A session of the United Nations Security Council in New York. (Shannon Stapleton/courtesy Reuters) Above the Fold. The UN Security Council witnessed a rare double veto on Tuesday. Both Russia and Ch…

When Martin Kramer met Patrick Seale. Robin Yassin-Kassab’s primer on Syria’s Alawis. Delegitimizing artists in Sisi’s Egypt.  (Hat tip to Arabist)

At a rugby stadium in Pretoria on May 25, Cyril Ramaphosa was sworn in as South Africa’s fourth democratically elected president since 1994. The U.S. presidential delegation to the inauguration was headed by Kimberly A. Reed, the president of the Export-Import Bank.

In Africa and elsewhere, COVID-19 dominates media attention. Yet malaria has probably killed four times as many as COVID-19 over the last year in Africa. The good news is that early trials of a new vaccine, R21, show an effectiveness rate of 77 percent. The new vaccine is a further development of Mosquirix, a vaccine with a 56 percent effectiveness after one year, falling to 36 percent after four years.