Hello, wonderful people. We hope you had a productive day and are looking forward to unwinding tonight before we’re all back to the grind for the last business day of the week. It’s a quiet-ish afternoon here in Cairo, but you can take a bit of comfort in knowing that it is, on balance, a good-news day.

HAPPENING NOW- Time may be running out for Yair Lapid to form a coalition government in Israel, raising the prospect that our neighbors to the east may have to go to the polls yet again. Lapid had hoped to announce yesterday the formation of a government and then blew a second deadline of this morning. He has until just before midnight tonight to tell Israel’s president that he’s formed a government, which would still face a confidence vote in the Knesset (most likely next week). Reuters thinks he’s nearly across the finish line. The Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post have more.

MEANWHILE: Could the EBRD have some cold, hard cash for us to finance upgrades to lines one and two of the Cairo Metro? A delegation met today with Transport Minister Kamel El-Wazir to discuss “future cooperation” on everything from railways to maritime transport and ports, but the importance of “upgrades” to Metro lines one and two leads the readout running on state news agency MENA.

Are we about to get a new national holiday? Pope Tawadros II has suggested making 1 June a national holiday in observance of the arrival in Egypt of the Holy Family (Jesus, Mary and Joseph), which he noted is “one of the fixed feasts of the Coptic Orthodox Church.” The story is everywhere from Ahram Online to Ahram Gate.

** CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from today’s EnterpriseAM:

• Foreign holdings of Egyptian treasury bills jumped to USD 20.8 bn at the end of April from USD 20 bn in March, with investors having put almost USD 3 bn into the short-term debt instruments during the first four months of the year.
• Covid cases continued to fall here at home — and the WHO has given Sinovac emergency use approval. Sinovac is one of two vaccines Egypt will manufacture, aiming to produce the first 3 mn doses as early as this month.
• Wadi Degla Developments is planning a sukuk issuance worth nearly EGP 2 bn next month that will be managed by Contact Financial (previously known as Sarwa Capital) and Misr Capital.

It’s another slow news day abroad with perhaps the “biggest” news being that Dogecoin (which started life as a spoof) just saw its price shoot up 20% after crypto exchange operator Coinbase said it would probably allow it to trade. Elon Musk is cheering, notes the Wall Street Journal, even though Tesla is being hammered this morning in the press amid suspicions the SEC thinks the company failed to adequately police the entrepreneur’s use of Twitter.

And speaking of Elon and Twitter (and possible signs of the apocalypse): Shares of Samsung Publishing are up 10% as the Baby Shark publisher got a boost from an Elon tweet about the viral song. CNBC and Bloomberg are both on the story.

You can stop dreaming of being Pfizered now #1: Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine could be responsible for heart inflammations in a small number of young males, the Israeli Health Ministry said Tuesday, Reuters reports. Israeli researchers found 275 cases of the condition termed myocarditis among the 5 mn vaccinated individuals in the country, but 95% of the cases were classified as mild.

You can stop dreaming of being Pfizered now #2: The vaccine is no more protective against most negative covid-19 outcomes than is AstraZeneca, according to UK government data (see table 1 on page 8, pdf).

BUT VACCINES WORK, DAMNIT- The UK reported no new deaths from covid-19 yesterday, the first time since July of last year, according to the Guardian.

Okay, but are we all gonna die of bird flu? Probably not, Reuters says, noting that experts say there is “so far” a low risk of human spread of the H10N3 flu virus.

???? CIRCLE YOUR CALENDAR-

FOR TOMORROW- The FIG World Challenge Cup in Artistic Gymnastics for men and women will kick off in Egypt tomorrow and run until Sunday.

The British Egyptian Business Association will hold a virtual conversation with Oil Minister Tarek El Molla on 7 June to discuss the sector’s achievements. You can register through this link.

???? FOR YOUR COMMUTE-

Jeff Bezos wants you to toke up. Or maybe he just wants to sell you a quarter of your favourite varietal. Either way, it feels like 4/20 today as Amazon has said it backs proposed US legislation to legalize weed at the federal level. The online retailer will suspend narcotics testing for job hiring for all employees except those working in transport, consumer boss Dave Clark said in a blog post. Clark called for more employers to follow the move and urged policymakers to push the legislation through. Meanwhile, Amazon is also amending its Time off Task — a policy that monitors how long an employee is logged into software tools, adding that the intent of the policy is to find operational systemic defects (not spying on employees, right?).

STEAL THIS BUSINESS idea: Portugal accounts for just 2% of the European Union’s population — but produces about a quarter of the bloc’s bicycles, making “the industry … one of Portugal’s fastest-growing employers.”

A new global agreement could require all listed companies in signatory countries to report their exposure to climate risks. The framework could be agreed at the UN’s COP26 climate change conference in November, Governor of France’s central bank François Villeroy de Galhau tells the Financial Times. France has for years required banks and ins. companies to disclose their exposure to climate risks, while the UK wants to make it mandatory starting 2025. The EU is also revising its rules on non-financial disclosure, while the US has said it would join with Europe in calling for mandatory and standardized disclosure rules.

More than half of the G7 bailouts for energy-producing and -consuming activities led to pollution-causing emissions, according to a report (pdf) by development charity TearFund picked up by the FT. Some USD 189 bn of pandemic recovery funds — out of a total of USD 372 bn — were used for the oil, gas, coal, and transport sectors and the G7 countries are coming under fire for handing over the lifelines “with no strings attached”. The report called for “green strings” to be required when offering financing in efforts to accelerate the shift to green economies.

Why we should care, part MMCVII: “Our grandchildren could experience a climate last seen when crocodiles roamed the Arctic,” writes WSJ tech columnist Christopher Mims, noting that the last time there was this much CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere, “sea levels were 20 meters higher and trees grew in Arctic.” Mims was tweeting about this paper in Phys.org: Earth's history sends climate warning.

???? ON THE TUBE TONIGHT-

“A black hole is stranger than anything dreamed up by science fiction writers.” That’s how the late Stephen Hawking opens the newly released documentary Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know. Filmed over four years, the documentary follows scientists as they attempt to understand and capture the first image of black holes. Getting that image was no easy feat, with the nearest black hole so far away it would require a telescope the size of Earth to capture. Instead, scientists used the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration: eight observatories working together from six mountains spanning four continents. The idea, implementation, and final product are all depicted in the documentary which you can watch on Netflix or Apple TV. The doc’s creators also talk to The Guardian about their film.

???? OUT AND ABOUT-

The Om Kalthoum puppet show will be shown today at El Sawy Culturewheel at 6pm. The puppet of the iconic singer will perform Amal Hayaty and Lel Sabr Hodood.

Ubuntu Art Gallery is hosting the exhibition Look Them in the Eye by Nada Mobarak which will run until 12 June.

???? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

The mathematical models running your life: With a background in physics, economics, and sociology, Pablo Jensen explores the modern mathematical models that scientists use to define and run a society in Your Life in Numbers: Modeling Society Through Data. These models are used to interpret everything from economic growth, climate change, epidemiology, and urban planning, he argues, though the data may not always be accurate and models may be doing more harm than good. The book is untechnical and accessible to anyone, with Jensen using easy examples to delve into how complex numerical models work and how they are used in practice.

☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- Expect daytime highs of 34°C and nighttime lows of 19°C tomorrow through Sunday, according to our favorite weather app.