USA

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) - Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Friday that he "absolutely" expected the United States would eventually re-open its embassy in Ukraine, but stopped short of predicting when that would happen.

"It will happen, absolutely, but we will wait," Shmyhal told reporters at a conclusion of a visit to Washington, when asked whether he had received assurances from the United States that it would re-open its embassy.

ABOARD USS LINCOLN, April 23 (Reuters) - Japan's foreign minister promised his country would bolster its military to help the United States maintain regional security during a visit on Saturday to a U.S. aircraft carrier patrolling Asian waters.

"Today I was able to experience first hand the frontline of national security," Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in the hangar deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln sailing in waters south of Tokyo. Japan will "significantly strengthen" its defence capabilities and work closely with the United States, he added.

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Xinhua) -- A person, believed to be the suspect of a shooting that wounding four people in northwest Washington, D.C. on Friday afternoon, has been found dead, local police said.

Robert Contee, chief of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, told reporters that they "believe the suspect took his own life" as officers were entering or breaching the apartment where he was located.

The police department tweeted in the evening that Raymond Spencer, 23, of Fairfax, Virginia, was identified as a person of interest.

UNITED NATIONS, April 23 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that the triple crisis of climate disruption, nature loss and pollution requires ambitious action.

"The Earth is facing a triple planetary crisis. Climate disruption. Nature and biodiversity loss. Pollution and waste. This triple crisis is    threatening the well-being and survival of millions of people around the world," the top UN official said in his message for the International Mother Earth Day, which falls on April 22 annually.

CHICAGO, April 23 (Xinhua) -- China-U.S. economic and trade relations are win-win in nature, and to restore normal trade ties between the two countries as soon as possible is the shared aspiration of both sides, said Chinese Ambassador to the United States Qin Gang on Thursday.

Qin made the comment at the 2022 China-U.S. High-level Agricultural Dialogue held in Des Moines, capital of U.S. state of Iowa.

He is visiting the U.S. Midwest states of Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota, and Des Moines is his second leg in Iowa.

NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly two months into the Russian-Ukraine war, the Kremlin has taken extraordinary steps to blunt an economic counteroffensive from the West. While Russia can claim some symbolic victories, the full impact of Western sanctions is starting to be felt in very real ways.

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) — The next speaker of the U.S. House could very well hail from California — not Nancy Pelosi’s slice of the Golden State, but the other California, Donald Trump’s California.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy is a son of the Central Valley, a farming and oil-pumping heartland that eagerly embraced the former president. A swath of rural conservatism amid California’s progressive politics, it’s where residents often feel ostracized, resented and left behind by their liberal neighbors in San Francisco to the north and Los Angeles to the south.

HONOLULU (AP) — The U.S. government on Friday dropped its appeals of a Hawaii order requiring it to remove fuel from a massive military fuel storage facility that leaked petroleum into the Navy’s water system at Pearl Harbor last year.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Defense notified the state and federal courts of its decision. The move comes more than a month after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the military would permanently shut down the tanks and drain all of their fuel.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The last time Russia invaded Ukraine, in 2014, outraged world leaders booted Russia out of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, which quickly rebranded itself the Group of Seven.

Eight years later, the G-7 is still holding at seven — a collection of countries that meet to talk through big issues like trade, economics and security.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Wayne Shaw seemed to have all the conservative credentials needed to win reelection to his state Senate seat in Oklahoma two years ago. The mild-mannered pastor with deep ties to the community had a solidly conservative voting record during his eight years in office.

But when Shaw, as chair of the Senate Public Safety Committee, declined to hear a bill to allow people to carry guns into bars, he drew the ire of an unemployed truck driver who was passionate about gun rights.