Topping coverage of Egypt in the foreign press this morning are pickups from the wires on the arrest of human rights lawyer Khalid Ali. The stories (see Associated Press and Reuters) have been framing the story as an attempt by the government to arrest opposition opponents ahead of the 2018 presidential elections.

Still high up on foreign coverage is again some beating up on Trump for minding his own business about the domestic affairs of Middle East allies. Abby Phillip and David Nakamura pen yet another piece for the Washington Post on how he has rejected pushing allies on human rights, while The Hill is now leaning purely leaning toward crass insults, calling regional leaders close to Trump “thugs.” Bloomberg is attempting to gauge the mood on the streets of Arab countries, including Egypt, on Trump’s speech in Riyadh.

The debate over the CBE raising interest rates 200 bps has carried into China’s official Xinhua news agency, which has a roundup of views from Egyptian experts and business folks including Mohamed Attwah (economics professor, Mansoura University), Hani Berzi (CEO, Edita), and Ihab Al Desouqi (chair of Sadat Academy’s economics department).

Daesh is spreading out of North Sinai and targeting minorities, writes Jenna Le Bras for Newsweek Middle East in a piece that attempts to cover just about everything about Daesh in Egypt. Le Bras speaks to displaced Christians from North Sinai on how their family members were killed by Daesh, and to Muslims about Daesh killing residents for cooperating with the army. In a sidebar, Lebras claims that political arrests have led to the radicalization of generations of people who become terrorists.

Other coverage worth noting in brief this morning:

• Tourists visiting Egypt should see the Egyptian Museum, the Giza Pyramids, ride a hot air balloon in Luxor, take a felucca down the Nile, and visit the White Desert, Karen Gardiner writes for television channel Bravo’s Jet Set blog.
• One asylum seeker who illegally crossed over into Israel from Egypt in November was the sole person to do so over the past year, marking a drastic drop from the “tens of thousands” who snuck into Israel before the border fence was built in 2012, Haaretz reports.
• What’s up with Moscow? Russia’s Patriarch Kirill has asked Pope Tawadros II to arrange for the transfer of artefacts “connected to the Egyptian forefathers of the Coptic Orthodox church” from Egypt to Moscow, TASS says in a very unusual introduction to a story that otherwise looks at warming ties between the two churches.