Iran’s Migration Picture. Russia’s Economic Slowdown. Chinese Fiscal-Nicotine State and May Chandavong

On May 31, 2026

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May Chandavong, known as the first generation of contemporary artists in Laos, is a former vice president of the university of Lao National Institute of Fine Arts and has influenced many students. After receiving art education in Paris, he returned to Paris and drew scenery pictures of Laos, which is scenic of scenic beauty, while he has produced many highly messaging works that reflect the experiences and memories of independent movements, the Vietnamese war, and the revolution, and so today he is certified as a national artist.

Iran’s Migration Picture

Source: DB Research

The ruble strengthening to prewar levels against the dollar is not helping the weakening Russian economy right now.

We covered Russia’s economic slowdown on the podcast a few weeks ago.

Derisking Russian-style

Russia has adopted a law allowing the central bank and other financial institutions to shoot down drones, as Ukraine intensifies its strike campaign inside the country. Under new legislation adopted on Tuesday, the central bank, top lender Sberbank and the Russian Cash Collection Association will be able to equip themselves with jamming devices and other air defences. Their staff will also be permitted to carry weapons, according to a lawmaker, who said the measures would not be state-funded. The move underscores the Kremlin’s growing concern over Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities, and the list of Russian targets has steadily expanded in recent months in response to Moscow’s deadly air attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

“Staff will carry weapons, while drone-defence systems and jamming equipment will be deployed near financial infrastructure sites,” said Anatoly Aksakov, head of the financial market committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament. The banks will fund the anti-drone measures themselves, Aksakov told Russian broadcaster RBC. “There won’t be any budget assigned for that purpose,” he added. Aksakov said that of the private lenders, Sberbank was the only one listed because it was “actively operating” and “has a special mission” in the occupied Ukrainian territories. Anastasia Stognei in Berlin https://www.ft.com/content/1c27e7db-8ee0-434b-ac92-cecf70df52f9?syn-25a6b1a6=1

China’s fiscal-nicotine state: Excellent this by By Joy Dong of the NYT.

Cigarette consumption in China rose 39 percent from 2003 to 2023, even as it fell 26 percent in the rest of the world. The 2.4 trillion cigarettes sold in China each year account for nearly half the global total, according to a report by a nongovernmental organization founded by former officials from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The percentage of smokers has declined over the last 13 years, as fewer young people smoke, but cigarette sales have steadily grown. Cigarettes prices are low: A pack costs about $3 on average, roughly one-third the price in the United States. The failure to slow cigarette sales is a measure of the clout wielded by China’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, which both regulates the industry and operates the country’s dominant cigarette maker, the China National Tobacco Corporation. The company generated roughly $244 billion in profit and tax revenue in 2025, about 7 percent of national government revenue and nearly what China says it spends on defense.

With economic growth slowing and a prolonged property slump eroding local governments’ land-sale income, tobacco revenue has become even more essential. The agency has also channeled its profits to support several of Mr. Xi’s strategic priorities. Last year, it injected more than $1 billion into one of China’s biggest banks to shore up the financial system. It has also been a major backer of a $100 billion national semiconductor investment fund. The financial weight has translated into political influence. The agency’s chief administrator holds a rank equivalent to a deputy government minister. Seven former top administrators have been arrested on corruption charges in the past seven years. In 2022, the agency expanded its authority to cover vapes, imposing far stricter rules, including limits on where they can be sold and bans on flavored products.

Unlike in other countries, vaping has not eroded cigarette demand in China. Beijing ratified the World Health Organization tobacco-control treaty in 2005 but has never implemented its strictest provisions. The administration’s clearest victory came around 2017 when it blocked a yearslong push for a national indoor smoking ban, shifting responsibility to local governments, where enforcement is often weak. A study by Zheng Rong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, found that roughly half the revenue from each cigarette sold by Chinese manufacturers flowed into government coffers. The dependence is acute in China’s largest tobacco-producing regions. In Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in southwestern China, tobacco taxes accounted for more than half the city budget in 2024. In Changde, a city in Hunan Province in central China, tobacco taxes accounted for 20 percent of its tax revenue in 2022.

Source: New York Times

May Chandavong, Boats on the Mekong

Good god what an image!

T. rex for sale

Sotheby’s is set to auction a 67mn-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex two years after it sold the most expensive fossil in history, a Stegosaurus, to Citadel owner Ken Griffin. The T. rex — nicknamed “Gus” after Gary “Gus” Licking, the rancher whose land it was found on in South Dakota — will be auctioned at Sotheby’s for between $20mn and $30mn, the highest estimate put on a dinosaur fossil, on July 14. The planned sale of the specimen, which Sotheby’s says is among the most complete T. rex skeletons discovered, is a sign that the luxury auction house is continuing to bet on the fossil market as a place where the world’s elite will spend tens of millions. The pre-auction estimate for “Apex”, Griffin’s Stegosaurus which was sold in 2024, ranged between $4mn and $6mn. The hedge fund boss bought the dinosaur for $44.6mn.

“For this specimen, it’s going to be a very broad buyer profile,” Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s vice-chair and global head of science and natural history, told the FT. “The overwhelming majority” of fossil buyers want to “lend their purchases to a museum or put them on display in their countries”, she added. ‘Gus’ has ‘bite marks and bones that broke and have healed’, says Cassandra Hatton, of Sotheby’s © Matthew Sherman/Sotheby’s “Apex” is now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The first dinosaur sold at auction was also a T. rex at Sotheby’s, in a 1997 bid bolstered by Walt Disney and McDonald’s. “Sue” went for $8.4mn and now resides at the Field Museum in Chicago. Christie’s sold “Stan”, another T. rex, for $31.8mn in 2020 to the government of Abu Dhabi. Recommended Science ‘Big bang’ of animal life may have begun earlier than thought “Gus” was discovered on a 6,500-acre cattle ranch in Harding County, South Dakota in 2021. The excavation and lab work were carried out by commercial palaeontologists Theropoda Expeditions and took almost five years, concluding at the start of this year.

Source: Financial Times

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Fatema Mernissi

Fatema Mernissi was born on 27 September 1940 in Fez, Morocco. She grew up in the harem of her affluent paternal grandmother along with various female kin and servants.[1] She received her primary education in a school established by the nationalist movement, and secondary level education in an all-girls school funded by the French protectorate.[2] She started her studies in political science at Mohammed V University in 1959. She then obtained scholarships to pursue studies in sociology, leading her to the Sorbonne in 1966, then she transferred to Brandeis University in 1970, where she gained her doctorate in 1973.[3][4] She returned to work at the Mohammed V University in Rabat and taught at the Faculté des Lettres between 1974 and 1981 on subjects such as methodology, family sociology and psychosociology. Further, she was a research scholar at the University Institute for Scientific Research at the same university.[5]

Mernissi’s Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Society was written for her PhD thesis and later published as a book which recognizes the power of Muslim women in relation to the Islamic faith.[6] Mernissi is known for her sociopolitical approaches towards discussing gender and sexual identities, specifically those in Morocco and other Muslim countries. She is regarded as an influential feminist figure, as she was a renowned public speaker, scholar, teacher, writer, and sociologist.[7] Mernissi died in Rabat on 30 November 2015.[8] Mernissi’s first monograph, Beyond the Veil, was published in 1975.[9] A revised edition was published in Britain in 1985 and in the US in 1987. Beyond the Veil has become a classic, especially in the fields of anthropology and sociology, on women in the Arab World, the Mediterranean area or Muslim societies in general.1975: Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Muslim Society. revised ed. 1985, 1987, reprinted London: Saqi Books. ISBN 0-86356-412-7

1982: Sabbah, Fatna Aït (1986). La femme dans l’inconscient musulman (in French). Fatna Aït Sabbah is a pseudonym. Albin Michel. ISBN 9782226028297.

1983: Le Maroc raconté par ses femmes.

1984: L’amour dans les pays musulmans

1985: Femmes du Gharb

1987: Le harem politique – Le Prophète et les femmes (trans. by Mary Jo Lakeland,1991: The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0201-63221-7)

1988: Shahrazad n’est pas marocaine

1990: Sultanes oubliées – Femmes chefs d’Etat en Islam (trans. 1993: Forgotten Queens of Islam)

1992: La Peur-Modernité

1993: Women’s Rebellion and Islamic Memory

1994: The Harem Within (retitled. 1995: Dreams of Trespass – Tales of a Harem Girlhood New York: Perseus Books. ISBN 0-201-48937-6)

1997: Les Aït-Débrouille

1998: Etes-vous vacciné contre le Harem?