5 Things to Read This Weekend

It’s the weekend. Time to catch up on all the things you didn’t have time to read during the week. We’ve compiled a few suggestions.

#1: The Race to Create Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Heats Up

Two years ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk came out with an audacious proposal for the “Hyperloop Alpha,” a 28-passenger solar-powered pod capable of levitating through a system of tubes almost at the speed of sound, with a one-way ticket price of $20 and a total building cost estimated at $6 billion. Reactions at the time ranged from excitement to skepticism to outright disbelief, but his dream is quietly becoming a reality.

#2: Why the U.S. Pays More for Drugs

Drug prices in the U.S. are shrouded in mystery, obscured by confidential rebates, multiple middlemen and the strict guarding of trade secrets. But for certain drugs—those paid for by Medicare Part B—prices are public. By stacking these against pricing in three foreign health systems, as discovered in nonpublic and public data, the Journal was able to pinpoint international drug-cost differences and what lies behind them. The upshot is Americans fund much of the global drug industry’s earnings, and its efforts to find new medicines.

#3: At Wells Fargo, How Far Did Bank’s Sales Culture Go?

Wells Fargo has long been the envy of Wall Street for its ability to get customers to load up on multiple products and services. Now, the bank’s prowess at cross-selling is drawing the wrong kind of attention. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the San Francisco Federal Reserve are each probing the bank’s sales culture, people familiar with the matter said. The investigation represents a potential black eye for Wells Fargo, which has escaped the large settlements paid by other big U.S. banks after the financial crisis and is generally considered one of the industry’s best-run companies.

#4: How to Satisfy the World’s Surging Appetite for Meat

As part of the Journal’s Demographic Destiny series, we looked at a food source that will play a crucial role in feeding the world’s expanding population: chicken. Rising household incomes among rapidly growing populations of developing countries are expected to whet the world’s appetite for meat, and chicken is likely be the main choice. Big U.S. agriculture companies have spent decades industrializing the processing of crops and meat, but some of their approaches are clashing with other social priorities, especially in the developed world.

#5: How the Carnage Unfolded in San Bernardino

When employees of the public-health department in San Bernardino County, Calif., arrived at the Inland Regional Center early Wednesday morning, they were looking forward to an office party. But about three hours after the festivities began, it turned into a scene of horror. Police say Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, burst in with semiautomatic rifles and opened fire, killing 14 people and wounding 21 others.