World

By Mariëtte Le Roux
Agence France-Presse

SANTIAGO —  Chile chooses on Sunday between far-right and leftist candidates for a president to lead the country through a period of constitutional change amid a clamor for social reform.

The country of 19 million people is on edge, fearing renewed mass protests in response to the outcome of the neck-and-neck race between ultra-conservative lawyer Jose Antonio Kast, 55, and former student activist Gabriel Boric, a millennial 20 years Kast’s junior.

For a country that has voted centrist since the democratic ousting of brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet 31 years ago, there is a stark choice between two political outsiders, one promising a “social welfare” state, the other a continuation of Chile’s neo-liberal economic model.

Many fear the socially and fiscally conservative policies of law-and-order candidate Kast — an apologist for Pinochet, who is also anti-same-sex marriage and abortion, and a proponent of cutting taxes and social spending.

Others are put off by Boric’s political alliance with the Communist Party, which many in Chile equate with the failure of Venezuela, from where it hosts many migrants widely blamed for a rise in crime.

Socially liberal Boric, who has taken up the mantle of Chile’s 2019 anti-inequality uprising, has vowed to increase social spending in a country with one of the world’s largest gaps between rich and poor.

‘Very nervous’ 

Polls opened at 8:00am (11:00 GMT) and after casting his ballot, Boric reiterated his plans for “a more humane Chile, a more dignified Chile, a more egalitarian Chile”.

Kast, for his part, emphasised the country needed “justice, order, security”.

Boric pledged to recognise the election’s outcome, unlike Kast who said he might seek a recount if the final margin is under 50,000 votes.

“We have hope, we believe that we will enter another stage in Chile, a stage where we can test the concept of the welfare state,” Boric-backer Sebastian Vera, a 35-year-old history teacher, told AFP on his way to the ballot box.

But if Kast wins, he said, “I am afraid of a setback... to a place where our neo-liberal system will become even tougher than it already is.”

Nataly Hidd, a 32-year-old civil servant, said she was “scared of what can happen to my country” after Sunday’s vote.

“There will be protests, one way or the other.”

Student Nicolas Julio, 21, said he too was scared.

“I don’t trust either of the two,” he said, adding he “panicked” over having to decide which candidate was “the lesser evil”.

Kast edged out six other candidates in the first presidential election round in November to take the top spot, with 27.9 per cent of the vote.

Boric came second, with 25.8 per cent.

Both candidates have softened their policy proposals in a bid to appeal to Chileans left without an obvious candidate when they split the centrist vote in the first round, leaving only the two antipodes.

There will be ‘noise’ 

Chile has a high abstention rate, with about 50 percent of its 15 million eligible voters regularly giving the ballot box a wide berth.

The country is going through profound change after voting overwhelmingly last year in favour of drawing up a new constitution to replace the one enacted in the Pinochet years.

This was in response to an anti-inequality social uprising in 2019 that left dozens dead and prompted the government to call a referendum.

The drafting process, in the hands of a largely left-leaning body elected in May, must yield a constitution for approval next year, on the new president’s watch.

The campaign has been polarised, with much antagonistic messaging and misinformation offensives.

President Sebastian Pinera, who leaves office with a low approval rating, said Sunday the country was living in “an environment of excessive polarisation, confrontation, disputes”.

After casting his vote, he urged citizens to do the same for the sake of a better Chile.

“I feel sometimes that the country is better than politics because I see... that the people have more capacity for dialogue, for agreement, for understanding than politics.”

Analyst Patricio Nava of New York University told AFP there is likely to be unrest, or at least unease, ahead.

“There is going to be some noise, be it in the stock markets” if Boric wins, “or in the streets”, if Kast prevails.

Whoever ends up victorious, governing will not be easy with a Congress split almost 50-50, requiring negotiation on every policy proposal and compromise.

Polls close at 6:00 pm (21:00 GMT) and results are expected a few hours later.

NEW YORK — With restaurants in Brooklyn closing in rapid succession and lines at COVID-19 test centres swelling by the day, fears are growing in New York of a return to the nightmare of 2020, when the city was the global epicentre of the pandemic.

In Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighbourhood alone, more than a dozen bars and restaurants have had to close temporarily amid a recent surge in infections among their workers and patrons.

Near popular McCarren Park, around 30 people are lined up at a medical van offering rapid tests.

"It feels very reminiscent of March 2020," said Spencer Reiter, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident who works in finance.

He and his friend Katie Connolly, a student who is also 27, had come to be tested after friends tested positive.

"Seeing these lines... it's kind of back to where we began," Reiter said.

Katie Connolly concurred, saying, "It's definitely eerie."

Empty streets 

The first wave of the pandemic brought New York to its knees in the spring of 2020.

The megalopolis of 8.5 million people, long known as "the city that never sleeps", felt almost deserted for weeks, its empty streets resembling something from a science fiction movie about a post-apocalyptic world.

The only sound heard in Manhattan’s broad avenues seemed to be the stress-inducing wail of ambulance sirens, while hospitals operated beyond capacity and morgues were forced to bring in refrigerated trucks to handle the huge influx of COVID victims.

The disease has claimed at least 34,000 lives in New York since spring 2020, and the city — especially Manhattan — has never completely regained its legendary glitter and energy of pre-COVID days.

‘Very scary’ 

“We are actually in the beginning again, or maybe even worse,” said Jolanta Czerlanis, a 54-year-old Brooklyn resident. She had come for testing after feeling possible COVID symptoms.

“It’s very scary,” added Czerlanis, who works in catering. “We were hoping that it’s going to get better.”

The startlingly rapid spread of COVID-19’s Omicron variant has raised grave concern across the US.

President Joe Biden on Thursday predicted a “winter of severe illness and death” for the unvaccinated.

The number of new daily cases nationwide stood at 86,000 on December 1; by December 14, it had soared to 117,000, a 36 per cent increase in two weeks.

The US already leads the world in the most grim of statistics. On Tuesday it surpassed 800,000 COVID deaths, according data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

What accounts for the surge?

“Omicron happened,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said recently on CNN.

“And we got to be honest about the fact that it’s moving very fast and we have to move faster,” he added, speaking just weeks before he steps aside to make way for his elected successor, Eric Adams.

De Blasio has made vaccination mandatory for all city employees and, effective December 27, for the 184,000 companies and businesses in the city’s huge private sector. It remains unclear, however, whether Adams will enforce that requirement once he takes power.

In this normally festive holiday season, when New York traditionally welcomes an influx of tourists — and their money — a sense of panic has gripped the iconic theaters and music halls of Broadway as positive cases among performers and back-stage workers have forced more and more cancellations.

Radio City Music Hall late Friday announced it was cancelling the four remaining Christmas shows starring its famed “Rockette” dancers due to “increasing challenges from the pandemic”, The New York Times reported.

As for the multiaward-winning musical “Hamilton”, it was cancelled without warning Thursday night.

“We literally flew in just to see ‘Hamilton’ one day only,” said Myron Abston, who had traveled from Michigan with his wife Dara Abston.

“We got here early this morning and the show is cancelled,” he glumly told AFPTV.

Back in Brooklyn, Edouard Massih’s Lebanese grocery and catering business remain open for now.

But he said he fears Omicron’s arrival will provoke a new exodus of more affluent New Yorkers to the posh suburbs north of the city, just as happened in 2020 — leaving Manhattan, again, feeling like a ghost town.

By Sunghee Hwang
Agence France-Presse

SEOUL — After 10 years in power, North Korea’s once youthful Kim Jong-un is now one of the world’s more experienced leaders, and will look to defy the West for decades to come with his nuclear arsenal, analysts say.

Unlike most of his counterparts, with no concerns over elections or term limits and age on his side — he is only in his late 30s — Kim can expect to remain in office for decades, as long as his health holds up.

It is a far different perspective to a democratic politician worrying about headlines every day, and Kim already has more experience in power than most heads of state he will deal with in the future.

The arc of his first 10 years points to the trajectory to come, analysts say, from isolation to nuclear development to sharing the diplomatic stage with the world’s most powerful leaders.

“North Korea will maintain its confrontational status with the United States and harass it by tactically challenging it while making sure it doesn’t cross the line to completely derail its relations,” Kim Jin-ha, researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told AFP.

For more than six years after inheriting power when his father and predecessor Kim Jong-il died on December 17, 2011, Kim did not leave his isolated country or meet any foreign heads of state.

Initially seen by some as a figurehead for North Korea’s generals and Workers’ Party bureaucrats, he brutally established his authority, executing his uncle by marriage Jang Song-thaek for treason.

He was also accused of the assassination at Kuala Lumpur airport of his elder half-brother Kim Jong -nam with a nerve agent.

At the same time, Kim oversaw rapid progress in North Korea’s banned weapons programmes.

He conducted four of its six nuclear tests and the 2017 launches of ballistic missiles that can reach the whole of the US mainland, defying increasingly severe UN Security Council sanctions along the way.

For months, he traded fiery rhetoric with then US president Donald Trump, raising fears of an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

Then he declared the country’s nuclear arsenal “complete” and came knocking on the door of the outside world.

‘Fortuitous alignment’

With the assistance of dovish South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in 2018 Kim became the first North Korean leader ever to meet a sitting US president at a headline-grabbing Singapore summit.

Soo Kim, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, said Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal was largely what made the encounter possible.

“North Korea’s development of its weapons programme, the credibility of the nuclear and missile threat, and the fortuitous alignment of leadership — Trump, Moon, and Kim — helped prime the conditions,” she said.

With just one meeting, the chubby young leader charmed the American businessman and reality TV host — some 40 years his senior.

Trump boasted of forming a “special bond”, even “love”, with someone he had once mocked as “little rocket man”.

The same year, Kim chatted in the woods with the Moon and had several meetings with Xi Jinping of China — North Korea’s primary backer.

“The effect was tantalising,” said Sung-yoon Lee, professor of Korean Studies at Tufts University.

“The cruel, funny-looking dictator had transformed himself into a reform-minded, peace-prone, responsible steward of nukes and gulags perhaps amenable to denuclearisation.”

The amicable mood was short-lived: a second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi collapsed over sanctions relief and what Pyongyang would be willing to give up in return.

Trump quickly flew out of the Vietnamese capital and Kim took a 60-hour train ride back home empty-handed.

A follow-up meeting in the Demilitarised Zone that divides the Korean Peninsula did nothing to break the deadlock.

‘Common adversary’

North Korea’s dynastic regime and the ruling Workers’ Party base their claim to a right to rule on nationalism, from asserting responsibility for the end of Japanese colonialism after World War II, to “winning” the 1950-53 Korean War, to defying the United States ever since.

Officials and analysts say Kim never intended to fully give up his nuclear arsenal, which North Korea has pursued for decades at vast cost in resources and isolation, and is still developing further.

“He can’t feed the people, but he’s able to maintain his regime’s political survivability” with his weapons, said Soo Kim of RAND Corporation. “And this is more important to Kim.”

And with the United States set for long-term tensions with China, Kim will have an opportunity to follow the example of his grandfather Kim Il-sung.

North Korea’s founder adeptly exploited Cold War tensions between Moscow and Beijing to play one Communist state off against another.

The ties between Pyongyang and Beijing — forged in the Korean War when their forces fought South Korea and a US-led UN coalition to a standstill — were “a love-hate relationship between two ‘frenemies’”, said Professor Lee of Tufts University.

“Neither adores the other, but recognises that the other is its closest ally in terms of strategy, ideology, history, and in taming the US, the common adversary.”

‘Considerable success’

Kim has only to look across the border to China to see how increasing prosperity over many years can bolster the popularity of a one-party state.

But — to Beijing’s frustration — while North Korea has acquired bombs and missiles, its state-led economy has been mismanaged for decades, even before sanctions, and its people suffer chronic food shortages.

With a vulnerable health system, last year it closed its borders after the coronavirus emerged in neighbouring China.

The self-imposed blockade remains in place, and while Pyongyang insists it has yet to see any cases of the disease — analysts doubt the claim — Kim has admitted resulting hardships and warned his people to prepare for the “worst-ever situation”.

“Economically, North Korea is at the very bottom in the international order,” said Park Won-gon, professor of North Korean studies at EwhaWomans University in Seoul.

“But with its nuclear arsenal, it is able to exercise its influence between two world powers, the United States and China,” he added.

“I’d call that a considerable success on Pyongyang’s part.”

KABUL — Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities said on Saturday they will resume issuing passports in Kabul, giving hope to citizens who feel threatened living under the Islamists’ rule.

Thousands of Afghans have applied for new travel documents to escape a growing economic as well as a humanitarian crisis described by the United Nations as an “avalanche of hunger”.

Authorities will start issuing the documents from Sunday at Kabul’s passport office, Alam Gul Haqqani, the head of the passport department in the interior ministry, told reporters.

The Taliban stopped issuing passports shortly after their August 15 return to power, as tens of thousands of people scrambled to Kabul’s only airport in a bid to catch any international flight that could evacuate them.

In October, authorities reopened the passport office in Kabul only to suspend work days later as a flood of applications caused the biometric equipment to break down.

“All the technical issues have now been resolved,” Haqqani said, adding that initially travel documents will be given to those who had already applied before the office suspended work.

New applications will be accepted from January 10.

Many Afghans who wanted to visit neighbouring Pakistan for medical treatment have also been blocked in the absence of valid passports.

“My mother has some health issues and we needed to go to Pakistan a long time ago, but we could not because the passport department was closed,” said Jamshid, who like many Afghans goes by only one name.

“We are happy now ... we can get our passports and go to Pakistan,” he said as many began gathering outside the passport office after Saturday’s announcement.

Call for refugees to return 

Issuing passports — and allowing people to leave amid the growing humanitarian crisis — is seen as a test of the Taliban’s commitment to the international community.

The Taliban are pressing donors to restore billions of dollars in aid that was suspended when the previous Western-backed regime imploded in the final stages of a US military withdrawal.

The abrupt withholding of aid has amounted to an “unprecedented” fiscal shock for an economy already battered by drought and decades of war, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

The crisis has forced many to sell household possessions to buy food.

On Saturday, the Taliban government’s deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai urged aid agencies to apply pressure for the release of nearly $10 billion worth of assets held in the United States.

Stanekzai also urged all Afghan refugees to return now that the war had ended.

“We invite and encourage everyone to return to Afghanistan, even our political opponents,” he said at a function held to mark International Migrants Day.

Afghanistan’s minister for refugees Khalil Haqqani said that humanitarian organisations must help Afghan refugees return home.

“Afghan refugees living in camps abroad are in a bad situation. They have to return to Afghanistan and work here,” said Haqqani, who is a member of the Haqqani network, which was branded a terror group by Washington.

Over the past four decades, more than 6 million Afghans have fled the country to escape war and economic crises, most of them living in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan.

The international community has so far not recognised the current Taliban government that was formed after the chaotic withdrawal of US-led foreign troops.

International flights, mainly to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, have meanwhile slowly resumed at Kabul airport after the facility was trashed in August when crowds of people scrambled to evacuate.


MOSCOW — Russia said on Thursday that court documents, which inadvertently revealed its troops are stationed in separatist-held regions of Ukraine, contained "errors" and denied its military had crossed Ukraine's borders.

Kiev and its allies in the West say Russia is supporting breakaway fighters in the east of the country in a conflict that has cost more than 13,000 lives and strained Moscow's ties with the US and Europe to breaking point. Russia denies providing military support.

But a court in the southern Rostov region this month published a ruling online in a case where the defendant testified he was responsible for supplying food to Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.

The court verdict read that every two weeks a column of 70 trucks carrying supplies would be dispatched to eastern Ukraine to bring food to Russian troops stationed there.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman told reporters on Thursday that the text likely contained an error.

"Maybe we are talking about a mistake by someone who wrote the document, because this is impossible," Dmitry Peskov said.

"There have never been any Russian forces on the territory of the self-proclaimed republics."

He added however that Russia has been sending humanitarian aid to the separatist statelets on a regular basis.

According to the court document, supplies were sent to eastern Ukraine in 2018 and 2019.

"The supplies were intended to be sent to military units of the armed forces of the Russian Federation deployed in the DPR and LPR," the conviction read, referring to two breakaway regions.

'Confession' 

The defendant - identified as V.N. Zabaluyev -- served as deputy regional manager for military food supplies at a local company and was sentenced to five years in prison for bribing officials in 2019.

Later Thursday, the Rostov courts press service issued a statement saying the local court that collected Zabaluyev's testimony had not verified it.

"This was not the subject of the legal proceedings," the statement said, adding that "the court did not and could not verify this part of the testimony".

The revelation comes at a tense time in the conflict, with Russia accused of massing around 100,000 troops near Ukraine, raising new fears in the West of a possible invasion.

Kiev said the court had "confessed" Russia's military presence in Ukraine.

Its Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko told AFP that the ruling disproves Russia's position that the conflict in eastern Ukraine is internal.

"Russia has by itself created a legal precedent that clearly fixates its status as a party to an international armed conflict," Nikolenko said.




PARIS — France said on Thursday that it would ban non-essential travel to and from Britain in a bid to keep the Omicron Covid-19 variant in check, as European leaders urged coordinated action and more booster shots to counter the more highly contagious threat.

Countries worldwide have begun advising against foreign travel while ramping up domestic restrictions to battle Omicron, even though scientists remain uncertain how dangerous it is.

Britain has seen case levels explode in recent weeks to record levels amid fears the variant could overwhelm hospitals during the dinners and parties for the year-end holidays.

Starting at midnight Saturday (23:00 GMT Friday), the French government said, travellers will need "an essential reason to travel to, or come from, the UK, both for the unvaccinated and vaccinated... People cannot travel for touristic or professional reasons".

It added that French citizens and EU nationals could still return to France from the UK, but they will now need a negative Covid test less than 24 hours old, and a blanket quarantine will be enforced upon their return.

The Spanish government said meanwhile that boosters would soon be available for everyone aged 40 and older, down from 65 and older currently.

EU drug regulators on Thursday also approved Pfizer's Covid pill for emergency use by member states struggling with the new coronavirus wave.

'Tightening the net' 

In France, the "drastic" new limits on travel to Britain aim to give the country time to give 20 million booster jabs by Christmas -- and the country may soon open up vaccinations to children aged 5 to 11.

"People [coming back] will have to register on an app and will have to self-isolate in a place of their choosing for seven days -- controlled by the security forces -- but this can be shortened to 48 hours if a negative test is carried out in France," government spokesman Gabriel Attal said.

Britain on Thursday recorded a record 88,376 laboratory-confirmed Covid cases, with scientists predicting even higher rates as Omicron is believed to spread much faster than the currently dominant Delta variant.

"It's down to individual countries to decide their approach," a spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in response to the French restrictions.

"We've maintained that travel abroad will be different this year and that countries may impose border measures at short notice," he added.

At the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras station in London, many passengers were scrambling to change tickets to arrive in Paris before Saturday and pass the holidays with family.

"I have friends who are panicking," said Marie Geoffroy, a 43-year-old who lives in London who was about to board.

"These last-minute changes are stressful, it feels like you've been taken hostage," she said.

'Fear the worst' 

The French move comes after Canada urged its citizens to avoid foreign travel over the Christmas holidays, with Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos saying the Omicron variant "makes us fear the worst".

South Korea said it would reimpose coronavirus curfews on restaurants, cinemas and other businesses and limit the size of gatherings again in the face of record infection levels.

New York's Metropolitan Opera, meanwhile, announced that it will require Covid booster shots from all its musicians and other employees -- some 3,000 people -- as well as anyone attending a performance.

The Omicron risk also elbowed its way into an EU summit meeting in Brussels on Thursday, with predictions the variant could become dominant in the bloc as soon as next month.

But leaders are struggling to forge a united approach to stop the spread, after several countries imposed emergency measures in recent days.

Omicron is "of significant concern obviously, in terms of the capacity of that variant to spread rapidly and create pressure on our societies and our health systems," Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin told journalists in Brussels.

"So today we'll be looking for greater coordination on a number of fronts," he said.

BERLIN — Several European nations started vaccinating children aged five to 11 against COVID-19 on Wednesday in an effort to contain a raging pandemic and keep schools open, while others are still deciding their approach.

Germany, Spain, Greece and Hungary were among those opening up their inoculation drives to younger kids, with doctors reporting strong initial demand from parents amid concerns about the fast-spreading Omicron variant.

Greek Education Minister Niki Kerameus was among the first to arrive at an Athens hospital to have her young son vaccinated, state TV ERT reported.

The country has so far registered more than 30,000 vaccine appointments for kids.

The EU's medicines watchdog last month approved the Pfizer-BioNTech shot for five to 11-year-olds, an age group experiencing high coronavirus infection rates across the continent.

The vaccine is administered in a lower dosage than the Pfizer jab for over-12s, and comes in a paediatric vial with an orange cap to distinguish it from the purple-capped vials for older ages.

Denmark, which has seen a surge in cases attributed to the new Omicron variant, and some Austrian regions already began offering jabs to younger kids in November.

The United States was the first large country to take the plunge and has so far vaccinated more than 5 million children in the 5-11 age bracket.

‘Small cog’ 

“As soon as we offered the vaccine appointments, they were pretty much all snapped up,” said Jakob Maske, a Berlin-based doctor and spokesman for Germany’s association of paediatricians.

But he downplayed expectations of the kids’ jabs heralding a turning point in the fight against COVID-19, at a time when Germany is battling a fierce fourth wave.

“Five to 11-year-olds only make up around three percent of the German population,” he told AFP, describing the kids’ immunisation impact as “a small cog” in the battle.

Germany’s STIKO vaccine commission has officially only recommended the jab for children with pre-existing conditions, but even healthy children will be inoculated if the parents request it.

Some German cities plan to administer kids’ jabs in museums and zoos, while others are mulling mobile vaccination teams outside schools.

The head of Germany’s teachers’ association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, said a high take-up “would significantly increase the chance of keeping schools open as long as possible”.

But like other countries, Germany also grapples with anti-vaccine militancy and Wednesday saw police in the eastern city of Dresden stage raids over death threats against a pro-vaccine public official.

Spain, which has one of Europe’s highest COVID-19 vaccination rates, said it was launching its immunisation campaign for five to 11-year-olds with the goal of breaking the chain of infection “in family settings, schools and the community”.

The country has around 3.3 million children within that age group.

A survey published by Appinio found that 74 percent of Spanish parents of five to 11-year-olds wanted to get their kids jabbed.

Hoping to spur take-up, the Spanish government has released a television commercial showing kids getting the shot so they can “help end the virus and protect the elderly”.

A number of European countries will launch similar vaccination drives in the coming days, including Italy, Portugal, Poland, the Baltic states and the Czech Republic, while others are still finalising their plans.

In France, vaccination has only been approved for five to 11-year-olds at risk of developing serious illness, but the government has said it is considering extending it to all children on a voluntary basis.

Cyprus will begin vaccinating children aged 5 to 11 from Thursday, after Health Minister Michalis Hadjipantela spoke of the “anguish” around the world over “the difficult days we are experiencing”.

Belgium is awaiting the recommendation of its national health body, with a rollout likely around the new year.

In Switzerland, the country’s medical agency has greenlighted the vaccination of kids, but the campaign itself will probably only start in early January.

British regulators are still assessing whether to approve jabs for the five-11 age group, with a decision likely before Christmas.

MAYFIELD, United States — US President Joe Biden arrived in Kentucky on Wednesday to visit tornado-ravaged towns and meet with survivors of the twisters that took scores of lives.

The 79-year-old president flew to Fort Campbell on Air Force One and is to conduct an aerial flyover before visiting Mayfield and Dawson Springs — two towns now synonymous with the damage wrought by the weekend storms.

"We appreciate the president coming down, coming to Mayfield," Bryan Wilson, a lawyer, told AFP as he sifted through the rubble of his firm's decimated downtown building. "It does mean a lot."

Wilson, speaking over the grinding sounds of construction equipment removing debris, said he was trying to salvage legal files, client records, computers — anything that would preserve the integrity of the business.

He said the Democratic president's visit to Kentucky, which voted heavily for Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, signals that people in Washington "do care about rural America".

"And hopefully that gives the incentive for people to stay, to build back," he said.

Wilson said he "can only hope" Biden's trip heals some of the bitter political and cultural divides that have plagued the country in recent years.

"America has been divided for too long," he said. "This is not Republican, this is not Democrat, this is not independent. This is America."

The death toll in Kentucky from the powerful twisters that struck late Friday has been put at 74, but Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has said he expects more victims to be found.

At least 14 people died in Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois.

'We've got common ground here' 

Brad Mills, a 63-year-old orthodontist in Mayfield, said his message to Biden was to expedite federal disaster assistance.

"As divided as we are on so many issues, we've got common ground here," he said

"Let's get the federal aid in here that we need," Mills said. "As divided as we are on so many issues, we've got common ground here."

Mills spoke to AFP outside his office in downtown Mayfield that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him. His son Stuart, who is in dental school, was on the roof putting on a tarp.

Asked if he was going to rebuild his practice, Mills said “that’s going to be the big question.”

“It’s so emotional right now, you can’t make a rational decision.”

Biden is to visit the town of Dawson Springs — 75 per cent of which was destroyed by the tornadoes — after touring Mayfield.

More than 500 National Guard troops have been deployed to help with law enforcement, traffic control and recovery efforts, along with volunteers and associations on the ground to support victims.

Biden declared a major disaster in Kentucky, allowing additional federal aid to be channelled into recovery efforts and has pledged Washington’s support in rebuilding.

“We’re going to be there as long as it takes to help,” he said at the White House on Monday after a meeting dedicated to what he said was one of the country’s worst tornado disasters.

While Biden said it was certain the tornadoes were “unusual”, due in part to the length of their path and the number of places they touched down, he was careful to note that the link between the phenomenon and climate change still needed more investigation.

“We have to be very careful. We can’t say with absolute certainty that it was because of climate change,” Biden said of the tornadoes.

Biden, who has made empathy one of his trademarks, was careful before his departure not to politicise the visit.

“The president looks at people through the tragedy they’re experiencing — the heartache they’re feeling at the loss of life, the loss of their homes,” said Press Secretary Jen Psaki. “He looks at them as human beings, not as people who have partisan affiliations.”