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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.

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.

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.

Republicans need a net pickup of four seats to win control of the U.S. Senate this November. One opportunity they see is in North Dakota, where longtime Democratic incumbent Kent Conrad has decided not to run for a sixth term.

Republican Rep. Rick Berg is expected to win the GOP nomination in next Tuesday's primary. If he does, he'll face Democrat Heidi Heitkamp.

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.

The rock band Japandroids is two men, not from Tokyo but from Vancouver, British Columbia — guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse. Both of them sang and very often shouted on their 2009 LP Post-Nothing, which received a lot of praise from music blogs. Their second album is out now; it's called Celebration Rock, and I think it's the best rock record I've heard this year.

The shuttle Enterprise made a incredible trip up the Hudson River by barge, today. The shuttle was framed by New York City's skyline and eventually it will be hoisted from the barge to its new home at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.

Here are some pictures from the Enterprise's journey:

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.

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.

"Airlines are expecting a banner year," NPR's Yuki Noguchi is due to report on All Things Considered later today.

More planes are flying with full passenger loads, as any frequent flier will tell you. Mergers have helped cut costs. Ticket prices are up. Airlines are charging fees for bags. Fuel costs have eased a bit.

In these relatively good times, what does an airline CEO want?

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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:

Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, died Tuesday. He was 91. Bradbury was known for his futuristic tales — but he never used a computer, or even drove a car.

Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Ill., in 1920 and grew up during the Great Depression. He said it was a time when people couldn't imagine the future, and his active imagination made him stand out. He once told Fresh Air's Terry Gross about exaggerating basic childhood fears, like monsters at the top of the stairs.

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.

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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.