Asia Intelligence Brief — Friday, September 25, 2026

Asia Intelligence Brief — Friday, 25 September 2026

Asia is quarrelling this week with the institutions that are supposed to stand above quarrels. Bangkok doubts the commission that certifies its elections, Manila wants to see a former speaker of its parliament actually punished, and Taipei has been asked to accept a sentence about its own future written by two other men.

The temperament across these capitals is not panic but a stubborn, procedural patience. People are filing petitions, pumping out streets, running live-fire drills and marching on election offices, and they are doing it with the flat manner of citizens who expect the machinery to disappoint them and intend to use it anyway.

Thailand’s week is a study in divided attention. Its prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, is in London on the last leg of a selling trip that began in Tokyo on 20 September, while at home the weather service forecasts heavy rain in 48 provinces including the capital, 19 of them at risk of very heavy rain.

Taipei chose to answer rather than to wait. Its foreign ministry accused Beijing of distorting facts after Xi Jinping pressed Donald Trump to oppose Taiwanese independence, and its defence ministry said the American arms pipeline was proceeding as planned even with a US$14 billion package still frozen.

Manila is the least forgiving of the three. Martin Romualdez, who resigned as speaker of the House of Representatives, pleaded not guilty to plunder on 16 September, and on Friday the court that will try him was rebuking his lawyers while his co-accused remained abroad and unseen.

Colombo ended its own argument with a division bell. Parliament passed the 22nd Amendment by 158 votes to 63 on Friday evening and the Speaker endorsed it the same day, which gave the government the two-thirds it needed and the country’s professional bodies the defeat they had spent a month trying to avoid.

Bangkok Pumps Water While Its Umpire Is Questioned

Thailand is not frightened this week, only unconvinced. The rain is heavy and the pumps are running, yet the argument with the real heat in it is about whether the body that certifies elections can be believed.

The weather is the part nobody disputes. The Meteorological Department forecast heavy rain in 48 provinces on 25 September, Bangkok among them and 19 of them at risk of very heavy rain, the Bangkok news site the Thaiger reported.

Its warnings run into the weekend. Flash floods, overflows and landslides are forecast near waterways and foothills to 27 September, Thai PBS World, the English service of Thailand’s public broadcaster, reported.

Eastern Bangkok took the water first, with Min Buri recording 99 millimetres overnight and water standing 15 to 20 centimetres deep on primary roads. The city’s governor, Chadchart Sittipunt, inspected the municipal flood-prevention centre on 25 September and said: “We are taking no chances, monitoring all weather forecasts and pumping out water at full capacity”.

The state’s own mapping shows where the danger sits. Thailand’s Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency, which reads the country from satellites, put eight central provinces and parts of Bangkok in its highest risk band on imagery taken at 08.38 Bangkok time on 25 September, Khaosod English, a liberal Bangkok news site, reported.

What steadies the picture is the comparison with 2011, the year Thailand drowned. Thon Thamrongnawasawat, a marine scientist, said the country had seen no tropical storm at all in 2026, Thai Enquirer, a liberal Bangkok news site, reported on 25 September.

The flooded area is a fraction of that year’s. Satellite readings for August showed under 400,000 rai under water, about 640 square kilometres, against 5.7 million rai in August 2011, about 9,100 square kilometres, the same site reported.

The prime minister is not in the country. Anutin Charnvirakul left for Tokyo on 20 September and spent 21 September in Japan, where he met Thai athletes at the Asian Games.

From there he went west. He was in New York from 22 to 24 September for the United Nations General Assembly and is in London on 25 and 26 September, The Nation, a conservative-leaning Bangkok English-language daily, reported.

The political quarrel is about a clearance rather than a conviction. On 14 September the Election Commission referred 77 people out of 427 accused to the Supreme Court’s election division over the 2024 selection of the Senate, and declined to act against any minister, member of parliament or party executive.

For a reader in São Paulo, the Senate matters because it helps choose the referees. Four of the seven serving commissioners entered office through selection and endorsement by the very Senate under investigation, the opposition People’s Party says, and the commission voted five to two not to prosecute Mr Anutin or the Bhumjaithai party’s founder, Newin Chidchob.

The opposition answered with paperwork rather than a barricade. Its leader, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, asked of the decision on 14 September: “Does that mean the EC believes the biggest organised Senate vote-rigging operation in Thai political history involved no politicians whatsoever?”, The Nation reported.

The paperwork followed a fortnight later. His party was to petition the national anti-corruption commission on 25 September to investigate all seven of its members, Thai Enquirer reported.

The commission’s chairman has put his own defence on the record. Narong Klunwarin told a press conference, in remarks The Nation carried on 15 September, that the commissioners would explain themselves in court if they were sued, and added: “I used to work in the courts, where contempt-of-court provisions offer protection against improper criticism. But here, I have nothing to protect me except complying with the law and explaining the basis for the EC’s decisions to the public”.

The pressure is not only from the reformist left. A nationalist coalition led by the veteran media proprietor Sondhi Limthongkul was due to rally outside the commission’s Bangkok office on 25 September, demanding that it examine bank transfers and telephone records instead of resting on witnesses who had changed their accounts, Thai Enquirer reported.

The government’s own account of itself is that it is steady and clean. Anutin Charnvirakul told a meeting in Tokyo on 21 September that “no one in my government is involved in these activities” and that his administration had “a very high level of stability”, Khaosod English reported.

He said that of illegal business rather than of the Senate case. Neither he nor his party had answered the criticism of the clearance by 14.20 UTC on 25 September.

Two of the seven voted for prosecution, and that is what keeps the story alive. Sitthichot Intrawiset, one of the two, said the evidence gathered in each province pointed to a single political party, Prachatai English, a left-leaning Bangkok site, reported on 21 September.

Taipei Answers For Itself While Others Bargain

Taiwan spent the week being discussed and decided to talk back. The island’s mood is neither alarm nor bravado but a careful, repetitive insistence that its future is not an item on anyone’s agenda but its own.

The provocation was a single clause in Beijing’s account of the Washington summit. Xi Jinping urged Donald Trump to oppose Taiwanese independence and to handle the question prudently, Al Jazeera, a Qatari state-funded international broadcaster, reported on 24 September.

Taipei’s reply came the next day and named the offence. Its foreign ministry said China was “distorting facts and unilaterally conveying its own positions and claims”, and that “the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other”, the Seoul Economic Daily, a South Korean business paper, reported on 25 September.

It also placed the question where it says the question belongs. The ministry’s words were: “Taiwan’s sovereignty rests with the people of Taiwan, and the Chinese Communist Party regime has no right to represent Taiwan”, and it added that the island’s future must be settled by its own people.

For a reader with no background, the weapons are the substance beneath the wording. The United States does not recognise Taiwan as a country, yet its own law obliges it to help the island defend itself, and it is Taiwan’s principal supplier of arms.

One pipeline is blocked and another is not. A record US$14 billion package was paused after Mr Trump met Mr Xi in Beijing in May, while a separate US$11 billion package was approved in December, the Associated Press reported from the southern city of Tainan on 23 September.

Mr Trump has said in public what the delay is worth to him, calling arms sales to Taiwan a “very good negotiating chip” with China. Taiwan’s soldiers answered with live rounds, holding firing drills with a locally built eight-wheeled vehicle called the Cheetah, which can be fitted with a 105-millimetre cannon, hours before Mr Xi landed in Washington, the same agency reported.

The defence ministry’s spokesman chose continuity over complaint. Major General Chiao Fu-chun said the American government and Congress had “repeatedly expressed support for Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities”, and added: “We will continue to maintain close contact with the U.S. Department of War and continue to push forward the arms procurement deal between Taiwan and the U.S., ensuring it proceeds as planned”.

The president is asking the island to carry more of the cost itself. Lai Ching-te told a resilience forum in Taipei on 19 September that peace rests on strength, strength on resilience and resilience on unity.

The money follows the rhetoric, slowly. Taiwan’s defence spending is set to pass 3 per cent of what the island produces in a year for the first time in 2027, on Mr Lai’s pledge to reach 5 per cent by 2030.

What is not known is what Washington does next. Mr Trump has not said whether he will forward the frozen package to Congress, and no decision on it had been announced by 14.20 UTC on 25 September.

Manila Wants To See Somebody Actually Punished

The Philippines has moved past outrage and into impatience. A year of hearings into flood defences that were paid for and in places never built has put a former speaker of the House of Representatives in the dock, and the question filling Manila’s front pages is whether anybody serves a sentence.

The charge is the gravest in the Philippine code. Plunder cannot be bailed and carries life imprisonment, and the Ombudsman, Jesus Crispin Remulla, said when the case was filed: “We don’t pick and choose, there is no name here that we’re trying to avoid. Everything here is based on evidence”, Agence France-Presse reported on 7 September.

The accused is the president’s cousin, which is why the Ombudsman said what he said next. Mr Remulla added: “This case proves that there are no sacred cows”.

Martin Romualdez had already given up the speakership when the charge was filed. He said that standing down would let investigators work without “undue influence” and he has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and on 16 September he pleaded not guilty by video link before the third division of the Sandiganbayan, the Daily Tribune, a Manila daily, reported.

On Friday the court spent its morning on manners. The Sandiganbayan’s third division, part of the court that tries public officials, told the parties to temper their public remarks, its chair, Associate Justice Karl Miranda, saying: “Your language must still reflect temperance, respect, and fidelity”, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a liberal Manila daily, reported on 25 September.

The defence took the rebuke without argument. Ade Fajardo, one of Mr Romualdez’s counsel, said after the hearing: “We appreciate the sentiments of the court”, the same paper reported.

His co-accused has not appeared at all. Zaldy Co, a former member of the House, is at large and reported to be in France, has been declared a fugitive by another division of the same court, and faces two further charges that also cannot be bailed, over a road dike in Oriental Mindoro and a project in Bulacan.

His lawyers would not say on Friday whether he intends to come home. Asked by the bench whether Mr Co meant to surrender, Gabrielle Rondain-Kapunan answered: “I have no personal knowledge”, and asked whether they sought any relief for him replied: “Not at this time, your honor”, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported.

The wider argument has narrowed to whether the works exist. At a Senate finance hearing on 25 September the public works secretary, Vince Dizon, was asked whether there were ghost projects in Taguig, a wealthy part of metropolitan Manila, and answered: “None. In our investigation, none”, saying all 107 projects there showed work done.

The allegation has not gone away with the answer. Senator Panfilo Lacson had raised ghost projects and misused money in Taguig reclamation work, while the question on Friday came from the Senate minority leader, Alan Peter Cayetano, who has repeatedly denied that any such projects exist.

The weather is the reason this subject never rests. The state forecaster put the tropical storm known in the Philippines as Queenie about 1,065 kilometres east of the far north of Luzon on 25 September, with winds of 75 kilometres an hour, no wind signals yet raised, and typhoon strength possible by Sunday, the Philippine Star, a Manila daily, reported.

Sri Lanka Settles Its Quarrel By Arithmetic

Sri Lanka ended a month of argument with a count rather than a compromise, and by nightfall the argument was settled law. Parliament passed the second reading of the 22nd Amendment on the evening of 25 September and then the third, and the Speaker, Jagath Wickramaratne, endorsed his certificate the same day, so the bill comes into force as the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution, Ada Derana, a Colombo broadcaster’s news site, reported.

The margin was the same at both readings. The bill carried by 158 votes to 63 with no abstentions at the second reading, a majority of 95, Newswire, a Colombo news site, reported, and Ada Derana recorded the identical 158 to 63 with no abstentions at the third-reading division.

The division ran along the lines everyone expected. The governing National People’s Power voted for it, and against it were the main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya, the Tamil party Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi and three smaller opposition groupings, Sarvajana Balaya, the National Democratic Front and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, Asian Mirror, another Colombo site, recorded.

What the amendment does is narrow and was never the whole objection. It lifts the retirement age of Supreme Court judges from 65 to 67 and of Court of Appeal judges from 63 to 65, and requires a chief justice to retire at 67 or after six years in office, whichever comes first.

It also enlarges the bench that hears appeals. Article 137 is amended to raise the number of Court of Appeal judges from 19 to 24, which the government expects to allow regional appeal courts and spare litigants the journey to Colombo, Ada Derana reported.

The case against it was made by people who do not usually make constitutional arguments. Forty professional bodies and trade unions, from doctors and nurses to railway station masters, joined the Bar Association of Sri Lanka in arguing that judicial power forms part of the sovereignty of the people, the Sri Lankan news portal Onlanka reported.

The lawyers went to consciences rather than to the streets. The Bar Association had asked every party to release its members to vote as they saw fit.

The government’s case was delay in the courts, and it did not change. The two bills were presented on 18 August by the minister of justice and national integration, Harshana Nanayakkara, and the stated aim was to strengthen the judicial system, improve its efficiency and clear a backlog of pending cases, Ada Derana reported.

The courts had already been asked to stop it. More than 65 petitions were filed against the legislation and heard on 1 and 2 September by a five-member bench headed by the chief justice, after which the Supreme Court determined that the amendment needed a two-thirds majority but no referendum, the same site reported.

Beijing Is Shown The Constitution And Offered Little Else

China’s three days in Washington were heavy on ceremony and light on substance, which is how the Associated Press described them. Mr Xi took tea at the White House with Mr Trump, Melania Trump and his own wife, Peng Liyuan, on 25 September, and Mr Trump and the first lady then showed him the American Constitution at the National Archives.

Standing over the document, the two men compared ages rather than positions. Mr Trump told reporters that “Ours goes 250 years, which is great, and we’re proud of it. But theirs goes 6,000 years”, and Mr Xi was expected to leave the city after the tour, the same agency reported.

Trade analysts could not find much in it, and the sharpest of them are not on the American left. Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research body in Washington, said “I can’t recall a U.S.-China summit that produced fewer deliverables” and that China “has fought the U.S. to a draw”.

A former American trade official put the cost in time. Jeff Moon said another summit without results “merely allows China to run out the clock on Trump’s second term without significant concessions”, the same agency reported.

The one settled item was settled before either man sat down. The tariff truce known as the Busan arrangement, which keeps duties between the two economies from returning to wartime levels, was carried forward to 10 January 2027 from 10 November, announced on 23 September by the American treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and described as agreed rather than signed.

The war in the Gulf sat over the table throughout. The American and Israeli war on Iran, begun in February, has closed the Strait of Hormuz and lifted energy prices, and Mr Trump pressed for Chinese help in isolating Tehran and reopening the strait while Mr Xi said he backed a return to the interim agreement announced in June, Al Jazeera reported.

Washington itself was not of one mind about the welcome. The Republican senator Roger Wicker said he would have advised against the invitation and objected to the scale of the reception, the Democrat Chris Van Hollen accused Mr Trump of making himself agreeable to authoritarians, and the Republican Rand Paul approved of it in four words: “Talk more, war less”, the same broadcaster reported.

Outside the building the welcome was not universal. Protesters in a plaza beside the National Archives held signs calling on Mr Xi and the Chinese Communist Party to step down, and two men tore a Chinese national flag, one of them using part of it to wipe his shoe, the same agency reported.

Asia Takes Its Holidays And Tokyo Keeps Climbing

Half of Asia’s trading floors were dark on Friday, and the half that opened did not agree with itself. Seoul was shut for a second day for Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival, and Shanghai and Shenzhen were shut for the Mid-Autumn Festival, with mainland trading due back on Monday 28 September.

Tokyo had the best of it, and the reason was borrowed from elsewhere. The Nikkei 225 closed at 66,364.20, up 850.21 points or 1.30 per cent, a fifth consecutive rise, which Trading Economics attributed to oil retreating from its Thursday spike and to the global sell-off in government bonds easing.

Hong Kong, which did trade, went the other way. The Hang Seng closed at 24,510.09, down 251.04 points or 1.01 per cent, so there was no single Asian direction to report on Friday at all.

Mumbai recovered part of a bad Thursday. The Sensex closed at 73,895.74, up 315.20 points or 0.43 per cent, and the Nifty 50 at 23,140.50, up 77.40 points or 0.34 per cent, after Thursday’s fall of more than 1,200 points.

The currency that moved was the yen. It was reading 157.18 to the dollar at 14.10 UTC, firmer than 158.83 a day earlier, and Japan’s policy rate stands at 1.25 per cent, the highest in 31 years, on a decision of 18 September.

The Korean and mainland levels in circulation are dated, and should be read that way. The Kospi’s last close is 7,080.92 from Wednesday 23 September, and the Shanghai Composite’s is 3,888.37 from Thursday 24 September, when it fell 1.22 per cent.

Japan Explains Itself Through The Asian Games

Japan is host to 17,000 athletes and officials and has spent the week explaining itself to them. The Asian Games in Aichi and Nagoya, the largest sporting event the region stages, have run on buses that do not arrive, beds that are too short and an anthem played for the wrong country.

The complaints came from nearly every delegation, the hosts included. A South Korean basketball team’s shuttle failed to appear before a final, a South Korean football team was driven to a baseball ground instead of the Mizuho rugby stadium, and North Korea’s anthem was played before a South Korean hockey match against Bangladesh, Al Jazeera reported on 20 September.

The lodging is the sharpest grievance. Competitors have been put in hotels, temporary wooden containers and a cruise ship; South Korea said the containers were too cramped for its basketball players, and 2,000 Nagoya families offered rooms to Indian athletes after their cricket board booked a hotel of its own.

The organisers say they are listening, and also that the fault is shared. Yuta Matsuo, their deputy director-general for accommodation, said: “We are taking the voices of each national delegation seriously and responding to them”.

He then set out the organisers’ side of it. Some delegations asked for changes to bus schedules late at night, he said, and buses had been sent to places where the athletes did not appear, SBS, a South Korean commercial broadcaster, reported on 24 September.

The visitors are not accepting that account. Yoo Seung-min, president of the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee, gave the operation a failing grade and said making excuses was undesirable, while Chalitrat Chandrubeksa of Thailand’s Olympic committee said the problems had run from the beginning until now and called the situation chaotic.

One complaint had a concrete answer. Mr Matsuo said the organisers had known that some competitors were unusually tall and had fitted every bed with an extension, the same broadcaster reported.

Congress Marches On India’s Election Offices

India’s row over its voter lists left the television studios on Friday and arrived at the doors that hold the lists. The main opposition Congress party announced marches on state election offices across the country, demanding the chief election commissioner’s arrest, his removal and an independent review of every decision taken under him.

The movement that started this has set a clock. The Cockroach Janta Party, a satirical youth outfit born on social media in May after India’s chief justice compared unemployed young Indians to “cockroaches” and “parasites”, gave Gyanesh Kumar forty-eight hours on Thursday, which run out on Saturday 26 September.

Its founder posted the terms himself. Abhijeet Dipke wrote on X: “If Gyanesh Kumar does not resign by tomorrow, CJP will begin its nationwide protest from Mumbai on 2 October, and take it to cities across India”.

He tied the date to a national holiday. His second line was “This Gandhi Jayanti let’s pledge to save democracy”, 2 October being the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth, Al Jazeera and Reuters reported on 25 September.

The deadline is taken seriously because the movement has already removed a minister. Its protests in July forced out Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s education minister over leaked examination papers, one of the government’s worst setbacks since it took office in 2014.

What set the week off was a newspaper report. The Indian Express, a Delhi daily, reported on Wednesday that two of the three election commissioners had put questions or concerns to Mr Kumar at least fourteen times in ten months, mostly about the way the voter lists were being updated.

The commission and the governing party both reject the charge. The Election Commission of India said that “differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution”, and that all its actions were lawful.

The governing Bharatiya Janata Party says the opposition is smearing a referee it keeps losing to. Its spokesman Sambit Patra said on Wednesday: “Neither the Election Commission of India nor any constitutional body in India is under dictatorial rule”.

Mr Kumar has not resigned and has not said that he will. No statement of resignation from him had been reported by 14.20 UTC on 25 September.

What This Means From Latin America

The oil Brazil sells is off its spike and still dear. November Brent, the contract that prices most of the world’s cargoes, settled on Thursday at US$106.60 a barrel and was reading US$105.35 at 13.58 UTC on Friday, which flatters Brazilian export receipts and raises the bill for Asia’s importers.

The tariff truce is the sharper South American stake. Washington and Beijing have carried theirs forward to 10 January 2027, and any Chinese buying of American farm goods under it would compete directly with Brazilian and Argentine crops.

That competition came a step nearer on Friday afternoon. The American trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said on the broadcaster CNBC at 13.53 UTC that the two sides had reached an agreement on a subset of goods including American agricultural products and medical devices, on preferential terms, with more detail promised on Monday.

An agreement is not yet a cargo. No Chinese purchase had been announced by 14.20 UTC on 25 September.

Thailand’s selling trip is a method Latin American trade ministries will recognise. Mr Anutin took his foreign minister and his digital economy minister through Tokyo, New York and London in six days to sell one country’s investment case, which is what Brasília and Mexico City do for the same reasons.

The rest of the region’s reading sits in the dossier. It carries the country health check, the deep dive and the outcome table with its Latin America column: read the Asia Intelligence Dossier →.

What We Are Watching

• India’s chief election commissioner reaches his deadline — 26 September, when the forty-eight hours the Cockroach Janta Party gave Gyanesh Kumar on Thursday expire. The movement says a nationwide protest then begins in Mumbai on 2 October.
• Tropical storm Queenie leaves Philippine waters — 27 or 28 September, on the state forecaster’s track of 25 September, which had it strengthening to typhoon force by Sunday with no wind signals yet raised.
• Mainland Chinese trading resumes — 28 September, after the Mid-Autumn Festival closure of Shanghai and Shenzhen. The mainland then trades only three sessions before the National Day break of 1 to 7 October.
• Thailand’s Constitutional Court rules on ballot secrecy — 28 September, on the barcode question left over from the general election of 8 February, a second institution now being asked whether that vote was properly run.
• The Kla Tham party and the coalition arithmetic — 29 September, when its members hold a routine meeting, at which the coalition question may or may not be reached. The opposition chief whip removed the party from the opposition whip on 22 September after its fifty-eight members backed the government’s 2027 budget, and Thai PBS World reported on 23 September that it is widely expected to join the Bhumjaithai-led coalition by November.
• The Bank of Thailand reports on the economy — 30 September, its first full account of conditions since the flooding of the central plains. It lands two days after the Constitutional Court rules on the February ballot and the day after the Kla Tham party meets.
• India’s satirical party opens its national campaign — 2 October, Gandhi Jayanti, the holiday marking Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, beginning in Mumbai on its founder’s announcement of 25 September.
• The Busan tariff truce expires — 10 January 2027, two months later than the 10 November date it replaced, on Mr Bessent’s announcement of 23 September and with no schedule of duties published.

The Bigger Picture

Asia’s week is being decided in commissions and courtrooms rather than at summits. Beijing got the lawn, the band and the tea; Bangkok, Manila, Colombo and Delhi are arguing about who certifies a vote, who judges a case and who goes to prison.

The steadying forces are dull and real. Thailand has seen no tropical storm so far this year, Tokyo has risen for five sessions running, and the tariff truce between Washington and Beijing runs to 10 January 2027.

The straining forces are the ones nobody scheduled. A satirical party has given India’s election chief until Saturday, the Philippine state cannot produce its second defendant, who is reported to be in France, and eight Thai provinces sit in the highest band of their own flood map with rain forecast to Sunday.

What none of this settles is the question underneath it. Every one of these arguments is about whether an institution will do what it was built to do, and in none of them has the answer arrived.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Thailand arguing about its Election Commission?

Because the commission cleared the politicians and referred the officials. On 14 September it sent 77 people out of 427 accused to the Supreme Court’s election division over the 2024 selection of the Senate, and declined to act against any minister, member of parliament or party executive, voting five to two not to prosecute the prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul. The opposition People’s Party was to petition the national anti-corruption commission on 25 September to investigate all seven members. Its leader, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, asked on 14 September: “Does that mean the EC believes the biggest organised Senate vote-rigging operation in Thai political history involved no politicians whatsoever?” The chairman, Narong Klunwarin, answered that he had “nothing to protect me except complying with the law and explaining the basis for the EC’s decisions to the public”, and asked to be judged over a longer period. A nationalist coalition led by Sondhi Limthongkul was due to rally outside the commission’s Bangkok office the same day demanding the opposite of leniency, so the pressure now comes from both flanks at once.

What exactly is frozen between Washington and Taipei?

A record American arms package worth US$14 billion, paused after Donald Trump met Xi Jinping in Beijing in May, with Mr Trump describing arms sales to Taiwan as a “very good negotiating chip” with China. A separate package worth US$11 billion was approved in December, the Associated Press reported from Tainan on 23 September. The United States does not recognise Taiwan as a country but its own law obliges it to help the island defend itself, which is why each pause is read in Taipei as a political signal rather than a procedural delay. Taiwan’s defence ministry says the procurement is proceeding as planned, and its army held live-fire drills with a locally built vehicle hours before Mr Xi landed in Washington. Its defence spending is set to pass 3 per cent of what the island produces in a year for the first time in 2027. Mr Trump has not said whether he will send the frozen package to Congress, and no decision had been announced by 14.20 UTC on 25 September.

Who is on trial in Manila, and what is he accused of?

Martin Romualdez, a former speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives and a cousin of President Ferdinand Marcos. He is charged with plunder over kickbacks and budget insertions in flood-control works, some of which investigators say were never built; plunder cannot be bailed and carries life imprisonment. He resigned as speaker saying that standing down would let investigators work without “undue influence”, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and pleaded not guilty by video link on 16 September. The Ombudsman, Jesus Crispin Remulla, said when filing the case that “This case proves that there are no sacred cows”, Agence France-Presse reported on 7 September. His co-accused, the former legislator Zaldy Co, is at large and reported to be in France, has been declared a fugitive, and on 25 September his lawyers told the court they had no personal knowledge of any intention to surrender.

Which Asian markets were open on Friday, and which were not?

Tokyo, Hong Kong and Mumbai traded and have closed; Seoul, Shanghai and Shenzhen did not trade at all. The Korea Exchange was shut for a second day for Chuseok, the harvest festival, and Shanghai and Shenzhen were shut for the Mid-Autumn Festival, with mainland trading due back on Monday 28 September. Of those that opened, the Nikkei 225 closed at 66,364.20, up 1.30 per cent and rising for a fifth session, and the Hang Seng closed at 24,510.09, down 1.01 per cent. The Sensex closed at 73,895.74, up 0.43 per cent, recovering part of Thursday’s fall of more than 1,200 points. The last Korean close is dated Wednesday 23 September at 7,080.92 and the last Shanghai close Thursday 24 September at 3,888.37, so any figure quoted for those two markets belongs to an earlier session and should be read as such.

Read More from The Rio Times

• USA & Canada Intelligence Brief — Friday, September 25, 2026
• Europe Intelligence Brief — Friday, September 25, 2026
• Africa Intelligence Brief — Friday, September 25, 2026