It’s a relatively quiet news morning at home and abroad, as domestic scribes took a deep breath yesterday after covering the aftermath of this weekend’s carnage in Sinai, the US press recovered from its Thanksgiving meat sweats, and other journos in countries to our west seemed to get an early start on the end-of-year news slowdown.

We’ll have images in Enterprise once again tomorrow morning as the three-day national period of mourning comes to a close.

And we’re off on Thursday, as is the rest of the nation: It is officially a four-day week. The central bank declared Thursday a day off for the banking and private sectors in an official statement (pdf) issued late yesterday afternoon. The government and EGX had announced last week that the public sector would be off for the day in observance of Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, which falls on Friday 1 December.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote today on three pieces of legislation regulating nuclear sites and industry activities, Ahram Online reports. House Speaker Ali Abdel Aal had called for the “emergency” plenary session to discuss and vote on the laws, which Deputy Speaker Mahmoud El Sherif noted must be passed before construction on the Daba’a nuclear power plant begins.

Also around the interwebs this morning:

For media geeks: If you’re into media in emerging and frontier markets, the Washington Post looks at how Zimbabwe’s largest newspaper is keeping up with changing times in Suddenly, Zimbabwe’s biggest newspaper can print exactly what it wants. It’s harder than it sounds. Also: Time Inc sold itself to Meredith and Koch brothers in an all-cash transaction worth some USD 1.8 bn. Throw in debt and the transaction values Time at USD 2.8 bn. Check out coverage from Reuters, the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times, as your personal preferences and subscriptions dictate.

For science geeks: Does bacteria play a role in the spread of cancer? And if so, could antibiotic treatment become part of a successful course of cancer treatment? The New York Times’ fantastic Gina Kolata takes a deep dive into the question after researchers found a common bacteria found in dental plaque also turns up in half of all colon cancers. “Whether Fusobacterium nucleatum causes colon tumors is unknown. But a new study hints that it may be ‘an integral part of the cancer.’”

Also worth a read in the Times: The very bright Anahad O’Connor looks at research that the sugar industry has long known that the sweet stuff it peddles has a negative impact on cardiovascular health. As in “going back to the 1960s” long.

For geeks like us: 12 Great Star Wars Gifts for 2017 from the people at iMore.

For the Luddites among us: The New York Times is on a tear of late with its questioning of technology. Go read How Evil Is Tech?, Our Love Affair With Digital Is Over and Laptops Are Great. But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting. All are out in the past few days. We manage our daily task lists and schedules with Moleskines now rather than one of the dozen tech toys that clutter our lives, but can’t imagine not taking verbatim notes in meetings on an iPad.

Our current finance obsessions, playing out in real time: Robots seem unlikely to take investment bankers’ jobs, but will make bank call center staff obsolete, Nordea Bank says. And in the granddaddy of them all, emerging markets and index providers collide in Bloomberg’s Index Providers Rule the World—For Now, at Least.

Whether you’re hitting your 40s or have parents north of that mark, go read Six things you need to know about dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, part of the Financial Times’ annual appeal for funding for Alzheimer’s research. Then go read this set of five short pieces by FT writers on sharing “their personal stories of how dementia has affected their family.”