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Shasta residents voted out an anti-establishment leader in favor of a business owner who attends the enormously popular yet controversial Bethel church

This is the third in a series of three stories on the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election in Shasta county, a region of 180,000 people in northern California that has emerged as a center of the election denial movement and hotbed for far-right politics. Read the first and second story.

For years, an extremist far-right movement has worked to transform one of California's most conservative regions. Since gaining a majority on Shasta county's governing body, they have managed to spark an exodus of government workers, attempted to do away with the voting system and fought the state over policies pertaining to Covid-19 and the second amendment.

Earlier this year, voters in the community of 180,000 -- perhaps tired of Shasta's national notoriety as a hotbed for extremist politics and election denialism -- declared they had had enough. In a stunning rebuke, they voted out a far-right leader by an enormous margin, handing his seat to a political newcomer.

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The public hearing of the 2018 incident aims to explain the death of British woman Dawn Sturgess to her family members and could reveal confidential information.

A public inquiry will begin on Monday in Salisbury into the death of a British woman who was unwittingly exposed to Novichok nerve agent.

The 2018 incident plunged relations between the UK and Russia to new lows at the time.

The public hearing aims to provide the victim's family with answers on how her death came about. It is also likely to reveal some confidential evidence from the government and the security services.

Trump has promised Musk major role in overseeing government spending in any future Trump administration

Donald Trump’s estranged niece is accusing the former president of having a “new owner” because of his increasingly close relationship with tech billionaire Elon Musk.

“Donald Trump has always been for sale,” Mary Trump wrote in a Substack post on Saturday.

“Given this decades-long pattern, it’s not surprising that the world’s richest fascist, South African jumping bean Elon Musk, would also be interested in purchasing a few shares in a man who is willing to sell whatever he can get his hands on —whether it’s steaks or American national security — because he values money more than anything,” she added.

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During the 1950s, the Catholic Church in Belgium separated thousands of newborns from their unwed mothers and put them up for adoption, often without the mothers' consent. The women were shamed into surrendering their babies by their families and a powerful church. Last month, Pope Francis apologized for those forced adoptions.

But Belgians weren't the only victims. From 1950 to 1970, the Vatican sent 3,500 Italian children to America on something called an orphan visa. The trouble was most were not orphans. Like their Belgian counterparts, they too were the children of unwed mothers. Many mothers later went searching for their children, only to discover they had been sent across an ocean. Today, thousands of American adoptees are still struggling to piece together their lost lives.

One in 4 middle-income new homeowners — twice as many as a decade before — are buying into cost-burdened situations.

The share of middle-class Americans who are buying wallet-squeezing homes has more than doubled in the previous 10 years.

Almost 30% of middle-class homeowners bought homes with monthly payments costing more than 30% of their income in 2022, an NBC News analysis of Census Bureau data found. That’s more than twice the share from 2013, with experts warning it leaves many households with less money for groceries and emergencies and less able to get ahead in the future.

That “cost-burdened” benchmark — in which a household devotes over 30% of income to housing costs — is a widely used measure of affordability for both homeownership and renting. The Census Bureau measures housing costs against it, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development has used it for decades.

Former President Donald Trump said Sunday that if elected he would ask Congress to pass legislation boosting the number of border patrol agents — several months after he thwarted a bipartisan measure that included staffing increases.

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Trump this year opposed a bipartisan measure that was the most aggressive border security bill in decades, one that would have imposed measures aimed at cutting the number of border crossings and tightening asylum rules. The legislation, which followed months of negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans and the Biden administration, also would have funded the hiring of 1,500 additional Customs and Border Protection agents and an additional 1,600 asylum officers.

Senate Republicans ultimately voted to block the bill after Trump pressured congressional Republicans to block any measure that was not “perfect.” That also allowed him to continue making the border and immigration the foundation of his bid to return to the White House.

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Doug Hamlin pleaded no contest to animal cruelty over 1979 incident in which fraternity cat was tortured and killed

Douglas Hamlin, who was appointed to lead the NRA this summer in the wake of a long-running corruption scandal at the gun rights group, was involved decades ago in the sadistic killing of a fraternity house cat named BK, according to several local media reports at the time.

Hamlin pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty brought against him and four of his fraternity brothers in 1980, when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The charge was brought against Hamlin under a local Ann Arbor ordinance. All five members of Alpha Delta Phi were later expelled from the fraternity.

The details of the case, described in local media reports at the time, are gruesome. The house cat was captured, its paws were cut off, and was then strung up and set on fire. The killing, which occurred in December 1979, was allegedly prompted by anger that the cat was not using its litterbox.

The 26 poorest nations in the world are more heavily in debt than any time in the last 18 years, according to a new report. Climate change and conflict are major drivers of poverty in the affected countries.

The World Bank published a new study late on Sunday highlighting 26 countries that "are in deeper debt than at any other time since 2006."

The list includes Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and North Korea. Most of the other nations are in sub-Saharan Africa, and include Ethiopia and Chad.

With an annual per capita income of less than $1,145 (€1,050) a year, the World Bank said these countries "are poorer today on average than they were on the eve of COVID-19,even though the rest of the world has largely recovered."

Hungary’s latest attempt to disrupt Ukraine aid isn’t about money — it would penalize the EU. It’s about making friends with Donald Trump.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is preparing to serve up a major policy gift for his best friend across the Atlantic, former United States President Donald Trump.

He’s concocted a way to let Trump, if he successfully makes it to the White House for a second term come November, wriggle out of a $50 billion loan the U.S., the European Union and leaders of the G7 offered to Ukraine to back its fight for survival against Russia. That would let Trump off the hook, allowing him to tell Republican voters that, if elected, he won’t give Ukraine another cent.

Hungary says it won’t consent to a change in rules that would allow Washington to play a major role in the loan until after the U.S. election.

A court in Berlin has sentenced a former member of East Germany's notorious secret police to 10 years imprisonment for murder.

The Berlin Regional Court on Monday sentenced a former East German secret police employee to ten years in prison for a murder at a border crossing in 1974.

The ruling was the first-ever conviction against a former employee of the Stasi, communist East Germany's secret police, for actions carried out while in service.

The court found ex-Stasi officer Martin N., 80, guilty of murder for killing Pole Czeslaw Kukuczka at close range as he sought to escape to the West through Berlin's Friedrichstrasse border point.

South Korea says it has detected preparations by North Korea to blow up its sections of inter-Korean roads. Tensions have been soaring between the two countries in recent weeks.

South Korean officials said on Monday that they had gathered intelligence indicating that the North was preparing to demolish its half of roads that connect the two countries.

"They have installed screens on the road and are working behind those screens, preparing to blow up the roads," Lee Sung Joon, a spokesperson for South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.

He said the operation could take place as soon as Monday.

The move follows weeks of soaring tensions on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has accused South Korea of using drones to drop propaganda leaflets over its territory three times, and threatened to respond with force if it happens again.

A Wisconsin woman accused of stabbing her classmate to please horror character Slender Man more than a decade ago asked a judge again Friday to release her from a psychiatric hospital.

Morgan Geyser, who is now 22 years old, filed a petition with Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren seeking her release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. The petition marks the third time in the last two years she has asked Bohren to let her out of the facility. 

She withdrew her first petition two months after filing it in 2022. Bohren denied her second request this past April, saying she remains a risk to the public.