Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry is to fly to Entebbe, Uganda, on Monday for ministerial meetings involving the Nile Basin countries, the ministry said in a statement on Sunday. Senior government officials, including ministers of foreign affairs and water, are due to attend two-day preparatory meetings on 20-21 June in the run-up to a presidential summit scheduled a day later. The presidential gathering, which Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi will attend, is the first such summit to bring together all Nile Basin countries, with a population of over 500 million. The ministry says the "historical" gathering will "open the way to exploring broad areas of cooperation in many development areas beyond the field of water," according to spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid. During this weeks meetings, Egypt aims to "work towards bringing the views and positions on the Nile water closer by focusing on prospects for cooperation and achieving common goals, as well as expanding the scope of cooperation ... to include cultural and security cooperation and political coordination," the ministry statement read. Last week, Sisi and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Musevini discussed preparations for the summit in a phone call. Officials had said earlier that the upcoming summit would look at the results of earlier meetings as well as points of contention on the Entebbe agreement. Uganda is the current chair of the Nile Council of Ministers of Water Affairs of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). Egypt froze its NBI membership in 2010 over disagreements about the Cooperative Framework Agreement, more commonly known as the Entebbe agreement. Spokesman Abu Zeid said Egypt hopes the upcoming summit will "come up with a common vision to re-launch the initiative based on the principle of the mutual interests of all countries." In July, Egyptian irrigation minister Mohamed Abdel-Ati attended the 24th annual meeting of the NBIs Nile Council of Ministers (Nile-Com) in Uganda after an absence of several years, a move seen as a partial return of the North African nation to active participation in the group. The NBI comprises 10 permanent members: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. Eritrea has observer status. In March, Egypts water resources Minister Mohamed Abdel took part in talks held by NBIs council of ministers in Ugandas Entebbe that addressed Cairos concerns over the Nile Basin Initiative and the Entebbe agreement. By 2011, six Nile Basin nations had signed the agreement, which was developed over more than a decade: Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Egypt and Sudan have declined to sign the treaty -- which sets out the principles and obligations of member states regarding the use of the basins water resources -- citing concerns about its reallocation of water quotas and other provisions. Historic water-sharing pacts between Egypt and Sudan continue to govern the distribution of Nile water between the two countries.

The crisis of the arrest of a number of journalists and activists who were protesting the demarcation agreement with Saudi Arabia at the Journalists Syndicate escalated on Wednesday evening, as Qasr al-Nil prosecutors started interrogating eight of those arrested, including three journalists.

Russia will supply Ka-52K shipboard helicopters to Egypt, according to a policy decision yet to be signed, Director for International Cooperation at Russia’s Rostec Corporation Viktor Kladov told Russian agency TASS on Tuesday. “We were just in Egypt to discuss this issue,” said Kladov. “Since a policy decision has been made, signing a contract is only a technical matter.”

Egypt s House of Representatives is expected to give a final vote on Wednesday on the controversial maritime border demarcation deal which places the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir, currently administered by Egypt, in Saudi Arabia s territorial waters. The vote comes after the legislative and constitutional affairs committee and the national security and defence committee approved the deal on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Wednesday the Defense and National Security Committee of the House of Representatives followed in the footsteps of the Legislative Committee, approving the handover of Tiran and Sanafir islands to Saudi Arabia. Parliament Speaker Ali Abdelaal stated on Tuesday that the Parliament’s Legislative and Constitutional Committee has agreed to refer the 2016 Egyptian-Saudi Arabian maritime demarcation deal to a general ballot for the parliament’s members.

An Egyptian court on Tuesday suspended an inspection system launched last year and intended to streamline the trade of agricultural commodities for the world s largest wheat buyer, lawyers on the case told Reuters. The suspension will return wheat inspections to the agriculture ministry s quarantine body, which had been stripped of its inspection authority after it applied a zero tolerance policy on the common grain fungus ergot last year, halting the country s wheat trade when traders refused to sell.

Egypt s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi told a German minister that terrorism cannot be fought only with military and security methods but rather its sources must be eliminated, especially those countries that provide it with financial and political support. Speaking to German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in Berlin on Tuesday, El-Sisi added that it is also necessary to destroy the theoretical bases of terrorism through developing education and correcting religious discourse to enhance the tolerant values of religions, state news agency MENA cited Alaa Youssef, the presidential spokesperson, as saying.

The members of parliament “25–30 bloc” called on the government to hand over the records of the meetings of the National Committee for Demarcating the Maritime Borders with Saudi Arabia. They also called on the government to deliver the “letter sent by the Finance Ministry to the Foreign Affairs Ministry in 1949”, in which Finance Ministry confirms that the Red Sea islands are Egyptian territories and states that the Egyptian Survey Authority has surveyed these islands as Egyptian land.

Car booking apps Uber and Careem were allegedly requested by the Egyptian government to disclose real-time user and driver data, the New York Times reported on Saturday, a move that raises concern over the state’s ongoing surveillance efforts.

Sixty political parties and movements as well as a number of public figures said they will confront parliament’s discussion of the maritime demarcation agreement with Saudi Arabia through all peaceful political and constitutional methods. They said the agreement grants the Saudi kingdom sovereignty over Tiran and Sanafir islands, violating the Egyptian constitution and other laws, as well as the recent judicial verdicts. In a statement, they stressed that ceding the Egyptian land is considered a clear announcement of dropping the legitimacy of the current authority and parliament.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi will fly to Germany on Monday for a visit intended to give a fresh boost to Egypt-German relations, according to Badr Abdel Atty, Egypt s ambassador to Berlin. Speaking to MENA on Sunday, Abdel Atty said that the two-day conference on German investment in African countries comes against the backdrop of unprecedented coordination between to two nations over the past two-and-a-half years.

The Parliament’s Complaints and Suggestions Committee is expected to meet on Tuesday to discuss a draft law, introduced by MP Bedier Abdel Aziz, prohibiting the usage of ‘foreign’ names for newly born babies in Egypt. The law would impose a fine, and in some cases a prison sentence, on individuals who give their children Western names.

The international community should implement strict procedures to stop the funding and arming of terrorist organisations, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi told French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian during a meeting in Cairo on Thursday. In a press release by the president s office, spokesman Alaa Youssef stressed the importance of continued coordination and talks between the two sides over different regional and international conflicts that share mutual interest in order to face the ongoing challenges, including the dangers of terrorism, which have implications affecting the whole world.

The Global Firepower Index (GFI) ranked Egypt’s military as the 11th most powerful worldwide ahead of Israel, Vietnam and Brazil, in a list of 127 countries with the most powerful military in the world for 2017. The GFI criteria ranks the countries based on more than 50 factors, including each country’s military budget, its manpower, the amount of equipment each country has in its respective arsenal and its natural resources.

Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said 1.93 million feddans of agricultural land has been encroached upon and 1.7 million feddans were recovered. Ismail added that 168.5 million square meters of state land was encroached upon and 118 million square meters were recovered.

Egypt is still discussing with Ethiopia an initial report issued by two firms tasked with assessing the impact of the under-construction Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on downstream countries, Egypt s irrigation ministry spokesman Hossam Imam told Al-Ahram Arabic news website on Tuesday. Egypt is currently negotiating with Ethiopia the period of time over which the dam s reservoir should be filled after construction is completed.

Lawyer Khaled Ali and political activist Shawqiya al-Kurdi filed a lawsuit on Tuesday before the Administrative Court to compel the President, the Prime Minister and the Parliamentary Speaker to dissolve the House of Representatives in accordance with Article 137 of the Constitution and to suspend its sessions as it represents a threat to national security and the territorial integrity of the Egypt. The Parliament recently referred a maritime demarcation agreement that would transfer two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia to its Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, which expects to discuss it within few days.

The US Embassy in Cairo released on Monday a security message for US nationals in Egypt warning of possible terrorist attacks targeting religious sites outside Greater Cairo. The Embassy called on US citizens to avoid visiting religious sites outside Greater Cairo, in addition to being “prudent” when it comes to their personal security and safety by following security guidelines issued in the US State Department’s travel warnings.

Egypt decided on Monday to cut off its diplomatic relations with the Arab Gulf State of Qatar and accused the Qatari government of following a hostile policy against Egypt, in addition to sponsoring terrorist organization such as the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) group, the Egyptian Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

Al-Masry Al-Youm learned that the Parliament’s Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee will discuss next week the Red Sea islands maritime demarcation deal, under which Saudi Arabia was recently given sovereign right over the islands of Tiran and Sanafir.

Egyptian expatriates in Qatar woke up on Monday to the news that Egypt had decided to sever diplomatic ties with their host country, on charges of sponsoring terrorism. According to statements from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Libya, Yemen and Egypt, Qatar stabilizes its national security by supporting terrorists groups such as the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood.