Chinese leader Xi visits the French Pyrenees in a personal gesture by Macron

TOURMALET PASS, France (AP) — France’s president has hosted China’s leader at a remote mountain pass in the Pyrenees for private meetings. The trip on Tuesday comes after a high-stakes state visit in Paris dominated by trade disputes and tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Tourmalet Pass near the Spanish border. Macron spent time there as a child visiting his grandmother. It is meant to be a reciprocal gesture after Xi took Macron last year to a place where the Chinese president’s father once lived. Xi is on a trip to Europe that takes him next to Serbia and Hungary.