On a pleasantly quiet news morning for Egypt in the international press, we note the following stories:

• Islamist former detainee Mohamed Soltan is protesting (in his own way) a decision by Washington’s Metro to reject his advertising campaign on human rights in Egypt, The Washington Post reports. Soltan hired a truck to park in front of the Metro headquarters and display the rejected ads.
• Egypt’s Mohamed El Shorbagy was unseated as the world’s top squash player by France’s Gregory Gaultier, who won the 2017 Allam British open, Eurosport reports.
• Cross-dressing was a big draw for urbane Egyptians a century ago, On Barak writes in Haaretz. Barack says Umm Kulthum used to dress as a boy in her early performances.
• This month, an Australian, major general Simon Stuart, took charge of the MFO forces stationed in Sinai, The Australian reported.
• The Financial Times’ Siona Jenkins reviewed HA Hellyer’s book, A Revolution Undone, in which he says that from the 2011 protests “Egypt showed that it was not ready for those alternatives but that does not mean that Egyptians are forever doomed to be stuck with the choices they made.”
• Leader of the Houthi movement in Yemen Abdel-Malik Al-Houthi praised Egypt for its “honorable” positions, and said that Saudi Arabia “abuses Cairo when it disobeys Riyadh,” Middle East Monitor reports, citing Anadolu Agency.