World

PHILADELPHIA — In line for Kamala Harris's final rally of this US election campaign in Philadelphia on Monday, enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate and acute concern at the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House were palpable. 

"I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm worried," said Robin Matthews, a community organiser. "If she doesn't win, we're screwed." 

A long queue snaked along the main avenue leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, outside which the vice president was due to address a crowd late in the evening, just hours before polls open on Tuesday.

Matthews, who lives in the Pennsylvania suburbs that will be so crucial in deciding this key swing state in a knife-edge election, said she feared a second Trump presidency.

"He'll ruin everything," she said. "There's no checks and balances anymore (if he is reelected)."

Her 16-year-old son Asher intervened to offer what he felt was at stake in this election: "The preservation of our democratic system."

 'Short end of the stick' 

Under the autumn foliage, percussionists set the mood before a rally where stars such as Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey were expected to attend, and at the foot of the famous museum steps climbed by Sylvester Stallone in an iconic scene from the film "Rocky." 

As a long campaign comes to an end, marked by extraordinary twists and turns in a country that appears more divided than ever, Yvonne Tinsley, a 35-year-old accounting manager, just "want(s) it to be over."

She is fed up with political ads on TV and tired of having to explain to her friends that Facebook and Instagram videos do not count as real news.

She does not expect any political miracles from Harris, though. 

"I understand that Kamala is not going to change everything, but I know that she'll at least be able to start this back on the right track," she said.

For her, too much is at stake if former president Trump returns to power.

"I'm a Black woman in America, so unfortunately, all policies hit me different," she said. 

"Every Supreme Court decision or bad Republican policy, or bad Democratic policy, I get the short end of the stick."

Robert Rudolf, 58, said Trump had "normalized" racism and misogyny.

Wearing a "Harris-Walz" cap and a flannel shirt, he said he comes from a rural Republican-leaning corner of the state, and that it had gotten harder to talk to neighbors about politics.

"We have gotten very divided," he said. "It's very difficult to talk to people on the other side."

Those tensions are raised even higher by Trump's false allegations of voter fraud, said 42-year-old Roxana Rahe.

"Trump is already kind of foreshadowing like that everybody stole the election from him before the election even happened," she sighed.

SEOUL —North Korea fired a salvo of short-range ballistic missiles early Tuesday, Seoul's military said, Pyongyang's second launch in days and just hours before Americans vote for a new president.

Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the launch of "several short-range ballistic missiles," at around 7:30 am Tuesday into waters east of the Korean peninsula. 

"In preparation for additional launches, our military has strengthened surveillance and alertness," it said, adding it was sharing information with Tokyo and Washington.

Tokyo also confirmed the launch, with the prime minister's office saying Pyongyang had "launched a suspected ballistic missile".

On Thursday, the nuclear-armed North test-fired what it said was its most advanced and powerful solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

It was Kim Jong Un's first weapons test since being accused of sending soldiers to Russia. 

It also came just hours after US and South Korean defence chiefs called on Pyongyang to withdraw its troops, warning that North Korean soldiers in Russian uniforms were being deployed for possible action against Ukraine.

On Sunday, South Korea, Japan, and the United States conducted a joint air drill involving a heavy bomber in response to the ICBM launch.

The drill mobilised the US' B-1B bomber, South Korea's F-15K and KF-16 fighter jets, and Japan's F-2 jets.

Such joint drills infuriate Pyongyang, which views them as rehearsals for invasion.

 'Aggressive nature' 

Kim Yo Jong, sister of the country's leader and a key spokesperson, called the drill an "action-based explanation of the most hostile and dangerous aggressive nature of the enemy toward our Republic."

In a statement carried Tuesday by the official Korean Central News Agency, she said the drill was "absolute proof of the validity and urgency of the line of building up the nuclear forces we have opted for and put into practice."

She warned that any "upset of the balance of power between rivals on the Korean peninsula and in the region precisely means a war."

Experts have suggested the spate of weapons tests by Pyongyang could be a bid to distract attention from its purported troop deployment to Russia, or bump itself up the agenda ahead of the US election.

Seoul has long accused the nuclear-armed North of sending weapons to help Moscow fight Kyiv and alleged that Pyongyang has moved to deploy soldiers en mass in the wake of Kim Jong Un's signing of a mutual defence deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.

It has also warned that Russia may be providing new technology or expertise in return for weapons and troops to help them fight Ukraine.

Seoul, a major weapons exporter, has said it is reviewing whether to send weapons directly to Ukraine in response, something it has previously resisted due to longstanding domestic policy that prevents it from providing weaponry into active conflicts.

North Korea has denied sending troops, but its vice foreign minister has said any such deployment would be in line with international law.

VALENCIA, SPAIN — Rescuers resumed their grim search for missing bodies on Tuesday as Spain reeled from a week of loss after its worst floods in decades that have killed 218 people.

The devastating Mediterranean storm that lashed eastern Spain a week ago triggered surging torrents of muddy water that have left a trail of destruction and an unknown number of missing.

Around 17,000 security force and emergency services personnel are working around the clock to repair damaged infrastructure, distribute aid and search for bodies in Spain's largest peacetime deployment of its armed forces.

Firefighters painstakingly combed through piles of damaged vehicles and pumped out water from inundated garages and car parks where more victims may be discovered, AFP journalists saw.

Maribel Albalat, mayor of the ground-zero town of Paiporta, told public broadcaster TVE they were doing "better, but not well" with many streets still inaccessible and residents struggling to get a phone signal.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez chaired a cabinet meeting on Tuesday where Spanish media reported he would declare the stricken regions "gravely affected" to facilitate more aid.

Castilla-La Mancha, Andalusia, Catalonia and Aragon could be included along with the ravaged eastern Valencia region which has suffered almost all the deaths and damage, they said.

Five working groups between the left-wing national government and the conservative-run regional authority have been created to coordinate the recovery in Valencia and overcome their occasionally tetchy relationship.

'Only the people are helping' 

But many survivors are furious with the authorities for failing to warn the population on time last Tuesday and provide urgent rescue and relief work.

That anger reached breaking point in Paiporta on Sunday when crowds heckled and hurled mud at King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia and Sanchez.

"Only the people are helping... And the politicians, where are they? Why didn't they raise the alarm? Murderers!" Matilde Gregori, 57, told AFP in the mud-soaked town of Sedavi.

"They don't know how to take care of their people, let them go home... We know how to do better," said Gregori, whose shop fell victim to the floods.

The authorities have warned survivors to shield themselves from health hazards in the stagnant flood water, which may contain toxic waste, chemicals or bacteria from dead humans and animals.

Biology teacher Jose, 58, wore a mask and gloves during the clean-up of a garage in Sedavi awash with water for almost a week.

"Having stagnant water that can breed germs is a great danger that we want to avoid... we'll see if we can manage," he told AFP.

Storms coming off the Mediterranean are common during this season. But scientists have warned human-induced climate change is increasing the ferocity, length and frequency of extreme weather events.

EAST LANSING, United States — Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours.

The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on Election Day on Tuesday.

Trump predicted a "landslide", while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that "we have momentum -- it's on our side."

The 2024 race is going down to the wire, with more key states effectively tied at this point than in any comparable election. Over 77.6 million people have cast early votes, around half of the total ballots cast in 2020.

With the clock ticking, Harris, 60, spent the day in Michigan where she risks losing the critical support of a 200,000-strong Arab-American community that has denounced US handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

"As president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza," Harris said at the start of her speech at Michigan State University, noting that there were leaders of the community present.

 'Demonic' 

But the rest of the speech was upbeat, with Harris spending more time on urging people to get out and vote than on attacks on Trump.

"We got two days to get this done," she said.

Earlier, Harris quoted scripture in a majority-Black church in Detroit, Michigan and urging Americans to look beyond Trump. 

"Let us turn the page and write the next chapter of our history," she said.

Trump on Sunday zigzagged through Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia -- the three biggest swing-state prizes in the Electoral College system that awards US states influence according to their population.

The 78-year-old Trump, the oldest major party candidate in US history, added to his increasingly dark rhetoric by musing to supporters in Lititz, Pennsylvania, that he wouldn't mind if journalists were shot.

Discussing his near-miss assassination attempt against him in July, he said to laughter that to be hit again "somebody would have to shoot through the fake news -- and I don't mind that so much."

Trump called Democrats "demonic" and, despite no evidence of any meaningful election cheating so far, claimed that Democrats in Pennsylvania "are fighting so hard to steal this damn thing."

Adding to fears that he would not accept a defeat in 2024, Trump added that he "shouldn't have left" the White House after he lost his 2020 reelection effort to Joe Biden.

RFK Jr controversy 

Trump meanwhile said in Macon, Georgia, that he had asked vaccine-skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who dropped his own presidential bid to support Trump, to work on "women's health" and "pesticides."

His comments came a day after Kennedy caused consternation by saying that a Trump White House would order US water systems to remove fluoride from public water supplies.

Later in another rambling speech in Kinston, North Carolina Trump said "we're going to have on Tuesday a landslide that's too big to rig."

The polls however show that the result is likely to be historically tight. 

A final New York Times/Siena poll Sunday flagged incremental changes in swing states, but the results from all seven remained within the margin of error.

Harris got a boost Saturday as the final Des Moines Register poll for Iowa -- seen as a highly credible test of wider public sentiment -- showed a stunning turnaround, with Harris ahead in a state won easily by Trump in 2016 and 2020.

In the last hours, both candidates are desperately trying to shore up their bases, and win over any undecided voters.

Pollsters have noted an erosion in Black support for Harris.

But with abortion rights a top voter concern, her campaign has hailed the large proportion of women turning out among early voters.

KHARKIV, UKRAINE — Thirteen people, including four police officers, were wounded in another night of Russian attacks on Ukraine's second largest city Kharkiv, authorities said Monday.

Kharkiv, which lies near the Russian border, has been shelled persistently since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022.

"The Russian armed forces carried out massive air strikes on Kharkiv and its suburbs," prosecutors said, adding that residential buildings and shops were damaged.

AFP journalists at the scene saw buildings gutted by the blast and emergency services assessing the damage.

Ukraine has for months been urging Western allies to supply more air defence systems to fend off Russian attacks.

Kyiv on Monday said it had downed 50 Iranian-designed Russian drones in nine regions overnight, including over the capital Kyiv.

It also said a Russian cruise missile had struck the Dnipropetrovsk region.

UNITED NATIONS, UNITED STATES — United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was "very concerned" on Sunday about reports that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia, and at their possible deployment to the conflict zone of Ukraine.

"The Secretary-General is very concerned about reports of troops from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea being sent to the Russian Federation, including their possible deployment to the conflict zone," said Stephane Dujarric, the UN chief's spokesman.

US intelligence has said North Korean forces have made their way to Russia's Kursk border region, with Washington and Seoul urging Pyongyang to withdraw its troops. 

North Korea and Russia have not denied the troop deployment reports, with the grinding war in Ukraine still ongoing more than 2.5 years after Moscow invaded its neighbor. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday the deployment of North Korean troops against Ukrainian forces could happen "in the coming days."

On Sunday, Guterres said such a deployment would be "a very dangerous escalation" of the war in Ukraine. 

"Everything must be done to avoid any internationalization of this conflict," he said, while reiterating a call for "meaningful efforts" to end the war.

North Korea and Iran have emerged as Russia's main backers in Ukraine, with both believed to be supplying Moscow with military hardware.

Pyongyang is widely believed to be offering military support in return for Russian nuclear technology. 

MOSCOW — Russia on Sunday claimed to have captured another Ukrainian village, just a dozen kilometres from the key eastern logistics hub Pokrovsk, as its troops advance rapidly.

The Russian defence ministry said it had "liberated the settlement of Vichneve following offensive operations".

Russia has been making swift advances in the eastern Donetsk region for weeks, taking dozens of towns and villages.

On Saturday, Moscow said its forces had captured the large village of Kurakhivka close to the industrial town of Kurakhove, which Russia is also aiming to capture, and the small village of Pershotravneve in the Kharkiv region close to the eastern Lugansk region.

Capturing Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub for Ukraine that connects several fortresses in the Donbas, is one of Russia's main objectives in the region.

It is also home to a major coke coal mine that is crucial to Ukraine's steel production for its military.

Russian troops have advanced to just a few kilometres outside the town.

The Russian army took 478 square kilometres  of Ukrainian territory in October, according to an AFP analysis of data from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

That marks a record since the first weeks of the conflict in March 2022.

VALENCIA, SPAIN — Spain is deploying 10,000 more troops and police officers to the eastern Valencia region devastated by historic floods that have killed 213 people, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday.

Hopes of finding survivors ebbed four days after torrents of muddy water wrecked towns and infrastructure in the European country's worst such disaster in decades.

Almost all the deaths have been in the Valencia region, where thousands of security and emergency services frantically cleared debris and mud in the search for bodies.

Sanchez said in a televised address that the disaster was the second deadliest flood in Europe this century and announced a huge increase in the security forces dedicated to relief works.

The government had accepted the Valencia region leader's request for 5,000 more troops and informed him of a further deployment of 5,000 police and civil guards, Sanchez said.

Spain was carrying out its largest deployment of army and security force personnel in peacetime, he added.

 Flood aid distribution 

Restoring order and distributing aid to destroyed towns and villages, some of which have been cut off from food, water and power since Tuesday's torrent, is a priority.

Authorities have come under fire over the warning systems before the floods, and some stricken residents have complained the response to the disaster is too slow.

"I am aware the response is not enough, there are problems and severe shortages... towns buried by mud, desperate people searching for their relatives... we have to improve," Sanchez said.

In the ground-zero towns of Alfafar and Sedavi, AFP reporters saw no soldiers while residents shovelled mud from their homes and firefighters pumped water from garages and tunnels.

"Thank you to the people who have come to help us, to all of them, because from the authorities, nothing," a furious Estrella Caceres, 66, told AFP in Sedavi.

Authorities in the Valencia region have restricted access to roads for two days to allow emergency services to carry out search, rescue and logistics operations more effectively.

A video circulating in Spanish media on Saturday showed the head of a civil protection team celebrating the rescue of a person who had been trapped in a car for three days.

With telephone and transport networks severely damaged, establishing a precise figure of missing people is difficult.

Sanchez said electricity had been restored to 94 per cent  of homes affected by power outages and that around half of the cut telephone lines had been repaired.

Some motorways have reopened but local and regional roads resembled a "Swiss cheese", meaning certain places would probably remain inaccessible by land for weeks, Transport Minister Oscar Puente told El Pais daily.

- King to visit -

Ordinary citizens carrying food, water and cleaning equipment continued their grassroots initiative to assist the recovery on Saturday. 

Around 1,000 set off from the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia towards nearby towns laid waste by the floods, an AFP journalist saw.

Authorities have urged people to stay at home to avoid congestion on the roads that would hamper the work of emergency services.

Spanish media reported King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia are due to visit the Valencia area on Sunday with Sanchez and regional leader Carlos Mazon.

Mazon called the floods "the worst moment in our history" on Saturday and laid out a series of proposals to help his region recover, ranging from infrastructure to economic support.

The storm that sparked the floods on Tuesday formed as cold air moved over the warm waters of the Mediterranean and is common for this time of year.

But scientists warn climate change driven by human activity is increasing the ferocity, length and frequency of such extreme weather events.

Emergency services late Saturday issued an updated of toll of 213 people confirmed killed , 210 in the Valencia region, two in neighbouring Castilla-La Mancha and one in Andalusia in the south.

Authorities have warned the toll could yet rise however as vehicles trapped in tunnels and underground car parks are cleared.

GASTONIA, UNITED STATES  - Kamala Harris and Donald Trump dueled across the swing states Saturday on the final weekend of the tensest US election of modern times, with the Democrat urging voters to "turn the page" on the Republican's scorched-earth brand of politics.

Seventy five million people have already cast early ballots as the hours tick down to the Election Day climax Tuesday.

The country, and the world, could then face a nail-biting wait to know whether Harris becomes the first US woman president or Trump secures a spectacular return to power after his unprecedented and at times violent campaign to overturn his 2020 re-election loss to Joe Biden.

The rivals literally crossed paths Saturday, with Harris's official vice presidential Air Force Two and Trump's personal jet sharing the airport tarmac in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Both held rallies in North Carolina, while Harris also spoke to supporters in Georgia, another of the seven swing states seen as the keys to victory in an otherwise dead-even nationwide contest. Trump added in a stop in Virginia.

The rounds of high-stakes speeches before thousands of people at each stop continue Sunday when Harris holds multiple events in the swing state of Michigan and Trump rallies with supporters in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Most polls show Trump, 78, and Harris, 60, within the margin of error from each other across the swing states.

However, there was a surprise boost for Harris when one of the most respected pollsters in the country dropped a new survey in the Des Moines Register that shows the Democrat three points ahead of Trump in Iowa, a state he won easily both in his victorious 2016 presidential campaign and again in his narrow 2020 defeat.

Reflecting Harris's drive to hit every possible target before Tuesday, her plane unexpectedly took a detour to New York for an appearance on the legendary Saturday Night Live television comedy show.

Women and dark rhetoric 

For Harris, a key electorate is women voters angered over the ruling by justices appointed by then-president Trump to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, ending a decades-long constitutional right to abortion.

"Donald Trump's not done. He will ban abortion nationwide," Harris said in Atlanta, Georgia.

She painted Trump as "increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge" and "out for unchecked power."

"We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump who spends full time trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other," she said.

Trump, stirring up his right-wing base, continued to deliver increasingly dark rhetoric.

In Salem, Virginia, he began his speech by saying "I've come today with a message of hope for all."

But he was soon back to conjuring the apocalyptic vision he'd laid out hours earlier in North Carolina.

Calling his opponent "low IQ" and "stupid," he said Harris would usher in an economic "depression," asking the crowd: "Do you want to lose your job and maybe your house and pension?"

Earlier, he warned women that without him in the White House, violent criminals would threaten them in their homes.

Trump has worked hard to appeal to men, appearing on podcasts with martial artists, spending time in barbershops and meeting with crypto entrepreneurs. With Harris getting a surge in support from women, some predict a dramatic gender gap in the results.

Thousands demonstrated Saturday in central Washington for a Women's March.

Sheridan Steelman, a 74-year-old part-time English teacher, said she'd previously been on the sidelines but was voting now for Harris.

"There's too much at stake," she said, noting her worries over reproductive health issues but also "being ignored and silenced."

 Election conspiracy theory 

Trump refuses to say whether he would accept a loss, sparking fears of unrest.

Businesses in the US capital have begun boarding up storefronts as city authorities warn of a "fluid, unpredictable security environment."

Trump is already alleging fraud and cheating in swing states such as Pennsylvania, much as he did in 2020 ahead of his unprecedented attempt to overturn the election, culminating in the attack by followers on the US Capitol.

On Saturday he claimed he could win in Virginia, despite no polls indicating this, and said even heavily Democratic California would vote for him "if we had an honest election."

The candidates' frantic schedules will run right into Monday, culminating with late-night rallies,  in Grand Rapids, Michigan for Trump and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for Harris.