Pearl Roundabout - focal point of a month-long movement that the Gulf Arab state crushed in March 2011 - was reconfigured on a plot of land in an outlying district where the government approved ...

At the new Raffles Al Areen Palace Bahrain, the 78 villas have private courtyards and pools. Each comes with a butler, who can arrange pearl dives and tours of the resort’s art collection.

Yesterday, diggers tore down the statue at the centre of Pearl roundabout, focal point of weeks of protests, in what the foreign minister said was an effort to erase “bad memories”.

Since the era of India’s bejeweled maharajahs in the 1800s to Jacques Cartier’s search for the world’s perfect pearl a century ago, Bahrain has been a pearl-lovers paradise.

A s a heavy moon rose above Bahrain’s Pearl Roundabout, the locus of the island nation’s protest this week, the army opened fire on a group of men who had just sat down for evening prayer.

“If Sunnis were demanding their rights in Pearl Roundabout, then the government would be giving in to them,” grumbled Ridha, a teacher. “But Sunnis don’t have these problems.

Security forces in Bahrain have fired tear gas today in an attempt to prevent demonstrators from gathering in the Pearl Roundabout to mark the first anniversary of the start of pro-democracy protests.

Bahrain security forces cleared Pearl roundabout where protesters have been camped out for several weeks as well as a medical complex, the state news agency said on Wednesday.

Essam Fakhro, chairman of the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce, says the political unrest that erupted in February and March cost the economy as much as $2 billion. The unrest, which left more than 30 ...