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Women in Baharain voted for the first time this week in a two-day referendum on political reforms. It's the first referendum in that Persian Gulf country since it gained independence from Great Britain in 1971. Linda Werthheimer talks with Howard Schneider, Cairo bureau chief for the Washington Post about politics in Bahrain and conclusion of the vote.

NPR's Eric Weiner reports the wireless Web is a sensation in Japan, where more people use their mobile phones to access the Internet than use personal computers. Like the 1980s Walkman craze, portable Web surfing devices caught on first with young people.

NPR's Larry Abramson reports Americans have been much more reluctant than the Japanese to surf the Web from their cell phones. It's likely to stay that way, as long as Internet access from wireless phones is slower and more costly than from a home computer.

As the AFL-CIO finishes its winter meeting today in Los Angeles, union leaders see the economic downturn as an opportunity to make inroads into part of the economy where their recruiting goals have fallen well short. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports from Los Angeles.

From elephants to otters to armadillos, all sorts of animals get a kick out stomping, rolling and eating the orange gourds.

The U.S. Navy was at pains today to explain why it waited several days to release details regarding the presence of civilians on board the attack submarine Greeneville last Friday. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports from the Pentagon.

NPR's Barbara Bradley explains how prosecutors investigate and build cases when they suspect a public official has been bribed. The U.S. Attorney in New York is investigating whether President Clinton's pardon of the fugitive multimillionaire Marc Rich was given in return for contributions by Rich's ex-wife to Democratic causes. Prosecutors say it's hard to prove criminal intent, but bribery cases have been successful with circumstantial evidence.

There's new momentum in the struggle to get AIDS drugs to the developing world. Drug companies are offering discounts on AIDS drugs to poor countries. Foreign generic drug makers are copying U.S.-patented AIDS drugs and selling them in the Third World. And studies are showing that even in the poor countries like Haiti, the triple-drug combination of AIDS drugs can slow disease and death.

Noah talks with Milwaukee County Supervisor Jim McGuigan about the controversy over Dennis Oppenheimer's sculpture of a giant blue shirt. The 35-foot-tall shirt is planned to decorate a parking structure at the Milwaukee Airport. Some people in town are worried that the sculpture will reinforce the city's blue collar image. The artist says that's not what he had in mind.

Commentator Sherry Sontag, an investigative journalist and author, argues that if everything had been done by the rules, the submarine would never have hit the Japanese trawler. By holding back the answers to key questions while it investigates, the Navy compounds the impression of incompetence by appearing evasive.