Most travelers are unaware of a small airport located close to the town of Marignane, southeast of Marseille. It’s not a tourist destination. However, it also serves as the hub of the largest helicopter manufacturer in the world, which discreetly produces almost one out of every three rotorcraft that fly anywhere in the world. That was not the original name of Airbus Helicopters SAS. The helicopter divisions of Germany’s DASA and France’s A Réspatiale combined their operations to form Eurocopter in 1992. Approximately one-third of the global helicopter market was acquired by Aïspatiale. DASA contributed less, perhaps 8%. That imbalance…
Author: Sierra Foster
Sierra Foster
Born in Kansas City, Sierra Foster writes about politics and serves as Senior Editor at kbsd6.com. She was raised paying attention to this city, not just living in it. Sierra has a strong, deep connection to Kansas City, from the neighborhoods east of Troost to the discussions that take place in the city hall halls. Sierra, who is presently enrolled at the University of Kansas to pursue a degree in Political Science, applies the rigor of academic study to her journalism. She writes about politics in Missouri and Kansas as someone who genuinely cares about what happens to the people in these communities—the policies that impact them, the leaders who represent them, and the civic forces influencing their futures—rather than as an outsider watching from a distance. Her editorial coverage encompasses state-level policy, local government, and the national political currents that permeate bi-state regional life. Whether it's a city council vote or a Senate race, she has a special gift for turning complex policy language into writing that feels urgent, relatable, and worthwhile. Sierra seldom sits still off the page. She claims that playing soccer on a regular basis has sharpened her instincts for political reporting because of the sport's teamwork, strategy, and requirement to read a changing game in real time. She's probably somewhere in Kansas City with her friends when she's not writing or on the pitch, discovering new reasons to adore a city she already knows so well.
By Saturday nite, the hills above the flatlands of Nevada were already lit up. By Sunday, the Hawk Fire had burned through more than 15,000 acres in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and it still couldn’t be checked. Not at all. There is a number in every briefing, press release, and worried text message from someone in Washoe County who hasn’t slept: 0%. The fire began on Saturday and moved quickly, helped by strong winds that sometimes made the work of ground crews seem pointless. About 42,000 people living near Reno were told to leave their homes. 45,000 more…
Shelley Fabares is hard to put into a single sentence. She sings and acts. Stay alive. TV is an institution. A woman died in Los Angeles on a Saturday at the age of 82. She was all of those things, and the labels still don’t do justice to someone whose career spanned six decades with a quiet persistence that most entertainers can’t match. She was born in Santa Monica in 1944, and by the time she was ten, she was already on TV. It wasn’t because someone forced her, but because she looked like she belonged there. She got her…
In football, there’s a time when everything stops. The only thing that can be heard is a player lying still on the ground while everyone else is quiet. That’s what took place at the Las Vegas Raiders’ training camp on Sunday, and it’s the kind of thing that sticks with you. An impressive young player in the league, Ashton Jeanty, a running back for the Raiders in his second year, got hurt during 11-on-11 drills. He went in the wrong direction after running a route and dove for a low pass from veteran quarterback Kirk Cousins. The grass took care…
A certain kind of worry spreads faster than any virus. It’s the kind of worry that turns every sneeze into a possible outbreak and lives on in news stories and group chats. The most recent health data for Delhi, which came out on August 22, has that kind of energy right now. This year, the city has had 2,392 cases of Influenza-A, and 1,777 of them have been confirmed to be H1N1. 114 new cases were recorded in a single day, August 20. You don’t just scroll past those numbers without stopping. Some people still call Influenza A H1N1 “swine…
Some relationships start with a lot of noise, like a red carpet event, tabloid rumors, or a publicist’s well-timed announcement. Then there are stories like the ones by Peyton List and Jacob Bertrand. Slow and quiet. They were friends for years before anyone used the word “couple.” This timeline makes you think that Hollywood might get something right once in a while. They met for the first time in 2015. List was already well-known on Disney Channel for her long-running role on Jessie, and Bertrand was making a name for himself on Disney XD’s Kirby Buckets. They were both teenagers—she…
At the end of Cobra Kai’s run, Daniel LaRusso looks at Robby Keene and says something quietly that stops the action. He tells the kid that no one has been further down and no one has come back up faster. When you watch it, you get the sense that the show has finally said out loud what it had been building up to for six seasons. Robby wasn’t the most exciting fighter. His character wasn’t the most talked about. But he might have been the most honest. When Robert Swayze Keene first comes into the series, he is a teenager…
When you think about it, Ralph Macchio was one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood in the 1980s and early 1990s. He still has a can of tuna from the set of My Cousin Vinny somewhere in his house. He’s not sure where it is. He knows he’s not going to open it, though. “Bought it in 1991, or whenever that was,” he joked on Live With Kelly & Mark not long ago. The tuna is older than most of the people who are asking about it online right now. The movie My Cousin Vinny came out in 1992,…
When an actor disappears so fully into a role that you don’t think about them at all, something magical happens. That’s what Elisabeth Shue did in 1984. As Ali Mills, the cheerleader with the nice smile and the ex-boyfriend who got dumped, she felt so much like a real teenager caught between two worlds that most people didn’t even think to ask how old she was. It turns out that the answer is 20. Shue was born on October 6, 1963, in Wilmington, Delaware. When The Karate Kid first came out, she was just a few weeks past her twentieth…
A certain kind of fame latches on to a person early on, wraps itself around a single image, and then won’t let go for decades. For Ralph Macchio, that picture is a teen standing on one leg in the sun in California with his arm raised, ready to strike. That scene was filmed when he was 22 years old. He is now sixty years old. He’s still that kid in some strange way. Macchio was born in Huntington, New York, in 1961. He grew up in a quiet suburban area that doesn’t really scream stardom. His dad owned laundromats and…