GENEVA — Eight more cases of Ebola have been identified in Congo, raising to 17 the number of people confirmed to have contracted the deadly illness, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The cases were confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told reporters in Geneva.

The outbreak in Congo is the first major resurgence of Ebola in years.

At least 170 people have died — though only six were confirmed to have had Ebola — in the affected region of Kasai Occidental over the past four months, and more than 400 have fallen ill, Chaib said.

TOKYO — Parliament elected political insider Yasuo Fukuda to be Japan's prime minister Tuesday, thrusting the veteran moderate into the job of battling a resurgent opposition and rebuilding the scandal-scarred ruling party.As a measure of the troubles that await Fukuda, parliament split over his election, with the lower house supporting him but the upper house choosing an opposition leader. Under parliamentary rules, the lower house decision triumphed.Fukuda, 71, took over from Shinzo Abe, a nationalist who lasted barely a year in office after a drumbeat of damaging scandals and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's loss in upper house elections in July discredited him and his party.