Five African heads of state led a ground breaking ceremony Wednesday on a $16-billion oil refinery project in East Africa, following calls for the continent to boost its self-sufficiency in processing raw materials into finished products.

Kenya's President William Ruto hosted his counterparts from Uganda, Ethiopia, Togo, Benin as well as Nigeria's former President Olusegun Obasanjo, shoveling soil at the site to symbolically show construction of the refinery has started.

Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad group have agreed to form an unlikely electoral coalition with a former top Fatah official who has close ties to the United Arab Emirates, Israel's closest ally in the Middle East, Palestinian officials told The Associated Press.

The alliance could be well positioned to threaten the dominance of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party over the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority — but only if the first national elections in 20 years actually happen, which is very much in doubt.

Clutching an oversized knife onstage during a recent campaign stop, Brazilian presidential candidate Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro vowed to inflict chemical castration on "rapists and child abusers," drawing thunderous applause.

The tough-on-crime message comes as Bolsonaro seeks to appeal to women, who account for 53% of the electorate and played a decisive role in handing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a narrow 2022 victory over Bolsonaro's father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Russia pressed on with its weekslong missile and drone barrage of Kyiv and areas around the Ukrainian capital, killing four people including a child while targeting the power grid and a key internet exchange point, officials said Wednesday.

Moscow's steep escalation of its aerial campaign since the end of August heaps pressure on Ukraine as it braces for winter, when Russia regularly bombards energy facilities to deny Ukrainians heating and running water.

South Korea's spy agency said Wednesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's recent revelation of a supposedly secret transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war to the South was likely meant to generate public support in this Asian democracy for greater assistance to Ukraine.

Zelensky's disclosure during his U.N. speech last week of the transfer of the captured soldiers has stunned South Korea and drawn strong protests. Seoul called on Kyiv to apologize and explain the violation of what it said was a nondisclosure agreement about the transfer. Ukraine denied agreeing to any such deal.

The U.S. military announced on Wednesday that it has completed the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq, ending a 12-year mission to fight the Islamic State group.

The last U.S. troops left the last air base where they had been present in northern Iraq under an agreement between Baghdad and Washington.

Iranian officials indicated Wednesday they have received an official U.S. response to Tehran's latest proposal to end the seven-month war, which U.S. President Donald Trump had publicly rejected just days earlier.

The officials did not say what the response contained, and whether it was a rejection or not.

The last U.S. troops were slated to leave Iraq on Wednesday under an agreement between Baghdad and Washington, a move celebrated by Iran-backed groups but which some other Iraqis found concerning, particularly in the Kurdish region.

U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein. They departed in 2011, but three years later, Iraqi authorities invited a smaller U.S.-led mission to fight the Islamic State group, which had rampaged across Iraq, seizing large swaths of territory.

Medication prices are soaring in Iran and some treatments have become hard to find, leaving patients and their families scrambling as a U.S. blockade and stepped-up sanctions squeeze the country's pharmaceuticals industry.

Some medicines have more than tripled in price, further squeezing Iranians' finances seven months into the country's war with the United States and Israel. Prices for food and other goods have skyrocketed even as unemployment has risen and the currency, which hit a record low this week, has lost half its value.

A fight between pilots on a commercial plane traveling from the United Arab Emirates to Israel forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, according to two officials. The episode raised concerns about a possible hijacking of a plane carrying dozens of Israelis and prompted Israel to scramble warplanes.

The FlyDubai flight landed safely. But Israel believes there may have been an attempt to attack Israelis, and an investigation is ongoing, an Israeli official said.