Deputy President William Ruto took an early lead in the race to become Kenya’s next president, as the authorities continue counting ballots after Tuesday’s election.

Ruto has about 50.6% of the vote and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga has 48.8% with about 1.31 million ballots tallied, according to provisional results published on the website of the Nairobi-based Daily Nation newspaper on Wednesday.

Two founders of a little-known Hong Kong investment bank briefly became billionaires in recent days following a baffling stock surge, only to see their paper fortunes quickly tumble when the shares plunged. 

In the midst of an arid summer that set heat records across Europe, the continent’s rivers are evaporating.

The Rhine — a pillar of the German, Dutch and Swiss economies for centuries — has dried up to the point of becoming all but impassable at a key bottleneck, stymieing vast flows of diesel and coal. The Danube, which snakes its way 1,800 miles through central Europe to the Black Sea, is gummed up too, hampering grain and other trade.

Japanese government bonds look set for further gains with both foreign and domestic investors seen returning to a market where the central bank has often been the only buyer this year.

A pullback in bets on a Bank of Japan policy tweak resulted in

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador detailed plans to further deepen the military’s role in Mexican life, boosting efforts to bring the national guard under the control of the Defense Ministry.

Mexico’s leader, who has already put the country’s ports and customs under military authority, acknowledged on Tuesday that the constitutional reform needed to make such a change is likely doomed since his party doesn’t have a super-majority in congress. But he said he may issue a decree or pass a legislative change by simple majority to the same effect and let the courts decide if it is legal. 

The virus, named Langya henipavirus or LayV, was found thanks to an early detection system for feverish people with a recent history of exposure to animals in eastern China. The patients -- mainly farmers -- also reported fatigue, cough, loss of appetite and aches, with several developing blood-cell abnormalities and signs of liver and kidney damage. All survived. 

The FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home as part of an investigation into whether he improperly took documents from the White House was celebrated by some as proof that no one is above the law and denounced by others as a political attack. Little is known about the aims of Department of Justice investigators and what evidence they may have gathered. There are laws governing how presidents are supposed to handle documents that, at least theoretically, can trigger prosecutions for failure to comply, chief among them the Presidential Records Act. But as with so much related to Trump’s time in office, the search appears to have landed investigators in uncharted territory.  

It’s a law enacted by Congress in 1978 as one of several post-Watergate measures aimed at combating potential corruption in the White House. President Richard Nixon had challenged the legality of a predecessor to the PRA, which sought to prevent him from destroying any of 42...

China accused Taiwan’s ruling party of damaging the chances of peaceful reunification by pursuing “separatist” policies, as Beijing published its first white paper on its dispute with Taipei in two decades. 

The Democratic Progressive Party must change course to reduce tensions, the Taiwan Affairs Office said, in its first such report released since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012. The paper blamed DPP leaders’ refusal to accept that both sides belong to “one China” with deepening the dispute.

More rain is on tap for areas of South Korea as Seoul tried to drain flooded trains stations and repair cut power lines after one of the worst storms in more than a century hit the capital, killing at least nine and leaving about six others missing.

President Yoon Suk Yeol, in a meeting on Wednesday, apologized to the nation for “inconveniences” caused by rainfalls that the weather agency said were some of the heaviest in at least 115 years. A day earlier, he asked authorities to recalibrate disaster management plans by taking into account the effects of global warming.

Japan’s cabinet reshuffle is likely to keep the central bank’s monetary easing intact while the government may do more to ease the pain of rising prices for households, according to economists. 

The overhaul Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said would take place Wednesday is expected to retain the same figures in key posts including Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, indicating the government’s policy direction will largely stay the same. 

“The management team have been in ongoing negotiations with a potential buyer for the parent company but have been unable to agree to terms in an appropriate time frame, leaving the board and shareholders agreeing the best option is to restructure the business,” Streetteam said Tuesday in a

Half of UK adults with a possible cancer symptom do not contact their GP within six months, despite spotting changes to their body, research suggests.

A YouGov poll of 2,468 people for Cancer Research UK found that just 48% of those who had experienced a red flag symptom - including coughing up blood, unexplained weight loss and a new or unusual lump - contacted their GP within half a year.

UK government departments require a £44 billion ($53 billion) cash boost if they are to fully offset the impact of soaring prices, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

In an analysis published Wednesday, the think tank said rampant inflation is expected to wipe out more than 40% of the planned real-terms increase in funding for public services over the next three years. 

UK households are already a record £1.3 billion in debt to their energy suppliers ahead of winter, when bills are set to surge yet again.

Consumers typically build up credit with their providers during the summer -- when energy usage eases -- limiting the shock of higher demand in the winter. But soaring gas and power prices have made this summer expensive and fueled warnings of an even bigger crisis in the coming colder months.

The teams include affiliates of the Yankees, Dodgers and Braves in cities such as Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Augusta, Georgia, according to a

SoftBank has evolved rapidly over the last ten years from a telecom company and strategic investor to the world’s biggest pool of tech capital. It’ll look even more like a pure investment house as it continues to buy back its own stock and sell or pare assets, including its stake in

Oil edged lower as traders waited to see whether a key crude pipeline from Russia to Europe would resume flows, and assessed industry estimates that pointed to an increase in US inventories last week.

West Texas Intermediate fell toward $90 after a volatile session on Tuesday, when Russia’s Transneft PJSC said Ukraine halted flows through the southern section of the Druzhba pipeline toward Hungary, the Czech Republic and

All parts of the US supply chain -- not just its ports -- need to move to round-the-clock operations to alleviate snarl-ups and reduce overall costs, President Joe Biden’s supply-chain czar said. 

“If only you or only a terminal goes to 24/7, that’s interesting,” Stephen Lyons told Port of Long Beach Executive Mario Cordero in an interview Tuesday. “But if everybody -- including the warehousing community, all the other modes of transport -- moved to 24/7, or something more than today, that makes logical sense that you could move much more cargo in the same period of time.”

A Nebraska woman was charged with two felonies related to an illegal abortion after authorities discovered information about the pregnancy through private messages on Facebook Messenger, according to court documents. The case renewed debate about how law enforcement may use social media accounts in cases involving reproductive choices. 

The messages were collected from Facebook parent company

Three professional golfers who joined the Saudi Arabia-financed LIV Golf series will have to sit out the FedEx Cup Playoffs because a judge refused to lift their suspension by the PGA Tour.

Talor Gooch, Hudson Swafford, and Matt Jones qualified for the lucrative playoffs and its $18 million top prize at the end of the tour’s 2022 season, but were banned from participating for joining the rival LIV Golf. The playoffs start Aug. 11 with the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, Tennessee.

In a country that only tolerates dissent in small doses—and relies on property as its economic growth engine—a mortgage boycott by hundreds of thousands of middle-class Chinese has become a five-alarm fire for authorities.

It began with a 590-word letter penned by angry purchasers of the half-built Dynasty Mansion project, whose pleas for China Evergrande Group to complete homes they’d long been paying for had fallen on deaf ears. “All homebuyers with outstanding mortgage loans will stop paying,” unless construction resumes before Oct. 20, they threatened.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s swing through Asia aimed to convey the US’s “strong and unshakable” support for the region. It ended up leaving many countries in stunned silence as China conducted unprecedented military drills around Taiwan.

The shockwaves from the highest-level US visit to Taiwan in a quarter century are still reverberating around the region days after she flew back to Washington. China’s military has extended

Madison, Wis. (AP) -- Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes won the Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday and will face two-term Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in what is expected to be one of the country’s most competitive races as the parties battle for control of the U.S. Senate.

Barnes’ top rivals dropped out of the race late last month and backed the former legislator, a sign of Democrats’ intense focus on defeating Johnson, who is one of former President Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters. The Senate is currently split 50-50, with Democrats relying on the vice president to break ties, and the Wisconsin contest is one of the few races seen as toss-ups in November.

China’s banks face mortgage losses of $350 billion in a worst-case scenario as confidence plunges in the nation’s property market and authorities struggle to contain deepening turmoil.

A spiraling crisis of stalled projects has