LOS ANGELES — An adolescent sea monster, Marvel’s god of mischief and Cruella de Vil helped Disney’s flagship streaming service attract 12.4 million new subscribers between April and June, more than Wall Street had expected.

The Disney+ service ended the quarter with 116 million subscribers worldwide, the company reported on Thursday. Analysts had been hoping for 112 million to 115 million. The most popular offerings on Disney+ were “Luca,” an original Pixar film; the superhero series “Loki,” starring Tom Hiddleston; and the live-action movie “Cruella,” with Emma Stone taking over as the classic Disney villain.

The quarter, the third in Disney’s fiscal year, was notable for another reason: Disney Parks, Experiences and Products swung to a profit ($356 million) after four consecutive money-losing quarters ($3.6 billion in total). The availability of coronavirus vaccines prompted families to return in large numbers to Walt Disney World in Florida. Disneyland in...

Hayden Brown grew up with parents who were out to change the world. Her mother worked on women’s empowerment issues, and her father helped develop a national park in the Himalayas. For a time, the family lived in Nepal.

“It really instilled in me the value of spending one’s life doing work that has a real impact on others,” she said. “To this day, that is my parents’ ethos.”

Ms. Brown wanted to make a difference, too, but resolved to do it in the private sector rather than in the nonprofit world. That led her to the consultant McKinsey & Company, and ultimately to UpWork, a site that matches freelancers with employers. Ms. Brown joined the company 10 years ago, and became chief executive in January 2020, just as the pandemic hit.

To hear Ms. Brown tell it, UpWork is making the world a better place, one freelance job at a time. Those advertising their skills on the site are not gig workers like Uber drivers or TaskRabbit handymen, but rather accountants,...

As they approach the limits of persuasion and incentives, the biggest question facing companies is whether to make coronavirus vaccines mandatory for workers. This is legally allowed, but many companies are still worried about political implications, employee pushback and other issues.

Also of concern is what competitors are doing, which is why C.E.O.s have been hustling behind the scenes to figure out their counterparts’ plans, gauging if the time is right to change their vaccine policies without standing out from the crowd.

The Business Roundtable is surveying members about their plans, DealBook hears. The influential lobbying group, led by Walmart’s Doug McMillon, declined to make the results public, but the results indicate that more companies are considering vaccine mandates compared with a few months ago, we understand.

The White House wants C.E.O.s to help persuade others. President Biden met with executives of companies that have mandated vaccination,...

There have been many confrontations over workplace safety since the pandemic began. One of the strangest has just been resolved: the case of the dog diapers.

Workers at a McDonald’s restaurant in Oakland, Calif., said their employer provided them with masks made from the diapers in lieu of bona fide masks at the start of the pandemic last year. They were also given masks made from coffee filters, they said.

After complaining, the employees said, they were given proper disposable masks but were told to wash and reuse them until they frayed. The allegations were included in a subsequent lawsuit, which contended that the franchise owner’s inattention to safety had resulted in a Covid-19 outbreak among workers and their families.

Now the workers and the franchise owner are announcing a settlement in which the restaurant has agreed to enforce a variety of safety measures, including social distancing, contact tracing and paid sick leave policies. The settlement also...

Coffee roasters have a problem. The cost of the beans that they import has soared this year, leaving roasters anguishing over whether their customers, from grocery stores to cafes to people looking for their daily latte, will tolerate higher prices.

Extreme weather has damaged crops in Brazil, the world’s largest coffee exporter. On top of pandemic-related shipping bottlenecks and political protests that stalled exports from Colombia, that has pushed the cost of beans up nearly 44 percent in 2021.

It’s not yet a problem for Starbucks or Nestlé, coffee giants that buy their supplies far in advance and won’t have to deal with the price gains for a year or more. But some smaller roasters have already had to raise prices, and others expect to — all the while worried about alienating consumers.

“These increases are making me nervous because one of the main tenets that we operate on is being able to make specialty coffee and make the pricing affordable,” said Quincy...

Coffee roasters have a problem. The cost of the beans that they import has soared this year, leaving roasters anguishing over whether their customers, from grocery stores to cafes to people looking for their daily latte, will tolerate higher prices.

Extreme weather has damaged crops in Brazil, the world’s largest coffee exporter. On top of pandemic-related shipping bottlenecks and political protests that stalled exports from Colombia, that has pushed the cost of beans up nearly 44 percent in 2021.

It’s not yet a problem for Starbucks or Nestlé, coffee giants that buy their supplies far in advance and won’t have to deal with the price gains for a year or more. But some smaller roasters have already had to raise prices, and others expect to — all the while worried about alienating consumers.

“These increases are making me nervous because one of the main tenets that we operate on is being able to make specialty coffee and make the pricing affordable,” said Quincy...

Reddit, the virtual town square of the consumer internet, has raised a fresh $410 million in funding, valuing it at more than $10 billion, the company said on Thursday.

The financing, which was led by Fidelity Investments, increases Reddit’s valuation from the $6 billion it achieved six months ago, when it raised $250 million. Reddit said it expected existing investors to participate in the latest financing as well, so the round is likely to grow and close out at around $700 million.

The latest funding wasn’t planned, but “Fidelity made us an offer that we couldn’t refuse,” Steve Huffman, Reddit’s co-founder and chief executive, said in an interview.

The company then decided the capital would give it more time to decide on when — and how — to go public. “We are still planning on going public, but we don’t have a firm timeline there yet,” Mr. Huffman said. “All good companies should go public when they can.”

The move gives Reddit more of a war chest to...

Sixteen years after acquiring Reebok for $4 billion, the German sportswear giant Adidas is selling it for a little more than half that to Authentic Brands Group, the voracious acquirer of struggling brands.

In the past few years, Authentic has acquired Brooks Brothers and Forever 21, adding to a stable that includes Sports Illustrated. The acquisition of Reebok for 2.1 billion euros, or $2.5 billion, comes as Authentic is preparing to go public.

“We’ve had our sights set on Reebok for many years,” the chief executive of Authentic, Jamie Salter, said in a statement. “Reebok not only holds a special place in the minds and hearts of consumers around the world, but the brand also has expansive global distribution.”

Reebok operates in 80 countries, with roughly 70 percent of its business outside the United States and Canada. Its world headquarters will remain Boston.

Coffee roasters have a problem. The cost of the beans that they import has soared this year, leaving roasters anguishing over whether their customers, from grocery stores to cafes to people looking for their daily latte, will tolerate higher prices.

Extreme weather has damaged crops in Brazil, the world’s largest coffee exporter. On top of pandemic-related shipping bottlenecks and political protests that stalled exports from Colombia, that has pushed the cost of beans up nearly 44 percent in 2021.

It’s not yet a problem for Starbucks or Nestlé, coffee giants that buy their supplies far in advance and won’t have to deal with the price gains for a year or more. But some smaller roasters have already had to raise prices, and others expect to — all the while worried about alienating consumers.

“These increases are making me nervous because one of the main tenets that we operate on is being able to make specialty coffee and make the pricing affordable,” said Quincy...

The invite list includes a wide range of business leaders, like Nathan Blecharczyk, a co-founder and strategy chief at Airbnb; Mark Breitbard, the chief executive of the Gap brand; Jenna Johnson, the president of Patagonia; Josh Silverman, the chief executive of Etsy; Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft; Hamdi Ulukaya, the chief executive of Chobani; and Alison Whritenour, the chief executive of Seventh Generation.

The White House selected those executives because of their companies’ policies on child care and paid leave, a senior administration official said. In the meeting, Ms. Harris is expected to emphasize the importance of child care as both a personal and business matter.

The United States is the only member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that does not have statutory paid leave for new parents. On Thursday, roughly 300 business leaders from companies like Salesforce and Spotify called for federal paid family leave. In a...

As we all put more of our photos, documents and videos online, how much of that data really belongs to us anymore?

That’s the question many are now pondering because of a change coming to iPhones. The debate has implications for online privacy and government surveillance and underlines how the storage of our digital data has changed over time, raising concerns about the ways we should conduct ourselves technologically.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up.

The hubbub began last week when Apple introduced a software tool for iPhones to flag cases of child sex abuse. That seems good, right? The tool will be included in Apple’s next mobile software update this fall. It works by scanning an iPhone for code linked to a database of known child pornography when photos from the device are uploaded to iCloud, Apple’s online storage service. Once there are a certain number of matches, an Apple employee reviews the photos before informing the National Center...

Positioning her premade sauces alongside pasta sauce, she imagined, might encourage spaghetti lovers to make Indian food. On the other hand, she could be setting her products up for removal from the aisle, as they probably wouldn’t sell as well as pasta sauce. Then there’s her mango chutney, which is essentially a fruit condiment. Would placing it among other jams and jellies make sense, or confuse shoppers?

The spot where her products have found the most success is the so-called ethnic or international aisle, the global smorgasbord that has long been a fixture of American groceries — wide-ranging, yet somehow detached from the rest of the store.

“Consumers are trained, if they want Indian products, to go to that aisle,” said Ms. Agrawal, 42. “Do I like the fact that that is the way it is? No.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s bombshell resignation yesterday, under a barrage of sexual harassment allegations, has upended politics in New York.

The news was notable for many reasons, not least that Cuomo was a purported supporter of the #MeToo movement. (In his resignation speech, the governor took responsibility for his actions but denied ever touching anyone inappropriately.) For more on how “the Cuomo story demonstrates the durability of the movement,” read The Times’s Jodi Kantor in our sister newsletter The Morning.

When Cuomo steps down in two weeks, the lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, will step up, becoming the first woman to occupy New York State’s top office. For the state with the country’s financial capital, a new leader has implications for business, too.

On the pandemic. Amid a resurgence of coronavirus cases, up nearly 90 percent in the state over the past two weeks, how Hochul addresses vaccine mandates, mask rules, testing and related measures will...

Midtown Manhattan, which has been in the doldrums for much of the pandemic, has finally begun showing signs of life. But that progress may be threatened by the surge in coronavirus cases from the spread of the Delta variant.

Outlying areas soldiered on during lockdowns, sustained by residents who spent money locally because many of them were holed up at home, but the city’s central business district languished. Midtown, commonly defined as the area from 34th to 59th Streets, doesn’t have a significant residential population, and when the office workers and tourists vanished, precious few people were left.

Hotels closed. Office buildings and storefronts lost tenants. Photographs of a shockingly empty Times Square, which usually attracts nearly 360,000 people a day, telegraphed the grim situation.

A start-up founded by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it is nearing a technological milestone that could take the world a step closer to fusion energy, which has eluded scientists for decades.

Researchers at M.I.T.’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and engineers at the company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, have begun testing an extremely powerful magnet that is needed to generate immense heat that can then be converted to electricity. It would open the gates toward what they believe could eventually be a fusion reactor.

Fusion energy has long been held out as one of the most significant technologies needed to combat the effects of climate change because it could generate an abundance of inexpensive clean energy.

But there have been no commercial payoffs for fusion research, despite decades of investment and often overly aggressive promises. While there is a long history of international experimentation, scientists have not yet...

The company owes hundreds of billions of dollars. Its creditors are circling. Its shares have taken a beating. But if anything forces a reckoning for Evergrande, a vast real estate empire in China, it might be the nervousness of ordinary home buyers like Chen Cheng.

Ms. Chen, 30, and her husband thought they had found the perfect apartment. It was part of an 18-building complex in the southern city of Guangzhou, near a good school for their daughter and a new subway station.

Evergrande was asking for a deposit worth nearly one-third of the price before the property was completed. After reading headlines about the company’s financial difficulties and complaints about construction delays from recent buyers, Ms. Chen walked away.

“We don’t have a lot of money,” she said. “We were really afraid this money would evaporate.”

China has a special term for companies like Evergrande: “gray rhinos,” so large and so entangled in the country’s financial system that...

MUNICH — Eight years ago, BMW was one of the first major automakers to sell a battery-powered car: The i3 broke ground with its lightweight carbon-fiber body and aluminum chassis.

But lately, the German company, known for its sporty luxury cars and “ultimate driving machines,” has fallen behind in the global race to develop the next generation of electric vehicles.

Unlike General Motors or Volvo, BMW has not set a date to bury the internal combustion engine. Unlike Volkswagen, it has not begun selling a full line of vehicles designed from the ground up to run on batteries. As other auto executives wax optimistic about an electric future, Oliver Zipse, the BMW chief executive, has criticized plans by the European Union to ban gasoline and diesel engines by 2035.

“I’m a little concerned about BMW,” said Peter Wells, director of the Center for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff Business School in Wales. When it comes to committing to a full lineup of...

MUNICH — Eight years ago, BMW was one of the first major automakers to sell a battery-powered car: The i3 broke ground with its lightweight carbon-fiber body and aluminum chassis.

But lately, the German company, known for its sporty luxury cars and “ultimate driving machines,” has fallen behind in the global race to develop the next generation of electric vehicles.

Unlike General Motors or Volvo, BMW has not set a date to bury the internal combustion engine. Unlike Volkswagen, it has not begun selling a full line of vehicles designed from the ground up to run on batteries. As other auto executives wax optimistic about an electric future, Oliver Zipse, the BMW chief executive, has criticized plans by the European Union to ban gasoline and diesel engines by 2035.

“I’m a little concerned about BMW,” said Peter Wells, director of the Center for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff Business School in Wales. When it comes to committing to a full lineup of...

A start-up founded by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it is nearing a technological milestone that could take the world a step closer to fusion energy, which has eluded scientists for decades.

Researchers at M.I.T.’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and engineers at the company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, have begun testing an extremely powerful magnet that is needed to generate immense heat that can then be converted to electricity. It would open the gates toward what they believe could eventually be a fusion reactor.

Fusion energy has long been held out as one of the most significant technologies needed to combat the effects of climate change because it could generate an abundance of inexpensive clean energy.

But there have been no commercial payoffs for fusion research, despite decades of investment and often overly aggressive promises. While there is a long history of international experimentation, scientists have not yet...