Alexandria-born economist Nemat “Minouche” Shafik (official bio) has been hired as the new president of Columbia University, the university said in a statement. Shafik has served as the president of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) since 2017, following stints as deputy governor of the Bank of England, deputy managing director of the IMF, and other leadership roles at the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development. She is set to take over from Lee Bollinger in June, making her the first woman to hold the top job at the Ivy League university. The story got coverage in the NYT, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post, amongst others.

We couldn’t be more proud of Shafik, with whom we sat down for an exclusive interview back in 2019.

Also making headlines:

• Foreign Policy takes a look at what it says are warming Egypt-China relations in the wake of Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang’s visit to Cairo this week.
• Eco-friendly building materials startup Tile Green gets ink from AFP, in the same week it was chosen as one of nine startups to receive help from the UK’s Climate Finance Accelerator.
• CNN is the latest to use the “chicken feet” drama as a jumping-off point for a story on the state of our economy.
• A poll by Al-Monitor claims to show that 86% of Egyptians worry about their ability to access food in the next six months.
• Mummified crocodiles discovered in Aswan in 2018 are making a splash at the NYT.