Windows Mobile? That’s not really a thing anymore. But with the latest update to Windows, Microsoft is sending a message, that it cares about what kind of smartphone you’re using, and it’s tweaking Windows to play nice with it.

The Windows 10 October 2018 Update, which officially arrives today, has the usual security updates and new features, but it’s clear a big area of focus was building a stronger bridge between Windows and the mobile devices people actually use. That of course means iPhones and Androids since Microsoft all but abandoned supporting any version of Windows Phone or Windows Mobile in the past couple of years.

Well, mostly Androids. The phone companion app in the Windows update, Your Phone, has a multitude of abilities when paired with and Android handset. First and foremost, it lets you easily text from your PC. While there have been all kinds of different solutions for this for a long time (brands that straddle PC and Android, like Samsung, have been particularly active here), it’s nice to have something plug-and-play for any Android phone (Nougat or better).

Transferring photos, likewise, becomes a drag-and-drop exercise when you want to move them from phone to PC, letting you use Windows’ strong inking features to mark up pics, or just toss them in Word or PowerPoint files. No need to email pics to yourself anymore.

Unless you’re on an iPhone, that is. The Your Phone app’s abilities are severely limited for iPhone users, amounting to letting you pick up on your PC where you left off on your phone… as long as you’re using the Microsoft Edge browser in both places. Your Windows 10 Timeline (introduced in the April 2018 Update) will also incorporate what you did on your phone, although, again, only if the activity touched a Microsoft app.

The platform split continues: Starting in a preview today, Android users will be able to view their Windows Timeline on their phones via the Microsoft Launcher. As for iPhone users, some kind of app version of that will come to iOS… eventually (Microsoft only said a preview was “coming soon”).

This underscores just how much of a walled garden Apple’s ecosystem is, and how much Apple holds up in-platform features like Continuity (where you can pick up on your Mac what you were doing on your iPhone) and iCloud (which syncs photos, videos, files, and other data among Apple devices) as premium features for customers who buy into that ecosystem completely. For Microsoft, whose only play left to make in mobile is to offer services on others’ platforms, that means it’s often on the outside looking in.

Android, on the other hand, is an inherently more open system, and that gives Microsoft a lot more wiggle room. Not to mention influence — 10 years after its inception, Android has become the dominant operating system in the entire world, particularly outside the U.S. Given the new phone features in the Windows update, any business or individual who uses PCs and Microsoft services as a daily drive on desktop has got to be at least considering Android for their mobile needs.

Reversing the equation, if you’re on Android, and you need a laptop, Windows is now officially friendly territory. Given the longstanding enmity between Microsoft and Google, it’s a bit surprising that this is where we ended up.

Office 365 upgrades and more

Besides the mobile features, the Windows 10 October 2018 Update has a few more goodies  Microsoft has been a big proponent of inking on PCs ever since it went “all in” on touch in Windows 8, and now it’s taking things even further: Word and PowerPoint in Office 365 will now support handwritten bulleted lists, flowcharts and diagrams, and even Smart Art icons. Which means, just draw your chart or icon, and the app will use AI to figure out what it is and turn it into something presentation-worthy.

PowerPoint and Word will also get built-in animations for 3D models, plus some new pen gestures, letting you quickly mark things like line breaks or inserting a new word into a sentence.

Microsoft Edge gets some minor upgrades, including a grammar tool that will highlight specific parts of speech (like verbs), an offline dictionary, and a line focus feature that can help you stay on track while reading by highlighting every other line (or every few lines) of a text-heavy web page.

A big feature Microsoft is working on but doesn’t yet have a launch date is incorporating Chrome and Firefox into the Windows Timeline. For Chrome in particular, which is the No. 1 web browser in the world, Timeline compatibility would go a long way toward making the feature truly useful.

While the iPhone will remain the final frontier for Windows compatibility, the latest update to Windows fills in more than a few blanks, especially for Android users. As efficient as Windows 10 has become, almost nobody lives in Microsoft’s ecosystem completely, and the October 2018 Update wisely acknowledges that fact by making those detours as smooth as possible.

Canada’s parliament formally stripped Aung San Suu Kyi of her honourary Canadian citizenship for complicity in the atrocities committed against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims.

Suu Kyi became the first person to have her honourary Canadian citizenship revoked on Tuesday.

The Senate voted unanimously to strip Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s civilian leader, of the symbolic honour bestowed on her in 2007.

The upper house’s move follows a similar unanimous vote in the House of Commons last week.

A United Nations fact-finding mission reported last month Myanmar’s military has systematically killed thousands of Rohingya civilians, burned hundreds of their villages, and engaged in ethnic cleansing and mass gang rape.

It called for top generals to be investigated and prosecuted for genocide.

The Senate has also followed the lead of the Commons in recognising that the crimes against humanity committed by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya constitute a genocide.

“We must recognize this atrocity for what it is,” said Senator Ratna Omidvar, who introduced the motion to revoke Suu Kyi’s citizenship on Tuesday.

“It is genocide. We must call it as it is.”

‘Shining light’

Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her fight for democracy in Myanmar.

“At that point she was a champion for change and human rights… The world pinned its hope on her as the shining light and hope for a democratic and peaceful Myanmar,” said Omidvar. “As we all now know, that was not to be.”

Omidvar said Suu Kyi has denied the atrocities, restricted access to international investigators and journalists, defended the military, and denied humanitarian aid for the Rohingya.

“We need to send a strong signal here in Canada and around the world that if you’re an accomplice of genocide, you are not welcome here. Certainly not as an honourary Canadian citizen.”

Breaking down the National League wild card game between the Chicago Cubs and Colorado Rockies at Wrigley Field:

Rockies 2, Cubs 1, 13 innings: The Rockies advance to the NLDS to face the Milwaukee Brewers in a best-of-five series starting Thursday. 

The game: The Rockies survive to play another day. 

In what turned into the longest sudden-death game in baseball history, it was Rockies catcher Tony Wolters, who entered this game hitting .170, delivering the biggest hit of his life in the 13th inning, driving in the winning run to give Colorado a 2-1 lead. 

“Our team’s been grinding, working our tails off,” said Wolters. “Did a great job getting this win. … Got a changeup, went up the middle, it felt great.”

Wolters says the club has been coming back all year, is ”dangerous.”

The game, which was nearly five hours long (4:55), started out as a pitching duel between Rockies starter Kyle Freeland and Cubs veteran ace Jon Lester.

Lester was fantastic, striking out nine over six innings, but Freeland was even better. Freeland, who started on three days rest, kept the Cubs hitters at bay over 6 2/3 innings. At one point he retired 11 straight batters from the second to the fifth innings to hold a 1-0 lead. 

Then the bullpens were summoned. A combined 13 relievers were used, with Kyle Hendricks earning the loss. 

Hits and opportunities were at a minimum for the Cubs. 

The Cubs’ best chance to score came in the bottom of the seventh, when Freeland was removed from the game. Reliever Adam Ottavino entered with two outs and a runner on first. His first pitch was wild, sending Albert Almora Jr. to second base. Catcher Willson Contreras drew a walk and Tommy La Stella reached first base on a catcher’s interference call. With the bases loaded trailing 1-0, pinch hitter Jason Heyward lived up to his postseason billing, striking out on a 2-2 pitch. 

The Cubs mustered out a run in the eighth inning when shortstop Javier Baez drove in Terrance Gore with a game-tying double. Baez was 0-for-3 with a strikeout before that at-bat.

NL MVP candidate Nolan Arenado drove in the Rockies only run with a sacrifice fly in the first inning.

It’s the third time a wild-card game has gone to extra innings, and the home team won the previous two. Kansas City beat Oakland in 12 innings in the 2014 AL wild-card game, and Toronto defeated Baltimore in 11 innings to take the 2016 AL wild-card game. 

***

State of the Rockies: The Rockies magical ride continues. After traveling nearly 2,600 miles since Game No. 162, Colorado won’t have too far to travel for the next round. Instead, they travel about 90 minutes north to Milwaukee for Game 1 of the NLDS against the Brewers on Thursday. 

***

State of the Cubs: The Cubs, who were the most dominant team in the NL most of the season, exit the postseason early failing to live up to expectations. The Cubs will have a lot to discuss in the offseason, including the fate of of manager Joe Maddon, who has one year remaining on his contract.  

***

Pivot point: Terrance Gore, one of only four players with more stolen bases than plate appearances, was inserted as a pinch runner for Anthony Rizzo in the eighth inning. He immediately stole second without a throw from former Kansas City Royals teammate and catcher Drew Butera. That set up a game-tying RBI double by Javier Baez. 

***

Man of the moment: Freeland, starting on short rest for the first time in the majors, was in complete control quieting the Wrigley crowd for much of the game. In his postseason debut, he allowed just four hits over 6 2/3 scoreless innings, striking out six batters. After allowing hits in the first and second inning, he sat down 11 consecutive batters only to earn a no decision.  

***

What you missed on TV:  The hug. In an awkward moment in the 11th inning, Javier Baez gave Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado a hug as he was be tagged out. The hug prevented any shot at potential double play, leading Rockies manager Bud Black to question the play.  

 

 

Failed retail giant Toys R Us has set the stage for a possible comeback by canceling a bankruptcy auction, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

That auction was set to sell off intellectual properties like brand names, website domains, and the well-known Geoffrey the Giraffe mascot. But a proposed reorganizational plan would instead allow the company to relaunch a retail business using those assets, the publication reports, citing court filings.

Earlier this year, the toy superstore finished the closure of its retail locations, a move that affected more than 700 stores and tens-of-thousands of jobs.  

At the time, Toys R Us left hints that its retail presence may return, indicating on social media that there would be “a next chapter for Geoffrey and the iconic Toys R Us brands.”

Court papers cited by the Journal say that there was a market for selling Toys R Us’ intellectual property, but that such a sale was “not reasonably likely to yield a superior alternative” to a plan filed in September.

That plan “contemplates a new, operating Toys ‘R’ Us and Babies ‘R’ Us branding company that maintains existing global license agreements and can invest in and create new, domestic, retail operating businesses under the Toys ‘R’ Us and Babies ‘R’ Us names.” 

More: Who are the winners and losers after Toys R Us’ fall? Walmart, Amazon and Mattel so far

Related: Amazon may put out a toy catalog, a holiday tradition up for grabs after Toys R Us bankruptcy

 

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President Donald Trump mocked Christine Blasey Ford, the California university professor who accused Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

During a campaign rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, Trump mimicked the moments during which Ford told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee she could not remember some details of the incident.

He launched into a mock question-and-answer exchange from the podium:

“How did you get home? I don’t remember. How’d you get there? I don’t remember. Where is the place? I don’t remember.”

The audience laughed and applauded as Trump echoed his earlier lamentations about the toll the accusations from Ford and others have taken on Kavanaugh — and what he believes is the new risk that “young men in America” face in the #MeToo era.

Ford sat for an hourslong hearing in front of the committee on Thursday, during which she recalled the alleged assault and the emotional and psychological trauma she says she endured for years afterward. Just days ago, Trump called Ford a “credible witness,” and said her testimony was “compelling.”

Watch Trump’s Tuesday night remarks below:

Michael Bromwich, one of Ford’s attorneys, responded to Trump:

“A vicious, vile and soulless attack on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Is it any wonder that she was terrified to come forward, and that other sexual assault survivors are as well? She is a remarkable profile in courage. He is a profile in cowardice.”

The president’s most recent comments come hours after Ford’s attorneys released a letter they sent to the FBI rebuking the agency for not interviewing Ford about her claims.

Ford’s attorneys say they heard nothing from anyone at the bureau since a Friday night phone call with the agency. They say it is “inconceivable” that it could conduct a deeper inquiry into the allegations against Kavanaugh without interviewing Ford.

“We also sent you a series of emails and letters in which we identified witnesses and evidence that would likely assist the FBI in its investigation into Mr. Kavanaugh’s sexual assault of Dr. Ford and asked you to forward them to the supervisory agent,” the letter reads.

“Despite these efforts, we have received no response from anyone involved in this investigation and no response to our offer for Dr. Ford to be interviewed.”

Several news outlets on Tuesday, including NBC News, cited sources who said the FBI does not plan to interview Ford or Kavanaugh.

Uber’s e-scooter fleet is finally here. 

The company’s recently acquired electric bike company, Jump, was one of four operators granted an operating permit in Santa Monica, California. Starting Wednesday, Jump’s red motorized electric scooters will be available for rent in the Uber app.

Santa Monica is the first city to receive Jump’s rental e-scooters, which look similar to the Jump e-bike’s red design. Since Jump already has 500 e-bikes in the Los Angeles-adjacent city, it can only have 250 scooters available through the city’s pilot program. 

To ride the battery-powered scooters you can switch to the “bike and scooter” mode in the Uber app and you can see where the nearest (and charged) scooter is located. Like with the bikes, you scan the scooters, which unlocks the device, and then you can ride. Once done scooting, you simply drop it off anywhere (out of the way, please) and end your trip. Your payment info already in the app will be charged.

The pricing is somewhat comparable to the e-bikes starting with $1 to “reserve” or unlock the scooter. That comes with a free five minutes and then it’s 15 cents per minute. This is intended for quick, shorter-distance trips.

The scooter arrival is the start of Uber’s self-proclaimed transformation into a mobility company — not just an order-a-car company. With its bike-share through Jump already in 10 cities and the scooters expected to arrive in more cities eventually (Jump was denied a permit to operate in San Francisco), Uber’s well on its way to becoming the “Amazon of transportation” all in one app. 

A partnership with Lime e-scooters is supposed to come online soon and when that happens even more scooters in more cities will be rentable through the same app that you order a car.

Time was running out on Wednesday for anyone trapped in the debris of a devastating earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia, five days after disaster struck.

The death toll on the island of Sulawesi climbed to 1,347, according to the country’s disaster management agency, as rescue teams scrambled to locate survivors.

Authorities and aid workers struggled to reach the affected areas made inaccessible by damaged infrastructure. Palu, a small city about 1,500km northeast of the capital, Jakarta, and other parts of Sulawesi island were the hardest hit by Friday’s magnitude 7.5 quake that triggered six-metre-high tsunami waves.

At Palu’s stricken airport, about 300 victims attempted on Wednesday to board Indonesian military transport planes to be evacuated to Makassar, capital of South Sulawesi province. The injured and those with children received priority seating on the Hercules C-130 aircraft. 

“The evacuation was orderly and there was no panic. But they obviously looked tired and stressed out,” Al Jazeera’s Ted Regencia reported from the scene. 

Outside Palu’s Mutiara Al Jufri Airport, hundreds of others were camped out, some receiving medical treatment, others awaiting a chance to escape.

Desperation

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, told reporters in Jakarta late on Tuesday rescuers were “racing against time” to find anyone alive.

More than 65,000 homes have been damaged and at least 60,000 people have been displaced and are in need of emergency help, according to the government. The UN says as many as 200,000 are in desperate need of relief supplies.

Earlier, President Joko Widodo called for reinforcements in the search for survivors, saying everyone had to be found.

There was mounting concern over Donggala, a region of 300,000 people north of Palu and closer to the epicentre, and two other districts – with a combined population of about 1.4 million.

Initial reports from Red Cross rescuers who reached the outskirts of Donggala district were chilling.

“The situation in the affected areas is nightmarish,” Jan Gelfand, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) office in Jakarta, said in a statement.

“The city of Palu has been devastated and first reports out of Donggala indicate that it has also been hit extremely hard by the double disaster.”

Family tracing

Al Jazeera’s Andrew Thomas, reporting from Palu, said there was “a pungent smell of decomposing bodies” in the city amid daily burying in mass graves. 

“Not all the bodies have been buried, I can say that from the smell we encountered as we got down to sea level,” he said. “It’s a very dark city in every sense of the word.”

With roads cut off by landslides and major bridges broken down, physical access remains a “real challenge”, according to Nigel Timmins, Oxfam’s humanitarian director. 

“The other one is information,” he told Al Jazeera. “Electricity is down, telecommunication is down. For many people, their first priority is family tracing.”

Muzair, a resident of the Petobo neighbourhood in Palu, said five of his relatives are still missing. 

“I hope the government can help find them,” he said. “The soil was churning and then it suddenly rose up and buried the houses. In my heart I said if this is the time I die, what more could I do? I just prayed to God.”

Children are reportedly showing up alone at medical centres, searching for their parents.

Because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” Indonesia is prone to earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions and is well versed in responding to disasters.

A massive earthquake off Sumatra island in 2004 caused a tsunami that killed 230,000 people around the region, the majority of them in the Indonesian province of Aceh.

That was the last time the country declared a national disaster.

Cassandra Stephenson, Jackson Sun
Published 3:22 p.m. CT Oct. 1, 2018 | Updated 12:05 p.m. CT Oct. 2, 2018

A Haywood High School student has been expelled after a teacher’s hair was lit on fire Friday morning.

A teacher was monitoring the back of a classroom after a stink bomb was set off in class when a student used a lighter to light her hair on fire, according to a Brownsville Police Department report.

“The teacher went over to a group of students. When she turned away, I think the student took a lighter and it got the back of her hair,” Haywood County Schools Superintendent Joey Hassell said.

The teacher reported that some students in the back of the classroom “got in her face and [asked] her (why you checking out the black kids),” according to the police report. 

As the teacher walked away, a teacher assistant alerted her that her hair was on fire and the teacher patted her hair to extinguish the flames, according to the report. Assistant Principal Alex Aikens and Officer Anthony Jones investigated the back row of the classroom where the incident took place, locating a black cigarette lighter.

Jones took three students to the office for interview while Aikens and co-Assistant Principal Steven Hoofkin spoke with the rest of the class, the report states. One student was charged with aggravated assault after two students in the classroom helped identify them as the assailant, according to the report.

The incident was entered into the school’s disciplinary system at around 10:45 a.m., according to Hassell. The student’s disciplinary hearing will be held within the next week.

“The school deems that it was a level five offense, which is 180 days where the student has been expelled, but we’ll have an upcoming disciplinary hearing authority appeal,” Hassell said Monday.

The teacher, who Hassell has not identified, returned to school Monday morning. Hassell said she did not require medical attention after the incident. 

Hassell said this was an isolated incident with a single student toward the teacher.

“We just will not tolerate that behavior,” Hassell said. “Obviously, we want to ensure that everyone has due process and that we’re fair in the process, but we expect appropriate behavior from our students and we will ensure that we protect our staff.”

Reach Cassandra Stephenson at ckstephens@jacksonsun.com or at (731) 694-7261.

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Postgame handshakes at a Pee Wee football game turned into a brawl between coaches in Virginia on Saturday.

Video shows two coaches talking at each other in the line. As their faces got close together, it appears people began to pull them apart.

Several punches were thrown and it appears a man was grabbed around the neck from behind and thrown to the ground.

Grown men fighting at a Pee Wee football game today. This happened in Wise Virginia at Central High School. Please make this go Viral. pic.twitter.com/cJO9LTN1Nw

— It’s Great to be a Tennessee Vol.. (@salyers73) September 29, 2018

It was unclear what triggered the words between coaches immediately preceding the fight.

According to WCYB News 5, nobody was seriously injured and no charges were filed.

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