Presenter and commentator Amr Adib has wrapped up his summer break and will be back on air on Friday with his weekday talk show El Hekaya on MBC. Until then, Ahmed Moussa still had the airwaves mostly to himself:

Building violations on agricultural land: Ala Mas’ouleety’s Ahmed Moussa spoke with Sayed Khalifa, the head of the Agricultural Syndicate, who discussed the work the Agriculture and Land Reclamation Ministry is doing to confront those illegally building on agricultural land. He said that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is the first president to address the problem of encroachment on these lands. Khalifa said that every feddan of agricultural land used for construction uses three times the amount of water it previously consumed as farmland. Every day Egypt loses 82 feddans of land, affecting the livelihood of 2k people, he said, noting that more than 1.2 mn feddans have been registered as encroached upon agricultural land (watch, runtime: 23:23).

State’s water treatment and desalination efforts: Moussa spoke with Vice Housing Minister Sayed Ismail, who spoke on Housing Minister Assem El Gazzar’s announcement that the government plans to invest EGP 134.2 bn in seawater desalination plants by the middle of the century (watch, runtime: 6:32), (watch, runtime: 6:25), (watch, runtime: 3:30). We have more coverage of the state’s investments in desalination plants in today’s Speed Round below.

State of the Suez Canal economic zone: Al Hayah Al Youm’s Lobna Assal spoke with Mohamed Yahya Zaki, the head of the Suez Canal Economic Zone, who said that he had discussed with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi the current challenges to drawing new investments in light of covid. They reviewed the performance of the zone’s six ports, and talked about possible incentives and regulatory amendments to help improve the current business climate (watch, runtime: 6:26).

Pros and cons of a brain chip: Al Hayah Al Youm’s Lobna Assal spoke with security expert Mohamed El Gendy to discuss the security implications of Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip. They discussed the potential for breakthroughs in treating physical conditions such as dementia, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injuries (watch, runtime: 8:20).