SEOUL — As Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has readied for his trip to Washington — where, on Friday, he will be the first foreign leader to meet face-to-face with President Biden — opposition lawmaker Shiori Yamao has been making preparations of her own.

On April 11, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minn. It was the latest in a long line of killings of Black people by police in America.

President Biden and his team have been making a simple case for why Republican elected officials should support his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan: Lawmakers might not like it, but their voters do.

"Overwhelmingly, the majority of the American people — Democrats, Republicans and independents — support infrastructure investments that meets the moment," Biden said last week. "So, I urge the Congress: Listen to your constituents and, together, we can lay a foundation for an economy that works for everyone and allows America to remain the world leader."

For the first time, scientists have created embryos that are a mix of human and monkey cells.

The embryos, described Thursday in the journal Cell, were created in part to try to find new ways to produce organs for people who need transplants, said the international team of scientists who collaborated in the work. But the research raises a variety of concerns.

Signs of an economic boom are emerging as Americans open up their wallets to spend freely.

Retail sales soared 9.8% in March, according to a report Thursday from the Commerce Department. The increase follows a 2.7% slump in February, which analysts blamed partly on severe winter weather.

The surge is being fueled by shoppers flush with cash from $1,400 dollar relief payments, and in some cases, by the feeling of newfound security from a fresh vaccine.

There are more than enough shots to go around in communities like Hartsville, Tenn. — the seat of Trousdale County, a quiet town dropped in the wooded hills northeast of Nashville.

Testimony ended Thursday in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. The defendant said he will not testify in his defense in the trial and would invoke his Fifth Amendment right.

Chauvin is facing charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in George Floyd's death after he held his knee on Floyd's neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds on Memorial Day last year.

President Biden is ordering a new round of economic sanctions on Russia — a response in part to Moscow's election meddling and a Kremlin-linked computer breach that penetrated numerous U.S. government networks.

The sanctions are also meant to impose a penalty over Russia's continued occupation of Crimea, which it infiltrated and annexed from Ukraine seven years ago, and for reportedly offering bounties for attacks against U.S. and coalition military personnel in Afghanistan."

"Aghast, appalled and very angry."

Those are the first words that come to mind when Karen Gibson, newly appointed sergeant-at-arms for the U.S. Senate, reaches to explain the feeling of watching a crowd of rioters storm the Capitol building.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kabul on Thursday in an unannounced visit that comes just a day after President Biden announced that he has decided to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, ending America's longest conflict.

Blinken told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that his visit was intended to "demonstrate with my visit the ongoing commitment of the United States to the Islamic Republic and the people of Afghanistan."