We’re getting underway on this shortened work week with two nuggets of business news, and we’re also on the cusp of earnings season. That said: It’s still going to be a week dominated by all things diplomacy.

The EGX’s market cap crossed the EGP 1 tn mark for the first time on Thursday, according to State Information Service. The benchmark EGX30 closed the day up 1.33%.

EXCLUSIVE- Is PepsiCo’s Khaled Abu Zahra to succeed El Monayer? Senior government officials tell us that PepsiCo’s Middle East and Africa taxation boss, Khaled Abu Zahra, has been nominated to replace Amr El Monayer as vice-minister of finance in charge of tax policy. El Monayer resigned in March. Abu Zahra joined Pepsi from Ernst & Young, where he was tax manager for almost eight years. He had earlier done stints at BMW and General Motors.

Now, what about that diplo stuff?

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is in Egypt today and will be meeting both President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, according to a statement from the French Foreign Ministry. Le Drian will also meet with representatives of French companies doing business in Egypt and will visit the Cairo Metro construction site, a significant portion of which has been contracted to French companies. Expect meetings to be dominated by talk of Syria, Libya and the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.

Le Drian will also hold follow up talks on a global anti-terrorism finance agreement signed by more than 70 countries last Thursday. In a final declaration, the agreement’s signatories agreed to “fully criminalize” financing for terror groups and suspects through effective and proportionate sanctions “even in the absence of a link to a specific terrorist act,” according to the Associated Press.

Le Drian’s visit is expected to pave the way for a sit-down later in May between El Sisi and French President Emmanuel Macron. No hard details have yet emerged on Macron’s planned visit.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini is set to visit Cairo tomorrow, Ahram Gate reports. Mogherini will be in town for a meeting of the Libya Quartet being hosted by the Arab League. Members of the quartet include the EU, the UN, the Arab League, and the African Union. The quartet meets as the Egypt-backed Libyan military commander Haftar Khalifa “flew home on Thursday to Benghazi” where we was “smiling and looking hale …and delivered a spirited televised address, seemingly dispelling for now reports that health problems could imperil his grip on power,” the New York Times reports. Mogherini is expected to sign a number of cooperation agreements with Egypt while in town.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin is due in Cairo on today and tomorrow, his ministry announced. Look for talks to be dominated by trade and tourism: Egypt is a significant market for Ukrainian wheat, and Ukraine has recently been an important tourism market for Egypt, although industry watchers think a substantial number of the 750k Ukrainian tourists who visited last year were Russians using Ukrainian flights to side-step Moscow’s flight ban.

Egypt will extend its leadership on energy policy in the Eastern Med this week when Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and his Greek counterpart, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, visit tomorrow. Look for plenty of talk about energy and curbing Turkish influence in the region. The two heads of state will be in Egypt to mark “A Week to Revive the Roots,” a celebration of the three nations’ shared culture and minority communities slated to run 30 April through 6 May with events in Alexandria and Sharm El Sheikh. Cypriot Energy Minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis is expected in Cairo during the trip to discuss energy cooperation.

Elsewhere this morning:

Food for thought on AI from co-founder of Google: He’s not in Elon Musk territory, but Google co-founder Sergey Brin has flagged concerns over how artificial intelligence will play out for humanity, writing in his annual letter to Alphabet shareholders that “the new spring in artificial intelligence is the most significant development in computing in my lifetime. We are truly in a technology renaissance, an exciting time where we can see applications across nearly every segment of modern society.” What’s keeping Brin up at night when it comes to AI? “How will they affect employment across different sectors? How can we understand what they are doing under the hood? What about measures of fairness? How might they manipulate people? Are they safe?” Read the full thing here or head over to the Financial Times for analysis.

Saudi’s King Salman and Crown Prince MbS broke ground yesterday on the multi-bn USD Qiddiya project,  “a vast entertainment resort… [that] will include a Six Flags theme park, water parks, motor sports, cultural events, and vacation homes,” according to Reuters. The news comes as Saudi grapples with the implications not of its spending on Robot Utopia, but of opening up to western culture: Officials “apologized Saturday for videos with scantily clad female performers shown at a pro-wrestling event,” the Wall Street Journal writes.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry welcomed news of the reconciliation between the two Koreas in a statement yesterday, describing the summit between North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in as an important step forward in easing overall global tension. Reuters says the leaders of the two countries, who met for the first time in over a decade last Friday, “held hands, planted a tree, and signed a pledge to pursue peace on the peninsula.” The meeting paves the way for a summit, possibly in June, between Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump.

PSA #1: It’s a short work week. Tuesday is a day off in observance of Labor Day. Banks and the stock exchange will be closed. We’ll be off, too, and back in your inboxes on Wednesday.

PSA #2: Expect high temperatures, blowing sand and periods of rain all week long, the national weather service warns. The worst of it will be on Monday and Tuesday, the weather service said, but the rain will not be as heavy as it was last week, when it flooded parts of the capital city. Expect a high today of 35°C, of 38°C Monday through Thursday and of 42°C on Saturday. We have more on the subject in Last Night’s Talk Shows, below.