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.

China on Tuesday rolled out new measures to help boost its economy and sluggish property sector as pressures ramp up ahead of a year-end target for hitting the government's economic growth goal.

The measures, some of the bigger moves made this year by Chinese officials, include encouraging targeted bank lending and new subsidies for homebuyers' mortgage interest payments.

The U.N. envoy for Yemen said Tuesday he met with Houthi negotiators over the weekend in efforts to avert further escalation in Yemen amid fierce battles on the country's western coast between the Iran-backed Houthis and the Saudi-supported, but fragmented, government forces.

The renewed violence, which has killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands, is the latest twist in Yemen's conflict, which began in 2014 when the Iran-backed rebels took over the capital, Sanaa, forcing the country's government to settle into exile in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom entered the war a year later with a multinational coalition.

Three news outlets that President Donald Trump abruptly banished from White House grounds this month asked a federal court to block the ban until the case is resolved, saying the administration has "persisted in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing its ban" despite a judge's restraining order — including selectively barring CNN from White House pool duties.

"The White House's words and actions leave little doubt that it will immediately reinstitute a complete ban of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO if allowed the opportunity," lawyers for CNN, MS NOW and Politico wrote in a filing late Monday.

For months, two-thirds of Cuba had no electricity at night. Some neighborhoods in the capital of Havana have been without running water for more than two weeks. Transportation is scarce and eggs, bread and cooking oil are hard to find.

Yet every morning, about 178 young students gather for classes at the National Ballet School in the capital. Housed in an imposing Art Nouveau building in the heart of Old Havana, the school combines rigorous dance training with academic classes in math, Spanish, history and science.