World

PARIS — France's armed forces said on Monday it had carried out a drone strike for the first time, during operations in Mali at the weekend in which it said 40 "terrorists" were killed. 

On Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron had announced that French forces had "neutralised" 33 extremists in the central Malian region of Mopti, in an operation that had started the previous night.

In a statement, the French military command said the drone strike happened during a follow-up operation on Saturday in which another seven extremist fighters were killed.

As French commandos were searching the combat zone in Ouagadou forest, 150 kilometres from the town of Mopti, "they were attacked by a group of terrorists on motorbikes", the statement said.

A Reaper drone and a French Mirage 2000 patrol opened fire to support the ground troops, it said.

"This is the first operational strike by an armed drone," the statement said, confirming an earlier report published in the specialist blog Le Mamouth.

The strike came just two days after the French army announced it had finished testing the remotely-piloted drones for armed operations. 

It has three drones, based near Niamey, the capital of Niger.

The operation at the weekend was in an area controlled by the Katiba Macina, a ruthless extremist group founded by radical Mopti preacher Amadou Koufa.

Two Malian gendarmes who had been held hostage were freed, and French troops seized several armed vehicles, motorbikes and weaponry, "delivering a very heavy blow" to the militants, according to Monday's statement.

France previously said it had killed 25 extremists in two operations in the Sahel this month.

Last month, 13 French soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash as they hunted extremists in the north of Mali — the biggest single-day loss for the French military in nearly four decades.

France has a 4,500-member force which has been fighting extremists in the fragile, sprawling Sahel since 2013. Forty-one soldiers have died.

KABUL —  The Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack on Monday on American troops that killed one US soldier and, according to the insurgents, wounded several more.

The killing is likely to have consequences for ongoing talks between the US and the Taliban. President Donald Trump in September declared negotiations "dead" after the Taliban killed a US soldier in a Kabul bombing.

Negotiations have since restarted in Doha, but were earlier this month put on a "pause" following yet another bombing, this time at the Bagram air base north of Kabul.

In a WhatsApp message to AFP, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said insurgents "blew up an American vehicle in Char Dara district of Kunduz" overnight from Sunday to Monday. He said "several" other US and Afghan forces were also wounded.

US Forces-Afghanistan said one American service member was "killed in action" on Monday.

A US official told AFP that the service member had been inspecting a weapons cache when it exploded.

"This was not the result of an attack as the enemy claims," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kunduz province is in northern Afghanistan and has been the site of repeated insurgent attacks and attempts to seize Kunduz city itself.

 Deadliest year 

Depending on how one qualifies a combat-related death, about 20 American troops have been killed in action in Afghanistan this year following Monday's announcement.

That makes 2019 the deadliest for US forces since combat operations officially finished at the end of 2014, and highlights the woeful security situation that persists across much of Afghanistan.

About 2,400 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in October 2001.

Currently, the Pentagon has 12,000-13,000 troops in Afghanistan. Trump has said he wants to cut that number to about 8,600 or lower as he seeks to show voters he is making good on a campaign pledge to end America's longest war. 

The deal between the US and the Taliban had been all but signed before Trump nixed it at the last moment, though a relative improvement in Kabul's security situation and the release of two Western hostages in a prisoner swap paved the way for a resumption of talks on December 7.

Those talks were paused for a few days following the Bagram attack, but have since started again.

The initial version of the deal would have seen the Pentagon pull thousands of troops out of Afghanistan in return for Taliban guarantees they would tackle Al Qaeda and Daesh.

But some members of Trump's own Republican party, including close confidant Senator Lindsey Graham, say the idea of the Taliban conducting counterterrorism operations is risible.

Monday's attack comes one day after officials announced preliminary results in Afghanistan's presidential elections that put President Ashraf Ghani on track to secure a second term.

Also on Monday, a bomb explosion at a funeral ceremony in Laghman province east of Kabul killed three civilians and wounded nine others, interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said.

He blamed the Taliban for the blast that hit the crowd of mourners at a local tribal leader's funeral.

The Taliban were not immediately available to comment.

BANDUNG, Indonesia — Three university students were found dead in a cave in Indonesia after they were trapped inside by flood waters, officials said on Monday.

A search and rescue operation launched on Sunday retrieved five people alive from Lele cave in West Java after heavy rain hit the area and flooded it, authorities said.

The victims "were trapped inside the cave for quite a while before the team managed to evacuate them", said local search and rescue agency spokeswoman Seni Wulandari.

She added it took an hour for the rescue team to make it into the cave, which is 30 metres below ground level.

The students — part of a university nature club — went there to train in basic caving.

A senior member of the club who helped with the evacuation, Ari Alfian, said the weather was normal when the students entered the cave, but an unexpected heavy downpour hit the area. 

"Water entered the cave like a waterfall. Initially only five students were inside the cave, including the victims," Alfian told AFP on Monday.

"Another three came in to rescue them as the bad weather arrived. They were all trapped but only five managed to survive."

The rainy season started in late November and several regions in Indonesia, including West Java have been hit by bad weather and storms in the past two weeks.

GABORONE, Botswana — Thirteen rhinos have been poached in Botswana in the last two months, the tourism ministry said, as the government tries to crackdown on hunting of the endangered species.

The country is home to just under 400 rhinos, according to Rhino Conservation Botswana, most of them roam the grassy plains of the northern Okavango Delta.

"From October 2019 to date, 13 more rhinos have been poached," the ministry said in a statement released over the weekend, adding that the number of rhinos poached since October 2018 now stands at 31.

Twenty three of those were white rhinoceros and eight were black rhinoceros, which are classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

"This unfortunate situation on the country's population has continued with more rhinos being killed from October 2019 to date," the ministry said.

In October, the government reported nine rhinos had been killed between April and October this year.

The thousands of rhinos that once roamed Africa and Asia have been culled by poaching and habitat loss. Very few are found outside national parks and reserves.

The tourism ministry said the government has stepped up efforts to tackle poaching with interventions leading to the recovery of some horns and hunting weapons.

The ministry reported seven casualties among poachers who were resisting arrest.

Sold for up to 55,000 euros ($60,300) per kilo on the black market, rhino horn is used in traditional medicine or as a symbol of wealth and success.

Botswana's neighbour South Africa lost 769 rhinos to poachers last year, and more than 7,100 animals have been slaughtered over the past decade

There are fewer than 25,000 rhinos left in the wild in Africa due to a surge in poaching, and only 5,000 of them are black rhinos.

NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought Sunday to reassure India's Muslims as a wave of deadly protests against a new citizenship law put his Hindu nationalist government under pressure like never before.

At least 25 people have died in almost two weeks of demonstrations and violence after Modi's government passed the law criticised as anti-Muslim. More protests took place on Sunday.

Addressing party supporters in New Delhi — who cried "Modi! Modi!" at the mention of the law — the 69-year-old said Muslims "don't need to worry at all" provided they are genuine Indians.

"Muslims who are sons of the soil and whose ancestors are the children of mother India need not to worry", Modi told the crowd of thousands.

Accusing the main opposition Congress party of condoning the recent violence by not condemning it, Modi said opponents were "spreading rumours that all Muslims will be sent to detention camps".

"There are no detention centres. All these stories about detention centres are lies, lies and lies," he said.

Modi also said that there had been "no discussion" about a nationwide "register of citizens", which many Muslims in India fear is targeted mainly at them.

Home Minister Amit Shah, Modi's close ally, has said repeatedly that such an exercise will take place, including in parliament aimed at removing all "infiltrators" from India.

This year such a register in Assam state left off 1.9 million people unable to prove they or their forebears were there before 1971. They now face possible statelessness.

Assam has six functional detention centres holding more than 1,000 people in the northeastern state, and plans another 11.

The Home Ministry in June issued a “2019 Model Detention Manual” to states, asking them to set up camps in major entry points.

The demonstrations have been largely peaceful but protesters have also hurled rocks and torched vehicles, while heavy-handed police tactics including the storming of a Delhi university a week ago have fuelled anger.

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered late Saturday in the southern city of Hyderabad. Other protests took place on Sunday, including in Jaipur and Mumbai. Another in favour of the law was held in Bangalore.

The law gives religious minority members — Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Christians and Buddhists — from three neighbouring Islamic countries an easier path to citizenship, but not if they are Muslim.

Islamic groups, the opposition and others at home and abroad fear this forms part of Modi’s aim to marginalise India’s 200 million Muslims and remould the country as a Hindu nation, something he denies.

Authorities have imposed emergency laws, blocked Internet access — a common tactic in India — and shut down shops in sensitive areas across the country in an attempt to contain the unrest.

More than 7,500 people have either been detained under emergency laws or arrested for rioting, according to state officials, with 5,000 in Uttar Pradesh state alone where 17 people have been killed.

Some 500 people have also been injured in Uttar Pradesh including 263 police, while two people were shot dead in the southern state of Karnataka and six died in Assam in the northeast last week.

In Assam, opponents of the legislation fear it will enable large numbers of Bengali-speaking immigrants, many of whom are Hindu, to settle there.

But elsewhere, opponents say the law has made religion a test for citizenship ahead of a nationwide register that Modi wants to carry out by 2024 to remove all “infiltrators”.

The US State Department this week urged New Delhi to “protect the rights of its religious minorities in keeping with India’s constitution and democratic values”.

Modi’s government, reelected in May, has defended the law saying it is meant to help “persecuted” minorites from Muslim-majority Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON — At every campaign rally, Elizabeth Warren, Democratic candidate for the US presidency, waits to hear the first notes of Dolly Parton’s popular country tune “9 to 5” before striding energetically onto the stage to greet wildly enthusiastic supporters.

The musical backdrop to this age-old campaign ritual describes the daily grind of American workers: “Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’/Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’.”

The senator’s song choice — others on her list include “Everyday People” and “Respect” — is anything but accidental, aimed at giving supporters an emotional lift while evoking her own working-class roots.

The 70-year-old Massachusetts progressive is competing against a field of 14 others — all of them deploying playlists at well-choreographed rallies — as they seek voters’ backing in a race to take on President Donald Trump in elections next November.

“The music employed by candidates is chosen with great care in order to appeal to certain audiences or craft an image of the candidate that resonates with the electorate,” Jacob Neiheisel, a political scientist with the University at Buffalo (New York), told AFP.

Senator Bernie Sanders, the feisty, self-declared democratic socialist who is the oldest candidate in the race, opens rallies to the militant tones of John Lennon’s “Power to the People”, an ode to protest and resistance from the 1970s. He also favours “Takin’ It to the Streets”.

And the centrist Joe Biden, who embraces the nickname “Middle-Class Joe”, regularly ends his rallies with gravelly voiced country singer Kenny Chesney (“For the teacher in the classroom, kid kickin’ cans in the street/... We say we can when they say we can’t”).

Country music may not export well but it is extremely popular in the American heartland, particularly among more conservative voters.

Biden served eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president and never misses a chance to highlight his association with the country’s first black president. He includes nearly equal numbers of black and white artists on his playlist.

And Democrat Julian Castro, the only Hispanic candidate in the primary field, strongly favours Latin music — notably by the late Mexican-American star Selena — as he reaches out to this important demographic ahead of the 2020 elections.

Music also allows candidates to create memorable moments — a time-tested approach.

Former president Bill Clinton, a Democrat and avid jazz fan, played this card successfully: When he performed Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” on the saxophone in a TV talk show appearance during the 1992 campaign, voters were surprised but largely enthusiastic at this departure from the traditional gray-suited formality of presidential candidates.

Democrats generally do better among young people than their Republican opponents, and music helps them break through to the 18-to-25 crowd, a key demographic if it can be mobilised to turn out and vote.

The team of Pete Buttigieg, who at 37 is the youngest candidate in the field, created buzz with a campy video of campaign aides dancing to “High Hopes” by the group Panic! at the Disco. (An earlier version of “High Hopes”, by Frank Sinatra, was the 1960 theme song of John F. Kennedy — the nation’s youngest president.)

The Buttigieg video — with aides dancing side-to-side, performing handrolls and claps — has since been imitated many times on social media and is now seen at the Indiana mayor’s rallies.

Sanders is quick to highlight supporters from the traditionally Democratic-leaning entertainment world as he works to again mobilise young voters, as he did in 2016.

Having recently had his praises sung by Cardi B — the former striptease dancer turned rap star — the 78-year-old with unruly white hair was recently seen on Instagram, arm-in-arm with pop princess Ariana Grande, who has an impressive 168 million followers.

On the Republican side, President Donald Trump favours popular and patriotic music for his raucous rallies, like Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA”, a country song from the 1980s that clearly aims to appeal to his political base.

Some choices have been controversial, however.

When Trump aides played Luciano Pavarotti’s spellbinding “Nessun Dorma” at rallies — a song meant to impart a sense of grandeur among the sea of red-hatted supporters — the late tenor’s family protested. The president’s values and Pavarotti’s, they said, were “incompatible”.

Several other artists or their heirs — the Rolling Stones for “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, Queen for “We Are the Champions”, as well as Adele, R.E.M. and Neil Young — have protested what they say is the wrongful appropriation of their iconic tunes at Republican rallies.

KABUL — Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani appeared to have secured a second term, preliminary polling results showed on Sunday, but his main rival immediately vowed to challenge the tally.

After months of political limbo and allegations of fraud and corruption in the September 28 poll, Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC) said Ghani won 50.64 per cent of the vote.

If it holds, the result is enough for Ghani to avoid a run-off. He easily beat his top challenger, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, who scored 39.52 per cent.

A jubilant Ghani gave a televised address, shouting triumphantly while flanked by his two vice presidents. He stopped short of declaring himself winner, but said the election results were a "victory" for all of Afghanistan.

"A government worthy of this great nation will be built," Ghani said.

Candidates now have three days to file any complaints before final results are announced, probably within weeks. Abdullah said he would contest the vote.

"The election commission has unfortunately sided with the fraudsters," Abdullah said in a televised address, when he also demanded a recount in provinces across Afghanistan.

"There is no doubt that we are the winners of the election based on the clean votes of the people," he added.

Abdullah lost to Ghani in 2014 in a divisive election that saw the US intervene to broker an awkward power-sharing deal between the two rivals.

US ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass said it was vital the full electoral process plays out.

"It's important for all Afghans to remember: These results are preliminary. Many steps remain before final election results are certified, to ensure the Afghan people have confidence in the results," Bass wrote on Twitter.

Preliminary results originally due October 19 were repeatedly delayed for what the IEC said were technical issues. Various candidates, particularly Abdullah, alleged fraud.

Observers and candidates have blasted the IEC over its handling of the count and its repeated disregard of the electoral calendar.

The Transparent Electoral Foundation of Afghanistan, an independent watchdog, said the IEC needs to share all information about how it reached its numbers and break down data by polling centre.

IEC Chairwoman Hawa Alam Nuristani said her agency acted with "honesty, loyalty, responsibility and faithfulness".

"We respected every single vote because we wanted democracy to endure," she said.

Many people had stayed away from the vote. Taliban vows to attack polling stations compounded voter apathy and despair that any politician could ever improve the lot of the average Afghan.

On the streets of Kabul after the results were announced, reaction was muted. Few people celebrated or protested.

Anxious Afghans 

The protracted limbo between the vote and the preliminary result heaped additional uncertainty on Afghans who are already anxiously awaiting the outcome of talks between the US and the Islamist extremist Taliban.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which provided support to electoral authorities, welcomed the announcement of preliminary results and called on the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) to listen carefully to any grievances.

"The ECC has an obligation to adjudicate any complaints it receives transparently and thoroughly so the election process may conclude in a credible manner," UNAMA head Tadamichi Yamamoto said.

ECC Chairwoman Zuhra Bayan Shinwari said candidates and their supporters should wait for final results to be announced.

"We are committed to reviewing all the complaints according to the law," she said.

The election was meant to be the cleanest yet in Afghanistan's young democracy.

A German firm supplied biometric machines to stop people from voting more than once. But allegations of vote stuffing, illegal balloting and other fraud came almost as soon as the polls had closed.

Nearly one million of the initial 2.7 million votes were purged owing to irregularities, meaning the election saw by far the lowest turnout of any Afghan poll.

Ultimately, only 1.8 million votes were counted, a tiny number considering Afghanistan's estimated population of 37 million and a total of 9.6 million registered voters.

Abdullah has repeatedly cried foul over 300,000 votes the IEC counted even though his team claims many of these ballots were fake or had been cast outside of polling hours.

Thirty-one per cent of votes were cast by women, the IEC said.

Abdullah's apparent loss to Ghani makes Abdullah a three-time loser and his future in government is uncertain as he has ruled out another power-sharing deal with the president. 

MADRID — The death toll from storms that have battered Spain, Portugal and France rose to nine on Sunday as the region braced for more violent winds and heavy rain.

Storms Elsa and Fabien have flooded rivers, brought down power lines, uprooted trees and disrupted rail and air travel across the region, leaving more than 118,000 households without electricity.

Two people have so far died in Portugal and seven have now been killed in Spain, the worst affected country, after a fisherman was swept off rocks into the sea in Catalonia.

The local government said three police officers and another fisherman had to be rescued after they tried to save the man in the resort town of Sant Feliu de Guíxols, 100 kilometres  northeast of Barcelona.

The deaths in Spain include a South Korean woman killed by debris falling from a building in Madrid and a Dutch man who drowned windsurfing in rough weather off the Andalusian coast.

As a weakened Storm Elsa moved over Britain on Saturday, Storm Fabien quickly moved in, bringing winds of 170 kilometres per hour to Galicia in north-western Spain, forcing the cancellation of 14 flights according to Spanish airport operator Aena.

Some 8,000 households in Galicia were without power due to damage caused to power lines by the wind, local officials said.

Eight Madrid city parks remained shut on Saturday because of the strong winds.

However, Spanish officials said on Sunday that Fabien was moving away quickly.

Parks and cemeteries were also closed in Bordeaux in south-western France on Saturday while the Arlette Gruss circus, which had set up in a big tent in the city’s main square, cancelled three performances.

France’s weather office placed 15 regions in the southwest of the country on orange alert Saturday, as the storm battered its Atlantic coast.

The winds were as fast as 148 kph at Socoa, in the southwest near the border with Spain. Even on the northwest coast of Brittany, winds reached up to 120 kph.

The region was still being buffeted by gusts of up to 90 kilometres an hour on Sunday.

Across southwestern France, violent winds left 110,000 households without electricity, officials said on Sunday.

France’s SNCF rail network cancelled services between Bordeaux, Toulouse and Hendaye in the southwest because of the likelihood of winds blowing trees down on to the line.

Officials on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica closed all the island’s airports because of the approaching storm. Ferry services to the mainland have also been suspended.

Roads into Corsica’s city of Ajaccio were also closed to try to prevent people from getting caught in floods.

GENEVA — One of four Swiss nuclear power stations was permanently disconnectedon  Friday after 47 years of service, marking a first in Switzerland, as the country begins to gradually phase out atomic energy.

The decision to press the “off” button for good at the ageing Muhleberg plant in western Switzerland came amid soaring upkeep costs, and leaves the wealthy Alpine nation with three remaining nuclear plants in service.

“This is the first ever de-commissioning of a power reactor in Switzerland,” Swiss energy company BKW, the plant operator, said in a statement.

Since it was commissioned in November 1972, the plant had pumped out some 130 billion kilowatts per hour of electricity, which is enough to cover the current electrical consumption of the Swiss capital Bern’s some one million inhabitants for more than a century, BKW said.

The shutdown of the plant officially began at 12:30pm (11:30 GMT), with the decisive button-push transmitted live on Swiss television.

But the full decommissioning process is expected to take around 15 years, with reuse of the site likely possible from 2034.

‘Truly historic’ 

“This is truly a historic day,” Swiss Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga told public broadcaster RTS earlier this week.

“The halt of the Muhleberg nuclear plant provides opportunities [for growth] of hydraulic energy and solar power,” she said.

The plant had become the site of repeated protests amid a raging debate about nuclear safety in Switzerland that intensified following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

In the aftermath of Fukushima, Switzerland announced plans to phase out nuclear energy and close its four plants, but no clear timeline has been set.

In early 2013, Muhlberg’s operating license was even extended indefinitely, but just months later, its operator announced its plans to shut it down.

But the decision to close the plant, which has covered around 5 per cent of Switzerland’s energy consumption, was not politically motivated, BKW said.

“This was a business decision,” the company told AFP in an e-mail.

“If we had wanted to keep running our plant in the long term, we would have needed to invest heavily to respond to the technical requirements stipulated by the Swiss Nuclear Safety Inspectorate [ENSI],” it said.

But the closure does mark a clear first step in Switzerland’s planned nuclear phase-out, leaving three plants in operation: Gosgen, Leibstadt and Beznau.

The latter houses two reactors, including one that turned 50 earlier this month, making it Europe’s oldest functioning reactor and the third oldest in operation worldwide.

But despite their advanced age and Switzerland’s stated ambition to gradually exit nuclear — which accounts for about a third of its current power generation — there are no immediate plans to shut down the remaining reactors.

In a popular vote three years ago, the Swiss rejected a call to speed up the phaseout of the plants by decommissioning all reactors over the age of 45.

As a result, the reactors can run for as long as ENSI deems them safe, or for as long as their operators find it financially viable to invest in the required safety upgrades.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump kicked off Christmas vacation on Friday after a series of legislative victories gave him one of his best weeks in office — apart from becoming only the third US president ever impeached.

Surprisingly, for a capital paralysed by Democratic-Republican gridlock and a presidency mired in scandal, a whole string of breakthroughs came through at once.

While Democrats and Republicans tussle over how his Senate impeachment trial will unfold, possibly in January, Trump is fighting to refocus voters' minds on the brighter side of his presidency ahead of the 2020 election.

And as he packed his bags for a golf holiday through the New Year at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Congress handed him ammunition.

Trump signed a giant $1.4 trillion spending deal that the Senate passed on Thursday, ahead of a deadline to avoid leaving the federal government with empty coffers.

Also on Thursday, the House of Representatives, where the Democratic majority had voted for impeachment a day earlier, finally approved a new US-Mexico-Canada free trade deal, known as USMCA.

That will go to the Republican-controlled Senate and on to Trump.

To top it all off, just before departing for Florida Trump signed a $738 billion defence spending bill that includes funding for the creation of one of his pet projects — a new branch of the military called Space Force.

"Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital, and we're leading, but we're not leading by enough, but very shortly we'll be leading by a lot," he said.

"The space force will help us deter aggression and control the ultimate high ground."

Economic boom, election boost? 

One more slice of seasonal cheer was delivered Friday with the White House accepting a formal invitation from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of Trump's leading Democratic foes, to deliver his annual State of the Union speech to Congress on February 4.

Impeachment and the still-to-come trial were not even mentioned.

Not bad for a president who some 48 hours ago was being pilloried by Democrats in the House for betraying his oath of office and impeached on two counts.

Republicans exasperated by Trump's erratic foreign policy, bombastic style and habit of insulting people in public have long wished he would stick to touting the country's roaring economy.

Unemployment is rock bottom, the stock market is hitting record highs and, usually, an incumbent president with a good economy gets a straightforward path to reelection.

The fact that despite these advantages Trump's approval rating is stuck in the low 40 per cent range and almost half the country backs impeachment shows his inherent weaknesses.

But Trump appears to be making more effort to stay on message since his impeachment.

'Doing the best' 

At a rally on Wednesday in the swing state of Michigan — held as the House was voting his impeachment — Trump said the economy would be his shield against any assault from the eventual Democratic challenger in 2020.

"When I'm on the debate stage with one of these characters and they try and say negative stuff, I'll just say, 'Well, here's the story: In the history of our country, this group is doing the best, and that group is doing the best, and the women are doing the best,'" he told the crowd.

"The whole country is doing the best."

Democrats, who are yet to pick a candidate from the big field of hopefuls, say Trump's economic boom and the rosy macro-economic statistics ignore reality for swaths of the country.

At the candidates' latest debate, onThursday, entrepreneur Andrew Yang said his party should focus on those voters, not the drama in Washington.

"We have to stop being obsessed over impeachment, which unfortunately strikes many Americans like a ballgame where you know what the score is going to be," he said.

Democrats should "start actually digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place".

While Democrats limber up to try and bring down Trump, he suffered a rare crack in the wall of his right-wing, evangelical support base when Christianity Today declared him "morally lost".

Trump angrily denounced the magazine, saying it wanted "those of the socialist/communist bent, to guard their religion".

"The fact is, no president has ever done what I have done for Evangelicals, or religion itself!" Trump said in a tweet that illustrated the deeply politicised nature of the US evangelical movement.