New Yorkers offered free travel following Sandy chaos

New Yorkers are being offered free travel on subways, buses and commuter trains as the city tries to help ease recovery from the chaos caused by superstorm Sandy.

The news came as officials confirmed that the number of people killed by the storm which battered the east coast of the US had risen to at least 72.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is waiving fares on Thursday and Friday to encourage people to use mass transit instead of driving into the city.

Parts of the city were flooded and lost power when the storm hit on Monday.

Limited subway service is expected to start on Thursday. City buses are running and limited commuter rail services have also started.

To signal the start of the road back to normal life in the city, the United Nations (UN) Security Council held a makeshift meeting after the storms forced the world body to remain mostly closed for a third day.

The council needed to meet on Wednesday because the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force in Somalia was expiring.

Meeting in a temporary chamber at its New York headquarters, the council voted to renew the force’s mandate for one week. The meeting was broadcast live on the UN website.

The UN Secretariat was expected to re-open on Thursday, according to a statement.

Elsewhere, President Barack Obama took a helicopter tour of the devastation caused in New Jersey with Governor Chris Christie.

“We’re going to be here for the long haul,” the president told people at one emergency shelter.

About six million homes and businesses were still without power, mostly in New York and New Jersey. Electricity was out as far west as Wisconsin in the Midwest and as far south as the Carolinas.