It’s a morning of barley-warmed leftovers for Egypt in the international press this morning, and for that we give thanks. The top two stories: Plenty of ink is being spilled on little-known singer Shaymaa, who is entering the final seconds of her 15 minutes of fame after having been sentenced to two years for “debauchery.” And a UK woman alleged to have smuggled opioids into the country is said by the tabloid press to be losing her hair in jail after being told her Christmas Day hearing may be postponed a month.

The Financial Times is getting into the leftovers game, too, barely able to summon the energy to “update” stories that ran earlier this year for a package headlined Doing Business in the Arab World 2017. Included here is Heba Saleh’s piece from July on the private sector’s war with interest rate hikes and inflation. The piece, which followed the CBE’s 700 bps interest rate hike and when inflation was still over the 30s mark, spoke to the frustrations of the business community unable to pass the costs over to the consumer. Other pieces from the series include:

• The Arab world: 2017 in rewind
• Will ‘world’s biggest IPO’ reach its USD 2 tn prediction?
• Amazon buys into the Middle East
• Gulf banks face up to Qatar fallout
• Middle Eastern disrupter airlines fly into heavy turbulence

Irish-Egyptian national Ibrahim Halawa says “dozens” of his cellmates in Egypt were radicalized to support Daesh’s views, the AP’s Brian Rohan writes. Halawa, who was released from jail in October after four years of being held in pretrial detention, says jail conditions in Egypt led many to “the brink of despair.” “In the beginning, no one had even heard of Daesh, but by the time I left, maybe 20 percent were openly supporting their ideas. It could have been just talk … but after all those years of being in jail with no explanation, many wanted revenge,” says Halawa.

Also worth a skim this morning:

• 70% of Palestinians polled by Reuters said they do not trust Egypt to broker peace with the Israelis, while 80% said they do not trust Saudi. (Super, we say. Go broker your own peace deal and we’ll focus on growing our economy.)
• Doctors diagnosed a 2,000-year-old mummy with cancer after analyzing it for 11 years, according to the Daily Caller. Good thing it was already dead.