Xi Jinping secures a precedent-breaking third term as China's president after his re-appointment is unanimously rubber-stamped. / Reuters

A primer on President Xi and how he'll potentially rule China for life. / The Economist

Chinese lingerie companies use male models for their sexiest products to avoid disturbing online censors. / CNN

General Motors offers voluntary buyouts to a "majority" of its United States white-collar employees. / CNBC

The professor who called Bret Stephens a bedbug bets Twitter only has six months left. / The Future, Now and Then

In the Bay Area, eight households hold more wealth than the bottom 50% of residents (nearly half a million households). / SF Gate

Thomas Lesaffre: Across post-colonial Africa, foreigners are a convenient scapegoat for a national elite that has failed to redistribute wealth. / Africa Is a Country

Details on the daily workings of a drug dealer in Texas selling counterfeit pills filled with fentanyl. / WIRED

Nepali developers create an app to save the lives of elephants as well as the humans they sometimes attack. / rest of world

Your weekly soothe: A small town in Iceland features a Puffling Patrol, a volunteer brigade tasked with shepherding little puffins. / Smithsonian Magazine

A mathematician explains how it was possible to tunnel through a mountain during the 6th century BCE. / The Kid Should See This

To be "plant blind"  is to fail to see plants for what they really are: "cognitive organisms endowed with memories, perceptions, and feelings." / Nautilus


Author Jane Miller at 90: "I'm often bored and certainly don't have enough to do." / The London Review of Books