Authorities in the Netherlands have launched a major investigation after an apparent family of 7 was discovered living in the basement of an isolated farm, allegedly "waiting for the end of time."
Police in Drenthe said on Twitter that someone reported they were worried about the living conditions of people who were living in "an enclosed space" on a farm located just outside the town of Ruinerwold.
When police went to the home on the farm on Monday, they discovered six adults aged 18-25 inside and a 58-year-old man who "did not want to cooperate with the investigation" and was subsequently arrested. It's unclear what relationship exactly the 58-year-old held with the others, but some reports described them as a "family".
"All scenarios are still open. Our research is in full swing and we cannot share more information at this time," police said.
The farm is located in Ruinerwold, a town in the northern Netherlands that has about 4,000 residents about 80 miles northeast of Amsterdam. The farm was on the outskirts of the village in an area known as Berghuizen, where less than 200 people lived, according to Dutch newspaper Dagblad van het Noorden.
Mayor Roger de Groot said Tuesday in a short statement the family is believed to have lived for 9 years on the farm and that authorities found "a number of improvised rooms where a family lived a withdrawn life."
He added: "I've never seen anything like it."
An aerial picture taken on October 15, 2019 shows a view of the farm where a father and six children had been living in the cellar, In Ruinerwold, northern Netherlands.
(WILBERT BIJZITTER/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
The discovery was made after the 58-year-old man's possible son, age 25, walked from the farm to a pub in Ruinerwold, where he was "completely confused" and police were called, RTV Drenthe reported.
The owner of the pub, Chris Westerbeek, told Dagblad van het Noorden the young man looked "unkempt," with long hair, and said he "needed help and had never been to school."
A 25-year-old man walked from the farm into the town of Ruinerwold where he was "completely confused," according to the owner of a pub.
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The 25-year-old added he slipped away at night because it "was not possible during the day," and that he could not go back to where he came from, according to Westerbeek.
When police went to the farm, they discovered a staircase to the basement behind a cupboard in the living room of the home, RTV reported.
The group lived in the space and had no contact with the outside world, according to the television station. The six younger members of the group reportedly had no idea there were other humans out in the world.
A neighbor told Dagblad van het Noorden he only saw one man on the farm at all times and was "totally surprised" at the news of the discovery.
"I am shaking on my legs," he told the newspaper.
The farm had a "huge" vegetable garden and many sheds but was described as rather "messy," according to the newspaper. RTV reported the family was completely self-sufficient, living off the vegetable garden and a goat.
WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son, acknowledged in an interview to be broadcast on Tuesday that he probably would not have been named to the board of a foreign company if his last name weren’t Biden, but he rejected suggestions by President Trump that he and his father had engaged in wrongdoing.
“Did I make a mistake? Maybe in the grand scheme of things,” Mr. Biden said in an interview with ABC News, which published excerpts from it on Tuesday morning. “But did I make a mistake based on some ethical lapse? Absolutely not.”
“I don’t think there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden,” Mr. Biden told Amy Robach of ABC.
Mr. Trump has seized on the younger Mr. Biden’s work in Ukraine and China to launch a series of attacks against the former vice president, a leading Democratic presidential candidate, over the past month. There is no evidence for the president’s claims that Mr. Biden, while in office, improperly intervened to aid his son, but that has not stopped him and other Republicans from raising questions about possible conflicts of interest.
The younger Mr. Biden, who recently resigned from the board of a Chinese investment company, said his service there had become a “distraction, because I have to sit here and answer these questions. That’s why I have committed that I won’t serve on any board or work on any foreign entities when Dad becomes president. That’s the rule I’m going to adhere to.”
Mr. Biden, 49, said he had exercised “poor judgment” by getting involved in a situation that he compared to a “swamp.” But he blamed his father’s opponents, including Mr. Trump, for spreading a “ridiculous conspiracy idea” involving his work.
“I gave a hook to some very unethical people to act in illegal ways to try to do some harm to my father,” he said. “That’s where I made the mistake. So I take full responsibility for that. Did I do anything improper? No, not in any way. Not in any way whatsoever.”
Many Democratic strategists and officials have warned that the issue threatens to become a distraction for the former vice president. Hunter Biden’s interview will be aired just hours before his father is to appear at the fourth presidential primary debate on Tuesday night. There, Mr. Biden will stand at the center of the stage, along with Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who recently surpassed Mr. Biden in several polls.
The scrutiny on Mr. Biden and his family over the past month has injected a degree of risk and uncertainty into his campaign, making it all the more urgent for him to land the kind of consistently fluent, forceful debate performance that has so far eluded him, Democratic operatives and activists said.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden said Sunday in a statement that he planned to leave the board of the Chinese private equity company by the end of October, and that if the elder Mr. Biden were elected president, Hunter Biden would “agree not to serve on boards of, or work on behalf of, foreign-owned companies.”
Mr. Biden had previously served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, including during a time when his father was running American policy in that country, but he stepped down when the elder Mr. Biden announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination.
While Mr. Biden said he learned of the statement from his son’s lawyers, the move appeared to be the first acknowledgment that Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings posed a threat to his father’s campaign.
For his part, the elder Mr. Biden on Sunday forcefully defended his son’s integrity and vehemently denied that there were conflicts of interest at play.
Instead, he took several barely veiled swipes at members of the Trump family, promising: “No one in my family will have an office in the White House, will sit in on meetings as if they’re a cabinet member, will in fact have any business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country.”
On Monday morning, Mr. Biden’s campaign released a plan centered on promoting ethics in government. His campaign and his allies have said that Mr. Biden would both push back forcefully against Mr. Trump and continue to discuss policy matters, like health care, on the debate stage and on the campaign trail.
Katie Glueck reported from Westerville, Ohio, and Stephanie Saul from New York.
CEYLANPINAR, Turkey — Kurdish-led fighters in Syria attempted on Tuesday to retake the strategic border town of Ras al-Ain from Turkish-led forces, as Kurdish and Syrian government troops sought to repel a Turkish incursion in northern Syria.
The Kurdish counteroffensive came as Syrian government troops were deployed inside the northern city of Manbij, a Syrian state broadcaster said on Tuesday. The broadcast showed what it said were residents of Manbij celebrating the arrival of government troops.
Heavy fire from machine guns could be heard to the south and southwest of Ras al-Ain and from the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, which is less than a mile from the fighting. Turkish artillery pounded an eastern suburb of the Syrian settlement midmorning, raising clouds of smoke above low farmhouses and pistachio groves.
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As of Tuesday, fighting in Ras al-Ain and other areas in northern Syria has forced at least 160,000 people from their homes, according to United Nations estimates. The Kurdish authorities put the figure at 270,000.
The battle highlighted the fluctuating nature of the Turkish incursion, which began last Wednesday after President Trump ordered the evacuation of American troops from the Turkish-Syrian border, opening the door for Turkish troops and their Syrian Arab proxies to enter Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria.
Since the Kurdish authorities asked the government of President Bashar al-Assad for assistance, thousands of Syrian Army troops have flooded into northern Syria for the first time since the government lost control of the region several years ago.
But Syrian government troops have stayed clear of the border region near Ras al-Ain, where Kurdish troops fight on alone. Instead, government forces have deployed to other strategic positions, such as the western cities of Manbij, to help alleviate pressure on Kurdish fighters on the front line.
The last-minute alliance comes at great cost to the Kurdish authorities, who are effectively giving up self-rule.
Syrian Kurdish militias established a system of self-rule in northern Syria in 2012, when the chaos of the Syrian civil war gave them the chance to create a sliver of autonomous territory free of central government influence.
The fighters greatly expanded their territory after they partnered with an international military coalition, led by the United States, to push the Islamic State from the area.
After the Kurdish-led fighters captured ISIS territory, they assumed responsibility for its governance, eventually controlling roughly a quarter of the Syrian landmass. They have also been guarding thousands of ISIS fighters and their families, hundreds of whom fled a detention camp in Ras al-Ain after Turkish-led forces bombed the surrounding area.
The Kurds’ control of the land in Syria enraged Turkey, since the militia is an offshoot of a guerrilla group that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. Turkey has long pressed the United States to abandon its alliance with Kurdish fighters so Turkish troops could enter Syria and force the Kurds from territory close to the border.
Washington rebuffed Turkey’s requests for several years, maintaining a de facto peacekeeping presence along the border near Ras al-Ain, the town at the center of the fighting on Friday. But that changed last week, when Mr. Trump made a sudden decision to withdraw troops — first from that particular area, and later from all of northern Syria.
Carlotta Gall reported from Ceylanpinar, and Patrick Kingsley from Istanbul.
A man uses a shovel to scoop mud in a neighborhood devastated by Typhoon Hagibis on Tuesday, in Nagano, Japan.
Jae C. Hong/AP
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Jae C. Hong/AP
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned on Tuesday of a "prolonged" impact from one of the most destructive typhoons in decades to hit the country, with a toll that has now risen to at least 53 dead.
Typhoon Hagibis brought record-breaking rainfall, caused extensive flooding and power outages, forcing the government to approve a special budget for disaster response.
In a parliamentary session, Abe said the rescue effort from the storm that hit central Japan over the weekend was "continuing around the clock."
"It is urgent to provide adequate support for the victims," Abe said, according to a translation from Japanese published in Japan Times.
"There are concerns that the impact on life and economic activities will be prolonged," he said.
Abe said the government would draw on a 500 billion yen ($4.6 billion) special reserve to pay for the storm.
The figure of 53 killed in the typhoon was given by Abe, but officials said it did not include at least another nine presumed dead. Public broadcaster NHK, which has consistently cited higher figures for the dead from Hagibis, on Tuesday placed the toll at 68. Kyodo News, citing information gathered from local authorities, reports that at least 19 people were still missing.
The country's infrastructure ministry said embankment collapses affecting 47 rivers in 66 locations had been confirmed as of Tuesday, but officials said they still don't have a complete picture of the damage.
About 34,000 homes were without electricity and 110,000 were without running water, the government said. More than 30,000 people were still in shelters as of late Monday.
In hard-hit Nagano, on the main island of Honshu, rainfall hit a record of 134.5 millimeters (5.3 inches) in a 24-hour period.
Sixty-eight-year-old resident Mayumi Shibata temporarily returned to her flooded home on Monday.
"I can't believe that something like this actually happened," she told Mainichi Shimbun.
Early Sunday morning, Shibata's husband took his 97-year-old mother to a local evacuation shelter in Nagano, but she chose to stay behind thinking that the flooding wouldn't be too serious.
"I have a cat, so I thought if I took it to the evacuation shelter, it would cause trouble to other evacuees," she told Mainichi.
She sent her husband worried messages by phone as the water kept rising through the night. She was eventually rescued from an upper floor.
When Toshitaka Yoshimura, a retired carpenter in Nagano, returned to his home after staying at an evacuation center during the storm, he was stunned by what he saw, according to The Associated Press.
His house was a muddy mess, with doors knocked out and furniture tossed about and covered in dirt.
"I put a lot of effort in this house," Yoshimura said. "I made all the furniture with my wife. Now look what happened in one day," he said. "Now this makes me want to cry."
A president who rose to political prominence on birtherism — and then won the White House obsessed with Hillary Clinton’s emails — is latching onto scraps of conspiracy theories to build his political defense against impeachment.
In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has incorrectly claimed whistleblower rules were changed immediately before the whistleblower filed his or her complaint. He’s resurrected the myth that Democrats planted a spy inside his 2016 presidential campaign. And he’s promulgated the idea that the whistleblower is a partisan operative and part of the “deep state” of federal government employees out to get him. (The whistleblower reportedly is an intelligence officer, who Trump’s acting director of national intelligence has said “acted in good faith.”)
Data, evidence and repeated assurances from Trump’s own national security leaders do not appear to influence Trump as he searches for ways to undermine Democrats’ impeachment proceedings and the presidential bid of a leading rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Trump is joined in his like-minded distribution of misinformation by his close personal friend and lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who often floats such ideas on TV — much to the chagrin of White House advisers.
Former administration officials say they’ve never been sure if Trump actually believes these theories, or simply sees them an effective political tool to silence critics, batter Democratic rivals and appeal to a slice of his base. His passionate and relentless effort to push the theories suggests the former; his long-running birther lie suggests the latter.
“I just think he keeps up the game,” a former senior administration official said. “It is much easier to have a conspiracy theory than have to deal with the facts. He and facts have a severe dislike for each other. He and facts don’t get along. If you are not going to get along with facts and you have an administration known for lying, then everything becomes a conspiracy theory.”
Many Trump allies and former advisers take a more charitable approach, saying the president often sniffs out intriguing tidbits of information and then highlights them for the American public and media to explore in greater detail.
“I learned to quit worrying a long time ago,” said Jason Miller, former chief spokesman for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. “He has a pretty uncanny nose for politics. When he has a gut feeling about something, he usually ends up being right.” Miller then pointed to major news events he said Trump had predicted like Brexit, the alleged political biases of the former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and the Hillary Clinton emails found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner just before the 2016 election.
“I don’t think he worries if one or two details are off,” Miller added. “The president likes to raise the questions, knowing everyone including the media will then go chasing it.”
By leaning so heavily on unsubstantiated musings, critics say the president has co-opted the Republican Party into being a fact-less operation.
One Republican close to the White House said he would far prefer the House Republicans take the lead in refuting the impeachment inquiry one allegation at a time rather than having the president do it hour-by-hour with his various theories and Tweets.
“It has been disconcerting in recent years to see the party rely more and more on outlandish theories of what the ‘deep state’ is doing,” said Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee. “Where were all of these people, who suddenly seem to have existed inside the government body, when Ronald Reagan was running the government, or when Bush 41 or 43 were there? Where were all of these people?”
“It is just easier to blame it on some nefarious organization and individuals rather than doing the job you are going to do. If I can blame you, why would I take responsibility?” Steele added.
The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.
As he hits the 1,000th day of his presidency this week, Trump has continued to move fluidly between fact and fiction. He has frequently been caught in lies — well over 12,000 since he took office, according to one count — and rarely cleans them up afterward.
During his business career, he was often caught in lies such as saying Princess Diana had taken an apartment in Trump Tower, or he’d call reporters while pretending to be a public relations spokesman named John Miller.
But back in his real estate days in New York, Trump was not much of an aficionado of conspiracy theories, said Barbara Res, a former top executive for the Trump Organization.
It’s true that he never took responsibility for anything negative that happened to him or his business and viewed mishaps as a personal attack, Res said, “but as far as promoting real conspiracy theories, no.”
“His ideas are more advanced and evolved now, but he has got new problems. The conspiracy theories he is spouting are an answer to that,” she said.
Trump went deep into conspiracy land in 2011 when he latched onto the discredited notion that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. The state of Hawaii released Obama’s original long-form birth certificate in 2011 to prove he was, in fact, born in the U.S.
Yet the “birther” theory still served as a core part of Trump’s political ascent, even as evidence proved it false and Trump weighed running for president.
Obama poked fun at Trump for fomenting the birther movement during the glitzy 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner as Trump sat stone-faced in the audience.
“No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald,” Obama told the crowd of thousands of journalists, politicians and celebrities. “And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
As president, Trump has promoted conspiracy theories since his inauguration centered on the idea of the deep state, the Clinton emails or the alleged wiretapping of his New York City campaign quarters by Obama’s federal government. He’s also promoted the idea Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to help the Democrats: a charge Trump’s former top homeland security adviser recently publicly debunked, citing no evidence for the allegation.
Former administration officials say it’s now futile to try to talk Trump out of these theories — with logic, data, common sense or even government intelligence — once he latches onto an idea.
Certain White House aides such as senior adviser Stephen Miller, or China trade hawk Peter Navarro often help to fuel Trump’s conspiracy-laden mind — especially with the idea that China is trying to steal all U.S. jobs, or every China exchange student is a spy. The latter is a mantra Miller often has discussed with the president, according to two former officials.
Escaping the Mueller investigation relatively unscathed only emboldened Trump and Giuliani, said one close White House adviser.
Just a day after Mueller testified about his findings to Congress, Trump made the July 25 call to the Ukrainian president and asked him to investigate Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020 campaign. This phone call and resulting whistleblower complaint now form the basis of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, with Democrats saying it was encouraging a foreign government to meddle in a U.S. election.
Trump’s not the first president to feel like he is under attack from foreign adversaries, or the media, or the intelligence community. President John F. Kennedy, for instance, often worried about officials leaking information, whereas President Richard Nixon was privately convinced the Johnson administration had bugged his airplane during the 1968 campaign.
The differences between Trump and other presidents is that he shares his conspiratorially minded, us-versus-them worldview far more publicly and prolifically, said Timothy Naftali, the founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
Americans did not know Nixon’s worldview until tapes of his Oval Office conversations surfaced.
“Trump and Nixon share this belief that the structure of government is working against them,” Naftali said. “Nixon’s conspiracy theories sent him down a rabbit hole that destroyed his presidency. We’ll see what happens to President Trump.”
DUBAI — Turkish assets are breathing a sigh of relief after tariffs threatened by President Donald Trump over Ankara's military offensive in Syria came up less serious than markets had expected.
Turkey's lira rose in Tuesday morning trading on the back of a statement by Trump promising a 50% tariff on Turkish steel imports and a halt to trade negotiations between Ankara and Washington — penalties that analysts are calling "window dressing."
The dollar was down 1% against the lira for the session, with the Turkish currency trading at 5.8628 per dollar at 8 a.m. London time on Tuesday.
The tariff threats are mere "window dressing from Trump," said Timothy Ash, senior emerging markets strategist at Bluebay Asset Management. "Minimal sanctions. A few individuals. A trade deal which was years off anyway. And steel tariffs up to 50% — Turkey hardly exports any (steel to the U.S.) anyway," Ash said in an emailed note.
"Likely relief in Turkish markets — they could have been much worse."
Turkish-backed Syrian fighters near the town of Tukhar, north of Syria's northern city of Manbij, on October 14, 2019.
Aref Tammawi | AFP | Getty Images
The lira was labeled the world's worst performing major currency in the second week of October as sanctions stress weighed on Turkish assets. Trump has been threatening to "totally obliterate" Turkey's fragile economy over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's military offensive into northern Syria against U.S.-backed Kurdish forces — an operation Trump essentially greenlighted with his shock announcement to withdraw U.S. troops from the area and hand responsibility for dealing with remaining Islamic State fighters to the Turks.
"These appear to be relatively light sanctions — meant to appease Congress without sundering Trump's relations with Erdogan," Charlie Roberston, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, told CNBC.
Turkey expands assault against US-backed Kurds
The agreement between the two countries came after a phone call between Trump and Erdogan, the contents of which are not publicly known. Widespread bipartisan criticism followed Trump's announcement, described by numerous lawmakers and security officials as an abandonment of America's Kurdish allies governing the region after they lost heavy casualties helping the U.S. drive out ISIS.
This prompted Trump to threaten Turkey with sanctions if the country went too far in attacking the Kurdish forces. Ankara views the Kurdish fighters, who were vital in driving ISIS out of Syria alongside American forces, as terrorists and has openly expressed its aim to crush their presence in northern Syria.
"The United States will aggressively use economic sanctions to target those who enable, facilitate, and finance these heinous acts in Syria," Trump's statement said Monday. "I am fully prepared to swiftly destroy Turkey's economy if Turkish leaders continue down this dangerous and destructive path."
No stranger to volatility, the lira had previously come down 5% this month against the dollar on sanctions worries, and lost some 40% of its value against the dollar in 2018 over controversial domestic monetary policy moves and a diplomatic fight with the U.S. that led to destabilizing tit-for-tat sanctions threats.
Turkey's offensive in Syria, marked by airstrikes and artillery shelling, is now in its seventh day amid reports of human rights atrocities, ISIS jailbreaks and mass fleeing of civilians. The UN says 130,000 people have already been displaced, and Kurdish forces say more than 200 have been killed. Pro-Turkish forces have cut off the main road between Syria's east and west Kurdish-held territory, blocking the main highway to the Kurdish city of Kobani where U.S. troops are based.
Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic lawmakers last week introduced a sanctions bill on Turkey that they say should have a veto-proof congressional majority if rejected by the president.
Of Monday's less-harsh-than-expected tariff threats, Robertson said, "While this should be helpful for Turkish assets, markets will stay jittery, as they can't be sure this takes enough pressure off Trump."
The flashpoint region of Manbij in northeastern Syria is becoming a battleground for Turkish-led Syrian rebel fighters advancing in the area following the pullback of U.S. forces.
A Syrian National Army statement to The Defense Post said the Turkish-led rebel fighters were launching the operation “with the goal of liberating the city of Manbij and its vicinity” from the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The Manbij region is home to U.S. outposts that were set up in 2017 to patrol the frontiers between Turkish-controlled areas and the Kurdish-held side of northern Syria, as The Associated Press reported.
Turkey-backed Syrian rebel fighters ride on a military truck at the border town of Tel Abyad, Syria, on Monday. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi - RC1A42D723C0
A U.S. official said troops are still in the town, preparing to leave.
The U.S. has had about 1,000 troops in northeastern Syria allied with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to combat the Islamic State, as The Associated Press reported. The Pentagon previously had pulled about 30 of these troops from the Turkish attack zone along the border. With an escalation of violence, a widening of the Turkish incursion and the prospect of a deepening conflict, all U.S. forces along the border now will follow that move. It was unclear where they will go.
The Kurds have turned to the Syrian government and Russia for military assistance, further complicating the battlefield.
Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters celebrate in Akcakale, in Sanliurfa province advance, after entering over the border from Tal Abyad, Syria, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2019. State-run Anadolu news agency reported Tal Abyad had fallen to a Turkish military offensive on Sunday. (AP Photo/Cavit Ozgul)
The Syrian troops entered the Kurdish-held town of Manbij, in a race with Turkey-backed opposition fighters advancing in the same direction.
Earlier, Syrian fighters backed by Turkey said they began an offensive alongside Turkish troops to capture Manbij, which is on the western flank of the Euphrates River, broadening their campaign east of the river.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled earlier in the day his military was ready to begin the assault on Manbij, with a goal of returning the city to Arab populations that he said were its rightful owners, as The Associated Press reported.
