UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party has suffered a stunning defeat in a parliamentary by-election that was a referendum on his government amid weeks of scandal and soaring COVID-19 infections.

Liberal Democrat Helen Morgan overturned a Conservative majority of almost 23,000 votes from the last election to win Thursday's contest in North Shropshire, a rural area of northwest England that has been represented by a Conservative almost continuously since 1832. The election was called after the former Conservative member of Parliament resigned amid a corruption scandal.

A Kentucky neighborhood ravaged by a tornado by got more bad news Thursday: the body of a missing teenager was found.

Nyssa Brown was the seventh member of her family to die in the tornado that hit Bowling Green last week. Warren County coroner Kevin Kirby said the 13-year-old's body was found Thursday morning in a wooded area near her subdivision.

Twenty-seven people were feared dead after a fire broke out in a building in Osaka in western Japan, fire department officials said Friday, and police were investigating arson as a possible cause.

The fire started on the fourth floor of an eight-story building in the shopping and entertainment area of Kitashinchi, Osaka city fire department official Akira Kishimoto said.

Five children died and four others were in critical condition on Thursday after falling from a bouncy castle that was lifted 10 meters (33 feet) into the air by a gust of wind at a school on Australia's island state of Tasmania.

The school was holding a celebration to mark the end of the school year.

The Kremlin said Thursday that Russia submitted draft documents outlining security arrangements it wants to negotiate with the United States and its NATO allies amid s piraling tensions over Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a senior Russian envoy stood ready to immediately depart for talks in a neutral country on the proposal.

Some former vaccine skeptics in Eastern Europe have shifted over to the other side as coronavirus infections surge, countries are making it more difficult for the unvaccinated to travel abroad and authorities battle against government distrust and vaccine disinformation.

When she rolled up her sleeve in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo to take her first COVID-19 vaccine dose, Fata Keco was afraid of possible adverse side effects. But she said the worst she had to contend with over the next few days was "moderately discomforting pain" in her left arm around the site of the injection.

The Bank of England raised interest rates in the United Kingdom on Thursday to combat surging consumer prices, becoming the first central bank among the world's leading economies to do so since the coronavirus pandemic began.

The increase in the bank's main rate to 0.25% from the record low of 0.1% was a surprise given the rapid spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus across the country, which is already hurting many businesses, particularly those in the hospitality sector.

Mercedes ended the dispute over the Formula One season finale on Thursday when it withdrew its appeal of the controversial finish that cost Lewis Hamilton a record eighth championship.

Mercedes had filed a pair of protests following Sunday's race, in which a late crash at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix helped Max Verstappen beat Hamilton for the title. Both protests were dismissed and Mercedes then asked for reconsideration at the International Court of Appeal, a process that could have dragged into next year.

Turkey's Central Bank again cut a key interest rate Thursday despite soaring consumer prices that are making it difficult for people to buy food and other basic goods, sending the country's currency to record lows against the U.S. dollar.

The bank's monetary policy committee said it is cutting the rate from 15% to 14%, though inflation is running at 21%, according to official data.

A powerful storm system swept across the Great Plains and Midwest Wednesday, closing highways in western Kansas, spawning reported tornadoes in Nebraska and Iowa and raising concerns about fires because of unusually high temperatures.

The strong winds whipped up dust that reduced visibility to zero west of Wakeeney, Kansas, the state Department of Transportation said, and caused at least four semitrailers to blow over. Kansas officials closed Interstate 70 from the Colorado border to Salina, as well as all state highways in nine counties in northwest Kansas.