A fishing boat named Princess Malak left Lake Manzala, near the northern Egyptian coast this past April with 37 fishermen on board. The boat was heading to Eritrea to fish in its territorial waters, but a week after the start of the journey, it accidently trespassed in Sudanese territorial waters. By the 49th nautical mile, […]

It was hardly a normal day last month for the river rescue team in Qena when they received a distress call from a sinking tanker loaded with 500 tons of phosphate. “As soon as we heard their Mayday call, we immediately headed to Dndara Bridge near the bank of the Nile where the tanker was […]

Besides being a well-known Egyptian activist, Laila Soueif is a math professor at Cairo University and co-founded the Universities’ Autonomy Movement in 2003, which was re-named 9 March Movement by the media. Soueif contributed significantly to many other political movements and also notably co-founded the Anti-Torture Egyptian Association, which played a major role in revealing […]

Instead of the pay raise the Egyptian president classically declares at Labor Day celebrations, this year’s holiday was marked by an honor pact handed by Gaebali Muraghi, Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) head to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. In the pact, Muraghi pledged to reject strikes (on behalf of all workers), and committed to social […]

On the outskirts of Sheikh Zuweid village, east of al-Arish city in North Sinai, Ibrahim Mansour was sitting under an canopy and smoking while looking every now and then at a big pile of uprooted olive trees that used to cover his land before security forces decided to uproot olive farms in al-Arish in their […]

“I never had any Christian friends before January,” admitted Hamada Zidan an activist from Mallawi, 250 kilometers south of Cairo. Zidan attributes this exposure to the burgeoning independent cultural and art scene in Upper Egypt, which has since the revolution, diversified and connected people. “The most positive aspect about the revolution was that it removed […]

Scenes of Egyptian education officials holding the national flag while watching a pile of books burn in a schoolyard in Faisal district in Giza last week have been circulating through social media. Burning books as a natural act against ‘terrorism’, or justifying such practices under the pretext that these books are non-compliant with the ideology […]

At Nadi Hamo, a popular café in downtown Cairo, just steps away from the Yemen Embassy, 30-year-old Mohammed Abdullah was having a cup of tea with a group of Yemenis whom he met while repeatedly visiting the Yemeni Embassy in Cairo, trying to bring an end to his nightmare. Abdullah has been stuck in Cairo […]

The electoral battle in the Egyptian parliament was held back once again—this time stalled by a March 4 Supreme Court ruling, which struck down the 15-year ban on dual citizenship Egyptians running in parliamentary elections. The electoral battle in the Egyptian parliament was held back once again—this time stalled by a March 4 Supreme Court […]

The sentence printed on the side of a tuk-tuk bustling through the streets of Ismailia is an implicit, but real threat: “If you want to remain president, treat the tuk-tuk well.”  Indeed, the last successive Egyptian presidents have heeded this warning about the cheap three-wheeled Indian motorized rickshaws. The sentence printed on the side of […]