Hurghada seems to have been the main beneficiary of Sharm El Sheikh being off-sale in the UK, Rob Gill writes for tourism news website TTG. Andrew Grant, managing director of Red Sea Holidays, says: “Holidays for Hurghada, particularly the Makadi Bay area, are showing healthy increases in passenger numbers — the market is reporting an increase of 35%… Price has certainly been a contributor to the surge in sales, as popular resorts in Spain are demanding significant increases in prices.” Hope for a revival in Sharm El Sheikh has not been lost either as “some specialist operators to the Red Sea are optimistic that the FCO will soon change its advice on Sharm’s airport — Discover Egypt has even decided to include Sharm as a twin-centre option in its new brochure in anticipation that Britons will soon be able to fly to the resort.”

Could US President Donald Trump’s USAID budget cuts affect economic development aid to Egypt? While it remains unclear, the fear of that happening is definitely there, Ben Barber writes in the HuffPost. “The good news is that it won’t really hurt many in Egypt,” Barber says. Civilian aid to Egypt was cut from USD 900 mn in 2003 to USD 150 mn in 2015, which means the US gives Egypt about “USD 1.50 per Egyptian per year in aid.” Passage of any cuts isn’t a sure thing: Congress could refuse them, powerful US farmer lobbies could rally against them, and the pro-Israeli lobby “seeking a stable and strong neighbor” could also push the Trump administration into leaving Egypt’s development aid alone.

The greatest threat to the politically- and economically-fragile Egypt’s stability is not Daesh and armed militants but its fast growing population, which rose from 66 mn in the early 2000s to nearly 93 mn this year, according to Peter Schwartzstein writing for Newsweek’s European edition. With the country “in the throes of food and water shortages,” authorities need to shift their focus from “real and perceived” security threats to rethink their population control strategies, which had been effective until state support for family-planning initiatives was curbed in 2008-09 and NGOs began allocating resources to other projects.

The developments in former President Hosni Mubarak’s trial are “a reflection of the continued political chaos and people’s growing ambivalence about liberal democracy in the Middle East,” Simon Shen writes for Hong Kong portal EJ Insight. Shen believes “the continued political turbulence and poor economy since 2011 have led to widespread disillusionment with democracy among the Egyptian people, and many Egyptians are once again looking to another political strongman like Mubarak to restore order and stability to society.”

Other mentions of Egypt worth a skim:

• Hopes for a thaw in relations with Tehran took a blow after Egypt’s foreign ministry spokesperson saying Iran meddles with internal affairs of Middle East countries, Tehran Times says.
• Egypt increased its vegetable sales to the EU by 5.23% y-o-y in 2016, according to Fresh Plaza. The Netherlands was the biggest supplier of vegetables to the EU during the year, with a volume of 6.1 mn tonnes.
• Egypt is moving from a shortage of electricity to sufficiency, but more focus on renewables is needed, Amr Emam writes for The Arab Weekly.
• Hassan Hakimian, Director of the London Middle East Institute, writes that economists failed to predict the Arab Spring and that its incidents suggest “that improved economic performance cannot be viewed as an insurance policy against political instability” in a largely trite and facile piece in Project Syndicate.
• The Sun is regurgitating the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s travel advisory (and warnings) on Egypt to answer the question is Egypt safe. They don’t, so thanks for nothing, Sun.