Vox Sentences: Saudi Arabia after Abdullah

1. The King is dead

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah at the king's Riyadh Palace April 6, 2011 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

• King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has died.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• His younger brother, Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, has been named the new king.

• Salman, Abdullah, and their four predecessors are all sons of modern Saudi Arabia's first king, Abdulaziz, who died in 1953 and had 45 sons with at least 22 wives.

  [Slate / Joshua Keating]

• Saudi Arabia, the most influential member of the OPEC oil cartel, has opposed restricting oil production in reaction to dropping prices.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• That's partly because the last time the Saudis restricted output as prices fell, in the 1980s, prices just kept falling anyway.

• The Saudi position has prompted (very unconfirmed) speculation that they're trying to hurt other oil-producing countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Russia that are geopolitical rivals.

  [Slate / Joshua Keating]

• The Saudi state has a horrifying human rights record, and is currently torturing a man with 1,000 lashes for defending atheists.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

2. Not-so-free Silver

New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver walks out of the Federal Courthouse after his arraignment on January 22, 2015 in New York City. (Yana Paskova/Getty Images)

• Democratic New York State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, who's run the lower body of the state legislature for 20 years, has been arrested for corruption.

  [WSJ / Erica Orden, Rebecca Davis O'Brien and Pervaiz Shallwani]

• He is accused of two specific schemes, involving two law firms, to obtain bribes and kickbacks.

  [NYT / William Rashbaum, Thomas Kaplan, and Marc Santora]

• The charges appear to be the result of Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for Manhattan, investigating Governor Andrew Cuomo's (D-NY) alleged interference with a state ethics commission that was looking into Sliver.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Silver has "been the key defender of the institutional status quo in Albany, a status quo that is generally regarded as bathed in corruption and conflicts of interest."

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• As far as policy's concerned, Silver is memorable for bucking liberals in helping revive the death penalty in 1995 and blocking then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg's congestion pricing scheme in 2008.

  [NY Mag / Margaret Hartmann and Katie Zavadski]

• The arrest is bad news for Mayor Bill de Blasio, who counted Silver as his top ally in Albany (for example, in resisting charter schools) and is standing by him even now.

  [New York Observer / Ross Barkan]

3. Misc.

• Yemen's president has resigned shortly after reaching a peace deal with rebels.

  [CNN / Nick Paton Walsh and Laura Smith-Spark]

• E-readers mean that publishers know how often people finish books. How is that changing the industry?

  [BuzzFeed / Joseph Bernstein]

• President Obama has said "at least 50" terrorist threats have been averted via the NSA phone metadata collection program. Bullshit.

  [New Yorker / Mattathias Schwartz]

• Can abortion ever be not just legal but a socially acceptable thing to do and talk about?

  [The Atlantic / Julie Rovner]

• The Supreme Court is weighing how to deal with judicial candidates soliciting campaign contributions. Why are we electing judges in the first place?

  [Bloomberg View / Noah Feldman]

4. Verbatim

• "[Late Congressman Bill Young (R-FL)] kept $10,000 in his desk because he believed the terrorists were going to attack the grid and no one would be able to get to the banks."

  [Beverly Young to Roll Call / Warren Rojas]

• "When I pick those balls out, at that point, to me they’re perfect."

  [Tom Brady via Slate / Ben Mathis-Lilley]

• "Brad likes to say that male modeling is to the women’s business as the WNBA is to the NBA."

  [NYT / Irina Aleksander]

• "All of the methods give the same answer: Democracy increases gross domestic product by about 20 percent in the long run."

  [Bloomberg View / Noah Smith]