A visit to the US by a delegation of Egyptian government officials and civil society members set for 21 January has been postponed as a number of top US officials will not be available to meet over the week of inauguration of Presient-elect Trump.

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) decided to pump EGP 2.5bn into United Bank, bringing the bank’s capital up to EGP 3.5bn. The CBE owns 99.9% of the bank’s shares. According to Ashraf Elkady, chairperson of the United Bank, the CBE’s injection of new capital will give a strong boost to the bank and its team to develop its business, strengthen the capital base, and raise the capital adequacy.

Egyptian parliament speaker Abdel-Aal said in his first-ever TV interview on Monday that it is parliament that will have the final say on the Red Sea island agreement with Saudi Arabia, despite the recent court ruling voiding the deal.

The Egyptian Pharmacists Syndicate said Monday that the presidency had invited its officials to a meeting with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi next week, to attempt to solve the Syndicate's crisis with the Ministry of Health and pharmaceutical companies over the pharmacists' profit margin.

A Russian security delegation left Egypt on Monday after a six-day visit, during which the delegation inspected the security measures undertaken by Egyptian authorities at Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh airports, in order to resume direct flights between the two countries. In a statement, Egypt’s Ministry of Civil Aviation said that the Russian delegation followed up on the new technical and security developments in the two airports, and praised the Egyptian side on the applied measures.

Egypt’s High Administrative Court upheld on Monday a June decision by an administrative court that affirmed Egyptian sovereignty over the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir, rejecting a government appeal against the lower court ruling. Today's High Administrative Court's ruling cannot be appealed.

Members of Parliament (MPs) for North Sinai governorate criticized the Interior Ministry's statement announcing the killing of 10 militants in clashes with the security forces. The MPs said that 6 out of the 10 militants announced dead had been detained for the past three months by the security apparatus, which rules out that they could've been engaged in the recent terrorist attacks in Arish city.

Head of the Egyptian parliament's committee of legislative and constitutional affairs Bahaaeddin Abu Shoqa told reporters Monday that he has no comment on the High Administrative Court ruling which halted transfer of the two Egyptian Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia.

Former presidential candidate and lawyer Khaled Ali filed a case with administrative court on Saturday demanding a halt to the Ministry of the Interior’s decision to impose an exclusion zone of 800 meters around vital governmental institutions in Cairo to ban any protests.

The Pharmacists Syndicate postponed a scheduled partial protest against the increment of medicine prices after receiving a call from the presidency that informed them their demands are being considered.

Minister of Finance Amr El-Garhy announced the terms of the loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), under which Egypt is set to obtain a $12bn loan over three years. In a press conference on Sunday, El-Garhy said that the most prominent terms of the economic reform programme are reducing the overall deficit, reaching a deficit of 10.1% in the current fiscal year and to decrease it to 8.5% in the coming fiscal year, and turning the initial deficit into a surplus this fiscal year.

Egyptian border guard forces prevented more than 12,000 people of various nationalities from illegally entering or leaving the country in 2016, the military said on Wednesday.

Forbes magazine reported Tuesday that business mogul Naguib Sawiris is Egypt's biggest winner in 2016 as his net fortune increased by US$700 million to reach US$3.7 billion in total.

President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi spoke by phone on Wednesday with French president François Hollande, a presidential statement said.

Egypt President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Tuesday that the cost of fighting terrorism is “very high,” but that Egyptians have chosen “the difficult path". In a phone-in with Amr Adib’s show Kol Youm (Everyday) on a privately owned satellite channel, Sisi said “I would like to remind you Egyptians and myself of July 24 (2013) I asked for a mandate from the people to counter terrorism and would-be violence, and people took to the streets. I was telling the Egyptians that you will see a huge amount of challenges, not just over one day, or a month or a year, but over years.”

The Ministry of Health announced on Tuesday that it has increased the prices of 3,000 drugs, of which about 300 drugs are against chronic diseases. Minister of Health Ahmed Emad El-Din said in a statement that the ministry has agreed with pharmaceutical companies to move up the prices of 15% of local drugs and 20% of foreign drugs (totaling 3,000 drugs), out of 12,000 drugs in the market.

The prices of poultry, meat and rabbits have witnessed high increases across the country, that people have described as ‘crazy’. In Luxor, Ahmed Saber, a merchant, said prices of poultry jumped high during the past period of time due to the increase in prices of fodder, workforce and fuel used for heating the chicken coops. One kilo of chicken has now reached LE33.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said in a TV phone interview on Monday that Egypt’s ongoing fight against terrorism in Sinai is taking a heavy toll on the state’s resources. In a phone interview with TV host Amr Adib on his late night show Kol Youm on ONTV channel, El-Sisi said that the cost of fighting terrorism has been “huge” over the last three-and-a-half years, not only in “sacrifices made through the blood of our children, but also in the monetary cost.”

Ministry of Planning Monitoring and Administrative Reform (MPMAR) is preparing a study to raise the minimum wage limit for state civil servants in the fiscal year 2017/ 2018 to LE1,500. An official source with the ministry said that the study recommends an increase in the minimum salary to LE1,500 instead of the current LE1200, to ease the burden on the low-income employees.

Political parties grouped under the Democratic Current decided to postpone their protest scheduled for Wednesday against the Egyptian-Saudi maritime demarcation deal to Saturday for legal reasons, lawyer Tarek Nagida told Daily News Egypt on Tuesday.

South Sudan's President Silva Kiir arrived in Cairo on Monday on a three-day visit for talks with the Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, state's news agency MENA reported. The two presidents will discuss bolstering bilateral relations and the latest developments in the Nile Basin and the Horn of Africa, according to MENA.