Lina Attalah
Chief Editor
Lina studied journalism at the American University in Cairo. Before joining Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition, she wrote for Reuters, Cairo Times, the Daily Star, and the Christian Science Monitor, among others. In 2005, she worked as radio producer and campaign coordinator with the BBC World Service Trust in Darfur, Sudan. She also worked as project manager for a number of research-based projects with multi-media outputs around the themes of space, mobility, and intellectual history. Lina is particularly drawn to border areas, where human geography issues of conflict and desire are rampant.
Contributions
News
Sinai community leaders have warned US officials that Egypt's plan to build an underground steel wall along the Gaza border may destabilize the peninsula, a new WikiLeaks cable has revealed.
The warnings were issued during various meetings held...
The Ministry of Tourism on Wednesday instructed Egypt’s Chamber of Diving and Water Sports (CDWS) to suspend all diving activities in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh. The closure is expected to remain in place until the end of...
Egypt’s underground steel wall on the Egyptian-Gaza border is valued at US$40 million and is due to be completed in December 2010, a US Embassy cable has revealed. The cable has been exclusively leaked to Al-Masry Al-Youm.
The wall, which the...
Among 250,000 classified US cables which began to be released on 28 November by online whistle-blower WikiLeaks are diplomatic messages that expose Egypt's alliance with the US in recent years. These include Cairo-issued advice to US officials...
Scattered violence and low voter turnout have marked the first few hours of today’s parliamentary poll, amid common irregularities.
The son of an independent candidate in the Mattariya district in Cairo died today after he was stabbed on...
In the early morning hours of elections day, Cairo seemed uncommonly calm. But this potentially vibrant day is nevertheless marked by expectations and early signs of violations.
Al-Masry Al-Youm observed a shortage of public buses, which are...
In an editorial on Friday, the Washington Post condemned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for saying “nothing” to Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit about what the paper described as unfair and illegitimate power sharing...
While doing archival research on 19th century Egypt and the intricacies of the foundation of a modern state, historian Khaled Fahmy stumbled upon a curious account.
In the first week of Muhammad Ali’s major expedition into al-Sham (the Levant...
Egyptian security uncovered a cell of some 20 extremists allegedly planning attacks in south Sinai, a police source said.
The source added that the plot targeted Israeli tourists in the region as well as multinational forces. The extremists were...
Six years after his death, scholar Edward Said is still remembered for his influential theories on imagery construction between the East and West. His chef d’oeuvre Orientalism remains a prevailing theoretical paradigm not only for academics,...
Opinion articles
I don’t expect the state to be creative, because power is an end in many ways, and only a threat to power is conducive to the state going outside of its comfort zone.
I don’t expect the state to be creative, because creativity is put...
I spent days grappling with the difficulty of identifying ways of remembering 25 January — and we’re only down to the second anniversary. Every possible story seems to have been told and retold. Barracks have been cast on both...
During the painful Ettehadiya battle earlier this month between Brotherhood supporters and youthful opposition, the violence was not just physical. The scene was also a battlefield of chants. We chanted, “horriya” (freedom). They...
Bashing the Egyptian state for its utter failure in Sinai is no longer news. But some microcosmic incidents still illustrate the state’s impotence in dealing with the tumultuous border area.
Indeed, Sinai can serve as a laboratory in which one...
Amid Egypt's troubled transition, news from Sinai is emerging again, albeit in its old familiar form. Lawlessness is the story of the arid peninsula, which is home to an intricate set of historic, political, social and economic conditions that...
I was recently sipping a cup of tea in Café Riche, Downtown Cairo’s 100-year-old café. I sat next to one of its windows, fenced with interlocking iron wires to close it off from the hurling sounds of the busy heart of town. As I was gazing at the...
