Our Times colleague Ed Lee, who wrote about a study finding that ViacomCBS used overseas tax shelters to avoid paying billions in U.S. taxes, goes deeper into the story for us:

Every multinational takes advantage of tax shelters, but the way ViacomCBS does it is particularly fascinating. The company behind the “SpongeBob,” “Mission Impossible” and “Transformers” franchises has avoided paying $4 billion in U.S. corporate income tax since 2002, according to a study from a Dutch nonprofit.

In the story of how the modern world was constructed, Toyota stands out as the mastermind of a monumental advance in industrial efficiency. The Japanese automaker pioneered so-called Just In Time manufacturing, in which parts are delivered to factories right as they are required, minimizing the need to stockpile them.

In the story of how the modern world was constructed, Toyota stands out as the mastermind of a monumental advance in industrial efficiency. The Japanese automaker pioneered so-called Just In Time manufacturing, in which parts are delivered to factories right as they are required, minimizing the need to stockpile them.

The new media company that would combine WarnerMedia and Discovery has a name: Warner Bros. Discovery.

David Zaslav, the executive who will run the combined companies if the merger is approved by regulators, announced the name at a town-hall-style meeting on Tuesday with WarnerMedia employees in Burbank, Calif.

At the event, Mr. Zaslav said the Warner Bros. name would go front and center because the studio — founded in the silent-film era by the immigrant brothers Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner — has produced “the greatest content over the last 98 years.”

“At the end of the film,” he said, “you see the word ‘Warner Bros.’ It’s imprinted in all of us.”

In his first opportunity to introduce himself to his prospective employees, Mr. Zaslav, who has been in charge of Discovery since 2007, spoke with the WarnerMedia chief executive Jason Kilar from the stage of the Steven J. Ross Theater on the Warner Bros. lot.

The White House on Tuesday said that a breach at JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, was a ransomware attack, as some of the company’s plants were partly or fully shut down in its aftermath.

“Meat producer JBS notified us on Sunday that they are the victims of a ransomware attack,” Karine Jean-Pierre, a deputy press secretary, told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday. Ms. Jean-Pierre said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating the hack and that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was also involved.

Operations at most JBS plants were affected, according to Facebook posts meant for employees. About 25 plants in the United States and Canada posted to Facebook that they had canceled shifts scheduled for Monday, with some of them citing “server problems.” Many of the company’s poultry plants were starting to bring workers back Tuesday, but at least three of the company’s 11 beef plants were still shuttered, according to the...

Oil prices climbed higher before a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allied producers including Russia. Analysts expect the oil producers to continue gradually increasing production quotas. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, rose 2.5 percent to $68 a barrel, and Brent crude, the global benchmark, increased 1.9 percent to $70.63 a barrel.

Krispy Kreme, the doughnut giant owned by the European investment firm JAB Holding, is planning to sell stock to the public.

The company revealed its financials for the first time on Tuesday as it prepares for a public listing in the United States. The company’s sales grew 17 percent to $1.1 billion its last fiscal year, up from $959,000 the year before. Losses, though, nearly doubled, to $60 million from $34 million as the company doubled down on efforts to transform itself. That includes the $20 million it spent on consulting and advisory fees, personnel transition costs, buying out its franchisees and other initiatives.

JAB acquired Krispy Kreme for roughly $1.35 billion in 2016, adding the doughnut seller to a portfolio of consumer brands that now includes the sandwich shop Panera and the coffee chain JDE Peets.

The firm has since taken JDE Peets public and is laying the groundwork to do the same with Panera. The I.P.O. market has been wide open for...

It did not take long. With oil futures rising to levels not seen since 2018, officials from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied producers like Russia met on Tuesday and decided to stick with a plan to gradually ease production curbs agreed in April.

OPEC meetings sometimes drag on for days, but Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi oil minister, said during a news conference that Tuesday’s gathering had required less than half an hour. The rising price of oil probably didn’t hurt.

The group, known as OPEC Plus, is still adjusting to a market that collapsed a year ago when the pandemic took hold of the global economy, forcing a huge cutback in petroleum output. Under the plan the group agreed to in April and confirmed at Tuesday’s meeting, the oil states will add 350,000 barrels per day in June and 441,000 barrels per day in July.

Saudi Arabia will also continue to unwind the one million barrels a day in voluntary cuts it announced...

In the story of how the modern world was constructed, Toyota stands out as the mastermind of a monumental advance in industrial efficiency. The Japanese automaker pioneered so-called Just In Time manufacturing, in which parts are delivered to factories right as they are required, minimizing the need to stockpile them.

The tennis star Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open yesterday, citing concern for her well-being, one day after officials threatened to expel her for not wanting to participate in news conferences. To us, this raises a number of questions, including: What’s to be done when one’s job includes tasks that pose risks to mental health?

The tennis star Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open yesterday, citing concern for her well-being, one day after officials threatened to expel her for not wanting to participate in news conferences. To us, this raises a number of questions, including: What’s to be done when one’s job includes tasks that pose risks to mental health?

The global economy is expected to recover from the coronavirus pandemic faster than expected this year, as vaccinations in advanced economies and an enormous fiscal stimulus package in the United States unleash pent-up business activity and job creation, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said on Monday.

But the pace of the recovery still hinges on vaccination programs and the ability of governments to beat back new variants of the virus, raising fresh risks even as economic activity starts to rev back up in most parts of the world, the organization said in its latest economic outlook.

The organization sharply raised its forecast for global growth to 5.8 percent in 2021, up from a 4.2 percent projection in December. It said the pace of expansion would cool to 4.5 percent in 2022 as government support programs unwind.

A government stimulus-led upturn in the United States, where President Biden is betting on a $2 trillion infrastructure...

Despite the uptick, one financial aid expert says rates “are still very low.” The new rates for undergraduate loans for next school year are expected to go up nearly a percentage point.

When the pandemic struck last year, the Social Security Administration shut down its national network of more than 1,200 offices as it scrambled to protect the public and its employees from the coronavirus.

The agency, which served 43 million visitors in those offices in 2019, was forced to meet immense technological and administrative challenges practically overnight as it shifted to an almost completely remote operation.

Social Security offices help older Americans with everything from retirement and Medicare claims to applications for disability insurance and Supplemental Security Income (S.S.I.), a benefit program for low-income disabled or older people. Yet even as Covid-19 cases decline and businesses and other public places reopen around the country, the timeline for a full reopening of the office network is uncertain. The agency is slowly bringing back workers in accordance with safety guidelines established by the federal government.

But operations...

When the pandemic struck last year, the Social Security Administration shut down its national network of more than 1,200 offices as it scrambled to protect the public and its employees from the coronavirus.

The agency, which served 43 million visitors in those offices in 2019, was forced to meet immense technological and administrative challenges practically overnight as it shifted to an almost completely remote operation.

Social Security offices help older Americans with everything from retirement and Medicare claims to applications for disability insurance and Supplemental Security Income (S.S.I.), a benefit program for low-income disabled or older people. Yet even as Covid-19 cases decline and businesses and other public places reopen around the country, the timeline for a full reopening of the office network is uncertain. The agency is slowly bringing back workers in accordance with safety guidelines established by the federal government.

But operations...

The economy picked up speed last quarter, shaking off some of the lingering effects of the pandemic as consumer spending grew, bolstered by government stimulus checks and an easing of restrictions in many parts of the country.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the economy expanded 1.6 percent in the first three months of 2021, compared with 1.1 percent in the final quarter last year.

On an annualized basis, the first-quarter growth rate was 6.4 percent.

Today is President Biden’s 100th day in office, and yesterday he delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress. In his speech, he laid out an agenda that, The Times’s Peter Baker writes, represents “a fundamental reorientation of the role of government not seen since the days of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and Roosevelt’s New Deal.” The centerpiece of his address was a plan for some $4 trillion in spending, split into two bills, on top of the $1.9 billion in economic aid already passed earlier in his term.

“Doing nothing is not an option. Look, we can’t be so busy competing with one another that we forget the competition that we have with the rest of the world.”

Although the Democrats’ narrow control of Congress means that they can pass spending bills without Republican support, they also need to keep their own group united. Even before the speech, Biden faced a skeptic in Senator Joe Manchin, the moderate West Virginia Democrat who is a key vote...

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As their country is hit with the world’s worst coronavirus crisis, Indians are using Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and shared online documents to crowdsource medical help and hold their elected leaders accountable for their mistakes.

But the technology companies are mostly leaving Indians to fend for themselves.

That’s the message from Mishi Choudhary, a lawyer who works to defend digital rights in India and the United States. Choudhary told me that she is furious about what she believes are failures of both Indian officials and the mostly American internet companies that are dominant in the country.

Tech companies, she said, should be doing far more to fact-check coronavirus information that is spreading like wildfire on their sites and stand up to Indian officials who are trying to silence or intimidate people for speaking out online.

A consistent theme in...

Apple said on Wednesday that its profits more than doubled to $23.6 billion in the most recent quarter as people embraced its latest iPhones and bought more of its other products, striking results for what is already the world’s most valuable company.

Apple said its revenues soared by 54 percent to $89.6 billion, a record for the March quarter that meant Apple sold more than $1 billion on average each day. The rapid growth is partly explained by slower sales in the same three-month period last year as the pandemic first took hold, but the quarter was still strong on its own merits and far surpassed analysts’ expectations. Apple’s sales increased sharply in each of its product categories and in each of its regions around the world.

As usual, the main driver of Apple’s success was the iPhone. Apple said iPhone sales rose by 66 percent to $47.9 billion, its steepest increase in years. The company’s flagship product had accounted for more than half of its overall sales...

Apple said on Wednesday that its profits more than doubled to $23.6 billion in the most recent quarter as people embraced its latest iPhones and bought more of its other products, striking results for what is already the world’s most valuable company.

Apple said its revenues soared by 54 percent to $89.6 billion, a record for the March quarter that meant Apple sold more than $1 billion on average each day. The rapid growth is partly explained by slower sales in the same three-month period last year as the pandemic first took hold, but the quarter was still strong on its own merits and far surpassed analysts’ expectations. Apple’s sales increased sharply in each of its product categories and in each of its regions around the world.

As usual, the main driver of Apple’s success was the iPhone. Apple said iPhone sales rose by 66 percent to $47.9 billion, its steepest increase in years. The company’s flagship product had accounted for more than half of its overall sales...