AID workers in hurricane-hit North Carolina have faced threats from members of the public following a rise in conspiracy theories, many of them politically motivated.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) workers were briefly forced to pull out of the US state as false information about land confiscation, cursory aid payments and deliberate weather manipulations rapidly spread.

On Saturday, a man was arrested after allegedly speaking in a shop about harming relief workers and was found with a rifle and handgun.