The semiconductor industry appears to generate a specific type of legal dispute more frequently than most; these disputes are slow, costly, technically complex, and nearly impossible to settle amicably. The battle between Intel and VLSI Technology has come to represent that category in some ways. As of this week, a federal appeals court overturned a lower court’s conclusion of noninfringement and remanded the case to a jury in a California lawsuit that was filed in 2017. That’s a challenging development for Intel, a company that had every reason to believe this particular chapter was closed. US Patent No. 8,566,836, which…
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.
The majority of Trader Joe’s stores have a distinct feel to them, with handwritten signs on the shelves, staff wearing Hawaiian shirts, and a carefully planned chaos that somehow feels cozy rather than overwhelming. It’s a brand that has cultivated sincere love from its consumers for decades. This is one of the reasons it feels a little strange that the lawsuit is now bringing those same clients into a $7.4 million settlement. The food wasn’t the problem. It was a receipt for groceries. When a Florida man named Brian Keim used his Visa debit card at a Trader Joe’s in…
Being informed that assistance is on the way and then watching the clock run out while the organization in charge of providing it looks for another way out is a certain kind of cruelty. Sweet v. McMahon, a case that started out as a simple legal challenge to government inaction and has since grown into one of the most contentious student debt battles in American history, is essentially what has been happening to hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers caught inside the settlement agreement. This week, April 15 came and went. That date was the last opportunity for the…
There was a certain electricity in downtown Los Angeles on the evening of October 27, 2020. People flocked to the streets surrounding Crypto.com Arena as they do when a city finally lets go after decades of waiting, following the Dodgers’ recent victory in their first World Series in thirty-two years. Among them was 22-year-old Cal State Long Beach student Isaac Castellanos, who was celebrating with friends without damaging anything or threatening anyone. By one in the morning, a police projectile had hit him in the right eye. His vision in that eye never came back. After less than two hours…
Watching a gadget you paid for just stop functioning—not because it broke or you dropped it, but rather because the manufacturer discreetly stopped providing it with what it needed to survive—causes a certain kind of frustration. That’s the frustration at the heart of a current class action lawsuit against Amazon, and it’s the kind of frustration that many people seem to recognize right away. In April 2026, California resident Bill Merewhuader filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court. In 2018, he purchased two second-generation Fire TV Sticks from Best Buy, a purchase that millions of people made at…
The Renaissance Hotel on Fort Lauderdale’s 17th Street is not the type of establishment that typically garners media attention. It is located near the airport, attracts consistent business from passing passengers, and manages crew layover logistics in the same way that hotels close to major airports have always done: quietly, effectively, and without fuss. That all changed on a February night in 2025 when a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines allegedly triggered a fire sprinkler system in her room, causing water to flow through several floors, soaking guest rooms, reaching the front desk and back offices, and initiating a $215,576…
Baseball-sized hail ripped through Paola and Osawatomie in Miami County, Kansas, which is just across the state line from Missouri, on the evening of April 15. Before the storm cells had completely passed, roofs were destroyed, car windshields collapsed, and an emergency was declared. Images from that night quickly went viral on the local news: fist-sized hailstones on driveways, siding stripped off of homes, and the unique kind of neighborhood silence that follows disastrous weather when people are still inside evaluating what they’ve lost. It was the beginning of a routine procedure for insurance adjusters. It was just another line…
On the evening of December 27, 2011, Betsy Faria was stabbed more than fifty-five times at a home on Sumac Drive in Troy, Missouri, a small Lincoln County town an hour northwest of St. Louis. She had been receiving chemotherapy for her terminal breast cancer all day. There was a kitchen knife with a serrated edge in her neck. After calling 911 at 9:40 p.m., her husband Russ was imprisoned for almost four years for her murder before his conviction was completely overturned in a second trial. Pamela Marie Hupp, the woman who allegedly drove Betsy home that night, received…
For many years, frequent travelers who had firsthand experience with Kansas City International Airport used it as the subject of a particular type of joke. A shuttle bus and the common humiliation of having to re-enter security if you needed to switch airlines were the only connections between the three distinct terminals from 1972, each essentially its own isolated building. There weren’t many food options. The lines of security were dispersed. The entire experience conveyed, through its subdued architectural style, that Kansas City was not a destination worth visiting but rather a city you passed through. That all changed in…
Republican leaders unveiled a revised version of their income tax elimination plan at 11:30 p.m. on a Wednesday inside the Missouri Senate chamber in Jefferson City. Missouri was mostly asleep. There was silence in the gallery. The vote was completed by 18 to 11 at 1:15 in the morning, bringing the state one step closer to trying something that no state in contemporary American history has attempted on this scale: substituting an expanded sales tax for nearly two-thirds of its general revenue. Missouri’s personal income tax, which is currently set at a top rate of 4.7 percent on income over…