**#8 PSA- We are taking a break from our daily talk shows coverage next week to give our ears the chance to heal. We will resume our regular roundup of the airwaves on Sunday, 16 September. (And, yes, we’ll keep one eyeball on the TV set each night in the event something big were to break.)

Has Lamees Al Hadidi been axed? The Egyptian Media Group (EMG) has reportedly decided to take Lamees Al Hadidi’s show Hona Al Asema off the air after it acquired 100% of Future Media Group (FMG), which owns satellite news channel CBC, in a recent transaction. The details of the agreement will be announced soon, a reporter at CBC tells Al Mal. The story provides a plausible explanation to Lamees’ absence from the screen, even though she had announced on on Twitter last week that she was due back last Saturday.

Egypt signs 11 MoUs with Uzbekistan: President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s visit to Uzbekistan earned much airtime on the airwaves. Egypt signed 11 MoUs with Uzbekistan covering cooperation in energy, agriculture, transportation, trade, manufacturing and industry, as well as political and cultural cooperation, according to an Ittihadiya statement. The two sides also agreed to establish an Uzbek-Egyptian business council,according to Central Asia’s Trends News Agency. El Sisi was in Uzbekistan for two days attend the Uzbek-Egyptian business forum and hold talks with Mirziyoyev (Read the full text of Sisi’s speech).

The trip is also significant as having been the first by an Egyptian president since Gamal Abdel Nasser, Bakhtiar Mohammed, a counselor at the Uzbek embassy in Cairo, told Al Hayah fi Masr (watch, runtime: 6:29). Yahduth fi Masr (watch, runtime: 1:35) and Masaa DMC also covered the visit(watch, runtime: 1:51). We have further details in Diplomacy + Foreign Trade, below.

Storms and heavy rains are expected to hit Upper Egypt today and tomorrow, but are not expected to cause flooding, meteorological authority head Ahmed Abdelaal told Al Hayah fi Masr (watch, runtime: 5:26). Abdelaal also spoke to Yahduth fi Masr, saying that autumn’s early arrival this year led the authority to begin taking steps to prepare for floods from now (watch, runtime: 3:45). We’re not sure how on earth the uncomfortable heat of the past week qualifies as “autumn,” but sure.

A campaign calling for the boycott of fruits and vegetables has driven down prices noticeably over the past two days, Mahmoud Askalani, the head of the Citizens Against High Prices Association — which routinely protests price increases in any commodity — claimed on Al Hayah fi Masr. Vendors were forced to slash prices as a drop in demand saw produce rotting on shelves, Al Askalani said (watch, runtime: 4:32).

Water us and measures to use flood and rain water for irrigation were the topic of the night in a talk between Irrigation Ministry official Osama Al Zaher and Al Hayah fi Masr’s Kamal Mady (watch, runtime: 5:53). Must-watch TV, to be certain.