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| What's News |
 | Good Morning Here's what we're watching as the U.S. business day gets under way: | | |
| Trump and Kim's nuclear summit ends without agreement. President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un failed to reach an agreement as their second summit aimed at curbing Pyongyang's nuclear-weapons programs ended abruptly. Mr. Kim pushed for sanctions relief in exchange for reciprocal steps that Washington said it viewed as inadequate. | | |
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| Cohen says Trump committed crimes. The president and his company's chief financial officer coordinated with Mr. Cohen to pay for the silence of a porn star and conceal Mr. Trump's role in the deal, using sham invoices to cover it up, Mr. Cohen alleged in testimony to the House Oversight Committee. | | |
- Trump calls Cohen hearing fake. At a press conference in Vietnam, Mr. Trump said the House Oversight Committee did a "terrible thing" by scheduling a hearing with his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to coincide with the timing of his summit with Mr. Kim.
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- Jarring images for Trump. Americans had a choice: They could view the president as contender for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with North Korea, or see him as a criminal and con man because of how he was portrayed by his former lawyer, writes Gerald F. Seib.
- Inside the testimony. Join Executive Washington Editor Gerald F. Seib for a conversation with Investigations Editor Michael Siconolfi, White House reporter Rebecca Ballhaus and Law Bureau Chief Ashby Jones on what Mr. Cohen's testimony could mean for President Trump. Register here.
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| U.S. drops threat of 25% tariffs on Chinese goods. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the U.S. was abandoning its threat to raise tariffs to 25% on $200 billion of Chinese goods—the strongest sign yet that an accord is near. His comments follow a House committee meeting where he said the U.S. and China have reached a tentative agreement on a mechanism to enforce the trade deal. | |
| Amazon is boosting brands' power to fight fake products. The online retailer is launching a new tool for companies to remove suspected counterfeit listings from its site, sidestepping its usual reporting process. | |
| Some states are sending money back to taxpayers. Ten years after the recession, many states have the choice of what to spend revenues on, rather than what programs to cut. As state's enjoy flush times, some are choosing to send that bounty back to taxpayers. | |
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| PG&E repeatedly delayed fixing problems in a fire zone. Since 2013, California's largest utility has repeatedly postponed upgrades to the high-voltage line that ran near Paradise, Calif., records show. The story of the Caribou-Palermo line is part of California's wildfire reckoning and at the center is PG&E and its track record of safety lapses. | |
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| Show us your climate risks, investors tell companies. Companies are expected to face a record of 75 or more climate-related shareholder proposals at coming annual meetings. Investing giants are separately backing voluntary climate-change reporting standards for public companies and hope to prompt an uptick in disclosures this spring. | |
| Pedestrian deaths reach an almost 30-year high. Transportation safety experts are alarmed by the rising death toll and many blame the legacy of road networks designed to maximize the speed of cars. They applaud many cities' move to lower speed limits, redesign intersections and improve crosswalks, and think these strategies should improve fatality rates. | |
| New cancer drugs seek alternatives to chemo. The medications represent an emerging way of treating certain cancers—by targeting tumors based on their genetic characteristics, rather than their location in the body. | | |
| Inside the probe that led to prostitution charges against Robert Kraft. How a tip on suitcases in a massage parlor led authorities to a months-long investigation that uncovered a network of spas that were allegedly fronts for prostitution. | |
| At Arizona State, big lectures are history. Arizona State University has moved away from the traditional lecture-homework-exam approach to higher education and shifted toward one designed for students who have grown up using technology. | |
| "I'm still under construction." Lifelong learning has become a mantra in American corporations as employees face pressure to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving workplace. Here are six such stories. | | |
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| | | Highlights from our tax coverage | | |
| 1. Devil in the details. New rules implementing interest-deduction limits could hit manufacturers and energy companies particularly hard, while governments across the globe are squaring off in their bid to tax tech giants. 2. Buy now, decide later. Real-estate investors are acquiring properties in disadvantaged "opportunity zones," without firm redevelopment plans. 3. Raising the stakes. Fewer donors are making bigger charitable contributions, a new report found, and history offers some cautionary lessons for Democrats seeking to tax the rich. See the difference a year can make. The New World of Taxes: 2019 lays out how much has changed, and what it means for you. — Theo Francis | |
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| "There's no money right now." China's building boom has run into a great wall of debt. A building splurge in an impoverished pocket of rural China ended in half-finished projects and a trail of angry investors from some of the country's wealthiest areas. | | |
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| Pope Benedict Resigns After announcing his plans to resign earlier in the month due to a "lack of strength of mind and body," Pope Benedict XVI stepped down as supreme pontiff. He was the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415 and the first to do so of his own accord since Celestine V in 1294. During his papacy, Benedict advocated for a return to fundamental values in the face of increasing secularization in the West and reintroduced traditional papal garments. He was succeeded by Pope Francis in March, who became the first pontiff from outside Europe since Gregory III in the 8th century. | | |
 | | THE WALL STREET JOURNAL | | |
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