AFP USA

Stock markets fell Friday after US President Donald Trump threatened China with “massive” new tariffs, while oil prices retreated as Middle East tensions eased following the Gaza ceasefire.Trump, in an angry and lengthy social media post, slammed China for “very hostile” trade practices, including imposing new export controls on rare earths.In addition to “a massive increase of Tariffs,” other major countermeasures were “under consideration”, he said, adding that he no longer felt it necessary to meet China’s President Xi Jinping at a summit later in the month.Trump’s sharp pivot sent Wall Street’s major indices sharply lower, with the Nasdaq leading the major benchmarks lower, down 3.6 percent.The dollar fell against its main rival currencies.Trump’s message “has been disrupting the market calm,” said Angelo Kourkafas of Edward Jones, who also noted that markets have been poised for a pullback after a heady rally.Washington and Beijing had been de-escalating trade tensions after a tit-for-tat tariffs war earlier this year, with the Trump-Xi meeting expected to help prolong a shaky truce.However China on Thursday announced new controls on the export of rare-earth technologies and items, adding to regulations on a critical industry that has been a key source of tension between Beijing and Washington.Oil prices had already fallen more than two percent as the Gaza ceasefire took effect, easing concerns about a wider regional conflict that could disrupt supply.But trade war worries pushed prices down more, with the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate ending down 4.2 percent at $58.90, its lowest closing price since April.European markets also slid after Trump’s comments.Paris finished the day down 1.5 percent amid focus on French President Emmanuel Macron’s handling of a rolling political crisis.The president late Friday reappointed his outgoing Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, just four days after he gave his resignation.The week was marked by a raft of new records in several markets, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq index, the Frankfurt stock exchange and gold prices reaching new heights. Silver also surged to a decades-long high.Buying sentiment won a boost earlier this week from news that ChatGPT-maker OpenAI had signed multi-billion-dollar chip deals with US firm AMD as well as South Korean titans Samsung and SK hynix.However, there are rumblings that the rally could run out of steam, causing jitters on trading floors.”The AI bubble debate remains a hot topic: some argue this is the new internet bubble 2.0 waiting to burst, others think it’s a bubble that still has room to inflate,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank.Such worries have been part of the reason behind the rally in gold to a record price above $4,000 an ounce Wednesday.- Key figures at around 2010 GMT -New York – Dow: DOWN 1.9 percent at 45,479.60 (close)New York – S&P 500: DOWN 2.7 percent at 6,552.51 (close)New York – Nasdaq Composite: DOWN 3.6 percent at 22,204.43 (close)London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.9 percent at 9,427.47 (close)Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 1.5 percent at 7,918.00 (close) Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 1.5 percent at 24,241.46 (close) Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 1.0 percent at 48,088.80 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 1.7 percent at 26,290.32 (close)Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.9 percent at 3,897.03 (close)Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1615 from $1.1564 on ThursdayPound/dollar: UP at $1.3352 from $1.3304Dollar/yen: DOWN at 151.57 yen from 153.07 yenEuro/pound: UP at 86.98 pence from 86.93 penceBrent North Sea Crude: DOWN 3.8 percent at $62.73 per barrelWest Texas Intermediate: DOWN 4.2 percent at $58.90 per barrel

US President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to cancel an upcoming summit with Xi Jinping and hit China with “massive” tariffs after Beijing imposed export curbs on rare earth minerals.In an angry social media post that triggered a sell-off on the stock markets, Trump said China’s restrictions on materials used in almost every area of modern life were “very hostile.”Trump said China had sent letters to countries around the world detailing export controls on “each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths.” “There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the World ‘captive,'” he said on his Truth Social network.The US president called into question his plans to meet Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit later this month, which was to be their first encounter since Trump returned to power in January.”I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” he said.He also threatened sanctions that would reignite the trade war that has simmered between Washington and Beijing since his second term began.”One of the Policies that we are calculating at this moment is a massive increase of Tariffs on Chinese products coming into the United States of America,” he said.There was no immediate reaction from Beijing.But Trump’s sharp pivot sent Wall Street’s major indices sharply lower, with the Nasdaq down two percent in late morning trading. The dollar fell against its main rival currencies.Rare earth elements are critical to manufacturing everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to military hardware and renewable energy technology. China dominates global production and processing of these materials.The US president said he did not understand why China was choosing to act now.”Some very strange things are happening in China! They are becoming very hostile,” he said.- ‘Lying in wait’ -Trump said other countries had contacted the United States expressing anger over China’s “great Trade hostility, which came out of nowhere.”He also accused Beijing of “lying in wait” despite what he characterized as six months of good relations, which has notably seen progress on bringing TikTok’s US operations under American control as required by a law passed by Congress last year.”Dependent on what China says about the hostile ‘order’ that they have just put out, I will be forced, as President of the United States of America, to financially counter their move,” Trump said.His outburst comes just weeks after he had spoken of the importance of meeting Xi at the APEC summit and revealed that he would travel to China next year.Washington and Beijing engaged in a tit-for-tat tariffs war earlier this year that threatened to effectively halt trade between the world’s two largest economies.Both sides eventually agreed to de-escalate tensions but the truce has been shaky.Trump said last week that he would push Xi on US soybean purchases as American farmers, a key voting demographic in his 2024 election win, grapple with fallout from his trade wars.China had said earlier Friday that it would impose “special port fees” on ships operated by and built in the United States after Washington announced charges for Chinese-linked ships in April.In a further development, the US communications watchdog said it had successfully managed to get “millions” of listings for banned Chinese items removed from commerce platforms.”The Communist Party of China is engaged in a multi-prong effort to insert insecure devices into Americans’ homes and businesses,” Brendan Carr, head of the Federal Communications Commission, said on X.

US First Lady Melania Trump said Friday she had secured the release of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia after establishing an extraordinary back channel of communication with President Vladimir Putin.In a rare public announcement at the White House, she revealed weeks of behind the scenes diplomacy with the Kremlin chief after he held a summit in Alaska with her husband, US President Donald Trump.Eight children displaced by Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine had been returned to their homes in the last 24 hours, she said.The 55-year-old said that Putin had agreed to help after she passed him a letter through Trump at the summit, a meeting which otherwise ended without a breakthrough in resolving the war now in its fourth year.”Much has unfolded since President Putin received my letter last August. He responded in writing signalling a willingness to engage with me directly and outlining details regarding the Ukrainian children residing in Russia,” she told reporters.”Since then, President Putin and I have had an open channel of communication regarding the welfare of these children.”The Slovenian-born former model said that both sides had also had “several back channel meetings and calls, all in good faith.””My representative has been working directly with President Putin’s team to ensure the safe reunification of children with their families between Russia and Ukraine,” she said.”In fact, eight children have been rejoined with their families during the past 24 hours.” – Elusive figure -Seven of them were returned to Ukraine from Russia, she said, while one young girl went back to Russia from Ukraine. Three were separated from their parents and “displaced to the Russian Federation by frontline fighting,” she said.The others including the girl returned to Russia were “separated from family members across borders” by the conflict. Kyiv has accused Moscow of abducting almost 20,000 children from parts of the east and south of Ukraine after Moscow’s troops invaded in February 2022. Ukraine has made the issue of the abducted children a diplomatic priority.The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, over the allegations of child abductions.Russia has said it moved some Ukrainian children from their houses or orphanages for protection due to the threat of hostilities.Melania Trump said in her announcement that Russia had “demonstrated a willingness” to share details to identify abducted children, including biographies and photos.She said she would continue to work for more children to return to their homes.”This is an important initiative for me. It is built on shared purpose and lasting impact,” she added.The announcement marked a rare glimmer of progress in the Ukraine war, which Trump vowed to solve within 24 hours of taking office but now admits is the most difficult conflict he has tried to solve.It was also a rare solo appearance by Melania Trump, who has been an elusive figure at the White House since her husband’s return to power in January, preferring to spend her time in New York or Florida.But she has highlighted a number of initiatives, often involving children.Melania also accompanied her husband on his state visit to Britain in September, making a joint appearance with Princess Catherine, wife of heir to the throne Prince William.

US President Donald Trump said Friday he no longer feels the need for a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this month, slamming Beijing for hostile trade practices and threatening “massive” tariffs.In a lengthy and unexpected Truth Social post, Trump railed against China imposing export controls on rare earth minerals — a critical component in modern technology.”Some very strange things are happening in China! They are becoming very hostile,” Trump said in the post, which he sent as he headed for a medical check-up at a military hospital near Washington.”I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” he said, adding that he had also seen no reason to call Xi about the issue.Trump added: “One of the Policies that we are calculating at this moment is a massive increase of Tariffs on Chinese products coming into the United States of America.”Wall Street stocks quickly tumbled into negative territory as traders worried the simmering trade war between Washington and Beijing could reignite.As recently as last week Trump had stressed the importance of his plans to meet Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which was to be their first encounter since the US president returned to power in January.He had also said that he would travel to China next year.But in his post on Friday, Trump said China had sent letters to countries around the world detailing export controls on “each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths, and virtually anything else they can think of, even if it’s not manufactured in China.”- ‘Lying in wait’ -“There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the World ‘captive,’ but that seems to have been their plan for quite some time,” Trump wrote.He accused Beijing of “lying in wait” despite what he characterized as six months of good relations, adding that he had not spoken to Xi about the matter.Trump also questioned whether the timing of China’s announcement was designed to take the shine off the Gaza ceasefire deal that he brokered this week between Israel and Hamas.Rare earth elements are critical to manufacturing everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to military hardware and renewable energy technology. China dominates global production and processing of these materials.Trump said other countries had contacted the United States expressing anger over China’s “great Trade hostility, which came out of nowhere.”He characterized China’s approach as building monopoly positions on magnets and other elements, calling it “a rather sinister and hostile move, to say the least.””Dependent on what China says about the hostile ‘order’ that they have just put out, I will be forced, as President of the United States of America, to financially counter their move,” he said.Washington and Beijing engaged in a tit-for-tat tariffs war earlier this year that threatened to effectively halt trade between the world’s two largest economies.Both sides eventually agreed to de-escalate tensions but the truce has been shaky.Trump said last week that he would push Xi on US soybean purchases as American farmers, a key voting demographic in his 2024 election win, grapple with fallout from his trade wars.China had said earlier Friday that it would impose “special port fees” on ships operated by and built in the United States after Washington announced charges for Chinese-linked ships in April.

US First Lady Melania Trump said Friday she had been communicating with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the fate of children abducted by Russia in the Ukraine war.In an announcement at the White House, the 55-year-old said eight children had been reunited with their families in the past 24 hours following negotiations between her team and Putin’s.Melania Trump said that Putin had responded to a letter she sent via her husband, President Donald Trump, at a summit in Alaska in August that otherwise failed to provide a breakthrough in ending Russia’s invasion.”Much has unfolded since President Putin received my letter last August. He responded in writing signalling a willingness to engage with me directly and outlining details regarding the Ukrainian children residing in Russia,” she told reporters.”Since then, President Putin and I have had an open channel of communication regarding the welfare of these children.”The Slovenian-born former model said that both sides had also had “several back channel meetings and calls, all in good faith.””My representative has been working directly with President Putin’s team to ensure the safe reunification of children with their families between Russia and Ukraine,” she said.”In fact, eight children have been rejoined with their families during the past 24 hours,” adding that one of them had been displaced by fighting and was returning from Ukraine to Russia.

US senators began a long weekend Friday that guarantees the government shutdown lasting at least 14 days, with both sides more entrenched than ever and the military facing an unprecedented threat to its pay.Republicans and Democrats have been getting into angry confrontations in the corridors of Congress, with frustration mounting as the crisis over funding the government hits public services harder each day.Pressure is increasing on Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to bring the shuttered lower chamber of Congress back in session to hold an emergency vote on at least providing military pay.But Johnson is sticking to his guns, telling reporters Friday that “we will come back here and get back to legislative session as soon as the Senate Democrats turn the lights back on.”Some 1.3 million active-duty service military personnel are set to miss their pay due next Wednesday — something that has not happened in any of the funding shutdowns through modern history.And with the Senate out until Tuesday next week, there’s little hope for the civilian federal workforce, whose pay has already been hit. “We’re not in a good mood here in the Capitol — it’s a somber day. Today marks the first day federal workers across America will receive a partial pay check,” Johnson said.”Thanks to Democrats’ obstruction to the system here, this is the last pay check that 700,000 federal workers will see until Washington Democrats decide to do their job and reopen the government.”Rising tensions between the two parties have been on full display this week, with Johnson and Democratic senators clashing over the shutdown in front of the gathered press.There was a fiery exchange after a House Democratic leadership press conference when Republican Congressman Mike Lawler needled House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries over his role in the shutdown.Jeffries told Lawler to “keep your mouth shut” as the two traded barbs and later called the Republican a “malignant clown.”    – ‘Tired of the chaos’ -Nonessential government work stopped after the September 30 funding deadline, with Senate Democrats repeatedly blocking a Republican resolution to reopen federal agencies.The sticking point has been a refusal by Republicans to include language in the bill to address expiring subsidies that make health insurance affordable for 24 million Americans.With a prolonged shutdown looking more likely each day, members of Congress have been looking to Republican President Donald Trump to step in and break the standoff.Trump has been largely tuned-out, with his focus on the Gaza ceasefire deal and sending federal troops to bolster his mass deportation drive in Democratic-led cities such as Chicago and Portland.”Donald Trump can find the time to play golf, but he can’t be bothered negotiating a bipartisan agreement to reopen the government… and House Republicans remain on vacation for three weeks,” Jeffries told a news conference.”The American people are sick and tired of the chaos, crisis and confusion that has been visited upon the country by Donald Trump and Republican complete control of Congress.”

US President Donald Trump said Friday he no longer feels a summit is necessary with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping this month, slamming Beijing for hostile trade practices and threatening “massive” tariffs.”Some very strange things are happening in China! They are becoming very hostile,” Trump said in a long post on Truth Social that railed against China imposing export controls on rare earth minerals — a critical component in modern technology.”I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” he added in the post, which he sent as he headed for a medical check-up at a military hospital near WashingtonTrump said China had sent letters to countries around the world detailing export controls on “each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths, and virtually anything else they can think of, even if it’s not manufactured in China.””There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the World ‘captive,’ but that seems to have been their plan for quite some time,” Trump wrote, adding that Beijing had been “lying in wait” despite what he characterized as six months of good bilateral relations.Rare earth elements are critical to manufacturing everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to military hardware and renewable energy technology. China dominates global production and processing of these materials.”One of the Policies that we are calculating at this moment is a massive increase of Tariffs on Chinese products coming into the United States of America,” Trump said, adding that he was considering “many other countermeasures.”Trump said other countries had contacted the United States expressing anger over China’s “great Trade hostility, which came out of nowhere.”The president added that he had not spoken to Xi about the matter.He characterized China’s approach as building monopoly positions on magnets and other elements, calling it “a rather sinister and hostile move, to say the least.”

Mark Bray, a US university professor and expert on the loosely organized left-wing Antifa movement says he has fled the country after receiving death threats, amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on opponents.Bray, 43, has written several books on the nebulous, self-described “anti-fascist” movement, which the Trump administration has classified as a terrorist group.”The whole thing has been very stressful, even more stressful having small children — my whole life has been turned on its head,” Bray, a history professor at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, told AFP in an interview.Fearing for their safety, Bray and his family flew to Spain on Thursday evening.Trump and his supporters “are trying to expand this term ‘Antifa’… and they’re trying to apply this to basically anyone they don’t like,” Bray said.”It is particularly easy to try and label me… the guy who wrote the book about it.”- ‘I’m a researcher’ -Bray acknowledged his history with the left-wing Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City in 2011, but stressed that he had “never been part of an anti-fascist group.””I’m not now, and I don’t intend to be. I support anti-fascism, broadly construed, I detest fascism, but in this capacity, I’m a researcher,” he said.Bray said he was first targeted on X following the September 10 murder of pro-Trump conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.Far-right activist Jack Posobiec labeled him online a “domestic terrorist professor,” while Andy Ngo, a conservative content creator, accused him of being a “militant anti-fascist activist.” Both took part in a White House round table discussion on the “Antifa threat” this week.After those social media posts, Bray began receiving death threats, he said, including one “saying that someone was going to kill me in front of my students,” and a threatening email with his home address.”At that point, I decided I wanted to leave the country for the safety of my family,” he said.- ‘Without fear’ -A petition calling for Bray’s dismissal was launched last week by the Rutgers University chapter of Turning Point USA, the right-wing organization founded by Kirk, and has gained more than 1,000 signatures.Bray also appears on a “watch list of professors” maintained by Turning Point USA.In a statement, a Rutgers University spokesperson said the “institution is committed to providing a secure environment — to learn, teach, work, and research, where all members of our community can share their opinions without fear of intimidation or harassment.”Turning Point USA and the student behind the petition have not responded to AFP’s request for comment.Since his return to power in January, Trump has launched an offensive against universities, with a series of shock decisions that have unsettled the scientific and academic community, pushing some professors to announce plans to move abroad.

Roberto Mosquera’s family had no trace of him for a month after he was arrested by US immigration agents, until a government social media post revealed he had been deported to Africa’s last absolute monarchy.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had picked up the 58-year-old Cuban at a routine check-in with immigration officials on June 13 in Miramar, Florida, said Ada, a close family friend, who spoke to AFP under a pseudonym for fear of US government retaliation.They told his family they had sent him back to Cuba, she said, a country he had left more than four decades earlier as a 13-year-old.But on July 16, Ada recognised her lifelong friend in a photograph posted on X by US Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who announced that Mosquera and four other detainees had been flown to tiny Eswatini.It was a country Ada had never heard of, and 13,000 kilometres (8,000 miles) away, wedged between South Africa and Mozambique.The Cuban and the nationals of Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen were sent to the kingdom under a deal seen by AFP in which Eswatini agreed to accept up to 160 deportees in exchange for $5.1 million to “build its border and migration management capacity”.The Jamaican, 62-year-old Orville Etoria, was repatriated to Jamaica in September but 10 more deportees arrived on October 9, according to the Eswatini government.Washington said the five men sent to Eswatini were “criminals” convicted of charges from child rape to murder, but lawyers and relatives told AFP that all of them had long served their sentences and had been living freely in the United States for years.In tightly controlled Eswatini, where King Mswati III’s government is accused of political repression, the deportees have been jailed in a maximum-security prison without any charge.They have no access to legal counsel and are only allowed to talk to their families in minutes-long video calls once a week under the watch of armed guards, lawyers told AFP. The men are in a “legal black hole”, said US-based lawyer Tin Thanh Nguyen. – ‘Not a monster’ – “It’s like a bad dream,” said Ada, who has known Mosquera since childhood.McLaughlin’s X post described him and the other four deportees as “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back”.In the attached photo, Mosquera sports a thick white beard, with tattoos peeping out of his orange shirt, and is described as a “latin king street gang member” convicted of “first-degree murder”.But “he’s not the monster or the barbaric prisoner that they’re saying,” said Ada, whom AFP contacted through his lawyer.Mosquera had been a gang member in his youth, she said, but he was convicted of attempted murder — not homicide -– in July 1989 for shooting a man in the leg.Court documents seen by AFP confirmed he was sentenced to nine years in prison, released in 1996 and then jailed again in 2009 for three years, for offences including grand theft auto and assaulting a law enforcement official.”When Roberto came out, he changed his life,” according to Ada. “He got married, had four beautiful little girls. He talks out against gang violence and has a family that absolutely loves him.”A judge ordered his deportation after his first conviction overturned his legal residency, but he remained in the United States because Cuba often does not accept deportees, lawyers said.He checked in with immigration authorities every year and had been working for a plumbing company for 13 years until his surprise detention and deportation, Ada told AFP.”They have painted him out as a monster, which he’s not,” she said. “He’s redeemed himself.”– Denied legal support – The men sent to Eswatini were caught up in a push by the Trump administration to expel undocumented migrants to “third countries”, with others deported to Ghana, Rwanda and South Sudan in shadowy deals criticised by rights groups.They were not informed they were being deported until they were already onboard the airplane, lawyers for each of them told AFP.”Right when they were about to land in Eswatini, that’s when ICE gave them a notice saying you’re going to be deported to Eswatini. And none of them signed the letter,” said Nguyen, who represents men from Vietnam and Laos.”It’s like modern-day human trafficking, through official channels,” he told AFP, describing how he was contacted by the Vietnamese man’s family after they too recognised his photo on social media.The lawyer, who said he had been “a hotline” for the Southeast Asian community in the United States since Donald Trump came to power in January, trawled through Facebook groups to track down relatives of the other detainee described only as a “citizen of Laos”.The deportees were denied contact with their lawyers and also with a local attorney, who tried to visit them in the Matsapha Correctional Centre 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of the capital Mbabane, infamous for holding political prisoners.Eswatini attorney Sibusiso Nhlabatsi said he was told by prison officers that the men had refused to see him.”We know for a fact that’s not true,” said Alma David, the US-based lawyer for Mosquera and another deportee from Yemen.Her clients told their families they were never informed of Nhlabatsi’s visits and had requested legal counsel on multiple occasions.When David herself requested a private call with her clients, “the chief of the prison said, ‘no, you can’t, this is not like in the US’,” she said. The official told her to seek permission from the US embassy.Nhlabatsi last week won a court application to represent the men but the government immediately appealed, suspending the ruling.”The judges, the commissioner of the prison, the attorney general — no one wants to go against the king or the prime minister, so everybody is just running around in circles, delaying,” said Nguyen.– ‘Layers of cruelty’ –Eswatini, under the thumb of 57-year-old Mswati for 39 years, has said it intends to return all the deportees to their home countries.But only one has been repatriated so far, the Jamaican Etoria.Two weeks after his release, he was “still adjusting to life in a country where he hasn’t lived in 50 years”, his New York-based lawyer Mia Unger told AFP.Reportedly freed on arrival, he had completed a sentence for murder and was living in New York before ICE agents arrested him.Etoria held a valid Jamaican passport and the country had not said they would refuse his return, despite the US administration’s claims that the deportees’ home countries would not take them back.”If the United States had just deported him to Jamaica in the first place, that would already have been a very difficult and painful adjustment for him and his family,” Unger said.”Instead, they send him halfway across the world to a country he’s never been to, where he has no ties, imprison him with no charges and don’t tell his family anything,” she said.”The layers of cruelty are really surprising.”Accused of crushing political opposition and rights activists, the government of Eswatini has given few details of the detainees or the deal it signed with the United States to take them in.Nguyen said the new group of 10 included three Vietnamese, one Filipino and one Cambodian.”Regardless of what they were convicted of and what they did, they’re still being used as pawns in a dystopian game exchanging bodies for money,” David told AFP.The last time Mosquera’s family saw him, in a video call from the Eswatini jail last week, he had lost hair and “gotten very thin”, Ada said.”This has taken a toll on everybody,” she said, her voice breaking. “It’s atrocious. It’s a death sentence.”

Donald Trump heads for his second medical check-up this year on Friday with the oldest elected president in US history insisting that he is in “great shape.”Trump, 79, will address troops at Walter Reed military hospital on the outskirts of the capital Washington before undergoing the examination.It comes three months after the White House announced Trump was diagnosed with a vein condition, following speculation about frequent bruising on his hand and his swollen legs.The White House had said earlier this week that Friday’s check-up would be an “annual” one, despite the fact that Trump had already undergone one of those in April.But Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday that he was “going to do a sort of semi-annual physical.””I’m in great shape, but I’ll let you know. But no, I have no difficulty thus far… Physically, I feel very good. Mentally, I feel very good.”Republican Trump then embarked on one of his trademark tirades comparing his health with that of former presidents, particularly his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden.Trump said that during his last check-up “I also did a cognitive exam which is always very risky, because if I didn’t do well, you’d be the first to be blaring it, and I had a perfect score.”Trump then added: “Did Obama do it? No. Did Bush do it? No. Did Biden do it? I definitely did. Biden wouldn’t have gotten the first three questions right.”- Bruised hand -But Trump has repeatedly been accused of a lack of openness about his health despite huge interest in the well-being of America’s commander-in-chief.In September, he dismissed social media rumors swirling about his health — including false posts that he had died.In July, the White House said Trump was diagnosed with a chronic but benign vein condition — chronic venous insufficiency — following speculation about his bruised hand and swollen legs.The hand issue, it said, was linked to the aspirin he takes as part of a “standard” cardiovascular health program.Trump is regularly seen at public events with heavy make-up on the back of his right hand which he uses to conceal the bruising.At his last check-up the White House said Trump was in good health, saying he had a “normal cardiac structure and function, no signs of heart failure, renal impairment or systemic illness.”