Image: Diyah Pera/Netflix

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is commonly abbreviated to CAOS for brevity, but if the world were perfect and CAOS were a show that revolved solely around its most interesting character, that acronym could easily stand for something else. 

Cousin Ambrose, Occasionally Sabrina. 

Cousin Ambrose is by far the breakout character of The Chilling Adventures. Pulled from the rebooted comics on which the show is based, Ambrose is Sabrina’s warlock cousin who is on house arrest for committing a crime in the eyes of the magical community. Though he has the appearance of a teenager, he is over a hundred years old. 

His age and experience, which is explored in later episodes, make Ambrose a living mystery in the context of the show. It takes a few episodes to even learn what his crime was (attempting to blow up the Vatican, apparently) and even more to find out the details of what his life was like before. 

The slow unraveling of his backstory offers an extra layer of intrigue to the ordinary A-plots of The Chilling Adventures, and every time he shows up on screen the audience learns something new and fascinating about him. Ambrose went to Oxford. He’s a poet. He was friends with Harry Houdini and joined up with a gang of extremist warlocks led by Aleister Crowley. 

That kind of history is prime spinoff potential, or at least capsule episode potential.

But Ambrose wouldn’t be as compelling if he didn’t have something else going on. Sure, he’s an incarcerated badass who knows a lot about raising the dead, but he’s also a young (for a warlock), pansexual dude who longs for freedom over everything else. His profound loneliness drives him through almost every decision he makes in Season 1, be that to try and find love in a fellow warlock or to join up with Father Blackwood’s boy-squad of potentially malignant wizards in the finale. 

That kind of history is prime spinoff potential, or at least capsule episode potential.

In episode 8, Ambrose has a defining moment that speaks volumes of his character. He is faced, as many characters in The Chilling Adventures are, given a choice: give up the names of the other men who attempted to bomb the Vatican and commute his sentence, or stay silent and continue his sentence in the Spellman house. 

In this choice, another of Ambrose’s salient traits comes through for him. He refuses to give up his friends…and is granted the commutation anyway. His loyalty, and the people he chooses to give it to, may very well prove to be a defining factor in any upcoming seasons of the show and can have disastrous (or beneficial!) effects on any of the show’s newly warring magical factions. 

Of course Cousin Ambrose would only be words on paper without the actor inhabiting his fascinating character. Relative newcomer Chance Perdomo plays the housebound warlock with all of the grandeur a centuries-old practitioner of magic should muster, while never underselling the loneliness of his imprisonment. 

Perdomo’s performance makes Ambrose a tragic figure who is also an object of envy — a difficult balance that gives him the opportunity to stunt on almost every other young actor on the show. No shade to the rest of the cast, but Perdomo’s campy, wounded characterization gives him much more to work with than many of the other roles. 

So if there’s anything The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina could afford to do next season, it would be to give the world what it wants. More Ambrose! Give him a bottle episode, maybe a couple fun flashbacks, and a big role to play in the upcoming conflict. He’ll bring his all and the audience will benefit massively from it. 

Apple’s new iPad Pros pack more screen into sleeker builds. 

Last year’s 10.5-inch iPad Pro has been upgraded with a sharp 11-inch Liquid Retina display. The larger model still has a 12.9-inch screen, but it’s thinner and weighs less. 

Apple slimmed down the bezels and killed the home button. Now, each iPad Pro uses a TrueDepth camera to unlock with Face ID, just like the iPhone XS, and are equipped with the new A12X Bionic Chip. They’re pretty impressive — but should you buy one if you just bought an iPad last year? 

Here’s how the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro stacks up against the previous generation.

Image: bob Al-greene/mashable

On October 30, as I was scrolling through news updates from Palestine, I received a phone call from a friend. “It’s that time of the year,” she said through thunderous laughter, “when our self-proclaimed leadership decides to play peek-a-boo and threaten to end security coordination with Israel.” 

The Palestinian Central Council (PCC) had announced that it authorised the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to suspend recognition of Israel and stop security coordination with Tel Aviv. It argued that the suspensions should remain in place until Israel recognises the Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

We both laughed, but more at the tragedy of the situation than anything else. The PCC made the same announcement in 2015. The repetition was indeed tragic, and telling of the nature of these efforts – that they are mere considerations, nothing more than laughable scarecrow tactics.

The term “security coordination” is misleading in itself. In reality, it’s a one-way street: The Palestinian Authority collaborates with Israel at the expense of Palestinians. Never the other way around. This so-called “cooperation” is one of the hallmarks of the stillborn 1993 Oslo Accords.

The Israeli fear

In many ways, the PCC’s decision to declare – once again – that it would end security coordination and revoke the recognition of Israel was not shocking or even noteworthy. One thing that was truly striking about the incident, however, was Israel’s reaction.

Following the announcement, the Israeli media went into a total frenzy, demonstrating how much Israel fears any prospect of serious confrontation with Palestine. Even a simple statement from the PLO (one which, as proved in the past, is unlikely to be truly enforced) seems to trigger a major freak-out on the Israeli political front.

This reflects internalised Israeli fears about the Palestinians actually aligning their resistance efforts and once again nurturing an empowered sense of confrontation.

We have seen many examples of this before. 

Last year, when 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi slapped two Israeli soldiers who were raiding her front yard, the same internalised fear resurfaced in the Israeli media, society and political sphere once again. She was arrested, tried in a military court, and sentenced to eight months in prison alongside her mother, Nariman.

Any behaviour that deviates in any way from the narrative that the Palestinian population is compliant and powerless, whether it is a young girl standing up to soldiers or a usually submissive leadership suddenly claiming that it may end its collaboration with the colonisers, is frightening for Israel. 

But when the PLO and the Palestinian Authority takes seemingly bold steps like Tuesday’s announcement only to back down the moment their power and the assets (which they have acquired through corruption, authoritarianism, and cronyism) are back in place, they weaken the small leverage Palestinians have against Israel.

They either fail to see how their flip-flops, scarecrow tactics and fake shows of resistance are affecting the Palestinian population, or they are well aware of it and simply do not care.

But there is an even more sinister side to the PCC’s latest declaration. It not only undermines the Palestinian resistance with its uncertain, unreliable nature but also carries undertones that highlight the PLO and the PA’s total compliance with the colonial system.

By threatening to revoke its recognition of Israel, the Palestinian leadership once again reminds the world that it, in fact, accepts the legitimacy of Israel. It also indicates that it will continue to do so as long as Israel is kind enough to give them a few crumbs. This kind of hypocritical bargaining is nothing but a green light for Israel to continue its colonialist practices, to thrive and persist in its violent plunder of Palestinian lands, resources, and the slaughter of the Palestinian people. 

Let us remember that this slaughter is not simply a memory of the past, an occurrence that only took place 70 years ago during the Nakba. It’s still ongoing. Since March 30 of this year alone, in a single city – Gaza – at least 218 Palestinians were killed.

The fact that this decision can even be taken (again) exposes the PLO’s decades-long complicity in the erasure of Israel’s crimes. In its recognition of and cooperation with Israel, the PLO ignores the Palestinian refugee crisis and those refugees’ right to return home or be compensated. Moreover, it completely erases thousands of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and their struggle to continue living in their own lands as second class citizens.

A desperate attempt to regain legitimacy

If we look closely enough at the PCC’s 2015 announcement and its latest one, we’ll see a pattern clearly emerging.

The 2015 announcement came just a year after the Israeli onslaught on Gaza that cost more than 2,100 Palestinian lives – and displaced more than 108,000. Protests were taking place in the West Bank against the Palestinian Authority and its complicity with Israel. 

This week’s announcement came as the landmark protest against Israeli colonialism in Gaza entered its 31st week. The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, is rapidly losing legitimacy and turning Palestine into a police state in the eyes of the Palestinians and the world as it continues to invest in its security forces to keep its population in line and please Israel.

It brutally cracked down on Palestinian demonstrators who wanted to protest their leadership’s sanctions on the Gaza strip. Additionally, the Trump administration emboldened the Israeli government by moving its embassy in the country from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognising the city as the undivided capital of Israel.  

In other words, both announcements came at a volatile time for Palestine and Palestinians, as the Palestinian leadership was on the verge of losing all legitimacy. The announcements, as hollow as they are, are desperate attempts for the PLO and the PA to legitimise themselves in the eyes of the Palestinians and the international community as the only relevant guardians and representatives of the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian struggle was reduced to ink and handshakes in 1993, and the PLO and the Palestinian Authority can’t seem to get out of that mindset 25 years later. They want to remain the recognised leaders of the Palestinian cause, at any cost. 

Today, Palestinians are forced to navigate the tragic results of their leadership’s shameless collaboration, magnanimous failures and destructive political ploys. Despite this, the Palestinian people’s shouts for freedom will not be drowned out by empty declarations and political theatrics. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Abeir Mohammed* sits at the foot of her mother’s mud-brick house in Sawan, east of Yemen‘s capital Sanaa.

She struggles as she searches for the words to describe the loss of her unborn child due to toxoplasmosis in July, this year. 

Usually preventable, toxoplasmosis is an infection caused by a parasite often found in cat faeces or undercooked meat, but that can also be transmitted through contaminated water.

In the early months of her pregnancy, Abeir visited Omar Al-Mokhtar medical centre in Sawan, where she was assured about the wellbeing of her pregnancy.

Six months later, she couldn’t feel her baby move. This was accompanied by persistent fatigue, pain and headaches, which prompted her to return for a medical examination. 

When the centre said she had miscarried, after an earlier misdiagnosis, her trust in the doctors waned. 

She travelled to different hospitals in the capital desperate for another outcome, but the response was the same.

“I saw the dead child. One foot was incomplete,” she told Al Jazeera.

She underwent surgery to remove the foetus from the womb at Al Sabaeen hospital. 

The lingering scars, she says, are a reminder of the trauma she endured, without postnatal therapy. 

Unable to afford the cost of the surgery, 100,000 Yemeni rials ($200), she borrowed money from relatives abroad.

Gynaecologists have warned Abeir against getting pregnant for at least six months.

“I would have been dead if I went to the hospital a week later because my baby’s body was decaying and generating poison,” she said.

It was her second miscarriage since the start of the Saudi-led coalition bombing campaign in March 2015.

Doctor shortage

Deemed by the UN as the worst man-made humanitarian catastrophe, little is known about Yemen’s mothers and their newborns.

Apart from the physical trauma, many suffer from an unspoken mental anguish.

Due to the country’s failing healthcare system, owing to the protracted war, expectant mothers do not have proper medical support. 

Specialised doctors have fled Taiz, Sanaa and medical centres because they have not received salaries for more than two years. 

With or without financial resources, women seek treatment in understaffed hospitals and are at the mercy of unqualified medics.

Widespread corruption, disease and relentless air raids, in addition to increasing pressure on existing staff, have compelled hospitals to turn to new graduates for help.

But they are technically unlicensed doctors.

“Some students have not graduated from an authorised medical university,” said Dr Youssef Al-Hadhri, spokesperson for the public health and population ministry within the Salvation Government in Sanaa.

Unlicensed hospital staff work for paltry sums of money. 

“The ministry does not have numbers of [how many] unlicensed doctors working in Yemen’s hospitals, both public and privately,” said Hadhri.

‘Doctors didn’t know what they were doing’

In the summer of June 2017, Lamis Ali*, a 25-year-old from Taiz, was expecting twins.

But one was outside the uterus, also known as an ectopic pregnancy, and had a limited chance of survival.

Lamis was overcome by lassitude for five months after the birth of her son. 

She endured severe abdominal pain, vaginal bleeding and poor blood circulation. 

“Doctors failed to identify the deceased child outside the womb, they didn’t know what they were doing,” she said.

It was only after a visit to Dr Tawfik Mikhlafi’s clinic that she underwent surgery at Al Sabaeen hospital in Sanaa to remove the remains of the dead foetus from her womb.

The worst case I have ever seen was of a mother bleeding profusely, but there was no blood at the blood bank. Her family was forced to shuttle between hospitals to get blood for her.

Nasreen al-Haj, gynaecologist

At Al Thawra hospital in Sanaa, the smell of death wafts in corridors filled with mangled bodies.

Nasreen al-Haj, a gynaecologist specialising in emergency Caesarean sections, says there is a lack of equipment, clean hospital gowns, sterile surgical suture and mattresses.

“The worst case I have ever seen was of a mother bleeding profusely, but there was no blood at the blood bank. Her family was forced to shuttle between hospitals to get blood for her,” she recalled. 

If women can’t be cared for at the government hospital, they are forced to seek private care.

“Some families can’t pay for C-section emergencies. Some can’t even pay for regular checkups, beds and blood. They wait until they can afford financial help, and often, it’s too late.”

‘Sharp rise’ in maternal, infant mortality

At the reproductive health department in the Sanaa health ministry, director general Zainab al-Badawi says maternal and infant mortality rates have risen since the war began in 2015, after an earlier decline in 2013.

“Now, we see children born with birth defects, children who are low weight, and miscarriages are not uncommon. Unfortunately, we don’t have numbers on the maternal and infant mortality rates. Though, I can confirm that during the past four years, there has been a sharp rise.”

Naval and air blockades have restricted the flow of life-saving medicines, vitamins and food supplies. 

More than one million pregnant or lactating women are acutely malnourished. 

The United Nations warns that 13 million people in Yemen are facing starvation, nearly half the population.

“We can’t compare the huge impact of Saudi-led aggression with the failure of the salvation government, the Sanaa-based Houthi government,” said Hadhri, adding the Saudi-led coalition has crippled more than 430 health facilities.

The unabated bombing has made it impossible for mothers to travel to health centres and hospitals in time.

Hadhri said the relocation of the Central Bank of Yemen to Aden resulted in the discontinuation of the salaries of 48,000 health employees.

Al-Badawi’s department in Sanaa health ministry is responsible for keeping records. She admits the aggression on Yemen has disrupted statistical work.

“Records can’t be sent from most Yemeni cities, especially those in the south after bridges have been bombed and the roads closed.”

Statistics used to be prepared manually, but a lack of supervision, fund shortages and the ambiguous political and security situations in wartime have made it impossible to continue.

*Name has been changed to protect the anonymity of speaker.

Most of us will never get to space, but at least we have videos that show us what it’s like to touch the void.

New footage from the International Space Station taken in 8K ultra high-definition shows off a hurricane, the moon, and even science experiments in a brand new light. 

The video was captured by RED’s Helium 8K camera, and it marks the first time 8K footage has been captured from the space station, according to NASA.

“This new footage showcases the story of human spaceflight in more vivid detail than ever before,” NASA’s Dylan Mathis said in a statement. 

“The world of camera technology continues to progress, and seeing our planet in high fidelity is always welcome. We’re excited to see what imagery comes down in the future.”

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is due to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Sharm el-Sheikh where they are expected to discuss Palestinian reconciliation and the situation in Gaza.

Abbas had arrived in the Red Sea resort city on Friday to participate in the World Youth Forum at the invitation of el-Sisi. The forum, running for the second year, is a four-day event beginning from November 3 and will focus on themes of peace, development and creativity.

According to a statement posted on the embassy’s Facebook profile on the same day, the Palestinian Ambassador to Cairo, Diab al-Louh, said the meeting will discuss the latest Palestinian political developments, as well as issues of mutual interest.

He also stressed the long and deep cooperation between the two leaders.

Egypt has recently been involved in efforts to revive the reconciliation process that was signed last October between the two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah.

However, the deal has been stalled for months over a deadlock that has shown no sign of progress for the 11-year political division.

The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) wants complete control over the Gaza Strip, including its security, which means the disarmament of Hamas’ armed wing the al-Qassam Brigades – a point that the Hamas movement has made clear it will not concede on.

On Thursday, The Jerusalem Post reported that Egypt has put forward a three-year agreement to bring the Hamas and Fatah reconciliation into fruition over two phases.

The first includes the PA taking over civil services and government ministries in Gaza, which are currently under the control of Hamas. The second phase would see the PA in control of the police and border crossings in the coastal strip. If this succeeds after three years, the Qassam Brigades would be placed under PA control as well.

Elections would also be drawn held for a new Palestinian government.

According to Ramallah-based political analyst Khalil Shaheen, Egypt eyes the Gaza Strip’s dependency on it as crucial, by holding the keys to the southern border and safeguarding Israel‘s interests.

“Egypt backs the return of the PA to the Gaza Strip in a way that will envelop Hamas into its fold but prevent it from having a political decision-making role,” Shaheen previously told Al Jazeera.

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Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak has said Moscow will support Iran to counter US oil sanctions.

Washington on Friday restored sanctions on Tehran, which had previously been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.

The measures are due to come into effect on Monday.

In an interview with the British Financial Times newspaper, Novak said that Russia is looking to continue trading Iranian crude oil beyond the Monday cut-off.

“We believe we should look for mechanisms that would allow us to continue developing cooperation with our partners, with Iran,” Novak told the FT.

Under a 2014 oil-for-goods deal, Moscow sells Iranian oil to third parties while Tehran uses the revenues from those sales to pay for Russian goods and services.

The Russian energy ministry told the FT that the trade would continue next week, while Novak said that Moscow considered the US sanctions to be “illegal”.

“We already live in the condition of sanctions,” he said. “We do not recognise the sanctions introduced unilaterally without the United Nations, we consider those methods illegal per se.”

Covering Iran’s shipping, financial and energy sectors, the sanctions are the second set to be re-imposed by the Trump administration since it unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal in May.

The 2015 deal, which also included Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the European Union as signatories, gave Iran relief from sanctions in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear programme.

While Trump has taken the US out of the deal, the other parties have strongly defended it and pledged to try and protect the agreement.

Britain, Germany, France and the EU have announced plans to establish a “special purpose” financial vehicle that would allow trade between Europe and Iran to continue, although it will not be ready by Monday.

The Europeans said on Friday they “deeply regret” the re-imposition of sanctions and would work to ensure legitimate trade with Iran could continue.

“Our collective resolve to complete this work is unwavering,” they said in a joint statement.

The US on Friday said that eight countries would receive temporary waivers that would allow them to continue to import Iranian petroleum products for a limited time.

The waivers, which are valid for six months, were for countries that could not fully end their imports of Iranian oil before Monday’s deadline, the US said.

SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies

The next Overwatch character has been revealed.

Blizzard revealed Ashe at BlizzCon on Friday, a shotgun-toting, dynamite-tossing, rifle-shooting outlaw who used to be friends with McCree. She was first shown in a fun cinematic taking place at Route 66, where we also met her partner and ultimate ability Bob.

Blizzard did not reveal when Ashe would be dropping, but likely characters arrive within a month or two of when they’re revealed.

Halima Aden has heard it all: “You’re not Somali enough. You’re not a good Muslim. You’re not American enough. I have multiple identities, multiple things that make me who I am.”

But, for the 21-year-old Somali American model, it all comes with being the first.

“[It’s] not an easy thing to be when the world wants you to be one thing or the other,” she explains.

It’s been two years since Halima shot to fame as the first contestant to wear a hijab and burkini at a Miss USA beauty pageant in Minnesota.

She has since been featured on fashion magazine covers and billboards across the world, challenging the definition of conventional beauty in the US and abroad.

But Halima desires more.

At New York Fashion Week, she prepares to navigate a demanding industry in the hope of becoming a high fashion model and icon.

It’s a very different world to the one she grew up in, as a refugee in Kenya, and later in St Cloud, Minnesota. A world that Halima’s mother does not want her to forget.

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FILMMAKERS’ VIEW

By Mike Shum and Arthur Nazaryan

Halima Aden came to public attention in 2016, as the first contestant to wear a hijab and burkini at the Miss Minnesota USA beauty pageant. But her story resonated far beyond the worlds of pageantry and modelling.

Less than a month after the election of President Donald Trump, who had portrayed Minnesota’s Somali community – to which Halima belongs – as a hotbed of extremism, Halima was showing the world that Somalis in Minnesota were part of the fabric of the state and, in many ways, defining its future.

By the time we met her in early 2017 to discuss the possibility of this film, Halima was just beginning her meteoric ascent from local beauty pageant contestant to international model.

She was keenly aware of what she represented, not only to Somali Americans, but to young Muslims who were eager to see themselves represented beyond the tired caricatures often found in the media.

But she also revealed a personal struggle: in spite of all her success, and what that meant to so many, her mother – supportive as she was – still could not accept that her daughter was a model.

Having grappled with the cultural and intergenerational gap that so often accompanies the immigrant experience ourselves, we were especially drawn to this aspect of her story.

At its core, this is a film that can resonate with anyone who has struggled to balance family acceptance with their ambitions in life.

We wanted to make a film that explored these personal dimensions of Halima’s story, looking at the new challenges that her career presented, and how Halima would respond to them – that is, we wanted to show something that transcended headlines and magazine covers.

Having both worked in the Minnesota Somali community over the past two years, we were also interested in how this unprecedented young woman would change and be changed by that community. We came to learn that this film captures merely the beginning of the wide-reaching impact Halima has chosen to have.

Source: Al Jazeera