The Court of Cassation (Egypt’s highest appeals court) has upheld death penalties handed to 12 Ikhwan members including Mohamed Beltagy and Safwat Hegazy for their involvement in the 2013 Rabaa sit-in, Masrawy reports. The court also reduced the death penalty to life imprisonment for another 31 Ikhwan leaders including the group’s general guide, Mohamed Badie. In 2018, 75 Ikhwanis, including Beltagy and Hegazy, were sentenced to death in a mass trial. In a separate case, the two leaders also received life sentences along with Badie in 2020 for inciting violence outside a police station in Port Said governorate in 2013.

The story is dominating the conversation on Egypt this morning: Reuters | AFP | AP | Gulf News | Amnesty.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia agreed to step up cooperation in over a dozen sectors ranging from agriculture to energy and from natural resources to trade, during a meeting of the Egyptian-Saudi Joint Committee yesterday, cabinet said in a statement. Among the list of minor agreements yesterday: Egypt will brief Saudi state-owned miner Ma'aden on investment prospects in the mining sector; the two countries will set up logistics zones to store and process dates; and agencies involved with Egyptian-Saudi electricity interconnection project were told to hurry up.

Another thing we’re keeping an eye on this morning: The deadline for private sector companies to bid in Heliopolis Housing’s tender to develop the Heliopark project in New Cairo has been extended (pdf) to 29 June from 16 June.