The New Jersey man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie told the New York Post in an interview published Wednesday that he was "surprised" the author had survived the attack.

"When I heard he survived, I was surprised, I guess," Hadi Matar, 24, told the tabloid, which said they held a video interview with the jailed suspect.

Boxer Anthony Joshua declined to comment on human rights in Saudi Arabia as news broke Wednesday that a woman had been jailed for 34 years over her Twitter activity, days before his world heavyweight fight in Jeddah.

Joshua, who has been based in Saudi Arabia ahead of Saturday's unification bout with Oleksandr Usyk of Ukraine, said people seemed "cool" in the kingdom and that he preferred to avoid "negative" talk.

The Saudi economy is expected to grow 7.6 percent this year, up from 3.2 percent in 2021, on the back of soaring oil revenues, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.

The government's Vision 2030 reform programme, designed to reduce the kingdom's dependence on oil, has also given the economy a boost as more Saudis join the workforce, particularly women, the IMF said.

Iraq's main political leaders -- but not firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr -- agreed Wednesday to work on a roadmap aimed at ending the country's political impasse, after talks called by the premier.

They also pledged to keep talking, and urged Sadr to join what Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi called the "national dialogue".

Ten months after a general election last October, war-scarred Iraq still has no government, new prime minister or new president, because of disagreement over forming a coalition.

Israel and Turkey announced the resumption of full diplomatic ties on Wednesday, following years of strained relations between the Mediterranean nations.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid hailed the step as an "important asset for regional stability and very important economic news for the citizens" of the Jewish state.

Lapid's office said the decision to resume ties would see ambassadors and consuls general posted to the two countries once more and direct flights restarted.

The governor of Egypt's central bank, Tareq Amer, resigned on Wednesday, state media reported, with the Arab world's most populous country in the grip of a deepening economic crisis.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi accepted the resignation of Amer, who took up his post in 2015 and had been due to stay on until next year, the state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram reported.

Sisi named Amer a presidential adviser but there was no immediate word on who would replace him at the central bank.

Israel and Germany on Wednesday condemned remarks by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Berlin, where he compared the Holocaust to the Jewish state's killings of Palestinians.

Abbas, standing beside Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday, was asked if he would apologise on behalf of the Palestinian militants who carried out the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage-taking in which 11 Israelis were killed.

An electrical fire that turned a crowded Cairo church into a deathtrap highlights a persistent problem, say Coptic Christians in majority-Muslim Egypt -- a struggle to build or renovate their places of worship.

The residential-style multi-storey building housing the Abu Sifin Church where 41 worshippers died had only one exit and, like most structures in Egypt, lacked smoke detectors and alarms or fire escapes.

The Syrian government on Wednesday denied holding American nationals captive, including journalist Austin Tice who was abducted a decade ago in Damascus.

It issued a statement in response to US President Jo Biden saying last week that he knows "with certainty" that Tice "has been held by the Syrian regime", and calling on Damascus to help bring him home.

The foreign ministry denied the accusation in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.

A Lebanese man who held bank staff hostage in Beirut last week to demand access to his trapped savings has been released from custody after charges against him were dropped.

Judge Ghassan al-Khoury ordered the release of Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, who stormed a Federal Bank branch in Beirut with a rifle, after the bank dropped the charges against him, the state-run National News Agency reported on Tuesday.

A judicial official told AFP on Wednesday that Hussein has since been released but still faces possible charges by the state.