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Intrigue

Daily flyovers

Latest news for 24 September 2026

Quick hits of consequential news from all corners of the world.

  1. 01

    CHINA

    Tarmac time.

    President Trump has personally greeted President Xi on arrival at Joint Base Andrews, in the kind of tarmac gesture not seen (popes aside) since JFK welcomed the UK’s Harold Macmillan in 1962. The substantive White House summit kicks off later today (Thurs) DC time. (BBC)

    Comment: The tarmac gesture — not reciprocated in Beijing — maybe just reflects Trump’s instincts for personalised strongman rapport. Xi, on the other hand, might interpret it more as his own preferred ‘G2’ dynamic: framing the US and China as equal titans who can sit down, cut through the bureaucratic noise, and solve historic issues directly. No framing alone, however, can dislodge their major structural differences across tech, tariffs, and Taiwan (though there are rumours Xi might use 1982’s Reagan-Zhao ‘Third Communiqué’ to pressure Trump into halting arms sales to Taiwan). And plot twist: those F-35 parts that somehow went missing in Hong Kong? Bloomberg says China now has them — rather neat timing for pre-summit leverage. So overall, we still expect a truce extension (Bessent confirmed overnight it now runs to January 10), some trade dressed up as deals, and quite a few photo ops — but not a major breakthrough, particularly when you recall they’ll likely meet another two more times this year (at Xi’s APEC summit then Trump’s G20).

  2. 02

    AUSTRALIA

    Naughty agents.

    Appearing at the UN in New York, Prime Minister Albanese has revealed that one of OpenAI’s autonomous agents hacked Australia’s public-facing Medicare statistics portal back in June. Canberra only found out via a belated public-mailbox email from OpenAI this month! (ABC)

    Comment: Albanese apparently told OpenAI’s Altman that Australia isn’t happy, but we wonder if it might really require some hard legal liability for AI labs to shift from their current mystical, alignment-puzzle, hands-in-hair, let’s-admire-the-problem-together think pieces, to actually treating their own product as their *own* existential liability.

  3. 03

    UNITED NATIONS

    Gaza invoice.

    Meeting on the UNGA sidelines, President Trump’s Board of Peace has unveiled a six-month, $2.45B starter plan for the reconstruction of Gaza. The 66 projects cover housing, diesel, rubble, UXO clearance, and waste. Longer term, the Board is estimating reconstruction will cost $71B over a decade, with $18B pledged but only $280M handed over so far. (MEE)

    Comment: The Board is trying to project momentum while its broader ceasefire remains fragile. But the bigger story might be structural: by running the reconstruction through the Board’s private JPMorgan-managed funds rather than traditional UN or aid agencies, DC is seemingly trying to establish a US-led alternative to the UN bodies that staffed pre-war Gaza. The test is now whether the region’s big donors start writing actual cheques before the security and governance pieces exist.

  4. 04

    ETHIOPIA

    War, again?

    It looks like the Ethiopian military has slid back into open civil war against Tigrayan forces in the north, four years after signing their peace deal. Each side now blames the other, with Tigray forces already claiming three airports. (NPR)

    Comment: Beyond the risk of a horrid repeat, the worry is this could all draw in Ethiopia’s neighbours and metastasise into a regional war — a possibility we explored earlier this year.

  5. 05

    ISRAEL

    Arab parties banned?

    Israel’s election committee has moved to ban the country’s main Arab parties from next month’s high-stakes vote, in response to a petition from hardline members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. The Supreme Court is expected to overturn for lack of evidence of a breach (like incitement to racism or support for armed struggle against Israel). (Bloomberg $)

    Comment: It looks like an attempt both to discourage Arab-Israelis from voting (they’re 20% of the electorate), and rally ultra-nationalists.

  6. 06

    CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

    Hague hammer falls.

    International Criminal Court (ICC) judges have convicted former Séléka commander Mahamat Said of crimes against humanity perpetrated at an infamous detention centre in Bangui — that’s the capital his predominantly Muslim coalition briefly held after mounting a 2013 coup, escalating a sectarian war until a regional intervention in 2014. (ICC)

    Comment: That’s long-awaited justice for Said’s victims, and ordinarily the kind of case that might resonate with some US voters (the conviction notes Séléka often targeted Christians). But the judgment dropped just as President Trump was at the UN reiterating his call for nations to *ditch* the ICC. And the first to heed his latest call seems to have been… Chad, the neighbour that supplied many of Said’s mercenaries.

  7. 07

    RUSSIA

    Plus-one for Miami.

    Secretary of State Rubio has confirmed the White House has invited Vladimir Putin to December’s G20 summit at a Trump resort in Miami. (Moscow Times)

    Comment: If Putin accepts, it’ll be his first in-person appearance at a G20 summit since 2019. It’s a way for Trump not only to keep playing his version of peacemaker, but also thumb his nose at the International Criminal Court (which has a warrant for Putin’s arrest). By dismantling the West’s post-invasion strategy of isolating Putin, it puts other allied G20 members in an awkward spot: boycott Trump’s summit, pose with Putin, or some kind of compromise (attend but no family photo?). The G20 itself lost its raison d’etre years ago, but a US-hosted summit is tougher to skip.