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Ex-fixer's testimony, Canadian wildfire haze and tackling gridlock

 
Today's NATIONAL story

Cohen ties Trump directly to hush-money scheme

What happened
Former President Donald Trump's longtime fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen testified Monday that Trump told him to pay off porn actress Stormy Daniels so her story of an extramarital one-night stand wouldn't hurt him with women in the 2016 election, then signed off on a scheme to repay Cohen for fronting the hush money while falsely recording the payments as legal expenses.

Who said what
When Trump learned in October 2016, after the "Access Hollywood" tape, that Daniels was shopping her sex story, he said "women will hate me. Guys, they think it's cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign," Cohen testified. After Daniels thwarted Cohen's efforts to slow-walk the payment past the election, Trump said friends advised him to just pay her off, "and he expressed to me: just go do it." 

Cohen's testimony that Trump reviewed and endorsed the problematic repayment scheme in a January 2017 meeting is "perhaps the most damaging bit of evidence yet," Politico said. "But it is also a tricky piece of evidence for prosecutors, because the jury may need to rely solely on Cohen's account of it," and Cohen is a convicted felon "with a history of dishonesty."

What next?
Cohen will return to the stand Tuesday and is "likely to testify" about a pivotal Oval Office meeting, The New York Times said. Trump's lawyers "will surely try to rattle his composure later in the day, when cross-examination is expected to begin."

 
 
Today's international story

Canada fires trigger air quality alerts in upper US

What happened
Several states across the northern U.S. were placed under air quality alerts on Monday as smoke from dozens of wildfires burning throughout western Canada pushed south.

Who said what
More than 140 active fires in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories have burned at least half a million acres this spring, much of it "over the past week," AccuWeather meteorologist Brandon Buckingham said. In the U.S., the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said fine particle levels tied to the wildfire smoke are "expected to reach the red air quality index (AQI) category, a level considered unhealthy for everyone," in southern Minnesota. Similar alerts were in effect across Montana, the Dakotas and Wisconsin.

Air pollution from wildfires is considered particularly dangerous because tiny particles in smoke, "about 4% of the diameter of an average human hair, are small enough to reach deep inside the lungs," NBC News said.

What next?
This is "likely to be a very bad forest fire season," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. "People are worried what the summer might bring."

 
 
Today's ENERGY Story

US energy regulator OKs rule to boost power grid

What happened
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) voted 2-1 Monday to adopt a new rule aimed at increasing interstate energy capacity to meet soaring demand. The long-awaited rule requires utilities and regional grid operators to collaboratively set 20-year plans that consider demand for and sources of electricity, reliability and the fairest way to pay for transmission upgrades.

Who said what
"Our country's aging grid is being tested in ways that we've never seen before," said FERC Chair Willie Phillips, one of two Democrats on the energy commission. "Without significant action now, we won't be able to keep the lights on in the face of increasing demand, extreme weather, and new technologies." The commission's lone Republican and no vote, Mark Christie, said the rule "utterly fails to protect consumers" and attempts to improperly "enact a sweeping policy agenda" to boost wind and solar projects, which are especially stymied by grid logjams.

What next?
FERC has limited authority to push projects through, and the rule "could take years" to "have an effect" amid lawsuits from states and permitting gridlock, The New York Times said.

 
 

It's not all bad

When the residents of Tiaro, Australia, learned the Mary River turtle was close to extinction, they banded together to protect the reptile. Volunteers found nesting sites and set up barricades to keep out predators, and fundraisers were held to send local youth to college so they could study the turtles. Their efforts began in 2001, and a recent analysis found these actions increased the number of Mary River turtles in town and boosted the survival rate of hatchlings, Good News Network said.

 
 
Under the radar

It has been called everything from the "gateway to the underworld" to a "tadpole-shaped gash." The Siberian crater is eating into the surrounding landscape "like a living thing," Treehugger said. This "immense fracture" in the depths of the Russian Far East "splintered open" just a few decades ago, said IFL Science. And with "climate change continuing to cook up this part of the world, the literal scar on the planet is continuing to grow."

The Batagay (also spelled Batagaika) crater, or megaslump, was first spotted on satellite images in 1991 after a section of hillside collapsed in Sakha, a republic in northern Russia. A megaslump is a vast, expanding depression in the Earth's surface. These "eerie sinkholes" are the result of melting permafrost, the frozen soil and rock that makes up the majority of the Arctic landscape, Treehugger explained. As our planet continues to warm, the permafrost thaws and the Earth "loosens and slumps."

The slump's expansion is "a sign of danger," Nikita Tananaev, the lead researcher at the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk, Russia, said to Reuters. The soil beneath the slump contains an "enormous quantity" of organic carbon that will release into the atmosphere as the permafrost thaws, further exacerbating the planet's warming. 

But there is a positive side, too, Julian Murton, a professor of permafrost science at the University of Sussex, told Yahoo News. Layers of soil going back 200,000 years have been exposed by the collapse, and the scientific community hopes that studying the crater may offer fresh insights into climate change.

 
 
On this day

May 14, 1948

David Ben-Gurion signed the Israeli declaration of independence from the U.K.'s Mandatory Palestine, forming the nation of Israel. The country was admitted to the United Nations a year later in 1949. Ben-Gurion became Israel's first prime minister and served two separate times from 1948 to 1963.

 
 
TODAY’S newspaperS

Michael Cohen's testimony in the hush-money trial of his former boss, Donald Trump, is front page news on Tuesday. "Ex-fixer testifies Trump directed payment" to quiet porn actress Stormy Daniels, The Wall Street Journal says. Trump ordered him to "just do it," The New York Times and The Washington Post highlight. The New York Daily News runs with Cohen's recollection of Trump's reaction to Daniels sharing her story of their purported one-night stand right before the 2016 election: "Women will hate me." The Philadelphia Daily News, noting that Cohen is a "veracity-challenged star witness," wonders if this is his "moment of truth?"

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

One small cookie for mankind

A cookie baked in space in 2019 is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. To make the treat, astronauts on board the International Space Station used a recipe based on DoubleTree by Hilton's chocolate chip cookies and baked the goods in a specially designed microgravity oven. The cookie sits inside a custom case within a pure nitrogen environment and will eventually move to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Harold Maass, Chas Newkey-Burden, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images; Artur Widak / NurPhoto via Getty Images; Frank Bienewald / LightRocket via Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images