Retail sales fell more than expected last month, the Commerce Department reported on Tuesday, a sign of the uneven recovery of the American consumer and a shift in spending patterns as the country reopens after the coronavirus pandemic.

The 1.3 percent decline in May followed months of ups and downs in retail spending.

After falling to record lows about a year ago, sales bounced back sharply this spring, only to swing from month to month, driven by the ebb and flow of government stimulus and the persistence of the virus. The data from April was revised on Tuesday to show an increase of 0.9 percent.

When the coronavirus shut down New York last spring, many residents came to rely on a colossal building they had never heard of: JFK8, Amazon’s only fulfillment center in America’s largest city.

What happened inside shows how Jeff Bezos created the workplace of the future and pulled off the impossible during the pandemic — but also reveals what’s standing in the way of his promise to do better by his employees.

“They are not running for the exits, but they are at least planning the escape route,” said Priya Misra of T.D. Securities. Rock-bottom interest rates and $120 billion in monthly bond purchases have propped up the economy and stock markets, and several Fed officials have said that they would like to soon discuss plans about how to start removing this support, even if that is months — or years — in the future.

Ms. Scott made that pledge in 2019, after her divorce from Jeff Bezos. At the time, her portion of the settlement, some 4 percent of Amazon shares, was valued at around $36 billion.

Thanks to the soaring value of that stock, Ms. Scott is accumulating wealth faster than she can give it away. Though she has donated more than $8 billion over the past 11 months, primarily through direct gifts to nonprofits, today she is richer than ever, worth some $60 billion, according to Forbes.

In 2020, a year of incredible need, Ms. Scott gave away nearly $6 billion to 500 organizations. Now, for the third time in under a year, Ms. Scott has announced a new round of grants, worth a combined $2.74 billion, demonstrating that her dedication to rapidly disbursing her fortune has not abated.

Things had not looked so troubled earlier in the year. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which helps ensure reliability of the power grids, expected above average reserves in Texas this summer, at 15.3 percent for the year, up from 12.9 percent in 2020.

But the agency warned in a report last month that “extreme weather can affect both generation and demand and cause energy shortages that lead to energy emergencies” for Ercot.

The problem is urgent, but not new. “Every summer, everyone holds their breath to see if there’s going to be enough generation in Texas to keep the lights on,” said Bernard L. McNamee, a former member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and a partner in the law firm McGuire Woods.

At times, some power producers simply choose not to offer electricity into the market because it might not prove economically beneficial, leaving customers short on energy and paying high prices for the power they do get.

Arnie...

The Girl Scouts are struggling to sell a heaping pile of extra cookies: 15 million boxes of them, to be exact.

Troops with armfuls of cookies used to be a fixture outside grocery stores and on people’s doorsteps. But this year, those cookies are stuck in warehouses after Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. was confronted with two major obstacles during the pandemic: membership has declined, and the scouts had to abandon their usual in-person selling methods.

Those problems left the national organization with millions of extra Thin Mints, Samoas and other signature treats. Around 12 million of the 15 million surplus cookies never left the bakery warehouses in Kentucky and Indiana, the Girl Scouts said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Given that a majority of cookies are sold in person by girls at booths or other face-to-face methods, a decrease in sales was to be expected,” Kelly Parisi, a Girl Scouts spokeswoman, said in the statement.

When the coronavirus shut down New York last spring, many residents came to rely on a colossal building they had never heard of: JFK8, Amazon’s only fulfillment center in America’s largest city.

What happened inside shows how Jeff Bezos created the workplace of the future and pulled off the impossible during the pandemic — but also reveals what’s standing in the way of his promise to do better by his employees.

Less than a decade ago, the economic malaise in Rocky Mount, N.C., was tangible. Rocky Mount Mills, a big cotton mill that had given the town its identity, had shut down in 1996, costing the area hundreds of jobs. Downtown was deserted. Nobody was hiring.

Retail sales fell more than expected last month, the Commerce Department reported on Tuesday, a sign of the uneven recovery of the American consumer and a shift in spending patterns as the country reopens after the coronavirus pandemic.

The 1.3 percent decline in May followed months of ups and downs in retail spending.

After falling to record lows about a year ago, sales bounced back sharply this spring, only to swing from month to month, driven by the ebb and flow of government stimulus and the persistence of the virus. The data from April was revised on Tuesday to show an increase of 0.9 percent.

Ms. Scott made that pledge in 2019, after her divorce from Jeff Bezos. At the time, her portion of the settlement, some 4 percent of Amazon shares, was valued at around $36 billion.

Thanks to the soaring value of that stock, Ms. Scott is accumulating wealth faster than she can give it away. Though she has donated more than $8 billion over the past 11 months, primarily through direct gifts to nonprofits, today she is richer than ever, worth some $60 billion, according to Forbes.

In 2020, a year of incredible need, Ms. Scott gave away nearly $6 billion to 500 organizations. Now, for the third time in under a year, Ms. Scott has announced a new round of grants, worth a combined $2.74 billion, demonstrating that her dedication to rapidly disbursing her fortune has not abated.

When the coronavirus shut down New York last spring, many residents came to rely on a colossal building they had never heard of: JFK8, Amazon’s only fulfillment center in America’s largest city.

What happened inside shows how Jeff Bezos created the workplace of the future and pulled off the impossible during the pandemic — but also reveals what’s standing in the way of his promise to do better by his employees.

President Biden has named Lina Khan, a prominent critic of Big Tech, as the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, according to two people with knowledge of the decision, a move that signals that the agency is likely to crack down further on the industry’s giants.

A public announcement of the decision is expected Tuesday, one of the people said.

Earlier in the day, the Senate voted 69 to 28 to confirm Ms. Khan, 32, to a seat at the agency. The commission investigates antitrust violations, deceptive trade practices and data privacy lapses in Silicon Valley.

Ms. Khan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In her new role, Ms. Khan will lead efforts to regulate the kind of behavior highlighted for years by critics of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. She told a Senate committee in April that she was worried about the way tech companies could use their power to dominate new markets. She first attracted notice as a critic of Amazon. The...

A day after ousting two top executives, the electric truck start-up Lordstown Motors said on Tuesday that it was on track to start production in September even if it does not raise additional funding, contradicting what it told securities regulators just a week ago.

In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, Lordstown said it needed to raise more money and might not survive. Then, on Monday its founder and chief executive, Steve Burns, and the company’s chief financial officer resigned.

But in a news conference hosted by the Detroit-based Automotive Press Association, the company’s new executive team presented a far more optimistic outlook without providing many details.

Lordstown’s president, Rich Schmidt, said that the company would start making trucks at its plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in late September and that it had enough money to last until May 2022. He said the company would be able to make about 15,000 trucks over the next 24...

Southwest Airlines flights within the United States were temporarily suspended on Tuesday afternoon, the second major disruption to the company’s operations in less than 24 hours.

The F.A.A. said in a statement that the airline had requested the nationwide grounding as it “resolved a reservation computer issue.” In a separate statement, Southwest said it had canceled nearly 500 flights and, it blamed the disruption on “intermittent performance issues with our network connectivity.”

“Teams are working quickly to minimize flight disruptions and customer impact,” the airline said. “We appreciate our customers’ patience as we work to get them to their destinations.”

The airline experienced a similar outage late Monday, which it had blamed on a third-party provider of weather data. Both disruptions prompted widespread complaints on social media from frustrated travelers. A spokesman, Dan Landson, said the company was “investigating the root cause of each event.”...

A day after ousting two top executives, the electric truck start-up Lordstown Motors said on Tuesday that it was on track to start production in September even if it does not raise additional funding, contradicting what it told securities regulators just a week ago.

In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, Lordstown said it needed to raise more money and might not survive. Then, on Monday its founder and chief executive, Steve Burns, and the company’s chief financial officer resigned.

But in a news conference hosted by the Detroit-based Automotive Press Association, the company’s new executive team presented a far more optimistic outlook without providing many details.

Lordstown’s president, Rich Schmidt, said that the company would start making trucks at its plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in late September and that it had enough money to last until May 2022. He said the company would be able to make about 15,000 trucks over the next 24...

Less than a decade ago, the economic malaise in Rocky Mount, N.C., was tangible. Rocky Mount Mills, a big cotton mill that had given the town its identity, had shut down in 1996, costing the area hundreds of jobs. Downtown was deserted. Nobody was hiring.

A day after ousting two top executives, the electric truck start-up Lordstown Motors said on Tuesday that it was on track to start production in September even if it does not raise additional funding, contradicting what it told securities regulators just a week ago.

In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, Lordstown said it needed to raise more money and might not survive. Then, on Monday its founder and chief executive, Steve Burns, and the company’s chief financial officer resigned.

But in a news conference hosted by the Detroit-based Automotive Press Association, the company’s new executive team presented a far more optimistic outlook without providing many details.

Lordstown’s president, Rich Schmidt, said that the company would start making trucks at its plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in late September and that it had enough money to last until May 2022. He said the company would be able to make about 15,000 trucks over the next 24...

A day after ousting two top executives, the electric truck start-up Lordstown Motors said on Tuesday that it was on track to start production in September even if it does not raise additional funding, contradicting what it told securities regulators just a week ago.

In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, Lordstown said it needed to raise more money and might not survive. Then, on Monday its founder and chief executive, Steve Burns, and the company’s chief financial officer resigned.

But in a news conference hosted by the Detroit-based Automotive Press Association, the company’s new executive team presented a far more optimistic outlook without providing many details.

Lordstown’s president, Rich Schmidt, said that the company would start making trucks at its plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in late September and that it had enough money to last until May 2022. He said the company would be able to make about 15,000 trucks over the next 24...

Charitable giving in the United States rose in 2020, fueled in part by a rising stock market and government stimulus checks, with organizations focused on civil rights and the environment seeing big increases in donations, according to a report released Tuesday.

Total charitable donations rose 5 percent to $471.4 billion, a record level, according to the annual Giving USA Foundation report. It helped, the report said, that the S&P 500 rose more than 16 percent by the end of the year and that personal income rose as the government rolled out stimulus spending, including checks sent directly to Americans. The backdrop of a national conversation over race, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, also fueled fund-raising.“In some ways, 2020 is a story of uneven impact and uneven recovery,” said Amir Pasic, dean of Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, which released the report in partnership with the Giving USA...

Retail sales fell more than expected last month, the Commerce Department reported on Tuesday, a sign of the uneven recovery of the American consumer and a shift in spending patterns as the country reopens after the coronavirus pandemic.

The 1.3 percent decline in May followed months of ups and downs in retail spending.

After falling to record lows about a year ago, sales bounced back sharply this spring, only to swing from month to month, driven by the ebb and flow of government stimulus and the persistence of the virus. The data from April was revised on Tuesday to show an increase of 0.9 percent.

At a time when corporate leaders are increasingly expected to act as moral arbiters, the professional services giant PwC has spotted a business opportunity: teaching executives how to be more trustworthy.

On Tuesday, it unveiled a plan to focus the firm, which offers an array of accounting and consulting services, around the concept of trust. (It also announced a goal of investing $12 billion in recruiting, training and technology, with plans to add 100,000 new workers.)

It’s an offering aimed directly at corporate America’s need to account for more than just profits and shareholders.

Executives are now regularly under pressure to speak out on issues such as racial justice and the environment. And businesses are in the unusual position of being the most trusted institutions in society, more than governments, nonprofit groups and the media, according to the latest edition of a long-running survey by the public relations firm Edelman.

Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, which provides eligible individuals with $300 a week on top of their regular benefits.

Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which extends benefits for workers who have exhausted their state allotment.

Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which covers freelancers, part-time hires, seasonal workers and others who do not normally qualify for state unemployment benefits.

Mixed Earner Unemployment Compensation, which offers additional assistance for people who make their income by combining a salaried job with freelance gigs.