Heading into this morning, the discovery of three Ptolemaic-era tombs in Minya swept news about Italy’s ambassador returning to Egypt after over a year of absence out of the top spot, having been picked up by BBC, Newsweek, Xinhua, and the American Institute of Archaeology.

The return of the Italian ambassador as the diplomatic rift over the brutal murder of Giulio Regeni also got heavy play in the foreign press. Declan Walsh has a long, well-sourced piece on “the strange twists in the case of Giulio Regeni’s disappearance in Cairo” for the New York Times. Along with the specifics of Regeni’s case, Walsh bring to the fore one of our nation’s more significant problems: The recurring failure of policymakers to address, respond to, and resolve one-off crises quickly, effectively, and unequivocally.

Italy’s decision to return the ambassador was taken out of consideration for larger regional issues, such as peace in Libya and stemming the flow of migration, says Xinhua, citing Italian lawmakers. “It was painful decision to make [but] the Libya issue does not allow us not to talk to Egypt," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Pier Ferdinando Casini explained to RAI public broadcaster in an interview.

Other international stories worth noting this morning include:

• A state “bid to stifle dissent” could overshadow a marked upturn in the country’s economy, writes Yigal Chazan for Frontera News.
• An Egyptian-American has pleaded guilty to receiving funds to support a Daesh terror attack that would have targeted America, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• Egypt’s nationwide campaign to develop a program for developing the Internet of Things technology is being looked at in IT Web Africa.