In the endless struggle to rein in high drug prices, one glaring failure has been grabbing the headlines: the exorbitant cost of drugs that need to be administered by physicians.

Such drugs were once a rarity. But they are now more than one-fifth of all Medicare drug spending and growing rapidly, thanks in part to the biotechnology revolution, which has yielded an array of drugs that must be injected, infused or inhaled.

One of them, an Alzheimer’s drug called Aduhelm, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June and is being priced by its maker, Biogen, at $56,000 annually. That’s roughly equivalent to the cost of 45 hours of home health care for an Alzheimer’s patient each week for an entire year.

The F.D.A.’s approval of Aduhelm has come under close scrutiny and protest. The agency has already reversed itself, narrowing the drug’s suggested use to those with early symptoms of dementia, as opposed to everyone with Alzheimer’s.

CARMEL, Calif. — In an acting career spanning four decades and dozens of roles, Tom Hanks has never starred as a used-car salesman. But last week, he had a convincing turn as one, selling off four vehicles from his private collection at a Bonhams classic car auction.

The autos that Mr. Hanks put on the block, and that he had kept at his backwoods ranch in Ketchum, Idaho, fetched over half a million dollars, at least twice as much as expected.

The centerpiece was a unique Airstream 34-foot travel trailer from the 1992 model year, bought new in the days before Airstreams would become wildly popular in all shapes and sizes. The sales price was $235,000, including buyer premiums, especially notable since the Airstream was not lavishly equipped as a new one that size would be.

“I got it in the days when movies moved slower,” Mr. Hanks said in an interview before the auction when he was preparing it for the auctioneer.

The DealBook newsletter delves into a single topic or theme every weekend, providing reporting and analysis that offers a better understanding of an important issue in the news. If you don’t already receive the daily newsletter, sign up here.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has chosen Liz Shuler, its acting president since the death of Richard Trumka this month, to lead the federation until it holds elections next year.

Ms. Shuler had served as secretary-treasurer, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s second-ranking official, since 2009.

The decision to name Ms. Shuler president came at a meeting of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. executive council on Friday, which Ms. Shuler was obligated to call within a few weeks of Mr. Trumka’s death under the federation’s constitution. Ms. Shuler is the group’s first female president.

“I believe in my bones the labor movement is the single greatest organized force for progress,” Ms. Shuler said in a statement. “This is a moment for us to lead societal transformations — to leverage our power to bring women and people of color from the margins to the center — at work, in our unions and in our economy, and to be the center of gravity for incubating new ideas that will unleash unprecedented union growth.”

PALO ALTO, Calif. — In 2014, Scott Hassan, known by some as the third Google founder, sent Allison Huynh, his wife of 13 years, a text message that their marriage was over and that he was moving out of their home.

Nearly seven years later, the pair are still locked in litigation over how to divide an estate with tech investments and prime California properties estimated to be worth billions of dollars.

A trial expected to start Monday will offer an unusual, public peek into the details of a big-money Silicon Valley divorce. They include Mr. Hassan’s failed attempt to persuade Ms. Huynh to sign a so-called postnuptial agreement and his admission that he started a website in her name to publicize embarrassing information from her past.

Technology billionaires have typically divorced quietly behind closed doors. Some of them more than a few times. While the sometimes unpleasant details of the ends of their marriages have often found their ways into the news, it...

General Motors said on Friday that it was expanding its recall of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars that have been found to be at risk of overheating and catching fire as a result of manufacturing defects.

The company said it was recalling Bolts from the 2020 through 2022 model years and a few 2019 Bolts that were not covered under a previous recall. The move means all 141,000 Bolts that G.M. has produced — going back to the 2017 model — are under recall.

The Bolt’s troubles are a setback from G.M. and its chief executive, Mary T. Barra, who is betting heavily that consumers will rapidly switch to electric vehicles in the years ahead. The company plans to spend $35 billion on electric and autonomous vehicles from 2020 to 2025, build four battery plants in the United States and end production of gasoline-powered cars and trucks by 2035.

G.M. said the move announced on Friday would cost the company $1 billion on top of the $800 million it had allocated for previous...

General Motors said on Friday that it was expanding its recall of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars that have been found to be at risk of overheating and catching fire as a result of manufacturing defects.

The company said it was recalling Bolts from the 2020 through 2022 model years and a few 2019 Bolts that were not covered under a previous recall. The move means all 141,000 Bolts that G.M. has produced — going back to the 2017 model — are under recall.

The Bolt’s troubles are a setback from G.M. and its chief executive, Mary T. Barra, who is betting heavily that consumers will rapidly switch to electric vehicles in the years ahead. The company plans to spend $35 billion on electric and autonomous vehicles from 2020 to 2025, build four battery plants in the United States and end production of gasoline-powered cars and trucks by 2035.

G.M. said the move announced on Friday would cost the company $1 billion on top of the $800 million it had allocated for previous...

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has chosen Liz Shuler, its acting president since the death of Richard Trumka this month, to lead the federation until it holds elections next year.

Ms. Shuler had served as secretary-treasurer, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s second-ranking official, since 2009.

The decision to name Ms. Shuler president came at a meeting of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. executive council on Friday, which Ms. Shuler was obligated to call within a few weeks of Mr. Trumka’s death under the federation’s constitution. Ms. Shuler is the group’s first female president.

“I believe in my bones the labor movement is the single greatest organized force for progress,” Ms. Shuler said in a statement. “This is a moment for us to lead societal transformations — to leverage our power to bring women and people of color from the margins to the center — at work, in our unions and in our economy, and to be the center of gravity for incubating new ideas that will unleash unprecedented union growth.”

General Motors said on Friday that it was expanding its recall of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars that have been found to be at risk of catching fire as a result of rare manufacturing defects.

The company said it was recalling Bolts from the 2020 through 2022 model years. An earlier recall covered 2017-2019 models.

G.M. said the move would cost the company $1 billion on top of what it had spent on previous Bolt recalls. It also said it would seek reimbursement from its battery supplier, LG Chem.

“G.M. customers can be confident in our commitment to taking the steps to ensure the safety of these vehicles,” said Doug Parks, an executive vice president at G.M.

The recalled Bolts use battery packs made in South Korea by LG Chem, which formed a joint venture with G.M. that is building battery plants in Ohio and Tennessee and expects to build others as the automaker rolls out new electric models.

The cutoff of federal unemployment benefits in much of the country was meant to bring a flood of workers back to the job market. So far, that flood looks more like a trickle.

A total of 26 states, all but one with Republican governors, have moved to end some or all of the expanded unemployment benefits that have been in place since the pandemic began. The governors, along with many business owners, have argued that the benefits discourage returning to work when many employers are struggling to hire.

Several recent studies, however, have concluded that the extra payments have played only a small role in this year’s labor shortages. And they found at most a modest increase in employment in states that abandoned the programs — most of them in June — even as millions of jobless workers have had to cut spending, potentially hurting local economies.

“The idea was that there were lots of jobs — it was just that people weren’t looking. That was the narrative,” said...

President Biden is encouraging states with stubbornly high jobless rates to use federal aid dollars to extend benefits for unemployed workers after they are set to expire in early September, administration officials said on Thursday, in an effort to cushion a potential shock to some local economies as the Delta variant of the coronavirus rattles the country.

Enhanced benefits for unemployed workers will run through Sept. 6 under the $1.9 trillion economic aid bill enacted in March. Those benefits include a $300 weekly supplement for traditional benefits paid by states, additional weeks of benefits for the long-term unemployed and a special pandemic program meant to help so-called gig-economy workers who do not qualify for normal unemployment benefits. Those benefits are administered by states but paid for by the federal government. The bill also included $350 billion in relief funds for state, local and tribal governments.

Mr. Biden still believes it is appropriate...

China has promised to teach its most indebted companies a lesson. Just not yet.

Huarong Asset Management, the financial conglomerate that was once a poster child for China’s corporate excess, said Wednesday night that it would get financial assistance from a group of state-backed companies after months of silence about its future. The company also said it had made a $16 billion loss in 2020.

Citic Group and China Cinda Asset Management were among the five state-owned firms that will make a strategic investment, Huarong said without providing more details on how much money would be invested or when the deal would be finalized.

Huarong also said that it had no plans to restructure its debt but left unanswered the question of whether foreign and Chinese bondholders would have to accept significant losses on their investments.

Investors took the news to be a strong indication that the Chinese government was not yet ready to see the failure of a company so...

The quest for legitimacy in the United States is leading Binance.com, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, to pursue an initial public offering of its American unit. But for a company founded on secrecy — as cryptocurrency firms typically are — the going could be slow and fitful.

This month, Brian Brooks, the chief executive of Binance.US, left the company after just three months on the job, citing “strategic differences.” Changpeng Zhao, the Chinese Canadian billionaire who owns Binance.com, had hired Mr. Brooks, a former regulator, to help the company gain a U.S. footing. Mr. Brooks left after a venture capital investment he was trying to put together for Binance.US fell through. The deal would have been the first step to a potential I.P.O., but some investors balked at the amount of control Mr. Zhao would retain over Binance.US.

Companies that deal in digital money are trying to grow up. Often started by lone programmers lugging laptops across the globe,...

The coronavirus pandemic appears to have unleashed a tidal wave of entrepreneurial activity, breaking the United States — at least temporarily — out of a decades-long start-up slump.

Americans filed paperwork to start 4.3 million businesses last year, according to data from the Census Bureau, a 24 percent increase from the year before and by far the most in the decade and a half that the government has kept track. Applications are on a pace to be even higher this year.

The surge is a striking and unexpected turnaround after a 40-year decline in U.S. entrepreneurship. In 1980, 12 percent of employers were new businesses; by 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, that share had fallen to 8 percent.

The prolonged decline worried economists, because start-ups are a key source of job growth, innovation and economic resiliency. A reversal of the trend could contribute to a more dynamic, productive economy that could more easily rebound from future...

Social media platforms were caught as much by surprise by the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan as Western leaders were. Accounts and content linked to the group are rapidly multiplying, as governments around the world decide whether to officially recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s rulers.

U.S. tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which have largely designated the Taliban a terrorist organization, have been put in a tricky position as the Taliban try to establish their authority and legitimize their rule online.

Aren’t the Taliban already banned from social networks? Mostly, yes. But emboldened by on-the-ground gains, newly created pro-Taliban accounts are openly defying the bans. An analysis by The Times shows that more than 100 new pro-Taliban accounts and pages have been created since last week, while dozens of accounts that were dormant for months or even years on social networks popped back up in recent days.

Facebook has activated an...

Mark Wray was working at the concession stand of a movie theater when the pandemic lockdowns hit last year. The movie theater shut down, and he lost his job.

But instead of looking for another low-wage job, Mr. Wray sought a different path. He found a program teaching basic technology and business skills, completed it and landed a job at a fast-growing online mortgage lender. He started in March, working in customer service and tech support. He makes about $55,000 a year, compared with $17,000 at the movie theater.

“The pandemic, weirdly, was an opportunity,” said Mr. Wray, 25, who is a high school graduate and lives in Charlotte, N.C. “And this job is a huge steppingstone for me.”

People returning to the work force after the pandemic are expecting more from their employers, pushing companies to raise pay, give bonuses and improve health care and tuition plans. Paychecks are getting bigger. Wages rose strongly in July, up 4 percent from a year earlier,...

Despite the chaotic end to its presence in Afghanistan, the United States still has control over billions of dollars belonging to the Afghan central bank, money that Washington is making sure remains out of the reach of the Taliban.

About $7 billion of the central bank’s $9 billion in foreign reserves are held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the former acting governor of the Afghan central bank said Wednesday, and the Biden administration has already moved to block access to that money.

The Taliban’s access to the other money could also be restricted by the long reach of American sanctions and influence. The central bank has $1.3 billion in international accounts, some of it euros and British pounds in European banks, the former official, Ajmal Ahmady, said in an interview on Wednesday. Remaining reserves are held by the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements, he added.

Mr. Ahmady said earlier on Wednesday that the Taliban had already been...

Deep into the third hour of testimony in federal bankruptcy court by Dr. Richard Sackler, a former president and co-chairman of the board of directors of Purdue Pharma, a prescription opioid manufacturer founded by Sackler family members, a lawyer posed a chain of questions:

“Do you have any responsibility for the opioid crisis in the United States?”

“No,” Dr. Sackler, 76, replied faintly.

“Does the Sackler family have any responsibility for the opioid crisis in the United States?”

Again, “No.”

And finally:

“Does Purdue Pharma have any responsibility for the opioid crisis in the United States?”

More firmly: “No.”

Dr. Sackler, perhaps the best-known among the billionaire Sacklers, who for nearly 20 years was the family member who figured most prominently in the company’s rollout of its signature prescription painkiller, OxyContin, made a rare, protracted appearance by video conference on Wednesday before a judge presiding over the...

Mark Wray was working at the concession stand of a movie theater when the pandemic lockdowns hit last year. The movie theater shut down, and he lost his job.

But instead of looking for another low-wage job, Mr. Wray sought a different path. He found a program teaching basic technology and business skills, completed it and landed a job at a fast-growing online mortgage lender. He started in March, working in customer service and tech support. He makes about $55,000 a year, compared with $17,000 at the movie theater.

“The pandemic, weirdly, was an opportunity,” said Mr. Wray, 25, who is a high school graduate and lives in Charlotte, N.C. “And this job is a huge steppingstone for me.”

People returning to the work force after the pandemic are expecting more from their employers, pushing companies to raise pay, give bonuses and improve health care and tuition plans. Paychecks are getting bigger. Wages rose strongly in July, up 4 percent from a year earlier,...