Tag Archives: Family

Mourners in Ohio remember U.S. student held prisoner by North Korea

FILE PHOTO - Otto Frederick Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who has been detained in North Korea since early January, attends a news conference in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo February 29, 2016. Mandatory credit REUTERS/Kyodo/File Photo

By Ginny McCabe

WYOMING, Ohio (Reuters) – Friends and family members will gather in Ohio on Thursday to say goodbye to an American student who died days after being returned to the United States in a coma following 17 months in captivity in North Korea.

Otto Warmbier, 22, was arrested in the reclusive communist country while visiting as a tourist. He was brought back to the United States last week with brain damage, in what doctors described as state of “unresponsive wakefulness,” and died on Monday.

A public memorial will be held on Thursday morning at Wyoming High School, in the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming. Warmbier will be buried later in the day at a local cemetery.

The exact cause of his death is unclear. Officials at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he was treated, declined to provide details, and Warmbier’s family on Tuesday asked that the Hamilton County Coroner not perform an autopsy.

Warmbier’s father, Fred Warmbier, told a news conference last week that his son had flourished while at the high school.

“This is the place where Otto experienced some of the best moments of his young life, and he would be pleased to know that his return to the United States would be acknowledged on these grounds,” he said.

After graduating as class salutatorian in 2013, Warmbier enrolled at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he was studying at the school of commerce and was a member of the Theta Chi fraternity. Warmbier was scheduled to graduate this year.

At a memorial service on Tuesday night, students at the university remembered Warmbier as outgoing and energetic.

“Being with Otto made life all the more beautiful,” Alex Vagonis, Warmbier’s girlfriend, said.

Warmbier was traveling in North Korea with a tour group, and was arrested at Pyongyang airport as he was about to leave.

He was sentenced two months later to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel, North Korea state media said.

Ria Westergaard Pedersen, 33, who was with Warmbier in North Korea, told the Danish broadcaster TV2 that he had been nervous when taking pictures of soldiers, and said she doubted North Korea’s explanation for his arrest.

“We went to buy propaganda posters together, so why in the world would he risk so much to steal a trivial poster? It makes no sense.”

(Wrting and additional reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Family declines autopsy for U.S. student released by North Korea

FILE PHOTO - Otto Frederick Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who has been detained in North Korea since early January, attends a news conference in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo February 29, 2016. Mandatory credit REUTERS/Kyodo/File Photo

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) – An Ohio coroner, abiding by family wishes, has performed an external examination instead of a full autopsy on the body of the U.S. student who was held prisoner in North Korea for 17 months and sent home in a coma, the agency said on Tuesday.

The Hamilton County Coroner’s Office was still conferring on Tuesday with doctors at a Cincinnati hospital who were treating Otto Warmbier, 22, before reaching any conclusions about his death a day earlier, investigator Daryl Zornes said.

Investigators also were continuing to review radiological images and awaiting additional medical records requested by the coroner, Zornes told Reuters.

He declined to estimate how long it would take for the coroner’s office to complete its inquiry. Preliminary autopsy findings had been expected later on Tuesday or on Wednesday.

There was no immediate word from the family about why relatives declined an autopsy, which may have shed more light on the cause of the neurological injuries that left him in a coma.

Warmbier’s death came just days after he was released by the North Korean government and returned to the United States suffering from what U.S. doctors described as extensive brain damage.

Warmbier, an Ohio native and student at the University of Virginia, was arrested in North Korea in January 2016 while visiting as a tourist. He was sentenced two months later to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, the nation’s state media said.

The circumstances of his detention and what medical treatment he received in North Korea remain unknown. The United States has demanded North Korea release three other U.S. citizens it holds in detention: missionary Kim Dong Chul and academics Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song. (Graphic of Americans held by North Korea: http://tmsnrt.rs/2pmE3ks)

Warmbier’s death has only heightened U.S.-North Korean tensions aggravated by dozens of North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests since last year in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The North Korean government has vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

Warmbier’s family has not specified how he slipped from a comatose state to death, but said in a statement on Monday that the “awful torturous mistreatment” he endured while in captivity meant “no other outcome was possible.”

Relatives have said they were told by U.S. envoys that North Korean officials claimed Warmbier contracted botulism after his trial and lapsed into a coma after taking a sleeping pill. Fred Warmbier, the student’s father, has said he disbelieves this account.

North Korea’s government said it released Warmbier last week on “humanitarian grounds.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he had spoken with Warmbier’s family and praised them as “incredible.”

“It’s a total disgrace what happened to Otto,” Trump told reporters in the White House, where he was meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. “And frankly, if he were brought home sooner, I think the results would have been a lot different.”

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the administration would “continue to apply economic and political pressure” on North Korea, in conjunction with U.S. allies and China, “to change this behavior and this regime.”

Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday he appreciated efforts by Chinese President Xi Jinping “to help with North Korea,” adding “It has not worked out. At least I know China tried!”

The government of China, North Korea’s main ally, said Warmbier’s death was a tragedy.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Lisa Shumaker)

‘He said he was Christian, they shot him,’ says son who saw father die

Hanaa Youssef and Mina Habib, the widow and son of a man who was killed in a militant attack against Coptic Christians last month, hold the victim's portrait in Minya, Egypt June 8, 2017. Picture taken June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

By Ali Abdelaty

DAYR JARNOUS, Egypt (Reuters) – Egyptian schoolboy Mina Habib rarely leaves his house these days. The 10-year-old is still recovering from seeing Islamist gunmen kill his father for being Christian.

In an attack claimed by Islamic State, gunmen ambushed a group of Coptic Christians traveling to a monastery in Minya in southern Egypt last month, killing 29 and wounding 24, with Mina’s father Adel among the dead.

A month later, residents of Dayr Jarnous, a Christian village that was home to seven of those killed, say the government is not providing proper security and has done nothing to help the victims’ families.

Mina is receiving therapy at a local church, in the absence of any treatment from the government. His brother Marco, 14, who also escaped the attack, visits a monastery to read the bible as a form of therapy.

Still shaken, village residents fear they are exposed if there is another attack and want President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to keep his promise to protect Christians. There was no extra security in the village, with only a police point out in the desert where the attack took place.

In one of the first detailed eyewitness accounts of the Minya attack, which has led to retaliatory Egyptian air strikes in Libya, Mina told Reuters it was pure chance that he and Marco were spared.

They were on a pickup truck headed to the monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor when the militants stopped them.

Ahead, blood-soaked bodies littered the desert road to the monastery and two vehicles had clearly been attacked.

“We saw dead people, just dumped on the ground,” Mina recounted.

“They asked my father for identification then told him to recite the Muslim profession of faith. He refused, said he was Christian. They shot him and everyone else with us in the car.”

Mina said there were around 15 gunmen. He does not know why he and Marco were spared when other children were shot.

“They saw us in the back of the truck. They made us get down and a man wearing camouflage like the army pointed his gun at us, but another one in all black told him to let us go. Every time they shot someone they would yell God is great.”

Marco added: “They had Egyptian accents like us and they were all masked except for two of them … They looked like us and did not have beards.”

LION HEARTED

Three vehicles were attacked. A bus and a car taking children and families to the monastery were the first targets.

The gunmen shot out the windows then killed all the men and fired at the feet of the women and children. They took the women’s gold jewelry, eyewitnesses said. Some children were killed.

When one of the gunmen’s vehicles had a flat tire, they stopped Adel Habib’s truck, which was carrying Christian workers, shot them and took the truck.

Marco stopped a car when the militants left and put Mina in it to get him to safety. When at last he got mobile phone reception on the desert road, Marco called their mother.

“I first thought it was someone trying to take the truck, I never thought it would be terrorism,” said Hanaa Youssef. “My husband has been going to the monastery for 25 years and nothing like this had ever happened.”

Now she keeps her children at home – neighbors have written “Marco and Mina the lion-hearted” on its walls – only letting the boys out for therapy in church. Marco was unavailable for interview; he was at a monastery reading the bible.

“Ever since the accident I am always at home,” said Mina.

“Security, the government, and the army are negligent. No one protects us other than God. It is known that Christians are not protected in this country,” said Kirolos Ishak, a university student whose father was also killed that day.

Coptic Christians, who make up 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 92 million, say they have been persecuted for years. In recent months attacks have increased, leaving about 100 dead.

Egypt’s Copts support Sisi, who has vowed to crush Islamist militants and protect Christians. He declared a three-month state of emergency after church bombings in April.

But many Christians feel the state is failing to protect them.

“Our Muslim neighbors say ‘you chose Sisi’ but ever since he came to power we are the ones who have suffered, not them,” said Youssef, the boys’ mother. “Churches and people have been attacked, people have been kidnapped, we are suffering.”

(Reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Giles Elgood)

As Taliban gain and U.S. weighs troop hike, a widow’s plea to ‘finish the job’

FILE PHOTO: Widow Alexandra McClintock holds her son Declan during a burial service for her husband, U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Matthew McClintock, who was killed in action in January at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia March 7, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File Photo

By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On a cold morning in January, Alexandra McClintock shoved her bare hands into the pockets of her black jacket and gazed at the endless rows of graves in Arlington National Cemetery, just across the Potomac River from Washington D.C.

Taking her hands out of her pockets and falling to her knees, she hugged a white marble tombstone as her sobs drowned out the bugle calls from a nearby funeral. Only the sound of her giggling one-and-a-half-year-old son, Declan, forced her to wipe away her tears and loosen her grip on the tombstone.

One year and a day earlier, a Green Beret soldier and chaplain had stood in her living room in Seattle to tell her that her husband, Sergeant First Class Matthew McClintock, 30, was killed in a firefight with Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

McClintock was one of more than 900 American and coalition troops killed in Helmand since 2001 — about a quarter of the more than 3,000 deaths in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

Now U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is contemplating sending more troops to Afghanistan to boost 8,400 others there more than 15 years after the Islamist Taliban government was toppled. A decision is expected within weeks.

Current and former U.S. officials say that plans being discussed call for sending 3,000-5,000 more troops into what has become America’s longest war.

Some relatives of the U.S. dead ask whether their loved ones have died in vain, particularly as U.S. administrations are reluctant to commit a large amount of resources to a conflict that is often forgotten.

“I feel like my husband’s death is being dismissed and like my husband died for nothing,” Alexandra told Reuters.

“We need to finish the job instead of just continuing to just barely get up to the line… we need to make my husband’s death mean something,” she said.

Some U.S. officials warn that the situation in Afghanistan is worse than they had expected and question the benefit of sending more troops there. Any politically palatable number of additional U.S. and allied forces — like the size of the deployment being considered by the Trump administration — would not be enough to turn the tide, much less create stability and security, the officials say.

Trump is likely to be sucked deeper into the war, which began when former President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Former President Barack Obama sought to pull out the remaining U.S. troops by the end of his tenure, but left thousands there to train and assist Afghan forces.

FILE PHOTO: Widow Alexandra McClintock (L) holds her son Declan while placing a rose on the casket of her husband U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Matthew McClintock, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in January, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia March 7, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Widow Alexandra McClintock (L) holds her son Declan while placing a rose on the casket of her husband U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Matthew McClintock, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in January, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia March 7, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File Photo

‘BLEEDING ULCER’

Large stretches of Helmand province, source of much of the world’s illegal opium supply, are again in the hands of the Taliban who have steadily pushed back Afghan forces which controlled less than 60 percent of territory earlier this year.

Last month, about 300 U.S. Marines were sent to Helmand, where McClintock was fatally shot in the head during an hours-long gun battle near the town of Marjah.

As far back as 2010, then Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top allied military commander in Afghanistan, referred to Marjah as a “bleeding ulcer”.

McClintock’s last trip home was in October 2015 for Declan’s birth. He stayed a few extra days to help Alexandra deal with her postpartum depression.

“All he wanted to do was hold his son all the time or take pictures of me holding him and he was there for every single second,” McClintock said.

The couple last spoke on Jan 1, 2016 on Skype. He promised he would be home in a month. His last words were: “I love you most.”

Four days later, and just weeks before he was supposed to complete his deployment, McClintock was killed.

Alexandra had just returned from a therapy session when her doorbell rang.

“I remember the sound that came out of me when I collapsed, I remember crawling into my fireplace,” she said.

Two weeks later, she received a package.

It wasn’t addressed to anyone but sat outside her door. In the box was a late Christmas present from McClintock; two shirts that said “momma bear” and “baby bear.”

Resting in a case on a mantle in her living room, Alexandra displays the American flag that was draped over her husband’s casket during his funeral at Arlington Cemetery in March 2016.

What she does not put on display is a letter of condolence she received from Obama which now sits in a drawer. The generic letter, of a type traditionally sent to the relatives of deceased service members, made Alexandra feel “dismissed,” she said.

“My husband died for their war, for this war,” she said, adding that she nevertheless supported the war.

“It doesn’t get easier,” Alexandra said. “I still have dreams where I wake up thinking that Matt is in bed next to me, and I have to remember that he is gone.”

For a graphic on U.S. troop fatalities in Afghanistan, click: http://tmsnrt.rs/2rCletQ

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Alistair Bell)

Alexandra McClintock holds her son Declan with her husband U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Matthew McCintock in this October 2015 handout photo provided May 24, 2017. Courtesy Alesandra McClintock/Handout via REUTERS

Alexandra McClintock holds her son Declan with her husband U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Matthew McCintock in this October 2015 handout photo provided May 24, 2017. Courtesy Alesandra McClintock/Handout via REUTERS

Oregon man charged with decapitating mom on Mother’s Day

(Reuters) – A blood-covered man carrying the severed head of his mother and a knife, walked into an Oregon grocery store on Mother’s Day and stabbed a clerk before being subdued, local law enforcement officials said.

Joshua Lee Webb, 36, faces charges of murder in the death of his mother, Tina Marie Webb, 59, and attempted murder for the attack on the clerk, Michael Wagner, who was recovering from his wounds in a hospital, according to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department.

Webb is being held in the Clackamas County Jail, the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement on Monday.

Customers fled the Estacada Harvest Market Thriftway in Estacada, Oregon on Sunday morning and called police after Webb entered carrying the head, according to local press reports.

After Wagner, 66, was stabbed, he and other store employees subdued Webb and held him until police arrived, the Sheriff’s Department said.

At about the same time, police said they also responded to a call at the Webb home in Colton, about 12 miles away, where they found Webb’s mother dead. Webb lived with his parents, they said.

Police did not provide any details on what led to Tina Marie Webb’s murder. It was not immediately possible to contact Webb or identify an attorney representing him.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Andrew Hay)

For families of radicalizing U.S. youth, a help line

Program coordinator David Phillippi (L) and Executive Director Myrian Nadri with "Parents For Peace", a support group founded by parents whose children were involved in extremist violence and which is starting a telephone helpline for people who fear their loved ones are being recruited into extremist organizations, speak to Reuters in Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S., March 23, 2017. Picture taken March 23, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) – Melvin Bledsoe felt helpless as he watched his son transform – becoming distant, converting to Islam and changing his name from Carlos Bledsoe to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad.

The Baptist father of two wishes there was someone who could have offered him guidance before the 22-year-old attacked a U.S. Army recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, killing a soldier and wounding another in 2009.

“I didn’t have any help. I didn’t have no one to turn to, no one to lean on but my other family members,” Bledsoe, 61, who runs a tour company in his native Memphis, Tennessee, recalled in a recent phone interview.

Bledsoe, hoping to give parents in similar situations and fearful of calling the police more options than he had, founded the nonprofit Parents for Peace and launched what it bills as the first citizen-run U.S. telephone help line to counter the ideologies that lead to violent extremism.

The help line, which quietly began tests of operations in December but only now is making itself known widely, is aimed at filling a void in the United States and perhaps avert violence by offering parents and others a way to better communicate with loved ones flirting with extremism, according to people who study it.

“It could be a powerful thing. People don’t have anywhere to go if they have a concern about their kids and they don’t want to go to law enforcement,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

Another group, called Life After Hate and based in Chicago, offers assistance to people personally involved in white supremacist organizations who are looking to break away. And some Muslim leaders across the country offer counseling to those tempted to turn to violence.

The Parents for Peace help line – +1-844-49-PEACE (+1-844-487-3223) – models itself on suicide help lines and other groups addressing such issues, and is open not only to those dealing with militant Islamist ideologies but also white supremacist and other radicalizations.

The United States has seen dozens of extremist attacks since the Little Rock incident, from the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the 2016 Orlando nightclub massacre carried out by militant Islamists, to the 2015 mass shooting at a historically black Charleston, South Carolina, church by a white man who wanted to start a race war.

DIFFERENT BELIEFS, SIMILAR PATHS

Although very different ideologies motivated the attackers, many followed similar paths to violence, immersing themselves in angry online communities.

“Former neo-Nazis and former jihadists report similar things,” said Myriam Nadri, a therapist of French-Moroccan heritage with an office in Boston who is the group’s executive director. “They talk about experiences with humiliation, they talk about extreme rage and anger.”

Calls to the help line are answered by two staffers, who work out of a tiny office in Boston. They begin calls by taking time to hear out callers’ concerns.

The counselors then advise callers on techniques to persuade their loved ones to open up about their activities, in order to counter the secrecy that militant and criminal groups usually urge on their members.

So far, the line has received just a couple of calls, but Nadri said she expects the volume to pick up as the group does more to publicize its existence.

In some cases, callers may be put in contact with Bledsoe or other members of his group who have lost loved ones to extremism. Bledsoe’s son survived his attack and is serving a life sentence, while other members of Parents for Peace have seen relatives killed.

Their number includes Carole Mansfield of Burton, Michigan, whose granddaughter, Nicole, traveled to Syria to join its civil war and died in the fighting in 2013.

“I’m battling cancer and I just hope and pray that I can live long enough to help at least one family save their loved one,” Mansfield said in a recent phone interview. “That’s the mission that I have in my life.”

The help line makes clear that callers who fear an attack is imminent should call authorities. The group otherwise has avoided working directly with law enforcement, and has not sought any funding from the U.S. government’s “countering violent extremism” program.

That Justice Department program, established during Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration, aimed to address the factors that drive some to violence by providing grants and other resources to community groups to develop prevention efforts.

Obama’s successor, Republican President Donald Trump, now wants the program to focus solely on Islamist militancy, rather than also addressing white supremacist groups. That move has drawn criticism from Democrats in Congress.

The proposed policy shift makes Parents for Peace’s neutrality all the more important, Bledsoe said.

“It should be about any extremist,” he said. “Parents for Peace is willing to talk to anyone who feels there is a threat.”

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Face of anti-Kremlin protests is the son of a Putin ally

A riot police officer climbs on a lamp pole to detain opposition supporters during a rally in Moscow, Russia March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

By Maria Tsvetkova and Maria Vasilyeva

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian high school student Roman Shingarkin had some explaining to do when he got home after becoming one of the faces of anti-Kremlin protests at the weekend. His father is a former member of parliament who supports President Vladimir Putin.

At the height of a protest in Moscow on Sunday against what organizers said was official corruption, 17-year-old Shingarkin and another young man climbed onto the top of a lamp-post in the city’s Pushkin Square.

Hundreds of protesters in the square cheered and whistled as a police officer, dressed in riot gear, shinned up the lamp-post and remonstrated with the two to come down. They refused, and the police officer retreated, to jubilation from the protesters down below.

As images of the protests, the biggest in Russia for several years, ricocheted around social media, Shingarkin’s sit-in on top of the lamp-post was adopted by Kremlin opponents as a David-and-Goliath style symbol of defiance.

Shingarkin was eventually detained when, after the protest in Pushkin Square had dispersed, police persuaded him to climb down. He was taken to a police station but as a minor, he could not be charged. From the police station, he had to ring his father to ask to be picked up.

His father, Maxim Shingarkin, was from 2011 until 2016 a lawmaker in the State Duma, or lower house of parliament. He was a member of the LDPR party, a nationalist group that on nearly all major issues backs Putin.

Putin last year gave the party’s leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a medal for services to Russia. With Putin standing next to him, Zhirinovsky proclaimed: “God protect the tsar.”

Shingarkin had not told his father he would be going to the protest, but the former lawmaker quickly guessed what had happened.

“When I rang my dad from the police station, he immediately understood why I was there,” Shingarkin, wearing the same blue and black coat he had on during the protest, said in an interview with Reuters TV.

“I went there (to the rally) out of interest to see how strong the opposition is, how many people would take to the streets, and at the same time to get a response from authorities to a clear fact of corruption.”

He decided to climb up the lamp-post because he “could see nothing from the ground”.

Contacted by telephone on Wednesday, Shingarkin senior said he was sympathetic with his son’s motives for attending the protest.

“He has a social position, against corruption, I support it completely,” Maxim Shingarkin said.

But he emphasized that his son’s actions did not mean that he or the family were opponents of Putin.

The Russian leader, Shingarkin senior said, is popular among voters and there is no one to replace him, but he is let down by the officials around him.

Roman Shingarkin said for now he would not attend any more protests unless they were approved by the authorities.

He said he might venture to a non-approved demonstration once he turns 18, because if he gets into trouble then, the police will charge him and not involve his parents.

(Writing by Maria Tsvetkova and Christian Lowe; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

In drought-stricken Somaliland, families try to survive on black tea

A displaced woman, Nima Mohamed, 35, poses with 6 of her 7 children beside their shelter at a makeshift settlement area near Burao, northwestern Togdheer region of Somaliland March 25, 2017. Picture taken March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

By George Obulutsa and Abdirahman Hussein

BURAO, Somalia (Reuters) – In a makeshift camp beside a disused airfield in the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland, 32-year old Nima Mohamed sits next to an open wood fire, boiling a kettle of black tea.

Unless aid groups bring them food and water, the tea is the only meal of the day for her three sons and three daughters who lie nearby in a home made of old bed sheets.

Mohamed is one of the two million people in the breakaway Horn of Africa republic — about half its population — facing starvation after an acute drought killed their livestock.

“We have lost all our animals,” she told Reuters.

Before their goats died from lack of pasture and water, they provided milk for the children to drink and butter which was used to cook rice for the family to eat, she said.

About 100 or so other families were camped out next to Mohamed’s hut in similar structures made of sticks, plastic sacks, moth-eaten canvas and cardboard.

They settled outside the airfield after migrating from various drought-stricken parts of Somaliland, especially in the eastern part of the territory.

According to the government, 70 percent of Somaliland’s economy relies on livestock.

The carcasses of goats, sheep and camels strewn around Burao and the vast, dusty scrubland surrounding the small city, are stark reminders of the extent of the hardship.

Beyond Somaliland, other regions in Somalia are also facing a devastating drought that has decimated harvests and is threatening to tip into full-blown famine only six years after a similar humanitarian catastrophe in which 260,000 people died.

In other parts of Somalia, the shortages are worsened by fighting in areas occupied by al Shabaab Islamist militants.

The Somaliland government in the regional capital Hargeisa said the drought had also led to an increase in diseases such as diarrhea and malnutrition, especially among children and the elderly.

At another makeshift camp housing 500 people in Bardihahle, 100 km (62 miles)from Burao, pregnant Amina Haji, 23, who fled from Wardad in the eastern Sanaag region, one of the heaviest hit by drought, sat in her small hut in sweltering heat.

Haji, whose baby is due any day, fretted about the conditions in the camp with its lack of food, water and healthcare.

“We do not have any kind of help and I live under this makeshift shelter,” she said. “Nothing remains for us.”

(Editing by Duncan Miriri and Ed Cropley/Jeremy Gaunt)

The family of U.S. tourist Kurt Cochran who was killed in last week’s assault on the British parliament said on Monday he would not have borne any ill feelings toward the attacker.

Clint Payne, brother of Westminster Bridge attack victim Melissa Cochran, speaks at a news conference at New Scotland Yard, in London, Britain,

LONDON (Reuters) – The family of U.S. tourist Kurt Cochran who was killed in last week’s assault on the British parliament said on Monday he would not have borne any ill feelings toward the attacker.

Cochran, 54, and his wife, Melissa, were in Europe to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary when they were mowed down on Westminster Bridge by a car driven by British man, Khalid Masood, who went on to fatally stab an unarmed policeman at the parliament building.

The couple from Utah had been due to return to the United States the day after the attack took place last Wednesday. Melissa remains in hospital where she is recovering from a cut to the head, a broken rib and badly injured leg.

“We know that Kurt wouldn’t bear ill feelings toward anyone and we can draw strength as a family from that,” Clint Payne, Cochran’s brother-in-law, told a news conference at police headquarters, just yards from where the attack took place.

“His whole life was an example of focusing on the positive. Not pretending that negative things don’t exist but not living our life in the negative – that’s what we choose to do.”

Cochran was one of four people killed in the assault, Britain’s deadliest attack since the 2005 London underground bombings, and his family said they had since been overwhelmed by the “love of so many people” in London and around the world.

Celebrating their anniversary, the couple had left the U.S. for the first time to visit Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and parts of Britain before visiting London last week to see the neo-Gothic parliament building on the banks of the River Thames.

The couple, who had a recording studio business, were visiting Melissa Cochran’s parents, who are missionaries in London for the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also known as the Mormon church.

“They loved it here and Kurt repeatedly said that he felt like he was at home so thank you for that, thank you for being such good people,” Melissa’s father Dimmon Payne said.

Shantell Payne, Melissa’s sister and one of 13 family members to attend the news conference, said it was “awful, horrible and gut wrenching” that the attack had been carried out in the name of religion, but that the family would focus on the positive’s of Cochran’s life.

“We’re thankful in a sense that everyone can know what an amazing person he really was,” she said.

(Reporting by Kate Holton; editing by Stephen Addison)

Trump’s son Eric and his wife expect first child in September

FILE PHOTO: Donald Trump's son Eric Trump and his wife Lara Yunaska watch the proceedings during the third day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., July 20, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Eric Trump, the 33-year-old middle son of U.S. President Donald Trump, said on Monday that his wife Lara was expecting to give birth to their first child in September.

“We are adding a boy to #TeamTrump,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “It’s been an amazing year. We are blessed!”

Eric Trump and his wife, formerly Lara Yunaska, married in November 2014 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida after dating for six years. Lara is also 33 years old, according to People magazine.

The baby boy, the president’s ninth grandchild, is due in September.

The couple told People they were still deciding on a name for their son.

“We really loved the name Charlie, but we’d already named our dog that, so it’s out,” Eric Trump said.

Eric is the third child born to Donald Trump and his first wife, the former model Ivana Trump.

A resident of New York City, Eric serves as a trustee of the Trump Organization along with his brother, Donald Trump Jr.

The president congratulated his son and daughter-in-law on the pregnancy following the announcement.

“Congratulations Eric & Lara. Very proud and happy for the two of you!,” he wrote on Twitter.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Andrew Hay)