It's election day in the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain. Voters will be filling seats left vacant when the leading Shi'ite opposition party walked out of parliament to protest the crushing of unrest back in March. The opposition is calling for a boycott, and street protests have continued. But the government, with Washington's encouragement, insists it will maintain order and usher in genuine reforms. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Bahrain.
Profits for the nation's carmakers are on the rise, but after years of doing more with less, higher profits are unlikely to translate into significant numbers of new jobs. There are eight fewer plants and hundreds of thousands fewer workers in the industry than before the Great Recession.