The Ramadan talk show slowdown began in earnest last night, with several channels transitioning to mosalsalat mode for the first day of Ramadan.

Ahmed Moussa provided the sole piece of political commentary last night — about GERD (what else?). Moussa had a thorough read of Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s invitation for a three-way summit next week to renew negotiations over the dam (watch runtime 4:56). We have more on this in this morning’s Diplomacy section, above.

A final attempt at diplomacy? Sudanese political analyst Essam Dakeen described Hamdok’s move as a “final attempt” to avoid the situation from seriously deteriorating. He suggested that the initiative will likely fail, given what he said was Ethiopia’s non-compliance with the 2015 Declaration of Principles (watch, runtime 4:40). Egypt and Sudan should stop the second filling as it would be a “real disaster” if it's done unilaterally, he stressed, suggesting that there may be a war to prevent it “if necessary.” Ala Mas’ouleety also covered Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Cairo on Monday (watch, runtime 2:02) and Sameh Shoukry’s call with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yesterday (more on this above) (watch, runtime 1:52).