One of Egypt’s best friends in Congress has lost his re-election bid. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the long-serving Republican from California, has narrowly lost his bid to stay in office. Rohrabacher penned a late 2016 letter declaring that President Abdel Fattah El Sisi a friend of the United States and a “defender of all the good things that we believe in” and calling Egypt a “partner for peace.”

The Middle East Solar Industry Association (MESIA) Solar Energy Trade Missionruns today and tomorrow at the Marriott in Zamalek. The gathering will look at the state of renewables and cleantech in Egypt.

A Libyan peace conference gets underway this morning in Italy, aiming to “push forward a new UN plan to stabilize the troubled North African country after a initiative to hold elections next month failed,” Reuters said. There was no word at dispatch time on whether Gen. Haftar Khalifa, the Egypt- and UAE-backed military commander whose forces control much of the east, planned to attend.

Saudi and Russia are at odds over production cuts: Two of the world’s largest crude producers are at odds over what the market looks like heading into 2019. Saudi Arabia is leading OPEC toward a production cut, pledging to slash its production by as much as 500k barrels a day in December, but Russia isn’t on board, arguing that any slack in supply is “short term.” Saudi Arabia is pushing OPEC and its allies to slash output by up to 1 mn barrels, and Oman Oil Minister Mohammed bin Hamed al-Rumhi said on Sunday that a majority of OPEC and other oil exporters would back the move. Russia has for the past two years moved in lock step with Saudi on production targets. Oil is now in a bear market, trading down more than 20% from the four-year high it hit just a month ago.

Can active fund managers recover after a disappointing October, the Financial Times’ Market Questions column wonders. Active managers have “long argued that a return to market volatility would renew their appeal” and are now “looking for fresh excuses after delivering disappointing returns in October when the Vix index — Wall Street’s fear gauge — rose sharply,” the salmon-colored paper write. US large-cap active managers posted their worst monthly results since September 2011.

In Saudi-themed miscellany this morning:

• Alwaleed bin Talal is back in the spotlight a year after having been given a late checkout from the Ritz Carlton. (WSJ)
• Erdogan claims to have given a recording of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi to the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Saudi Arabia. (NYT)
• Officials close to MbS allegedly discuss whacking enemies a year before the killing of Khashoggi. The alleged plot saw officials as a “small group of businessmen last year about using private companies to assassinate Iranian enemies of the kingdom.” (NYT)

Fortune magazine is now owned by a Thai business leader, Dealbook reports. It’s part of a trend of the US business press being snapped up by Asian and European investors, Felix Salmon writes for Axios.

Chinese online retailer Alibaba set a new record for single-day e-commerce sales yesterday on Singles Day, moving some USD 30.8 bn worth of merchandise. That’s nearly triple the combined total of every US company’s “black Friday” and “cyber Monday” sales, Business Insider reports.