DUBAI (AFP) - International ratings agency Moody's on Monday downgraded Bahrain's local and foreign currency government bond ratings to A3 from A2 due to budgetary pressure, but kept a stable outlook.
The ratings action was based on a "gradual but significant rise in the breakeven oil price in the Bahraini budget over recent years," Moody's Investors Service said in a statement.
The oi [...]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called on Bahrain either to release or formally charge eight activists, including clerics, the groups said the Gulf kingdom has arrested.
"The Bahraini authorities must make it clear why these eight men have been arrested, and either release them or charge them with recognizable criminal offences," Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, depu [...]

MANAMA (AFP) - Bahraini authorities have arrested four Shiite men, including two clerics, suspected of setting up a network aimed at destabilising the country, a security official said on Sunday.
Three of the arrests wee made on Sunday, while the fourth, Abduljalil al-Singace, a leading figure in the Shiite opposition association Haq, was detained late on Saturday, said the official fro [...]