USA: Otto Warmbier, Who Returned From North Korea In Coma Is Dead

US student Otto Warmbier, who was imprisoned in North Korea for 17 months before being returned home in a coma less than a week ago, has died in hospital, his family said in a statement.

Mr Warmbier returned from North Korea last week, and his father Fred Warmbier denounced the "pariah" regime that brutalised his son.

Otto Warmbier, the American student who was released from North Korea in a coma after being imprisoned for 17 months, has died in a Cincinnati hospital.

"It is our sad duty to report that our son, Otto Warmbier, has completed his journey home. Surrounded by his loving family, Otto died today at 2.20pm," the statement said.

It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost - future time that won't be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds.

But we choose to focus on the time we were given to be with this remarkable person.

Mr Warmbier had been sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labour in North Korea, convicted of subversion after he tearfully confessed he had tried to steal a propaganda banner.

The University of Virginia student was held for more than 17 months and medically evacuated from North Korea last week. Doctors said he had returned with severe brain damage, but it wasn't clear what caused it.

He was taken by Medivac to Cincinnati, where he grew up in suburban Wyoming. He was salutatorian of his 2013 class at the highly rated high school, and was on the soccer team among other activities.

In their statement on Monday, his parents said: "You can tell from the outpouring of emotion from the communities that he touched - Wyoming, Ohio and the University of Virginia to name just two - that the love for Otto went well beyond his immediate family.

We would like to thank the wonderful professionals at the University of Cincinnati Medical Centre who did everything they could for Otto.

Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today.

When Otto returned to Cincinnati late on June 13th he was unable to speak, unable to see and unable to react to verbal commands.

He looked very uncomfortable almost anguished. Although we would never hear his voice again, within a day the countenance of his face changed, he was at peace. He was home and we believe he could sense that.

"We thank everyone around the world who has kept him and our family in their thoughts and prayers. We are at peace and at home too."

Three Americans remain held in North Korea. The US government accuses North Korea of using such detainees as political pawns. North Korea accuses Washington and South Korea of sending spies to overthrow its government.

At the time of Mr Warmbier's release, a White House official said Joseph Yun, the US envoy on North Korea, had met North Korean foreign ministry representatives in Norway the previous month.

Such direct consultations between the two governments are rare because they don't have formal diplomatic relations.

At the meeting, North Korea agreed that Swedish diplomats could visit all four American detainees.

Mr Yun learnt about Mr Warmbier's condition in a meeting a week before the release from the North Korean ambassador at the UN in New York.

Mr Yun then went to North Korea and visited Mr Warmbier on June 12 with two doctors and demanded his release on humanitarian grounds.

USA: Montana Tourism Grows Stronger

The state of Montana covers more than 94 million acres, but its tourism industry is built on 1,080,225 of them.

Given what happened in 2015, and what’s on tap in 2016, that should bode well for many of the state’s businesses that rely heavily on visitors, said Daniel Iverson, communications manager for the Montana Office of Tourism and Business Development.

Those 1,080,225 acres belong to all Americans, and come in the form of Glacier National Park (1,013,572 acres) and Yellowstone National Park (96 percent of which lies in Wyoming, but which has 66,653 acres — and three of its five entrances — in Montana).

Yellowstone smashed its record for visitation earlier this year, and is on course to cross 4 million visitors a year for the first time ever and post a 15- to 16-percent increase more than 2014. There were times this year when lines to get into the park were so long, rangers waived hundreds of vehicles through at a time without charging the entrance fee in an effort to keep traffic moving.

Glacier, meantime, broke a 31-year-old visitation record in 2014 when it welcomed more than 2.3 million people and is poised to erase that again in 2015.

The park is edging toward a second straight record despite a challenging summer that included wildfires inside its borders, smoke-filled skies and the 2 ½-week closure of a significant chunk of its most popular attraction — Going to the Sun Road — during the height of the season.

The two national parks are definitely our cornerstones. They’re front and center, montana focuses a lot of the promotional works we do on them.

Information from the University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research indicate that more than half the out-of-state visitors to Montana visited Yellowstone while, and 40 percent visited Glacier.

They’re the top two attractions by a comfortable margin.

With the National Park Service celebrating its 100th birthday in 2016, the centennial could help draw more attention — and visitors — to parks, including the two in Montana.

“We’re talking with our partners about how to promote, and take advantage of, the centennial,” Iverson says. “We think the increase in visitation to the parks will continue.”

The two parks predate the National Park Service itself, and have already celebrated their own centennials — Glacier six years ago, and Yellowstone, America’s first national park, back in 1972. But the NPS centennial will draw national attention in 2016, and Montana could benefit.

Among the ideas being considered, is one that would promote various routes between the parks — and attractions along the way — that could benefit more than communities close to Yellowstone and Glacier.

The parks should help the 2016 tourism outlook for the state.

You might be surprised at some of the other things that could affect it.

Iverson says Norma Nickerson, the director of the Institute of Tourism and Recreation Research, has noted that 2016 is a presidential election year. She called it a “wild card” that could lead to caution among voters/tourists who are uncertain about how the election of certain candidates could affect the economy.

That uncertainty could affect their travel plans.

Fuel prices and economies in other nations figure in. Another variable is the weather, which will wind up playing a major role in whatever Montana’s final 2015 tourism numbers turn out to be.

A lot depends on the weather.

After a good snow year in 2014, Montana saw a 10 percent drop in the number of skiers in a drier, lighter-snow year in 2015. That lack of precipitation carried over into the summer and affected the wildfire season, a year after wildfires weren’t much of a factor.

The lack of snow and increase in wildfires was accompanied by a weakening of the Canadian dollar that also affected a very important part of Montana’s economy — visitors from the North.

Most of our visitors come in by road,there was 4.2 percent increase at our west, south and eastern borders.

But there was a 6.3 percent decrease in traffic coming into Montana from the Canadian border, and that hurts the economy in many places across the northern tier of the state, and as far south as Great Falls.

It’s really slowing up communities like Great Falls. With a weak Canadian dollar, “Essentially, (Canadians) can’t buy as much for their dollar as they used to be able to while in the United States.

Early figures for 2015 final figures won’t be available until early 2016 — indicated that in addition to the higher numbers of visitors entering by vehicle over Montana’s borders with Idaho, Wyoming and North and South Dakota, there was a 1.8 percent increased in air travel, and a 2.2 percent increase in the number of hotel and motel rooms sold.

Montana usually comes close to matching national projections for tourism,for 2016, the U.S. Travel Association is predicting a 2 percent increase in the number of trips taken, and a 2.3 percent increase in spending.

International visitors to Montana seem to be increasing, which is part of a national trend.

The international markets are skyrocketing, especially Asia and China. We have a program focused on international travelers, and work with tour operators because a lot of international visitors like to go through tour operators to show the Montana sights they can sell to international markets.

No doubt Glacier and Yellowstone are on that list. Montana’s attractions certainly don’t stop with the national parks, there’s some spectacular scenery on those other 93 million acres but for many out-of-state visitors, whether they’re from other countries or other states, the national parks are the first thing they want to see.