NPR News

China's first national survey of tuberculosis has produced some of the worst TB news in years.

Out of the million Chinese who develop TB every year, researchers say at least 110,000 get a form that's resistant to the mainstay drugs isoniazid and rifampin. Patients with such multidrug-resistant or MDR tuberculosis have to be treated for up to two years with expensive second-line drugs that are toxic and less effective.

The 2013 Honda Fit EV received the best fuel efficiency rating the Environmental Protection Agency has ever issued. The AP reports that the EPA said the electric vehicle gets the equivalent of 118 MPG.

The AP reports:

Spain's banks are struggling and the country's leaders are sending mixed signals about whether they can afford to rescue them, or whether they'll need to ask for outside help.

But one thing is clear: Spanish leaders are trying to avoid calling any potential rescue plan a bailout.

Spain's Economy Minister Luis de Guindos dismisses talk of a bailout for Spanish banks.

"We'll make whatever decisions we need in the future," De Guindos told reporters in Brussels. And that won't be for weeks, after audits of Spanish banks, he said.

We've all probably been there, at work, feeling crummy, when we should be home in bed. Maybe we do it because we need the money, or we feel like we can't miss that super important meeting. But what if you work with food and coming in sick means potentially infecting hundreds of other people?

A coalition of food labor groups says it happens a lot, and they blame the lack of paid sick days for people who pick, process, sell, cook and serve food.

The rest of the economy may not be doing great, but airlines are expecting a banner year. Profitability is up and fuel prices are declining, but that's not necessarily great news for consumers.

When Robert Herbst, a former pilot and industry consultant for many years, says the skies are blue, it sounds pretty convincing. And from Herbst's projections, this may be a historic year for the airline industry.

I always suspected that the pursuit of science could keep a person young — or at least young at heart.

Now I have evidence. Sort of.

The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, a charity that helps raise money to support the NIH, today announced the Lurie Prize. A $100,000 check awaits a "promising young scientist in biomedical research" with the right stuff.

You may not have noticed when you woke up today, but the Internet universe expanded overnight by the trillions.

Today at midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, the new Internet protocol system IPv6 was born, bringing "more than 340 trillion, trillion, trillion" extra Internet protocol addresses into the world, according to the Internet Society, the nonprofit, Internet policy organization that is behind the system's launch and also controls the .org domain.

Tuesday was, unquestionably, a very bad day for public-employee unions and not just for the reason that got most of the attention, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's success in fending off an attempt to oust him through a recall election.

The Wisconsin recall election might have failed, but it succeeded in sending an ominous message to pro-labor forces across the nation — especially in the Midwest, where a handful of legislatures are pushing to roll back collective bargaining and other union rights.

The vote against Republican Gov. Scott Walker was prompted by his support for a law limiting collective bargaining for some public sector employees. His victory Tuesday night could embolden governors in states such as Ohio, Indiana and Missouri to push back harder on labor rights.

Who is Latino? Who counts as Native American?

The debate over who is considered a minority was brought to the spotlight by the Senate race in Massachusetts. Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren claimed she had Native American heritage, but there's no records to indicate that. Still, Warren insists that she learned of her background through family stories and that she is proud of her heritage.

For a new book, Kill or Capture, investigative reporter Dan Klaidman examined how President Obama came to embrace the drone program, and the closed-door process that determines under what circumstances drones are deployed. He talks about the administration's growing reliance on covert attacks.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker survived his recall election, a victory that may signal trouble for Democrats at the national level come November. NPR's Political Junkie columnist Ken Rudin and Katrina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation talk about what Walker's victory means for progressives.

Heinlein, Asimov and Bradbury; they were the tripod (invasive, moving, with lasers) on which my science fiction education was built in the 1970s. This was somewhat self-selected, because once you — or I — grew out of Danny Dunn and Journey to the Mushroom Planet and Tom Swift, Jr., they were the inevitable destinations, the planets with the heaviest gravity wells in the sci-fi solar system.

Richard Grenell recently explained that Mitt Romney chose him to serve as his foreign policy adviser based on his record and abilities. The Romney campaign, he says, also knew he was openly gay. Grenell explains why he resigned, and where Romney and President Obama differ on foreign policy.

Anecdotal reports from across the nation "suggest overall economic activity expanded at a moderate pace" from early April through late May, the Federal Reserve just reported.

In its "beige book" review of conditions around the country, the Fed said the only one of its 12 bank districts to report slower growth was Philadelphia.

The report also adds that:

Did Larry Summers, the president's first National Economic Council director, just become the second Obama surrogate to stray from the talking points and endorse an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts?

Those tax cuts, which the Obama administration has said it will not extend for the very rich, are due to expire at the end of the year. Along with deep cuts in government spending scheduled to take place at the same time, many have called the end of the year a "fiscal cliff" that would plunge the economy back into recession.

Our post on the paleo diet moving from the CrossFit gym to the doctor's office generated a robust discussion here in our comments section (and on NPR's Facebook page).

Readers batted around the relative merits of the paleo diet, how to interpret Paleolithic man's short lifespan and the meaning of evolutionary medicine, among other issues.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Some sad news this morning: The world has lost a literary giant. Author Ray Bradbury died last night after a long illness. He was 91 years old. He wrote such classics as "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451" - futuristic tales from a man who never used a computer, or even drove a car. NPR's Arnie Seipel has more on Bradbury and his curious life.

The television journalist Barbara Walters apologized yesterday after leaked emails showed that she offered to help an aide to Syrian President Bashar Assad land a job in the U.S. after the aide helped Walters secure an interview with the despot.

The AP reports:

California's new truly open primary held Tuesday could result in single-party matchups in November for eight of the state's 53 U.S. House seats.

While some results remained unofficial Wednesday morning, five congressional districts were certain to have Democrat-vs.-Democrat races on Nov. 6, while a sixth looked likely; two districts could have Republican-vs.-Republican contests.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, a lot of famous people have gotten in trouble for being reckless with the social media tool Twitter, but now the skilful use of the delete key may not be enough to save them if they are running for office or are already a member of Congress. We'll find out why in just a few minutes.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, could raising the retirement age help preserve Social Security? A new study suggested that actually might not work, and could also significantly hurt blue-collar workers. We'll talk about that in just a few minutes.

The cities of New York and Los Angeles grade their restaurants on cleanliness and the precautions they take to avoid making customers sick.

Now hospitals are getting similar assessments for their patient safety records from the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit that's looking to improve the quality and safety of health care.