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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has once again changed the number of cars included in a massive and urgent recall over an inflator defect in air bags made by the Japanese company Takata.

Initially, 4.7 million vehicles were recalled, but in a list released on Wednesday, NHTSA added 3.1 million additional vehicles.

The Associated Press reports NHTSA has had difficulties getting the right facts out about the recall this week:

"[T]he regulatory agency has twice corrected the number of vehicles affected and acknowledged that a list it released Monday wasn't completely accurate. The agency urged people to use its website to see if their cars are affected — but a feature allowing people to check for recalls by vehicle identification number malfunctioned Monday night and still wasn't operational Wednesday."

Michigan Radio's Tracy Samilton told our Newscast Unit that the bags in the recalled cars may have "faulty inflators that can rupture and send metal fragments flying out." Samilton says at least four people have died in accidents related to the air bag problem. Officials believe prolonged exposure to high heat and humidity might be a cause for the defect. That's led NHTSA to give a special warning to vehicle owners in warm, humid climates.

"The message comes with urgency, especially for owners of vehicles affected by regional recalls in the following areas: Florida, Puerto Rico, limited areas near the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana, as well as Guam, Saipan, American Samoa, Virgin Islands and Hawaii."

Toyota was one of the automakers with vehicles added to the expanded list. But Reuters reports the automaker says it will stand by Takata:

"[A] top Toyota Motor Corp. executive said in Tokyo that the Japanese automaker had no plans to abandon Takata despite the supplier's struggles.

" 'Toyota's not one to just dump a supplier,' Steve St. Angelo, Toyota's head of Latin American operations and the former chief quality officer in North America, told reporters. 'Have we ever eliminated a supplier? Yes. But it's really, really tough. We will exhaust every opportunity to help that supplier first.' "

David Shepardson, the Washington bureau chief of the Detroit News, told NPR's David Greene that in some places, Toyota is shifting replacement air bags away from colder states to warm-weather states. Shepardson also said Toyota is telling some vehicle owners that it will deactivate their passenger air bags until they can be replaced.

Toyota, Honda, Mazda, BMW, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors have vehicles being recalled. NHTSA has published an updated list of vehicles potentially affected.

Today's mobile phones can do almost everything a computer can. But we still need them for their most basic purpose: making phone calls — especially in emergencies.

And yet, existing technology can't always pinpoint a caller's location, particularly when a 911 caller is indoors.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed new regulations for wireless carriers to help address the problem, but so far, wireless providers are resisting the changes.

One of the first questions a caller is asked when they call 911 is, "Where is your emergency?" It's also "absolutely the most important," says Steve Souder, director of the Fairfax County Department of Public Safety Communications in Virginia.

"We need to know where you are to send somebody. We don't need to know what; we don't need to know how, we don't need to know when," Souder says. "The 'where' is the No. 1 thing."

But that's become a much harder question for first responders in the past 20 years. First, the GPS on cellphones doesn't work as well indoors as it does outside.

Second, callers used to reach 911 via a landline, which was linked to a specific address — down to the apartment number. That's not true with cellphones.

Chris Frederick, a 911 call-taker in Fairfax County, remembers when an 8-year-old called him on a cellphone because his parents had a medical emergency. The boy couldn't read very well, and his parents didn't speak English. So Frederick asked him to walk outside.

NPR/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/National Center for Health Statistics National Health Interview Survey

"And I said, 'Can you tell me what the number is on your house?' And he told me the number. It took about 10 minutes."

If the call had come in on a landline, Frederick says, identifying the house would have been instantaneous — the location would have just popped up on his computer screen.

With nearly half the children in the U.S. — like the boy Frederick helped — living in wireless-only households, situations like that are common. According to the National Emergency Number Association, around 210 million 911 calls come from cellphones every year. And about half of the people calling on a cellphone from indoors don't know where they are specifically.

The FCC regulates the cellphone industry, including wireless carriers like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. Currently, the FCC requires cellphones to have technology that tracks a person to between 100 and 300 meters of where they are.

But as Jodie Griffin, senior staff attorney at the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge points out, "100 meters, which is the stricter end of the rules right now, is more than a football field."

And a football field is longer than some city blocks.

"When you're talking about someone who's outdoors, the ambulance may be able to arrive and just see where someone is in distress," Griffin says.

But if a caller is inside one of these buildings? Good luck.

So earlier this year, the FCC proposed new rules that would require vertical location information. That way, first responders could identify what floor a caller is on. The rules would also require location information within 50 meters — still longer than some apartment building hallways.

The new rules would apply to any phone, no matter what type.

So far, wireless providers are resisting the proposed changes. In filings with the FCC, Sprint said that the agency's timeline wasn't realistic.

In an email to NPR, Verizon said the company is "working with a variety of organizations across the ecosystem on a viable path forward."

The technology to meet those requirements is actually already available.

All Tech Considered

New Digital Amber Alerts Could Create A Backlash

Several companies have created systems that can better track a phone's location. The company TruePosition creates custom geo-location technology.

NPR Ed

Enlisting Smartphones In The Campaign For Campus Safety

"Special receivers are installed in the existing wireless operators' or carriers' cell towers," says Rob Anderson, TruePosition's chief technology officer. "Those receivers are able to very accurately measure the time the signals that are transmitted from the cellphones arrive at the various cell towers. And by making those time measurements, we can compute a position. And we measure those signals very precisely, on the order of nanoseconds."

Cities Project

Police Take Different Approaches To 'The Tyranny Of 911'

TruePosition's system doesn't require updates to every cellphone, but it does require cellphone carriers to add equipment to their towers.

Obviously, this would cost money — which companies would likely pass on to consumers in one way or another.

Public Knowledge's Jodie Griffin says the added cost could also raise another problem.

"The people who can't afford the newest smartphone, or can't afford to be on an LTE network, are going to be left behind if we just assume that we'll let the new technology that comes along in two years solve everything," she says.

The FCC is currently taking comments on the proposed rules. If they're approved, the regulations would still take at least a year to implement.

911 service

emergencies

emergency response

cellphones

geolocation

GPS

This election season is proving to be tough for Democrats, but many believe they can turn the red state of Georgia blue with the help of new voters.

One voter registration campaign led by the New Georgia Project, a "nonpartisan effort" according to its website, has targeted black, Latino and Asian-American residents.

The organization's parent group, Third Sector Development, is currently engaged in a legal battle with election officials over more than 40,000 voter registration applications that, the group says, are missing from Georgia's voter logs. This month, that organization, along with the NAACP and other civil rights groups, filed a lawsuit against five counties and Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who oversees elections in the state.

"These are voters who deserve to have their voices heard," says Stacey Abrams, founder of the New Georgia Project. "This is a critical election — an election that will not only speak to what happens in the state of Georgia this cycle but ... speaks to the future of the Georgia that we want to have."

The issue has been resolved in Georgia's DeKalb County, located outside Atlanta. But four other counties, including Fulton, Chatham, Muscogee and Clayton, still face the lawsuit.

A Call For Transparency

Abrams, a Democrat who serves as Georgia's House minority leader, says it's unclear whether the 40,000 applications in question have been processed, based on the state's public lists of registered voters.

"The reality may be that the voters are in the process, and they will appear on the rolls. But we don't know," she says. "This is about information. It's about transparency."

The Georgia secretary of state's office did not respond to requests for comment by deadline, but during a press conference on Oct. 16, Kemp said the lawsuit is "totally without merit."

"The claim that there are over 40,000 unprocessed voter registration applications is absolutely false," he said. "The counties have processed all the voter registration applications that they have received for the general election."

In September, Kemp launched an investigation into the New Georgia Project's voter registration campaign after forged and other invalid applications were submitted to county offices. The New Georgia Project says it is legally required to submit all voter registration applications it collects — even invalid ones.

Resolution In DeKalb County

Earlier this week, DeKalb County was released from the lawsuit after confirming that the county had processed all of its applications. Maxine Daniels, director of voter registration and elections in DeKalb County, says she was upset by the lawsuit's allegations.

"We understand that what we do is the very basis for our democracy, and so we take it very seriously," she explains. "For someone to say that we're not doing it, it's just very disconcerting."

Daniels says the lawsuit may come down to failures in communication between the New Georgia Project and county election offices. She says she wishes the group had reached out to her office about missing applications earlier in the process. But Daniels still supports outreach to new voters.

"Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water," she says. "We have to keep in mind that there still were some 7,000 voters that as a result of their project got registered [in DeKalb County]. And so we applaud that effort."

NPR contacted the four other counties named in the lawsuit. All asserted that they currently have no unprocessed applications. A hearing about the case is set to take place in Atlanta on Friday.

There's a woman running in the tight race for the Senate in Iowa — one of the contests that will decide who controls the Senate next year. In the 21st century, a female candidate for Senate may not sound historic. But in Iowa, it is.

The state shares a rare distinction with Mississippi: It has never elected a woman to the Senate, to the House, or to be governor.

Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst is trying to change that in her race against Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley — a race in which the role of female voters is central.

The gender gap has been around for decades. Republicans typically do well with men, Democrats with women.

And among women who vote, those who are not married are still more likely to vote for Democrats. Young singles, divorcees and widows are all prime Democratic constituencies.

Democrats say they appeal to women on both economic and social grounds. Women, they say, would benefit more from a higher minimum wage and other pocketbook issues. And, they say, women are concerned about reproductive rights.

Democrats accuse Republicans of waging a war on women.

Professor Rachel Paine Caufield, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, says Republicans have been responding to that charge and gaining ground.

"They've identified this problem. And they know that need to appeal to women. ... Part of that is fielding more women candidates. Part of that is reframing some of their messages to women voters," she says.

i i

Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley speaks to fairgoers at the Iowa State Fair. While polls show Braley with a sizable lead among women, he trails among men by an even wider margin. Charlie Neibergall/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Charlie Neibergall/AP

Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley speaks to fairgoers at the Iowa State Fair. While polls show Braley with a sizable lead among women, he trails among men by an even wider margin.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

In Iowa, polls show Braley running as many as 14 points ahead of Ernst among women.

But he's trailing Ernst by even more than that margin among men.

So the Democrats need women to turn out and vote.

The week before last, Braley got a visit from a very high profile Democratic woman: Michelle Obama.

For a candidate who is said to have a tough time introducing himself to Iowa voters, it didn't help that the first lady several times got his name wrong.

"You can request a ballot by mail, right here, at this event or you can go to vote dot Bruce Bailey dot com. That's vote dot Bruce Bailey dot com. Or even better, you can ..." she started, eliciting shouts from the audience. "Braley? What did I say? I'm losing it. I'm getting old."

Ernst, who's an officer in the Iowa Army National Guard, presents herself as a mother, soldier, leader. She has made a strong introduction with the voters, largely through her commercials.

In an ad titled "Squeal" she narrates: "My parents taught us to live within our means. It's time to force Washington to do the same." She also invokes the common experience she shared with other Iowa farm kids, castrating hogs. She'll come to Washington and cut pork. "Let's make 'em squeal," the ad ends.

Then came a commercial showing Ernst riding a motorcycle to a shooting range and firing a pistol she carries in her purse.

"Joni Ernst will take aim at wasteful spending, and once she sets her sights on Obamacare, Joni's gonna unload," the narrator says.

Drake's Caufield says those images are relaying a central message: "I'm from a man's world."

"This is something, particularly in a time in foreign policy, women candidates tend to have a harder time appealing to voters on foreign policy issues," says Caufield. "I don't think Joni Ernst has had any problem on that. I don't think there's any question that she has presented herself to voters as someone who is tough, and capable, and willing to fight every bit as hard as any male would be."

How is it playing with women?

Last week, we invited six Iowa women, from across the political spectrum, to watch the third and final Braley-Ernst televised debate with us.

In that debate, there was much talk about the Personhood Amendment to the Iowa Constitution that Ernst sponsored as a state senator. Would declaring a fertilized egg to be a person ban all abortions, some contraceptives and in vitro fertilization?

Braley cited the concerns of OB-GYNs that it would do all those things.

Ernst said she's pro-life. She could support abortion to save the life of a mother. She said she supports access to contraception and she has no objection to in vitro, which entails disposing of excess fertilized eggs.

In the debate, Ernst also spoke of going to Washington to fix a dysfunctional government.

Braley said that all of her solutions scrap things: the Department of Education, federal student loans, the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal minimum wage.

When each was asked to say something admirable about the other, Braley said this about Ernst, who was deployed in the Iraq War:

"Well, I admire the fact that Sen. Ernst has served our nation and our state and the Iowa National Guard. I think it's a terrific attribute. My father was a Word War II combat veteran, and I have great respect for Sen. Ernst for serving our country."

Ernst's answer:

"And I think Congressman Braley is a great father."

The reaction from our group: "Oh, God." Most found that line to be condescending.

It turned out that our six viewers all thought Braley did better.

Loretta Sieman — a former Des Moines councilwoman and registered Republican — sounded disappointed that she couldn't be enthusiastic about the female candidate. Ernst struck her as too negative.

"At the end, he just talked about what he was going to do. She talked about what he didn't do. And that drives me crazy," she said. "As a woman, we know that we have never had a woman from Iowa so we're supposed to be involved for that. As a past councilperson, I want the right person and I don't care if they wear a skirt or pants."

Brittany Gaura, a sophomore at Iowa State, is a Young Republican; she hopes to be a veterinarian. I asked about the importance of electing a woman to the Senate: "To me, it's important to have a woman, I think, in the Senate, and from Iowa. I think a lot of women in Iowa have a lot to bring to the table — but it's not important to me right now if she's not the right woman."

Her fellow conservative in the group, businesswoman Karen Novak, agreed. "I'm looking at who's the most qualified individual. I don't care if they wear pants or a skirt, it makes no difference. I would absolutely love to get a woman in office, but only if she's the right one and she has the right qualifications," she said.

Those two Iowa women had described themselves as leaning toward Ernst before the debate. Afterward, they were leaning a little less in that direction.

The same was true for Angela Ten Clay, who works at an ad agency. "Braley was very articulate and answered things really well and gave more meat and depth to his conversation. And whether I agreed with it or not, when someone is concise and clear and strong in what they believe that's really what I look for. That they stand up for something, and they back it and they don't change their opinion," she says.

I asked our group of Iowa women what they made of the references in the debate to motherhood. Ernst describes herself as a mother first.

We had two decided Braley voters in the group. Pat Schneider said Ernst's description of herself didn't impress her. "When she talks about she's a mother, she's a soldier ... it's like, OK, but that could be anybody. I mean that to me doesn't qualify you to run for Congress. Although I do think if we had more women in Congress, I think we could probably get a lot more done because women are used to compromising, and working together. I mean, we have to do it every day with our kids, our workforce," she said. "In that respect, it would be great, but I don't think Joni Ernst is the right woman."

Nicole Peckumn, who also supports Braley, is not a mother. And as she said, female voters are a more mixed lot than just moms.

"To me, it's really about the quality of the candidate, and not necessarily about gender. Do I want to still be tied with Mississippi for not having a woman go to D.C.? Absolutely no and I think that this will be the year that either in the congressional or Senate race we'll do it," Peckumn said.

"Being a mother is wonderful, but there are a lot of people in our society who have opted to not have that be a part of their plan. So I think when you're talking about the big scope of America, you have to also look at people who are not like you. Someday I want to be a mom. ... But it doesn't really generate a big emotional connection with me or some of my friends who are moms."

Here's something that all six women agreed on. And both Senate candidates in the debate said they agreed on. And both state party chairmen whom I interviewed last week in Des Moines said they agreed on: Everyone hates the nonstop, bumper-to-bumper airing of campaign commercials, typically bashing one candidate or the other. Commercials from campaigns, national party committees, outside groups. The revulsion is as universal as it is, apparently, ineffectual.

As in many states, early voting is well underway Iowa, so every day is Election Day.

And as soon as last week's televised debate ended, the commercials resumed.