Egypt’s Central Bank paid back US$2bn (€1.5bn) in aid to Qatar despite its faltering economy and refused a request by Qatari airlines to increase flights, authorities said today, marking a new low in relations between the two countries.

Masked gunmen killed 16 Egyptian soldiers at a checkpoint along the border with Gaza and Israel, the first such attack on troops.

A FORMER chairman of a major Egyptian bank is being held on US$25,000 (€17,000) bail after being charged with sexually abusing a housekeeper at a New York City hotel.

Antiquities officials in Egypt today celebrated the return of a sculpture of a pharaonic queen’s head, which was smuggled to Britain as a cheap souvenir almost a decade ago.