Welcome back, friends. Air traffic between Russia and Egypt may resume by early 2017, Sputnik reported. “January 2017 is a very plausible deadline for reopening regular air traffic with Cairo,” Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said, adding that the final decision will be taken by the Russian government. Ahram Online has a photograph of what it says are Russian security officers arriving at Cairo International’s Terminal 2 yesterday for inspections. In other Russia-related news, Energy Ministry spokesperson Ayman Hamza told the domestic press yesterday that contracts for the Daba’a nuclear power plant aren’t ready for a signing ceremony that a Russian report had said could come as early as tomorrow.

Oh, and if the Russians aren’t coming back, China is certainly interested in exporting tourists to us. Chinese state-broadcaster CCTV’s American service has a little package headlined “Egypt looks to growing Chinese tourism to help economy” that covers everything from the tripling of China’s tourism flow to Egypt to 200k arrivals per year since 2014, to trends in China’s outbound travel.