After years of waiting for a day that appeared doubtful for a long time, Ruairí McGrath waited outside the High Court in the kind of afternoon sunshine that seemed a little strange. He claimed that it had been a five-year battle. His daughter’s world was now open to her, he remarked. “The sky was the limit,” he added. It didn’t sound exaggerated. It sounded like someone who had just put down something heavy that they had been carrying for a long time. On May 20, 2016, Olivia McGrath was born at Cork University Maternity Hospital. At the age of ten,…
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.
When this matter initially came to Meta’s legal department, there was likely a brief period of true confidence. The majority of big publishers have global music license agreements with the company. It bargains. It is profitable. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp’s licensed music infrastructure is a large enterprise. Therefore, Meta’s original response, characterizing the claim as “fanciful,” when Eminem’s publisher, Eight Mile Style, launched a $109 million copyright infringement lawsuit, certainly felt like a reasonable stance. The complaint was no longer dismissible as overblown after a federal judge allowed the fundamental claim to move forward. Eight Mile Style claims that Meta…
On Wednesday, Cathay Wagantall stood in the House of Commons and gave the kind of speech that members of parliament make when they are aware that a chapter is coming to an end. Since taking office in 2015, she has won Yorkton-Melville four times and, according to most sources, intended to remain in office until the next federal election. Then she had second thoughts. The date is now August 31. She didn’t say why. Whether it is justified or not, the lack of explanation is what usually leads to conjecture. Politicians who leave Parliament early can do so for a…
Reading a lawsuit against a television writers’ room, which is meant to be a place where creative people collaborate on ideas, frequently with a level of flexibility and informality that other professional settings don’t allow, is especially unsettling. According to John Lowe’s filing, that informality evolved into something quite different. Thirteen days after he brought up Juneteenth, he was verbally and abruptly fired, ending a nearly two-year relationship. In October 2023, Lowe was brought on board as an executive story editor for the CBS revival of Matlock. The show, which starred Kathy Bates and was a legal drama centered on…
In markets, it is not uncommon for a company that has been quietly intriguing for years to suddenly become loudly relevant. That moment seems to have come with an uncommon force for Bloom Energy. Founded in 2001 and publicly traded since 2018, the San Jose-based fuel cell manufacturer has seen its stock rise from $16 a year ago to a new 52-week high of $234 on Tuesday. It has long been considered a genuinely promising but consistently unprofitable clean energy venture. It’s not a typo. The return after a year is roughly 1,200 percent. The stock has increased by more…
Tuesday morning began with a truly peculiar moment in the history of the market. In the first hour of trading, the Nasdaq Composite briefly reached a new 52-week high of 24,537, which on any other Tuesday would have been cause for celebration. Oil reversed upward past $90, the geopolitical news cycle reasserted itself, reports emerged that Vice President Vance’s trip to Pakistan for Iran negotiations had been postponed, and the index declined for the remainder of the session. The Nasdaq was down about 0.6 percent by the end of the day. It ended the day lower after setting a record…
Even seasoned market observers were taken aback by something that occurred during the first two weeks of April. The S&P 500 abruptly changed direction and surged after initially absorbing the shocks of a U.S.-Iran war and rising oil prices with what appeared to be genuine anxiety. The index’s market capitalization increased by more than $7 trillion in roughly three weeks. With thirteen straight sessions of gains, the Nasdaq recorded its longest winning run since 1992. For the first time in its history, the S&P 500 surpassed 7,100. And this occurred while negotiations for a Middle East ceasefire were ongoing and…
Investor tension tends to increase in the days leading up to a significant earnings release, and Microsoft is currently bearing the brunt of this tension. MSFT continued to rise from lows that appeared genuinely concerning earlier this year, rising roughly 1.5 percent on Tuesday to trade at about $424. At its low of $355, the stock was down almost 36% from its peak of $555 in July 2025. Since then, it has recovered a significant amount of those losses. Now, the monthly gain exceeds 10%. However, it’s still down nearly 12% year to date. Investors will learn from the April…
On Wall Street, Tuesday had the distinct feel of a day when no one was entirely sure what to do with themselves. Rising oil prices, geopolitical anxiety, and the ongoing uncertainty about whether the U.S.-Iran ceasefire would last past Wednesday all contributed to the Dow Jones’s decline during the remainder of the trading session after it had opened firmly in positive territory, up roughly 270 points in the first few minutes of trading. By mid-afternoon, the index was in the range of 49,100 to 49,250, down between 0.4 and 0.7 percent, depending on when you checked. Not a breakdown. But…
Given the magnitude of the announcement, Apple’s stock experienced an almost anticlimactic reaction on Monday afternoon as word of Tim Cook’s resignation spread across trading desks and financial newsrooms. It slipped. Not significantly—after-hours trading saw a one to two percent decline in shares, which settled in the $267 range after closing above $273 earlier in the day. That kind of movement hardly counts as a tremor for a company whose market capitalization is close to $4 trillion. However, the subdued response reveals how much the market had factored in the potential for a change in leadership and possibly how much…