My nuclear button is bigger, Trump boasts to Kim

US President Donald Trump has boasted that his nuclear button is "much bigger" and "more powerful" than North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's.

Trump's tweet is the latest contribution to the increasingly personalised feud between the nuclear-armed leaders.

Kim threatened earlier this week that his nuclear launch button was "always on my table".

Unsurprisingly, Trump's unorthodox words sent social media into a frenzy.

It ended a quickfire day of tweeting by Trump that included taking credit for a lack of plane crashes, announcing awards for "corrupt media", and threatening to pull aid from Palestinians who do not show "appreciation or respect".

Trump's latest comment states the obvious: any US president has immediate access to the nuclear codes and the US has the world's biggest nuclear arsenal.

North Korea claims it has nuclear weapons and could strike the US, but while analysts agree that Pyongyang has nuclear weapons, it is not clear whether it has the technology to use them in anger.

And in contrast to the bickering on Twitter, there was good news on the Korean peninsula itself as the North reopened a telephone hotline to the South.