Le Journal

The Philippines’ deepening flood-control corruption scandal has now drawn in one of the country’s most influential religious groups, with a mass mobilisation by members of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) church offering a revealing glimpse into the political fault lines reshaping Manila’s crisis. The two-day gathering, which began on Sunday and drew more than half a million INC members to the capital, was officially framed as a demand for transparency and accountability over billions of pesos...

If you’re planning a little festive indulgence – whether for yourself or someone special – Tudor’s holiday line-up makes the choice deliciously difficult. The brand has long mastered the balance between heritage and modernity, offering Swiss-made precision wrapped in an unmatched style. This season, the spotlight’s on the Black Bay collection, where classic craftsmanship meets fresh design across a palette of dials and materials – from polished steel to warm bronze. And for a more refined touch,...

As a brand built on sensuous experiences, it comes as little surprise that perfume maker Henry Jacques not only creates travel cases for its opulent scents, but that those cases should be as exquisitely fashioned as possible. Crafted in exceptional materials such as rare leathers, the cases in the HJ Voyage collection are designed to carry both sizes of the maison’s fragrances: the 15ml flacons of Les Essences (potent perfumes and pure oils for sparing use) and 75ml bottles of Les Brumes...

According to legend, Queen Bao Si never smiled. King You of the Western Zhou dynasty (about 1046BC-771BC) wanted to amuse her. So he lit the beacon fires – meant to warn of invasion – to make nobles rush to court. They dashed in but found no enemy. When the Quanrong nomads stormed in from the north, the beacons burned, but no one came. The king died. The dynasty collapsed. Chinese stories blamed Bao Si for the fall. But a study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment shows...

When it deemed remarks on Taiwan by Japan’s new prime minister as provocative, China did not just issue a diplomatic rebuke to Tokyo; it deployed an economic arsenal, and what began as a bilateral spat has since spiralled into a full-blown crisis. China last week warned its citizens to avoid travel to Japan, with major Chinese airlines offering full refunds for flights there. On Wednesday, Beijing said it would suspend Japanese seafood imports. It is not the first time China has wielded its...