President Obama is cutting his trip to India short in order to visit Saudi Arabia to pay respects following the death of King Abdullah and to meet Saudi Arabia’s new king, Salman. Over the weekend, many world leaders traveled to Saudi Arabia to offer condolences, including Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President François Hollande and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Meanwhile, human rights groups are urging the new king to pardon dissident blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for charges including insulting Islam.

Christophe Deloire, general secretary of Reporters Without Borders: “There can be different kings. The religious police, they succeed to control the whole country, to control information in that country. They succeed to condemn journalists, bloggers, to put them in jails, to inflict them penalties with lashes. So we hope that international pressure in that case, in the Raif Badawi case, will be a success and that the new king, Salman, will pardon Raif Badawi and that really things will change in that country.”