Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have been holding talks in the Chinese capital, Beijing, with a raft of meetings and events taking place on Thursday and Friday.
The US leader was greeted with a gun salute, cheering children and a tour of the stunning 15th Century Temple of Heaven.
Trump is also joined in Beijing by tech bosses, including Tesla’s Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and Trump’s son Eric.
On Thursday evening, a lavish banuquet at the Great Hall of the People was held in honour of the occasion.
BBC reporters were able to see the banquet menu, with the main course including lobster in tomato soup, Beijing roast duck and pan-fried pork bun.
Dessert options included trumpet shell-shaped pastry and tiramisu.
In a banquet speech, President Xi called it a “historic visit”, adding “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and “Make America great again” can go hand in hand.
China-US relations are the most important bilateral relations in the world, Xi says.
Their relations concern the well-being of the two countries of 1.7 billion population, and the interests of over 8 billion people in the world, he added.
Trump spoke, saying he received a “magnificent welcome like no other”.
He then invited Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, to visit the White House on 24 September.
Among those spotted at Thurday’s banquet were Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Eric and Lara Trump.
Musk was accompanied by his son X Æ A-12.
Trump landed in Beijing on Wednesday evening, where he was greeted by youths waving American and Chinese flags as he walked the red carpet with Vice President of China Han Zheng.
On Thursday, Trump was welcomed at an arrival ceremony with Xi at China’s Great Hall of the People.
After shaking hands, Trump and Xi walked the red carpet and inspected Chinese troops who lined up in impeccably neat rows.
Dozens of children also lined up along the red carpet and waved mini flags and bouquets.
Joining Trump on his trip to China are some of the US’s top business leaders, including Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, and Larry Fink of BlackRock.
Jensen Huang, the boss of Nvidia, a company which has been central to the US-China technology rivalry, was reportedly a last-minute addition. (BBC)
French President Emmanuel Macron urged investment in Africa on Monday as he co-hosted an economic summit in Kenya, after defending European involvement on the continent.
The European leader, speaking at the University of Nairobi, said Africa “needs investment to become more sovereign”, replacing aid with economic opportunities.
Speaking in French, Macron said that previously European chiefs would lecture African leaders on what they needed, but, “this is no longer what Africa needs or wants to hear”.
“That’s just as well, because we, too, no longer have the means, if we’re being honest,” he said.
Ahead of the summit, in an interview with the magazines Jeune Afrique and The Africa Report, the French leader said he first strongly condemned colonialism when he came to power in 2017.
In contrast, the United States and China were locked in a trade standoff, with no respect for the rules, he added.
On critical minerals and rare earths, China, he said, “operates according to a predatory logic: it does the processing at home” and creates “dependencies with the rest of the world”.
Macron, leading the two-day summit aimed at renewing France’s engagement with Africa after years of strained ties with its former colonies, said Europe was instead promoting “a strategy of autonomy” for both continents.
Central to transforming Africa’s fortunes should be an overhaul of international finance, to set up a system of financial guarantees to bring in private investment, he added. (Channels)
Britain’s King Charles III has used a speech in front of the United States Congress to pledge NATO unity and call for support for Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion.
The address on Tuesday came during the royal’s four-day visit to the US, with the US-Israel war with Iran, US President Donald Trump’s criticism of NATO, and trade tensions between the longtime allies looming large.
But Charles avoided any reference to specific frictions during his speech at the US Capitol, instead striking a light tone in his joke-heavy opening.
He praised what he called the shared history and values of the two countries, quipping at one point that Washington, DC was “a tale of two Georges”, the first US President George Washington and his ancestor, the UK’s King George.
He assured lawmakers, to laughs, he was not in the US “as part of some cunning rearguard action” in a delayed continuation of the Revolutionary War.
“I am here on this great occasion in the life of our nations to express the highest regard and friendship of the British people to the people of the United States,” the sovereign said to repeated standing ovations.
But amid broad themes of unity, more pointed messages lurked.
Charles did not directly address the US-Israel war with Iran or Trump’s outspoken criticism of NATO allies who have rejected joining Washington’s war efforts.
Instead, he praised support for NATO and the alliance’s invocation of its Article 5 collective defence treaty in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
“We answered the call together, as our people have done so for more than a century, shoulder to shoulder through two world wars, the Cold War, Afghanistan and moments that have defined our shared security,” he said.
He then turned to funding for Ukraine, an increasingly pointed issue in the Republican-controlled US Congress.
“Today, Mr Speaker, that same unyielding resolve is needed for the defence of Ukraine and her most courageous people,” he said, referring to House Speaker Mike Johnson.
In one instance, Charles hailed the “$430 billion in annual trade that continues to grow, the $1.7 trillion in mutual investment that fuels that innovation”.
Last week, Trump threatened to impose a “big tariff” on the UK if it did not drop a digital services tax on US tech companies.
At another point, Charles pointed to global environmental concerns.
“We ignore, at our peril, the fact that these natural systems, in other words, nature’s own economy, provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security,” he said.
Trump has called climate change a “con job” and withdrew from the landmark Paris Agreement climate accords during his first and second terms. His administration has since pursued deregulation of fossil fuels and pivoted away from green energy, an approach embraced by many members of the president’s Republican party.
Other messages appeared to gently reference political trends in the US, where critics have accused Trump of using the Department of Justice for political retribution and of overturning long-standing norms of presidential authority.
Charles described the “common ideals” of the US and UK: “The rule of law, the certainty of stable and accessible rules, an independent judiciary, resolving disputes and delivering impartial justice”.
He also drew a throughline between the Magna Carta, the 13th-century document that established that the British king was subject to law, and constitutional and legal precedent in the US, calling it “the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances”.
The address came shortly before Trump was set to host Charles and his wife, Queen Camilla, for an official state dinner.
The pair were then set to visit New York and Virginia, before an official farewell ceremony at the White House on Thursday. (AlJazeera)
The US’s top media watchdog announced on Tuesday that it is accelerating the review of eight local broadcasting licenses used by ABC, in a move critics see as a clear example of political and regulatory retribution against a disfavored broadcaster.
The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) announcement comes after the White House launched a full-on attack against the ABC’s late-night host, Jimmy Kimmel, over a joke he made last week about Melania Trump.
On Monday, Donald Trump called for Kimmel to be fired over the segment, in which Kimmel said that the first lady has “a glow like an expectant widow”. The joke was made two days before an attempted shooting – allegedly targeting Trump’s administration – interrupted the annual White House correspondents’ dinner.
The FCC – led by Trump-appointed chair Brendan Carr – does not grant licenses to national television networks; rather, it licenses each individual station that broadcasts using the public airwaves.
ABC owns and operates eight stations, though it has content agreements with many more. Those eight stations – WABC-TV New York, KABC-TV Los Angeles, WLS-TV Chicago, WPVI-TV Philadelphia, KTRK-TV Houston, KGO-TV San Francisco, WTVD-TV Raleigh-Durham and KFSN-TV Fresno – are the ones being targeted by Carr’s FCC.
Those stations were not scheduled to have to apply for renewal until 2028 at the earliest and 2031 at the latest. But now they are required to file for renewal by 28 May, years ahead of when they were originally required to do so. The FCC announcement appears connected to an investigation launched by the agency early last year into ABC parent company Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices.
“Specifically, FCC rules provide that whenever the FCC regards an application for a renewal of a license as essential to the proper conduct of an investigation, the FCC has the authority to call the broadcaster’s licenses in for early renewal. Doing so both allows the FCC to conduct its ongoing investigation and enables the FCC to ensure that the broadcaster has been meeting its public interest obligations more broadly,” David J Brown, chief of the video division at the FCC’s media bureau, wrote in a memo. “The FCC determines that calling in Disney’s ABC licenses for early renewal, at this time, under the Communications Act’s public interest standard is essential within the meaning of agency regulations.”
In a statement, a Disney spokesperson acknowledged that the company has received notice of the expedited renewal process. “ABC and its stations have a long record of operating in full compliance with FCC rules and serving their local communities with trusted news, emergency information and public‑interest programming,” the spokesperson said. “We are confident that record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the first amendment and are prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels. Our focus remains, as always, on serving viewers in the local communities where our stations operate.”
On a conservative podcast published on Tuesday, Carr weighed in on the DEI-related investigation and said: “There’s evidence that Disney has been pretty bad. There’s evidence suggests that Disney literally was dividing and categorizing employees based on race and gender, and potentially – we’ll see what the evidence establishes, ultimately – giving different opportunities to people based on their race or gender or other protected class. And we’re going to get some more discovery from Disney on that. But that could raise character questions about the company long-term.”
Carr, on the podcast, said that license renewals can be “accelerated” if there are “significant concerns” about how a network is operating, and questions about whether it is doing so in the public interest. If the FCC determines that a broadcaster is in violation, the next step would be a hearing designation, which Carr said was a “multi-month process”.
Anna M Gomez, the lone Democrat on the FCC, has decried any attempt to speed up the license renewal process for ABC – or any other television network that has been targeted by the Trump administration. “This is unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere,” she wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. “This political stunt won’t stick. Companies should challenge it head-on. The First Amendment is on their side.”
In an interview with the Guardian last month, Gomez said the license renewal apparatus is intentionally onerous and time-consuming to prevent any appearance of partisan decision-making.
“If they are trying to take adverse action through the license renewal process, that is an arduous, long, process with multi-layers of decisions that have to be made by different parties that are meant to protect broadcasters from capricious and arbitrary action from the commission,” Gomez said.
Tom Wheeler, who served as chair of the FCC during Barack Obama’s presidency, told the Guardian on Tuesday that Carr “has turned [the FCC] into a political organization using policy to achieve political goals” rather than “a policy agency operating in a political environment”.
While Wheeler said that Carr has the ability to schedule consideration of ABC’s license renewals, any adverse decision would ultimately be appealable – and he noted that license denials are exceedingly rare.
Wheeler said that a denial of ABC’s licenses “would have a hard time at the courts”, though he doesn’t see that as the goal. “There are two message: there’s a message that goes to the Maga base that says, ‘Boy, I’m going at them.’ There’s a message that goes to the president that says, ‘Boy, am I carrying forth what you want me to do.’ And then there’s a message to every licensee of the FCC that says, ‘I can do this to you too.’”
In February, Carr confirmed that the FCC is also investigating the ABC daytime talkshow The View for a potential violation of rules around providing equal time for opposing political candidates.
Despite calls by Trump and his wife Melania for ABC to take action against Kimmel, his show aired as scheduled on Monday night. “It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am,” Kimmel explained to viewers. “It was not – by any stretch of the definition – a call to assassination. And they know that. I’ve been very vocal for many years, speaking out against gun violence, in particular.”
In September, Carr reportedly pressured television station groups to pre-empt Kimmel’s show as punishment for a comment that he made in the wake of the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. Two right-leaning broadcast groups, Sinclair and Nexstar, did so, and ABC opted to “indefinitely” pull Kimmel’s show. Kimmel ultimately returned to the air a week later. Carr later claimed that his comments about Kimmel’s show did not amount to a threat.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, issued a statement on Tuesday calling out Carr’s FCC. “The FCC is neither the journalism police nor the humor police,” he said. “This is nothing but illegal jawboning intended to intimidate ABC into kissing the ring.”
“The FCC has no authority to cancel broadcasters’ licenses because of their perceived political views. But this isn’t just about the rights of Disney and ABC. President Trump is trying to consolidate control over what Americans see and hear on the radio, television, and social media,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement.
“If he gets his way, we’ll have only government-aligned media organizations that broadcast only government-approved news and commentary. It would be difficult to imagine an outcome more corrosive to democracy or more offensive to the first amendment.” (Guardian)
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says his government is developing a government-owned investment fund.
Carney said on Monday that the fund, a first for the country, will invest in major Canadian industrial projects in areas such as energy, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and technology. It will begin at 25 billion Canadian dollars (US$18bn).
The prime minister said the federal government will put up funds alongside private investors. The money will help finance major projects that Carney’s government is focused on building as Canada seeks to diversify away from the United States.
US President Donald Trump has threatened Canada’s economy and sovereignty with tariffs and claims that Canada could be “the 51st state” in the US.
Carney is a former central banker in England and Canada as well as chairman of the board of directors for Bloomberg.
“We take a lesson from other jurisdictions that had the foresight many decades ago to start sovereign wealth funds,” Carney said. “In some cases, they began with a domestic focus then outgrew the scale of the domestic focus.”
Sovereign wealth funds invest in assets, such as stocks, bonds and real estate. They are typically funded by a country’s budgetary surpluses, which Canada currently does not have. The announcement came a day before Carney’s government announces its spring economic update.
There are more than 90 sovereign wealth funds around the world. They manage more than $8 trillion in assets, according to the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, a London-based organisation made up of roughly 50 of these entities.
Trump ordered the creation of a US sovereign wealth fund last year. In the US, more than 20 sovereign wealth funds exist at the state level, according to an analysis from the Center for Global Development, a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan think tank. (AlJazeera)
North Korea fired ballistic missiles into the sea on Sunday, accelerating its missile launches amid Iran war tensions and talk of possible meetings with the U.S. and South Korea.
Pyongyang’s intense missile activity – this was the fourth such launch this month and the seventh of the year – is meant to display its self-defence capabilities while gaining international leverage, some experts said.
“The missile launches may be a way of showing that – unlike Iran – we have self-defense capabilities,” said South Korean former presidential security adviser Kim Ki-jung.
“The North also appears to be exerting pressure preemptively and make a show of force before engaging in dialogue with the United States and South Korea,” he said.
The seven-week-old U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, which has as one aim the curbing of Tehran’s nuclear program, could reinforce Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, experts and former South Korean officials say.
U.S. President Donald Trump, preparing for a summit in China next month, and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung have repeatedly expressed interest in holding talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. There are no publicly known plans for any meetings.
Lee recently conveyed regret to the North for drone incursions from the South, receiving rare praise from Pyongyang.
Sunday’s missiles were fired from near the city of Sinpo on North Korea’s east coast toward the sea around 6:10 a.m. and flew about 140 km, South Korea’s military said in a statement.
Japan’s government posted on social media that the missiles were believed to have fallen near the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, and no incursion into Japan’s exclusive economic zone had been confirmed.
South Korea’s presidential Blue House convened an emergency security meeting, calling the launches a provocation that violated U.N. Security Council resolutions, according to media reports. It urged Pyongyang to “stop the provocative acts”.
It was not clear what kind of ballistic missiles were fired, but Sinpo has submarines and equipment for test-firing submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The North last fired a ballistic missile from a submarine in May 2022, and it flew as far as 600 km.
North Korea has made “very serious” advances in its ability to turn out nuclear weapons, with the probable addition of a new uranium enrichment facility, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday.
In late March, North Korean leader Kim said Pyongyang’s status as a nuclear-armed state was irreversible and expanding a “self-defensive nuclear deterrent” was essential to national security. (JapanToday)
Lionel Messi is being sued by a Miami-based event promoter who says the soccer icon violated terms of a $7 million contract by missing an exhibition match last year.
Vid Music Group filed the lawsuit for fraud and breach of contract against Messi and the Argentine Football Association in Miami-Dade circuit court last month, according to court records.
Messi and the AFA didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Considered one of the greatest soccer players ever, Messi appears with both his Major League Soccer club Inter Miami and Argentina’s national team, and fans routinely pay much higher prices for the chance to see him play.
According to the lawsuit, Vid signed a deal with the AFA last summer for exclusive rights to organize and promote Argentina’s friendlies last October against Venezuela and Puerto Rico in exchange for ticket, broadcast and sponsorship revenue. Vid claims that Messi was supposed to play for at least 30 minutes in each match, unless he was injured.
The 38-year-old Messi watched Argentina’s 1-0 win against Venezuela on Oct. 10 from a suite at South Florida’s Hard Rock Stadium, according to the lawsuit.
The next day, Messi scored two goals in Inter Miami’s 4-0 MLS win over Atlanta. That match was important to Inter Miami, since it gave them home-field advantage for Round 1 of the playoffs.
Then, on Oct. 14, Messi played in Argentina’s 6-0 win over Puerto Rico. That game was originally supposed to take place in Chicago, but low ticket sales in the city where Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were making more than 1,000 arrests led organizers to move the game to Florida. AFA blamed the immigration crackdowns when the smaller venue in Fort Lauderdale didn’t sell out, even after ticket prices were reduced to $25 each.
Vid hasn’t specified damages they’re seeking in the lawsuit, but they claim they lost millions between Messi failing to appear in one game and low ticket sales at the other. (JapanToday)
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni lacks courage and has let Washington down, U.S. President Donald Trump told an Italian newspaper on Tuesday, delivering a blunt public rebuke to one of his closest European allies.
Meloni had been a vociferous supporter of Trump, but she distanced herself from him after he went to war with Iran in February, and on Monday she openly criticized him for lashing out at Pope Leo, saying his verbal assault was “unacceptable”.
Trump responded in an interview with Corriere della Sera, saying Meloni was “very different from what I thought” and denouncing her for refusing to help re-open the Strait of Hormuz, which has been blocked by Iran.
“I’m shocked by her. I thought she had courage. I was wrong,” he was quoted as saying in the Italian-language article.
The White House declined to comment on the reported quotes. Meloni’s office also declined to comment, but politicians of all stripes rallied to her defence, including Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, head of the coalition Forza Italia party.
“We are, and will remain, sincere supporters of Western unity and steadfast allies of the United States, but that unity is built on loyalty, respect and mutual frankness,” he said, applauding Meloni for denouncing Trump’s attack on the pope.
“On Pope Leo XIV, she said exactly what all of us Italian citizens think,” he added in a statement on X.
Trump’s criticism marked a dramatic change in tone toward Meloni, the only European leader to attend his inauguration in 2025 and whom he had hailed as “a great leader” just one month ago.
On Tuesday he accused her of failing to back U.S. efforts to tackle Iran’s nuclear program and guarantee energy flows through the Gulf, saying she wanted America “to do the job for her.”
Asked about her condemnation of his comments on Pope Leo, he said: “She is the one who is unacceptable, because she does not care whether Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow Italy up in two minutes if it had the chance.”
The reprimand capped a tumultuous month for Meloni, who lost a crunch referendum on judicial reform in March and then saw her political ally Viktor Orban ousted from power in Hungary.
The U.S.-Israeli war in the Gulf threatens to upend the economy with surging energy costs and is hugely unpopular with Italians, putting Meloni on a collision course with Trump.
Seeking to distance herself from the conflict, she refused to let U.S. fighters use an air base in Sicily for combat operations in Iran last month and on Tuesday, she suspended a military cooperation pact with Israel.
Trump said the surge in energy prices should have encouraged Italy, which is heavily dependent on oil and gas imports, to help re-open the Strait of Hormuz.
“They pay the highest energy costs in the world and are not even ready to fight for the Strait of Hormuz… They depend on Donald Trump to keep it open,” Trump said. (JapanToday)
Hungarian voters on Sunday ousted long-serving Prime Minister Viktor Orban after 16 years in power, rejecting the authoritarian policies and global far-right movement that he embodied in favor of a pro-European challenger in a bombshell election result with global repercussions.
Election victor Péter Magyar, a former Orbán loyalist who campaigned against corruption and on everyday issues like health care and public transport, has pledged to rebuild Hungary’s relationships with the European Union and NATO — ties that frayed under Orban. European leaders quickly congratulated Magyar.
It’s not yet clear whether Magyar’s Tisza party will have the two-thirds majority in parliament to govern without a coalition. With 77% of the vote counted, it had more than 53% support to 38% for Orban’s governing Fidesz party.
It’s a stunning blow for Orban, a close ally of both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Orban conceded defeat after what he called a ″painful″ election result.
“I congratulated the victorious party,″ Orban told followers. “We are going to serve the Hungarian nation and our homeland from opposition,″ he said.
‘’Thank you, Hungary!” Magyar posted on X, as thousands of his supporters thronged the banks of the Danube in Budapest, chanting “We got it! We did it!”
Orban, the EU’s longest-serving leader and one of its biggest antagonists, who has traveled a long road from his early days as a liberal, anti-Soviet firebrand to the Russia-friendly nationalist admired today by the global far-right.
Turnout by 6:30 p.m. was over 77%, according to the National Election Office, a record number in any election in Hungary’s post-Communist history.
The parties of both Orban and Magyar said they had received reports of electoral violations, suggesting some results could be disputed by both sides.
“I’m asking our supporters and all Hungarians: Let’s stay peaceful, cheerful, and if the results confirm our expectations, let’s throw a big, Hungarian carnival,” Magyar said.
Mark Radnai, Tisza’s vice president, also called for reconciliation after a tense campaign. “We can’t be each other’s enemies. Reach out, hug your neighbors, your relatives. It’s the day of reunification.”
The EU will be waiting to see what Magyar does about Ukraine. Orban repeatedly frustrated EU efforts to support Ukraine in its war against Russia’s full-scale invasion, while cultivating close ties to Putin and refusing to end Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy imports.
Recent revelations have shown a top member of Orban’s government frequently shared the contents of EU discussions with Moscow, raising accusations that Hungary was acting on Russia’s behalf within the bloc.
Orban occupied an outsized role in far-right populist politics worldwide.
Members of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement are among those who see Orban’s government and his Fidesz political party as shining examples of conservative, anti-globalist politics in action, while he is reviled by advocates of liberal democracy and the rule of law.
Casting his ballot in Budapest, Marcell Mehringer, 21, said he was voting “primarily so that Hungary will finally be a so-called European country, and so that young people, and really everyone, will do their fundamental civic duty to unite this nation a bit and to break down these boundaries borne of hatred.”
During his 16 years as prime minister, Orban launched harsh crackdowns on minority rights and media freedoms, subverted many of Hungary’s institutions and been accused of siphoning large sums of money into the coffers of his allied business elite, an allegation he denies.
He also heavily strained Hungary’s relationship with the EU. Although Hungary is one of the smaller EU countries, with a population of 9.5 million, Orban has repeatedly used his veto to block decisions that require unanimity.
Most recently, he blocked a 90-billion euro ($104 billion) EU loan to Ukraine, prompting his partners to accuse him of hijacking the critical aid.
Magyar, 45, rapidly rose to become Orban’s most serious challenger.
Donald Trump’s remarks about Pope Leo XIV were “unacceptable”, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has said.
The US president accused the pontiff of being “WEAK on Crime and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a long Truth Social post, later telling reporters he was “not a big fan”.
“The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and normal for him to call for peace and to condemn every form of war,” Meloni said in a statement.
Meloni, who is a Catholic and heads a right-wing coalition government, is a close ally of Trump and had so far been reluctant to condemn the US president’s harsh criticism of Pope Leo.
Italian opposition parties have criticised Meloni for failing to speak out promptly.
Her coalition partner Matteo Salvini, the leader of the populist League party, said that “attacking the Pope… doesn’t seem like a useful or intelligent thing to do.”
After Trump’s remarks, the Pope told reporters en route to Algeria that he did not want to get into a debate with Trump but would continue to promote peace.
Pope Leo has said he has “no fear” of the Trump administration and will continue to speak out against war after the US president launched an unusual and scathing attack over his stance on the Iran conflict.
He has been a staunch critic of the Iran war, calling Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilisation “unacceptable” and calling for him to find an “off-ramp” to end the conflict.
On Monday, Trump doubled down on his criticism, saying he would not apologise to the “very weak” Pope.
In general, it is rare for a Pope to directly address statements by world leaders.
There are more than 70 million Catholics in the US, about 20% of the population. They include Trump’s Vice-President JD Vance.
Trump’s comments came as the pontiff embarked on an 11-day trip to Africa, his second major foreign trip since being elected last year.
The US president wrote in Sunday’s post that the Pope “should get his act together” and said he was “weak on nuclear weapons”, apparently referring to Tehran’s attempts to become a nuclear power, cited as one of the reasons for the US and Israel going to war with Iran.
He also suggested that the pontiff was elected “because he was American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J Trump”.
“If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”
Asked by reporters to explain the post, he later said: “I don’t think he’s doing a very good job, he likes crime, I guess.”
Trump added: “He’s a very liberal person, and he’s a man who doesn’t believe in stopping crime, he’s a man who doesn’t believe we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world.”
In response, the Pope told reporters on board his plane to Algiers that he did not see his role as that of a politician but as one of spreading the message of peace.
“I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the Church is here to do,” he told reporters.
“I don’t want to get into a debate with [Trump],” he added. (BBC)
English