The editor-in-chief of one of Egypt’s last independent news outlets, Mada Masr, will stand trial after prosecutors questioned her for more than six hours, her lawyer said early Thursday.
The Supreme State Prosecution referred Mada Masr’s Lina Attalah to trial on Thursday on a charge of establishing and managing a website without a license. She was also questioned on a charge of publishing false news, but that charge was not included in her court referral, according to Mada Masr’s lawyer, Hassan al-Azhari.
She was released Wednesday evening on bail of 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,800), but if convicted, she faces a fine of one to three million Egyptian pounds ($18,000 to $54,000), al-Azhari said.
Under Egyptian media law, the court may also order the outlet closed and its equipment confiscated. Al-Azhari called the speed of the referral, which came just hours after the questioning ended, “unjustified urgency.”
Attalah is due in court on Oct. 27.
Attalah founded Mada Masr in 2013, and its investigative reporting has made it a frequent target of authorities. The site has been blocked in Egypt since 2017. Time magazine named Attalah one of its 100 most influential people in 2020.
The case file included a Mada Masr report published earlier this month in which lawyers described a wave of protests at several prisons and a harsh security response, al-Azhari said. The protests followed parliament’s decision to delay Egypt’s new criminal procedures law by a year.
Mada Masr said it has applied for a license several times since 2018. It says the Supreme Media Regulatory Council never responded and that it learned of the council’s rejection from prosecutors in 2022. The outlet challenged that decision in court. Its latest application has been pending since 2023, Mada Masr said.
The case is the sixth against Mada Masr and its journalists in six years. It comes less than a month after security forces arrested the entire six-person newsroom of Matsadaash, an independent fact-checking and investigative platform, in raids across the country on Sept. 28 and 29. Their families and lawyers did not know where they were for days.
The six remain in pre-trial detention on charges including joining a terrorist group and spreading false news, which they deny. Their detention was renewed for 15 days on Oct. 13.
This week, Mada Masr and seven other Egyptian and Arab outlets launched a temporary joint fact-checking newsroom in solidarity with the detained journalists.
Egypt ranks 169th of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2026 World Press Freedom Index.
FILE - Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, participates in a panel discussion at cultural center in Cairo, Egypt, Nov. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Roger Anis, File)
Asian shares were mostly lower Friday after the latest shudder for artificial-intelligence stocks weighed on markets around the world, giving the benchmark S&P 500 its worst day since July.
Oil prices were hovering at their highest levels since May on worries about the war with Iran, with Brent crude up 0.5% at $113.73 per barrel. U.S. benchmark crude oil added 0.6% to $100.08 per barrel.
In share trading, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 lost 1.7% to 61,825.26, while the Kospi in South Korea declined 2.4% to 5,403.32.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng climbed 0.2% to 22,983.80 and the Shanghai Composite index slipped 1.3% to 3,610.52.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.2% to 8,777.00.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 fell 1.2%, while the Nasdaq composite tumbled 2.6%. The weakness for tech stocks was so overwhelming that it masked strength for the rest of the U.S. market, where the majority of stocks actually rose. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added less than 0.1%.
AI-related stocks have been swinging on worries that their boom may be under threat because of how expensive it’s become to borrow money to build data centers and buy more AI chips. Investors fear their prices shot too high during a yearslong frenzy, even though companies in the industry continue to report growth.
Meta Platforms, which is pushing its Muse AI agent, lost 7% after reporting stronger revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, though its profit fell short. The company behind Facebook and Instagram also said it’s creating a new class of stock to raise money to pay for AI investments and other expenses.
Tesla fell 3.1% after reporting a stronger profit for the summer than analysts expected, though its revenue was weaker than forecast.
The global tide against AI stocks knocked Nvidia down 4.4%. Because the chip giant is the largest company on Wall Street by total value, movements for its stock carry more weight on the S&P 500 than any other, and it was the single strongest force pulling the index lower.
CoreWeave, which has borrowed money to buy Nvidia’s AI chips that it rents out to customers over the cloud, has been particularly shaky in recent weeks because of worries about its debt. It dropped 10.1%.
Higher oil prices also have been weighing on stocks. The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil leaped 4% on Thursday and has shot up from less than $97 at the start of the month on uncertainty about when the war with Iran will allow the global energy industry to return to normal.
Worries about big government debt loads and strained budgets are hanging over almost every developed economy. Protests across France have raised pressure on the government to increase spending, which could add further to its debt.
In the United States, such concerns, along with high inflation, signals of a still-strong U.S. economy and other factors, have pushed yields in the U.S. bond market recently to their highest levels in decades.
But U.S. yields fell sharply Thursday in a signal that investors were buying U.S. government bonds in search of something safer to own as AI stocks tumbled.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury tumbled to 4.97% from 5.13% late Wednesday and from more than 5.30% earlier this month. That’s a major move for the bond market.
Thursday’s drop in yields came even as another report suggested the U.S. economy may be doing better than economists expected. It said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, which could signal that layoffs remain low across the country.
In other dealings early Friday, the U.S. dollar rose to 156.93 Japanese yen from 156.77 yen. The euro was unchanged at $1.1215.
AP Business Writer Stan Choe in New York contributed to this report.
A screen shows the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics Co. stock price at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
