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Most attempts at leader succession in China have flopped, but Xi Jinping's norm-breaking practice comes at a precarious time for his country.

Some states have passed laws or implemented policies related to evidence-based reading instruction — as two-thirds of children struggle to read. How are colleges that train teachers responding?

Officials were concerned that during halftime too many toilet flushes would stress a sewer line that already had broken and created a sinkhole. The sewer line held.

United Airlines is set to buy about 100 Boeing planes — the single-aisle 737s. The deal, long rumored, will be worth billions of dollars for Boeing. Boeing would still be behind Europe's Airbus when it comes to new orders for the next generation of narrow body jets.

Two boys in Russia managed to tunnel out of their kindergarten playground — they wanted to buy a car. And in New York City, Matthew Ahn set a speed record for traveling to every subway station.

Teenagers get in trouble for skipping school, breaking curfew or buying cigarettes, but in one Tennessee county, that can mean jail. Susan Ferriss reported on this for the Center for Public Integrity.

State and local officials buy electronic voting machines in hopes of avoiding the low-tech messiness of pencil marks on paper ballots and so-called "hanging chads." But some computer scientists say vote-counting computers are inaccurate. NPR's Dan Charles reports.

David Kestenbaum reports on astronomers plans to deal with some future climate changes. A billion years from now the sun will swell and grow brighter as it burns more fuel. By nudging an asteroid into close passes with the earth, they say it would be possible to move our planet into a cooler, more distant orbit. That would buy us a five billion years to figure out what happens when the sun becomes a red giant and engulfs us.

Commentator Andrei Codrescu laments the hard time non-blockbusters have catching browsers' attention on bookstore shelves. He details the thought-process that a potential reader goes through in making a bold determination if he or she should actual buy a lesser-known work. It is this detail that gives us insight into the difficulties of authors. Codrescu's latest book is It was Today: New Poems, available from Coffee House Press.

Jean Kilbourne, author of Can't Buy My Love -- How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, says the media have created an ideal of beauty for young girls that is dangerously unachievable. Kilbourne speaks with NPR's Susan Stamberg in the second in a series of conversations on the nature of beauty.