The governor of Red Sea province, where the resort of Hurghada is located, said two “foreign residents” of the city were killed in the attack, a cabinet statement said.

Although the attacker’s motives were unclear, the stabbing will come as a blow to Egypt which has been trying to woo back tourists after years of unrest and deadly attacks.

There was confusion about the nationalities of the victims, with Egyptian officials and state media initially saying the two women killed were Ukrainian which Kiev’s ambassador to Egypt denied.

An Egyptian health ministry official told AFP “the two foreigners killed earlier are Germans”.

But Germany’s foreign ministry, which condemned the stabbing as “cowardly” in a statement, said it could not confirm or deny whether its nationals were among the victims.

An Armenian foreign ministry spokesman said two Armenian women had been wounded in the attack, and the Czech foreign ministry tweeted that one of its nationals had been lighty injured.

The interior ministry said in a statement that the attacker, who had swum ashore, was arrested and was being questioned.

“We don’t know his motives yet, he could be crazy or perturbed — it’s too early to tell,” a senior interior ministry official told AFP.

In January 2016, three tourists in Hurghada were wounded in a stabbing assault by two assailants with apparent Islamic State group (IS) sympathies.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday’s stabbing.

Hurghada is one of Egypt’s most popular beach resorts, especially with Ukrainians and European tourists.

Security has been boosted in resorts around the country, as the tourism industry provides Egypt with much-needed revenues.

An IS bombing of a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from a south Sinai resort in 2015 killed all 224 people on board and decimated the country’s tourism sector.

Russia suspended all flights to Egypt in response and has yet to resume them.

IS has been waging a deadly insurgency based in the north of the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.

Policemen shot dead

Also on Friday, unknown assailants shot dead five policemen south of Cairo, in the latest of a series of attacks targeting the country’s security forces.

The ministry said three gunmen opened fire on a police car and then fled, killing a non-commissioned officer, three conscripts and a police employee.

CCTV footage posted online by the Ahram newspaper showed the three assailants pretending to fix a motorbike before they opened fire on a passing police truck then looted it.

The attack took place near Badrasheen, a town some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Cairo, where militants have also targeted police in the past.

As with the beach stabbing, there has not yet been any claim of responsibility for the attack.

The killings came as police and the army said they were closing in on militants and jihadists following a spate of deadly attacks in the Nile Valley and the Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt has struggled to quell IS jihadists based in the Sinai and smaller militant groups in the mainland since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and cracked down on his supporters.

IS jihadists killed at least 21 soldiers in restive north Sinai on July 7, the same day as the militant Hasam group claimed responsibility for shooting dead an officer with Egypt’s secret police in an attack north of the capital.

While smaller groups such as Hasam have mostly targeted policemen and government officials, IS has also attacked foreign tourists and Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority.

Dozens of Christians have been killed in church bombings and shootings since last December in attacks claimed by IS.

The jihadists have threatened to carry out further attacks on Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million people.

July 15 has been declared an annual national holiday of “democracy and unity” and the authorities want people to see the foiling of the putsch as a historic victory of Turkish democracy.

Friday’s measures, however, mean that 50,000 people have been arrested and a further 100,000 sacked in response to the thwarted bid to overthrow Erdogan.

Some 7,563 people were fired in the latest cull, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported, with nearly 350 retired army members also stripped of their rank. Hurriyet daily reported that 2,300 police were dismissed.

Saturday will see Turkey hold a major programme of events to mark the coup attempt, blamed by the authorities on US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen.

The decree, published late Friday in the official gazette, said those sacked were “linked to terror organisations, or groups determined to have been acting against the state’s national security”.

A former Istanbul governor was among those dismissed. The decree also stripped medals from Hakan Sukur, the retired Galatasaray and Turkey national team footballer.

Once one of the country’s top sporting heroes, Sukur powered Turkey to third place in the 2002 World Cup where he scored the fastest goal in the competition’s history.

He later served as a ruling party MP but then fell out with the authorities over his links to Gulen. Now believed to be living in the United States he is the subject of a Turkish arrest warrant.

Slanders

Gulen on Friday again denied any involvement in what he called a “despicable putsch,” and called on Ankara to end its “witch hunt” of his followers.

“Accusations against me related to the coup attempt are baseless, politically motivated slanders,” Gulen, who lives at a compound in rural Pennsylvania, said in a statement.

“I reiterate my condemnation of the despicable putsch and its perpetrators,” he said, while decrying a government “witch hunt to weed out anyone it deems disloyal” to Erdogan “and his regime”.

The attempted putsch came when a disgruntled faction in the army sent tanks into the streets and planes into the sky in a bid to oust the president.

War planes bombed Ankara and tanks surged into the streets of Istanbul in a night of violence that left 249 people dead. The bid was swiftly thwarted as the authorities regrouped and people poured into the streets in support of Erdogan.

Late-night commemorations

Turkey insists the post-coup crackdown is necessary to tackle the threat they say is posed by the Gulen movement, but activists and Western governments have criticised it as excessive.

Gulen called for an independent international investigation of the coup attempt, saying “hundreds of thousands” of innocent Turks had been punished simply for suspected links to him.

“The government’s treatment of innocent citizens during the past year is dragging Turkey into the category of the countries with the worst record of democracy, the rule of law and fundamental freedoms in the world,” he said.

Saturday’s events begin with a special session of parliament, after which Erdogan will take part in a people’s march on the bridge over Bosphorus that saw bloody fighting on the night of the coup, since renamed Bridge of the Martyrs of July 15.

At midnight local time (2100 GMT) people across Turkey will take part in “democracy watches”, rallies commemorating how crowds poured out into the streets.

Erdogan will return to Ankara and give a speech to parliament at 2:00 am — the time it was bombed on the night of the attempted putsch.

A monument to those killed will then be unveiled outside his palace in the capital as the dawn call to prayer rings out.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a strongly-worded statement announcing the appeal, accused the Hawaii court of having “undermined national security, delayed necessary action, created confusion and violated a proper respect for separation of powers.”

He charged the lower court had “improperly substituted its policy preferences for the national security judgments of the executive branch in a time of grave threats, defying both the lawful prerogatives of the executive branch and the directive of the Supreme Court.”

It was unclear how quickly the Supreme Court — now in summer recess but able to act on emergency motions — might be able to respond, and when or if the expanded terms set by the Hawaii judge might take effect. If they do, thousands of potential travelers could be affected.

The travel ban, which the administration insists is necessary to keep violent extremists out of the country, has faced a series of judicial roadblocks from lower courts.

But the administration gained partial satisfaction in June when the Supreme Court ruled that it could proceed with its plan to prohibit the entry of some people from countries deemed dangerous, while still allowing visits by people with “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling allowed a 90-day ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and a 120-day ban on refugees to come into force, with exceptions for those people with “bona fide” relationships.

That June 29 ruling, which capped months of legal wrangling, left unclear the question of just who had such a “credible claim.” The Trump administration then provided a list defining that category as including parents, spouses, children, sons- and daughters-in-law, siblings and step- or half-siblings.

But the Hawaii judge, Federal Judge Derrick Watson ruled that the administration’s criteria unfairly exclude grandparents and grandchildren.

The decision late Thursday thus expanded the exceptions to the ban, ordering that the list include grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the United States.

Common sense

Watson said the government’s “narrowly defined list finds no support in the careful language of the Supreme Court or even in the immigration statutes on which the government relies.”

“Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents,” he wrote.

“Indeed, grandparents are the epitome of close family members. The government’s definition excludes them. That simply cannot be.”

The judge also ruled that refugees who have assurances of a placement by an agency in the United States should be exempt.

White House Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert told journalists the ruling seemed “fairly broad,” adding that he would be troubled “if it was as broad as reported.”

The original ban, announced days after Trump became president on January 20, was successfully challenged in lower courts on the grounds that it overstepped Trump’s presidential authority and discriminated against Muslims in violation of the US constitution. A revised version also did not pass legal muster.

Judges in lower courts had cited Trump’s repeated statements during the presidential campaign that he intended to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

People have suffered enough

Douglas Chin, attorney general for the state of Hawaii, which filed the lawsuit against the Trump administration, welcomed the Thursday ruling.

“The federal court today makes clear that the US government may not ignore the scope of the partial travel ban as it sees fit,” said Chin.

“Family members have been separated and real people have suffered enough. Courts have found that this executive order has no basis in stopping terrorism and is just a pretext for illegal and unconstitutional discrimination.”

The World Bank “projected the Lao economy to expand at around seven percent in 2017-19 supported by a healthy pipeline of power projects and growth opportunities for the non-resource sector resulting from closer Asean integration.”

It said recoveries in global commodity prices could support mining and agricultural output along with improved connectivity to facilitate growth in tourism.

Meanwhile, the IMF has projected the Lao economy will grow at 6.8 percent this year despite the country’s revenue shortfalls and complex changes occurring in the world economy.

Independent economist Dr Mana Southichak who has led several economic research efforts on behalf of government, international organisations and private companies told Vientiane Times on Wednesday that the World Bank and IMF remain optimistic about the Lao economy.

“The World Bank and IMF might be seeing that several hydropower projects will be completed and begin operation next year which should further drive economic growth in our country,” he said.

“Higher growth of Laos’ trading partners particularly China will create stronger momentum for the economy of our nation to grow at a high rate.”

According to an IMF report, China continues to transition to a more sustainable growth path enacting reforms that have advanced across a broad domain, meaning the country has improved potential to sustain high growth over the medium term safely.

“Policy support, especially expansionary credit and public investment are believed to have helped China maintain strong growth,” the report stated.

The World Banks researchers “project growth of 6.7 per cent in 2017 and average annual growth of 6.4 per cent between 2018-20”.

Dr Mana said strong growth in China would drive demand for commodities produced in Laos notably rubber, mining and other agriculture products.

“MI has to promote and develop training and assist in knowledge for its member countries, while solving social problems,” Narongchai Akrasanee, chairman of a committee supervising MI, said yesterday.

The new focus on social assistance with knowledge training in GMS countries was a shift from economic aid, he said at the Mekong Forum on “New Geo-economics: Reshaping the Future of the GMS?” in Khon Kaen.

Workers have been driven back to their own countries, which leads to unemployment problems in Thailand’s neighbouring countries while Thailand faces a labour shortage, he said. MI’s next move not only aims at GMS countries, but also Asean countries, he said, pointing to a key strategic point – the Korean Peninsula. If anything happens, Asean’s landscape will be changed.

Watcharas Leelawath, executive director of MI, said social problems now come as the forefront work in GMS countries and discussion will be needed with them to jointly attack social problems.

Societies find difficulties to continue development and more collaboration will be required to fight them in manufacturing, services and Mice (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions), he said.

Puripan Bunnag, director of domestic mice at the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau, said if the bureau joins MI to hold meetings, seminars and training, the Mice market will be effectively broadened, given the broad and potential customer bases in these countries.

“MI holds the Mekong Forum every year and this is the market that can make connection with GMS and Asean countries,” he said. “If we see that Thailand cannot grow alone, its growth will be driven together with Asean countries, while promoting the exchange of products, exhibitions and booths for business decision-making and joint economic development.”

Narongchai said global development is centred not only in Western countries, but also Asean’s neighbours, particularly when economic power has been shifted to China.

“We see China growing into the world’s economic power, overtaking the United States, whose policy changes after its new president.

“Our development plan in trade and investment must be set to accord with China, the economic power that is in closest proximity to GMS countries,” he said.

Given the Sino-Thailand, Sino-Laos and Sino-Myanmar railway projects, China plays a role in infrastructure development in GMS and CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) countries, he said.

Thailand should produce for trade and make a big improvement in infrastructure, he said.

MI will be the intermediary, coordinating with all countries to produce people to drive development for the six GMS countries with international legal issues in particular, Watcharas said.