Miss Texas crowns first Asian American winner and more Dallas news

This roundup of news around Dallas is very people-oriented. There's an exciting new Miss Texas, a newly appointed CEO at Greyhound, and a longtime TV reporter who is moving on. There's also some unsettling news about home sales, which are starting to wind back after a big year.

Here's what's happening around Dallas this week:

House sales
Home sales are getting canceled at record numbers, according to a report from Redfin. Nationally, 14.9 percent of homes that went under contract in June were canceled — the highest percentage on record with the exception of March and April 2020, when the pandemic shut everything down. Dallas is even higher, with 19.9 percent of contracts falling through, and in Fort Worth, 18.9 percent of contracts falling through.

Other cities in Texas include:

• Houston with 22.9 percent cancelled
• San Antonio, with 20.3 percent cancelled
• Austin, with 17.9 percent

It could be worse. In Las Vegas, the percentage of home sales cancelled was 27.2 percent, the highest in the U.S.

Monkeypox update
Monkeypox cases more than doubled around Dallas-Fort Worth: The Texas Department of State Health Services reported a statewide total of 183 cases, and of those, 89 are in North Texas, up from the previous 42. If you add 42 and 42, you'd get 84, so that is definitely more than double. Until this week, all of the cases were men, but now the numbers include three women.

Greyhound bus news
Flix SE, the global transportation provider that operates Greyhound, as well as FlixBus, FlixTrain, and Kâmil Koç, has created Flix North America, Inc., a new entity based in Dallas that'll oversee operations for Greyhound and FlixBus across North America. Flix acquired Greyhound in 2021. Newly appointed to the CEO role is Kadir "Kai" Boysan, former CEO of Kâmil Koç Buses, Inc., who has worked with Flix since the company acquired Kamil Koç in 2019. He led operations in Türkiye (formerly Turkey, who knew). Greyhound CEO Dave Leach, who has been with the company since 1986, will retire at the end of 2022, remaining as a strategic advisor until his retirement. Leach started out as a baggage handler, then worked his way up to CEO in 2007, how cool is that.

Media move
TV reporter David Schechter is leaving WFAA after 16 years for "an interesting opportunity." What that opportunity is, he will not say. He tweeted, "Shortly, I'll tell you more about my next adventure in journalism," such a mystery, and told his co-anchors that his partner, WFAA director of photography Chance Horner, will join him on his next unannounced adventure. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he came to WFAA from WCCO in Minneapolis. UPDATE 7-26-2022: A post from Horner says, "I'm leaving WFAA to join my buddy David Schechter at the CBS Innovation Lab. We’ll be reporting on environment and climate change for CBS stations nationwide."

Miss Texas milestone
Averie Bishop, a Filipino American, is the first Asian American to win the title of Miss Texas in the 85-year history of the beauty pageant. Bishop, 25, is an SMU graduate who also studied law. She was crowned on June 28, and will represent Texas in the coming Miss America pageant to be held in Uncasville, Connecticut in December. She has more 65,000-plus followers on Instagram and 809,000-plus followers on TikTok. She told Insider that she plans to use her platform to promote diversity and inclusion initiatives.