Driving the conversation about Egypt this morning in the international press:Wire service reports on the economy, the flap at the OIC over a Saudi insult to Egypt as well as life sentences for Ikhwan members and the death of as many as 26 people in flash floods caused by heavy rains over the weekend.

Fallout from the seizure last week of sugar at Edita and PepsiCo continues, with everyone from the Associated Press to private intelligence outfit Stratfor noting the dent the actions made in business and investor confidence. The AP contrasts the scene “inside the glitzy Nile Ritz-Carlton hotel off Tahrir Square, [where] Cairo’s business elite were eager to put years of tumult and lost opportunities behind them” during the US Chamber’s business mission to Egypt, with the “shameful” seizure of sugar and “treating [business] like we’re smugglers.”

Private intelligence outfit Stratfor nails it, suggesting right off the bat that, “Economic reforms will stir up opposition across the socioeconomic spectrum, but it will not become a credible threat to the government.” Sadly, the firm has also picked up on the impact of the sugar seizures at PepsiCo and Edita: “Public unrest and resulting economic uncertainty are ironically the result of reform measures designed to help Egypt’s near-term economic stability. The result is an environment that is currently not conducive to investment. Cairo’s seizure of rice and sugar stores from private companies for the subsidized market, for example, does little for investor confidence. Furthermore, that the government is setting price caps on commodities and dictating private sector prices for products has ruffled feathers in recent weeks. Cairo insists the measures are temporary for Egypt’s extraordinary circumstances, but business owners are not convinced.” (Read)

WaPo runs letter on economy from Egypt’s ambassador to Washington: Amb. Yasser Reda writes in response to a front-page Washington Post piece by Sudarsan Raghavan and Heba Mahfouz headlined As Egypt’s economy struggles, calls for protests against Sissi grow louder, which we noted the Thursday before last. Key takeaway: “To spur growth, we are implementing market-driven reforms to energy subsidies and investment laws. We are modernizing the taxation system and legislation to fund health and education, increase the efficiency of social welfare programs and provide targeted cash subsidies to the most vulnerable segments of society. Ongoing infrastructure projects, such as the Suez Canal Economic Zone, will stimulate the economy, create jobs, and provide needed water and sanitation, roads and railways, hospitals and schools and thousands of housing units in the least developed urban areas.” (Read)

MoFA gets in on the act: Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ahmed Abu-Zeid is blogging about “Egypt’s necessary war on terrorism” in response to a piece in Foreign Affairs by Steven Cook headlined “Egypt’s Nightmare: Sis’s dangerous war on terror” in the journal’s November / December 2016 issue.

EFG Hermes’ Vortex infrastructure fund gets a brief shout-out in Reuters’ profile of Portuguese wind farm builder-operator EDP Renovaveis and chief executive Joao Manso Neto, with his “long, grey hair and gaunt features.” The EFG fund has twice acquired substantial non-majority stakes in EDPR assets.

Also making the rounds this morning on the interwebs:

• Eni profits may be slumping, but it’s pushing ahead with work in Egypt (FT, paywall) and still plans to sell a stake in the Zohr field (Reuters).
• The Guardian’s Ruth Michaelson files a bottom-up take on the nation’s economic challenges in “Sugar shortage and soaring food prices fuel discontent in Egypt.”
• Reuters takes note of the president’s pledge to consider amending the protest law and to review the cases of those convicted under it.
• Egypt and KSA are members of the UN Human Rights Council; Russia has been given the boot, RT reports.
• A long profile of Naguib Sawiris based on an actual interview runs over on Forbes’ contributor platform.