There were no big events to mark the start of Malaysia’s National Service Training Program, which is also known as PLKN or Program Latihan Khidmat Negara. It began its trial session quietly on January 12, 2025. About 150 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 25 showed up at training grounds that hadn’t been used in years. It was very different from 2004, when 85,000 young people were sent to camps across the country as draftees out of about 450,000 who were eligible. The difference is very clear, and it shows how much has changed and how much is still…
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.
Kendall Clancy spoke out loud for the first time since her murder trial began last Tuesday in a courtroom in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She did this before the jury even arrived. In essence, two words. “Yes, your honor.” When Judge William F. Sullivan asked her if she understood the terms of a legal agreement she was signing, she said it clearly and in a steady voice. The trial then went on with the jury present. The agreement, which is what lawyers call a “stipulation of facts,” was mostly about how things should be done. Both sides agreed that some pieces of…
During most federal trials, there is a point where things feel like they will go in a certain direction. The lawyers are done with their closing arguments. The jury leaves the room. Everyone has to wait. Last month’s events at the E. Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., were not that moment. Shamell Naquan Joyner had been sent to jail for a month. On the surface, the charges seemed pretty solid: prosecutors said he robbed seven 7-Elevens, several gas stations, and took cars with guns over the course of several weeks in the spring of 2023. Ten days of…
When the ground under western Colombia finally stopped being still on a Monday morning, it was still early. At 7:34 a.m. local time, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 hit the Chocó region, with its epicenter near the small town of San José del Palmar. In some places, the shaking went on for almost 45 seconds. It takes a long time to worry about whether the building you’re in will stay up. In many places, the dust had already settled, and at least 111 people were dead and dozens more were hurt. Officials confirmed that 61 buildings had completely…
There was a strange, heavy pause in the air when news alerts started flashing on Basque TVs over the weekend. Coworkers who had shared control rooms and microphones with Oihane Mateos for years were now telling the kind of news that they had spent their whole careers trying to put in context. The head of digital news for public broadcaster EITB died in her home town of Ibarra. She was only 45 years old. Her death left a sudden hole in Spanish regional journalism. As someone who has watched regional broadcasting for ten years, Mateos’s change from a polished on-air…
On a Thursday morning in Naucalpan, Estado de México, a group of women waited outside of a local government event for a pension card in their own names, which hadn’t been possible even five years before. Some had been cooking, cleaning, raising kids, and keeping homes together for almost forty years without getting a single peso of formal recognition. About 20,000 of them were getting something back that day, just in Naucalpan. Pensión Mujeres Bienestar is a federal program in Mexico for women aged 60 to 64 that gives them 3,100 pesos every two months, which is about $180 at…
These days, when you walk thru suburban parking lots, you might see ultra-cheap electric hatchbacks parked next to heavy gasoline SUVs. This seemed impossible just three years ago. Battery-powered commuting has become almost $20,000 thanks to brands like BYD and Geely. This means that people who previously couldn’t afford a Tesla can now drive a zero-emission car. But today, as I stand on a dealership lot in Mexico, I can feel a quiet tension building. A heavy 50 percent import tax on cars from countries that don’t have trade agreements could wipe out those low prices, leaving automakers scrambling to…
On Monday, August 10, Spain awoke to yet another weather report that was both foreseeable and concerning. Ten autonomous communities have been placed under active alert by the nation’s meteorological agency, AEMET; some are for intense heat, others for violent storms, and a few for both at once. It’s the kind of prediction that might have seemed out of the ordinary ten years ago. It reads more like routine now. The image of the temperature is striking. Throughout the afternoon, temperatures in the Guadalquivir valley are predicted to rise above 40 degrees Celsius. While cities like Granada, Jaén, Toledo, Zaragoza,…
In a quiet lab in Palo Alto, scientists recently looked at a group of cloudy Petri dishes that had small, clear circles on them. The tiny holes showed that the host had been destroyed and that sixteen man-made viral genomes had been able to break thru bacterial cell walls. These genomes were not made by natural selection but by a biological language model. Scientists from Stanford and the Arc Institute fed an algorithm called Evo trillions of genetic letters, which made it make completely new genetic sequences. Even tho it’s an amazing step forward in technology, watching computer scripts put…
Watching a drone hover in place has a subtle unnerving quality. There is no cockpit, no engine roar, and no obvious indication that someone has decided it should be up there. It simply does as instructed, hanging in midair. And more and more, that’s the point. Drones, or UAVs as most engineers prefer to refer to them, have been working toward this goal for a long time. Probably longer than most people think. In 1849, Austrian forces launched about 200 bomb-carrying balloons toward the besieged city of Venice, marking the first known use of an unmanned aerial device for military…