THE SHORTEST-EVER WEEKEND EDITION

Good morning, fair readers. You’re reading a five-story weekend edition because we’re pouring a bit of extra time this week getting ready to take the GCC Edition daily (look for an email on that front on Sunday morning); we’re working out some new technology that will make your reading experience a bit more social (more on that in the next couple of weeks); and clearing stuff off our plate so we can spend some time in the UAE in early March (get in touch if you’d like to have coffee).

Before we get underway with five short from five different writers here, a public service announcement for the community: Tarek Amer will be on television on Sunday evening at 10:00pm CLT, talking with Al Kahera wal Nas’ Ibrahim Eissa. We’ll have a full take on what he says on Monday morning, but if you’re awake at that hour, you might want to tune-in live.

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SPEED ROUND, THE WEEKEND EDITION

From Moustafa, a meditation on inner beliefs: Sell-side equity research analysts are like priests … or a at least they should behave like ones, Bloomberg View columnist Matt Levine writes. “If you are a sell-side research analyst in the U.S., you are required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to conform your work to your inmost beliefs. ” Levine outlines that using the SEC case against Charles P. Grom, a former research analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities, who was effectively accused of not believing in a “BUY” recommendation he put on one company he covered.

From Gaser: The age of Siri and Clyde. Artificial intelligence exists across the board in society in the form of algorithms. The most prevalent of these is the black box algorithm, the kind where hardly anyone knows the inner workings, much like what goes into deciding how long your Schengen visa lasts or whether you’re “randomly” chosen for secondary screening at U.S. airports. The problem with this form of AI is its potential for becoming “an unnamed co-conspirator”, says former Interpol senior adviser and founder of the Future Crimes Institute Marc Goodman. Two examples, from opposite ends of the spectrum, illustrate this point featuring a hack, a tweet, and USD 136 bn in evaporated valuation. (Run time: 4:32; link also includes a transcript.)

From Rehaam, thoughts on motivation. Want to encourage your employees to get healthier? Thinking about giving financial incentives a try? Well don’t. According to a 281-employee study at the University of Pennsylvania, “Rewarding people with money, it turns out, didn’t inspire more people to achieve their [fitness] goal … The people who faced a penalty for failure, however, reached their goal 55 percent of the time,” Bloomberg reports. We wager threatening a little unpaid, mandatory overtime might also do the (probably non-kosher) trick.

From Hisham, some sarcasm: Paris and Rome becoming too tacky for you? Well look no further because travel agency Triptanza is launching “the first space travel agency in the MENA region, offering more than 14 different space packages 3 destinations around the Earth, the moon & Mars View” [sic] and boldly going where no street pickpocket has gone before. The cost: EGP 750K — and you better hurry up because apparently spaces are running out. That’s right: In EGP, in case you were worried about getting your hands on USD. Now you can help save the tourism sector by getting off this planet. And while you’re up there, you should think about lunar real estate, a secure investment in these trying times, before the Ashraf Salman gets its hands on it.

From Patrick, whose cold-addled brain can’t handle words today: The World Press Photo awards recognize the best news photography of the year from across the globe. Winners from 2015 were announced last night, and I’m still digesting them. The top prize went to a moody, black and white shot at night of a Syrian dad passing his child (maybe one year old) through barbed wire to outstretched hands as they try to cross a border. There but for the grace of God…

THE WEEK’S MOST-CLICKED STORIES

The most-clicked stories in Enterprise in the past week were:

• The Cairo Real Estate Market: 2015 A Year In Review (JLL)
• Our tweet of the week (@rafat)
• Pressure builds on Egypt to devalue pound (Financial Times)
• Five Countries Being Squeezed by Currency Pegs (Bloomberg)
• Tarek Amer on devaluation (Al Ahram)

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