At the G20 conference — the premier forum for international economic cooperation — U.S. President Joe Biden declared that Israel, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will establish the “India-Middle East-Europe Corridor” (IMEC): a multimode transit corridor spanning over 3,000 miles.

US Senator Bob Menendez, D-N.J., was indicted on federal corruption charges on Friday for allegedly taking bribes from the Egyptian government.

The Biden administration has allowed much of US foreign military aid to Egypt to go ahead, saying the country was vital for US national security interests, despite what critics have said about widespread human rights abuses, Reuters reports.

Egypt will lose “massive” amounts of much needed financial revenue generated by the Suez Canal if the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor is established, Israel’s economic Globes newspaper said.

The United States plans to withhold $85m in military aid to Egypt owing to Cairo’s failure to uphold US conditions on freeing political prisoners and other human rights issues, a US senator said, with some of the withheld funds being redirected to Taiwan.

Egypt is the country second most at risk of a debt crisis, coming just after war-torn Ukraine, according to analysis by Bloomberg.

Egypt’s annual headline inflation – which includes commodities such as food and energy prices – increased to a new high of 39.7 percent in August, up from 38.2 percent in July, according to data released by the country’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) on 10 September.

The Pentagon has increased its contribution to regular war games with Egypt, even as the Biden administration faces increasing pressure from Democrats in Congress to curtail military funds to Cairo in response to widespread human rights abuses.

A four-storey residential building collapsed in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Wednesday morning, 6 September, claiming the lives of at least four people, all from a single family.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called Tuesday for measures to slow the birthrate in the Arabic-speaking world’s most populous country, citing China’s one-child policy as an example.