If you run a business, interview the person your software screened out. Ask about the gap in the work history instead of assuming the worst.

If you know somebody who quit looking, walk with them back to the door. Say their name to somebody who is hiring.

If you belong to a church or a union or a lodge, find out this month who among you is out of work. Do not stop at praying for them. Make the call.

Dr. King argued with a number because he knew a number can hide a person.

Count them. Then hire them.

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Ben Jealous is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and former president and CEO of the NAACP.

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.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
4096658446

By Victor Guzman, Ricardo Tovar

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    Monterey County (KSBW) — The Timber Fire has grown to 800 acres in Monterey County and remains 5% contained Monday morning as evacuation orders and warnings remain in effect for areas of Big Sur.

CAL FIRE reported the fire at 800 acres and 5% containment in an incident update issued at 6:26 a.m. Monday. The fire had been reported at 400 acres and 5% containment Sunday night.

The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office issued an immediate evacuation order at 11 p.m. Sunday for zones MRY-F026 and MRY-F027. The evacuation order includes the Ventana Inn.

“LEAVE NOW!” the sheriff’s office said in announcing the orders.

Evacuation warnings remain in effect for zones MRY-F024, MRY-F025 and MRY-F028.

An evacuation order means people should leave the affected area because of an immediate threat to life and property. Officials are urging residents in evacuation order zones to take their families, pets and emergency supply kits and consider bringing essential documents and records.

People in evacuation warning zones should prepare to leave in case an evacuation order follows. Officials recommend packing a go-bag, gathering essential items and making arrangements for pets and large animals. People who need additional time or assistance to evacuate should also prepare now.

Residents can find the latest evacuation information through Alert Monterey County at alertmry.org/alerts.

The Timber Fire has continued to grow rapidly since Sunday. CAL FIRE reported the fire at 180 acres earlier Sunday before it grew to 400 acres Sunday evening and then doubled to 800 acres by Monday morning.

Containment remains at 5%. The fire had previously been reported at 20% contained as of 4:29 p.m. Sunday before CAL FIRE reported containment at 5% later Sunday night. Officials have not said what prompted the change in the reported containment percentage.

The U.S. Forest Service, which is the lead agency on the fire, said the Timber Fire started around 9:38 p.m. Saturday.

The fire is burning southeast of Loma Vista in the Los Padres National Forest.

Officials reported increased fire behavior Sunday evening, including spotting, as the fire continued to burn through heavy fuels in a remote area.

Crews have been dealing with steep, rugged terrain and difficult access, which the Forest Service said continues to hamper containment efforts.

A significant number of additional resources have been assigned to the fire, both on the ground and in the air. Aviation resources worked extensively on the fire Sunday and were expected to continue operating as weather conditions allow.

CAL FIRE’s Monday morning incident update lists no structures as damaged or destroyed and no civilian or firefighter injuries or fatalities.

The cause of the Timber Fire remains under investigation.

This is a developing story.

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 James Ganley, Bella Van Lanen

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    MILWAUKEE (WISN) — 12:29 p.m. Severe Thunderstorm watch canceled for an entire.

12: 15 p.m. We Energies reports 9,765 outages in Milwaukee County and 3,072 in Waukesha County. There are 1,387 in Jefferson County.

11:28 p.m. The National Weather Service issues a Severe Thunderstorm Warning until 12:15 p.m. Sunday for Kenosha County, Racine County and eastern Walworth County.

11:10 a.m. The National Weather Service issues a Severe Thunderstorm Warning until noon Sunday for Milwaukee County and eastern Waukesha County.

11:04 a.m. The National Weather Service issues a Severe Thunderstorm Warning until 11:30 a.m. Sunday for Racine, Walworth and Waukesha counties.

10:35 a.m. The National Weather Service issues a Severe Thunderstorm Warning until 11:15 a.m. Sunday for Jefferson County.

10:21 a.m. The National Weather Service issues a Severe Thunderstorm Warning until 10:45 a.m. Sunday for central Dodge County.

10:19 a.m. The National Weather Service issues a Severe Thunderstorm Warning until 11 a.m. Sunday for Northern Jefferson County and southeastern Dodge County.

9:45 a.m. The National Weather Service issues a Severe Thunderstorm Watch until 2 p.m. Sunday for 12 Southern Wisconsin counties including Dodge, Jefferson, Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Sheboygan, Walworth, Washington and Waukesha.

Southeast Wisconsin faces another round of showers and storms Sunday, with some storms potentially turning strong or severe.

A round of storms is expected to move through around midday. Areas around and south of I-94 are under a Level 2 of 5, or Slight Risk, for severe weather from the Storm Prediction Center.

Any stronger storms that develop Sunday or Sunday night could produce damaging wind gusts and hail. Heavy rain is also a concern, especially if storms repeatedly move over the same areas.

Localized flooding could develop in spots that see multiple rounds of heavy rain.

Temperatures Sunday will top out in the upper 70s.

After the midday storms move through, there is still some uncertainty about whether additional scattered storms will redevelop Sunday evening and overnight. Any storms that do form could again produce gusty winds and locally heavy downpours.

The unsettled weather pattern will continue into Monday and Tuesday, although neither day is expected to be a complete washout.

There will be only a slight chance for a shower or storm during the day Monday before storm chances increase Monday night. Additional rounds of rain could again lead to localized flooding if storms repeatedly track over the same locations.

Occasional showers and storms remain possible into Tuesday.

A quieter and cooler weather pattern is expected to arrive later in the week. By Thursday and into next weekend, highs are expected to fall into the low to mid-70s.

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 WLWT Staff

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    BLUE ASH, Ohio (WLWT) — A large group gathered outside an ICE office in Blue Ash Sunday morning to show support for the Haitian community.

The rally comes less than two weeks after thousands of Haitian migrants lost their temporary protected status in the U.S. Advocates say many Haitians in the Springfield area are now receiving letters from the Department of Homeland Security asking them to attend check-ins.

People who have attended those check-ins said they were placed on ankle monitors and given court dates.

“These people are from our community and they need to know that we care,” one faith leader at the rally said.

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.