I have a new phone and a new number. It is a Samsung Galaxy S6, if I must have you know, which is not what is pictured above.

Re-logging into various applications―like Instagram and Twitter and Facebook―is occupying my day. Please connect with me via any of these services if you would like to. In other news …

Two brief updates on stories I have been sharing: Raif Badawi was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today, but the winner, the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, helped spur on the Arab Spring in 2011 that led to Raif Badawi and others like him starting to declare for themselves a belief in freedom of consciousness, freedom of speech, liberalism, and human rights.

Also, there are reliable but as yet officially unverified reports this evening that Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, Dawood Hussain Almarhoon, and Abedallah al-Zaher have been moved to the Saudi capital. No advance notice was given to their families, who learned about it after the fact. What this means or portends is not clear.

Ali’s father is quoted in tonight’s Guardian online as saying, “I’m very worried now because they’ve moved my son to a prison in Riyadh and he is in solitary confinement. I expect that this can only mean bad news and I fear he could be executed at any moment. Dawoud al-Marhoon also faces the same fate as my son, but so do six others. So in total there are eight young men who have been sentenced to death. My son is completely innocent.”

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for October 9 asks, “Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.”

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