US braces for Hurricane Florence

"Life-threatening" Hurricane Florence edged closer to the east coast of the United States yesterday, with tropical-force winds and rain already lashing barrier islands just off the North Carolina mainland.

-Storm downgraded to Category 2 hurricane

- Packs tropical storm-force winds over hundreds of miles

- Intense storm surges, inland flooding expected

- 10 million people in potential disaster zone

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The huge storm weakened to a Category 2 hurricane overnight, but forecasters warned that it still packed a dangerous punch -- 110 mile-an-hour (175 kph) winds and torrential rains.

Georgia joined four other coastal states issuing an emergency declaration as forecasts showed Florence dumping historic amounts of rain on the southern state.

As Florence closed in, President Donald Trump and state and local officials urged residents in the path of the storm to evacuate.

"We are completely ready for hurricane Florence, as the storm gets even larger and more powerful. Be careful!" Trump tweeted.

Appeals to stay safe came from as far away as space. German astronaut Alexander Gerst tweeted pictures of the monster storm taken from the International Space Station along with the warning: "Watch out, America!"

Up to 17 million people are under voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders, and coastal residents were frantically boarding up homes and businesses and hitting the road on Wednesday as the storm approached.

Meanwhile, Trump yesterday rejected the official death toll from last year's Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, saying it had been inflated to almost 3,000 as part of a ploy to make him look bad.

"3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico," Trump tweeted early Thursday. "When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths."

"Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000..." he said, going on to claim: "This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico."

Hurricane Maria killed 2,975 people in Puerto Rico, a long-awaited independent investigation into the 2017 storm concluded last month. It was initially said to have killed just 64 people.