New York | President Donald Trump assailed China as the coronavirus villain on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) in a strongly worded United Nations speech, extolling his own actions in the pandemic and demanding that the global organisation hold accountable "the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world."

Mr Trump's speech – made via prerecorded video to a General Assembly drastically curtailed because of the pandemic – was followed by a recorded speech from President Xi Jinping of China, who called the coronavirus a crisis shared by everyone.