Boris Johnson builds lead in race to be UK prime minister

LONDON — Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson increased his lead in the race to become Britain’s next prime minister Tuesday in a Conservative Party vote that eliminated one of his rivals and enabled upstart candidate Rory Stewart to defy expectations by remaining in the contest.

Johnson won 126 of the 313 votes cast by Conservative lawmakers in their second-round of balloting. The vote left five contenders vying to succeed Theresa May as prime minister, and all but guaranteed Johnson would be one of the two candidates competing in a runoff decided by rank-and-file party members.

Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary after Johnson, had the next-highest number of votes. Environment Secretary Michael Gove, Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Stewart all trailed far behind.

In Egypt: The nation’s first democratically elected president, Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi, 67, was buried under heavy security early Tuesday, a day after his collapse and death inside a Cairo courtroom, his family and a member of his defense team said.

Morsi’s family attended funeral prayers in the mosque of Cairo’s Tora prison, followed by the burial at a cemetery in the Egyptian capital’s eastern district of Nasr City, said a member of Morsi’s defense team.

Morsi’s son Ahmed said security agencies refused to allow Morsi to be buried at the family’s cemetery in his hometown of Adwa in Sharqia province. Dozens of people performed the absentee funeral prayer in Adwa.