We don’t know whether it’s a function of this being budget season, the run-up to earnings season and the fact that the House of Reps is in recess, but it feels like the slowest news day ever. In our three years of doing this, it’s quite possibly the slowest news day ever, to the delight of our night staff. (Don’t get complacent, though: It won’t last. It never does.)

IMF delegation’s reform review continues: The IMF delegation in town to review progress on the Sisi administration’s economic reform program met with Vice Minister of Finance Amr El Monayer yesterday, unnamed senior officials tell Al Masry Al Youm. On the agenda: tax policy reforms, which allowed the government to exceed its target revenues for the first time in FY2016-17. Talks are going well, they add, and the visit is expected to unlock another tranche of Egypt’s USD 12 bn extended fund facility. Finance Minister Amr El Garhy had said that structural reforms to support manufacturing and exports are among the key topics during the delegation’s visit, which he expects to wrap up around 8 or 9 November. Also on the agenda: more meetings with Finance Ministry and central bank officials and sit-downs with staff at the ministries of social solidarity and planning.

Random stuff from around the interwebs that’s worth a read this morning if your inner geek, like ours, demands to be satiated:

Exercise isn’t just more powerful than most anti-depressants in treating depression, it’s a protective against cancer, too. In former lives, two of us were molecular biologists, so we can’t help but geek out over Cell’s “Molecular Mechanisms Linking Exercise to Cancer Prevention and Treatment,” which provides an overview of the mechanisms behind how “physical exercise has been shown to reduce cancer incidence and inhibit tumor growth. … Exercise has a role in controlling cancer progression through a direct effect on tumor-intrinsic factors, interplay with whole-body exercise effects, alleviation of cancer-related adverse events, and improvement of anti-cancer treatment efficacy.” It’s by the same researcher who found that running helps your body make and redistribute more of the awesomely named NK or ‘natural killer’ cells, thereby “reducing the risk of cancer and disease recurrence.”

It’s not fat, but sugar and other carbs — including “healthy whole grains” — that are gonna kill you. So says the Economist in its favourable review of Nina Teicholz’s Big Fat Surprise. The book is about three years old now (as is the review), but both are making the rounds of social media of late. Teicholz’s book, along with Gary Taubes’ groundbreaking Why We Get Fat, are at the cutting edge of the post-Atkins anti-carb movement.

D&D is back in fashion, and what better way to prompt us to read about the geeky ‘80s board game some of us loved as kids than a New Yorker piece that opens with the story of a corporate drone who quit his day job to open a board game business that centered on his school-aged daughter? Read The Uncanny Resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons.