Apple has offered to replace faulty on-off buttons on the iPhone 5, a rare glitch which it admitted affected “a small percentage” of the previous-generation smartphones.

Apple said on its user-support page that “iPhone 5 models manufactured through March 2013 may be affected by this issue,” in which the button, also known as a sleep/wake mechanism, stops functioning or works only intermittently.

 It did not say how many phones were shipped with the faulty mechanism. Owners can type in their iPhone serial numbers on Apple’s website to see if their phones qualify for a fix, then either take their gadgets to a store or mail them in to be repaired.
“Apple will offer the service free of charge to iPhone 5 customers with models that exhibit this issue and have a qualifying serial number,” spokeswoman Teresa Brewer said in a statement on Friday.

 Apple rarely initiates large-scale repair programs for its products, and iPhone glitches are rare. The company prides itself on hardware engineering and design, particularly for a flagship phone that yields more than half its revenue.

In a 2010 incident dubbed “Antennagate,” the company famously admitted that its iPhone 4 may experience signal loss when handled a certain way. The company subsequently offered free phone casings to correct the issue.

Apple began selling the iPhone 5S and the cheaper 5C in late 2013. In the first quarter, it moved a better-than-expected 43.7 million phones, helped by the gadget’s increasing popularity in markets like Japan and China.

Microsoft has officially announced it has completed its acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services business. The takeover has been approved by Nokia shareholders and by governmental regulatory agencies around the world and arrives right on schedule, as announced earlier this week.

 As part of the transaction, Microsoft will honour all existing Nokia customer warranties, beginning April 25, 2014. Approximately 25,000 employees will be transferring to Microsoft from around the world.

 “Today we welcome the Nokia Devices and Services business to our family. The mobile capabilities and assets they bring will advance our transformation,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Together with our partners, we remain focused on delivering innovation more rapidly in our mobile-first, cloud-first world.”

Former Nokia President and CEO Stephen Elop will directly report to Nadella and will serve as executive VP of the Microsoft Devices Group, overseeing development and progress of the Lumia range and other Nokia phones, Xbox hardware, Surface PCs and Perceptive Pixel (PPI) products.

 Microsoft says in a press statement that Windows Phone is the fastest-growing ecosystem in the smartphone market. “Furthermore, with the Nokia mobile phone business, Microsoft will target the affordable mobile devices market, a $50 billion annual opportunity, and delivering the first mobile experience to the next billion people while introducing Microsoft services to new customers around the world.”


The statement also confirms that Nokia as a brand will become largely irrelevant when it comes to handsets. Microsoft says Microsoft Mobile Oy develops, manufactures and distributes Lumia, Asha and Nokia X mobile phones and other devices, with no mention of the Nokia brand in the statement when talking about what Microsoft constitutes.


Microsoft also reiterated that it will not acquire Nokia factories in Masan, South Korea, and Chennai. The latter will stay with Nokia due to the ongoing tax row in India that prevented the transfer.

The Versova police on Friday arrested actor Inder Kumar on charges of raping and physically assaulting a 23-year-old woman.

Kumar has worked in several movies, including Masoom, Khiladiyon ka Khiladi, Wanted, and Tumko Na Bhul Payenge. The victim has been sent for medical tests and the police are waiting for the results.

Kumar lives in a rented apartment in Shanti Niketan building in Seven Bungalows, Andheri (West), with his wife Pallavi. His mother-in-law and brother-in-law too live in the same society.

"Kumar and his wife used to frequently fight as he would come home drunk. Earlier this week, Pallavi went to stay with her mother," an officer said. "Kumar and his wife had a major argument last Thursday. Pallavi even lodged a complaint against Kumar at the Versova police station that day." In her complaint, she said she suspected Kumar of having an affair with a model.

Kumar and the model were called to the police station. "We sorted out the matter within an hour and they went back to their homes," the officer said.

The model, in her statement to the police, said that the same evening Kumar called her to his residence and allegedly assaulted her with a broken beer bottle. She alleged that Kumar forcibly kept her in his house for two days while his wife was staying with her mother.

"Based on her allegations, we have arrested Kumar. We are verifying the facts and are waiting for the medical reports," Milind Bharambe, additional commissioner of police (west region), said.

The police have charged Kumar under sections 376 (rape), 324 (causing grievous hurt), 325 (punishment for voluntarily causing grievous hurt) and 506 (2) (criminal intimidation) of the IPC.

A society member said Kumar often fought with his family members. "Society members warned him on several occasions but he refused to change. Recently, the society asked him to vacate his flat within 15 days."

"Frozen" has broken another box office record, becoming the sixth highest-grossing movie of all time. The Disney movie has raked in $1.129 billion worldwide. It recently surpassed "Transformers: Dark Of The Moon" and was the second highest-grossing movie of 2013, coming in just behind "Iron Man 3," the fifth highest-grossing movie of all time.

"Frozen" has already shattered a handful of box-office records. In March, it became the highest-grossing animated film in history, beating out "Toy Story 2," "Monsters Inc.," "Toy Story 3" and "Aladdin." It also broke a Disney record by banking $93.9 million over the five-day holiday Thanksgiving weekend and demolished records in South Korea when it made over $75 million there in early March.

"Frozen" also won out over "Ice Age 4" to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time overseas. Its best market so far has been Japan, which is surprising because the country's anime films usually reign supreme. But "Frozen" earned $104.1 million there, making Japan the film's most popular country outside the U.S.

Let's not even get started on the "Frozen" soundtrack, which has sold 2.1 million copies in the U.S. according to Nielsen SoundScan. The "Frozen" reign continues!

On Wednesday, April 23, "13 Going On 30" turns 10 years old. In honor of the reverse-coming-of-age time travel romcom (and all 13 year olds now going on 23), we have spliced Jennifer Garner's recreation of "Thriller" into 11 easy steps. Without further adieu, please let her teach you how to dance, nay, how to live via the GIF-ed cuts of the sequence below.
Step 1: Turn to the side and take four steps forward and four steps back, starting with your right foot first. Bob your head on beats one, three, and four, and be sure to shake your butt.
Step 2: Turn your waist to the front, and push your arms forward and back, with your hands in the shape of claws (like a monster!). Do this two times.

Step 3: Be really enthusiastic, to make sure even the most basic individuals get involved.

Step 4: Spin around, bend your arms at the hips and pull them back and forth twice, with your hands in a "thumbs up" position. Turn in the opposite direction and repeat.

Step 5: Stand straight and take two hops forward, then bend down and pop up, while flashing an exuberant smile.

Step 6: Shift your shoulders left to right. Hold your arms up and clap your hands together.

Step 7: Bring your arms down and drag your feet to the right. Repeat on the left.

Step 8: With your claws up, take three steps to the right. Repeat on the left.

Popular messaging app WhatsApp has now crossed 500 million users. The company which was bought by Facebook in February this year  - for a gigantic amount of $19 billion – has been steadily adding to its growing list of users.

Last year in August, WhatsApp had 200 million users while the number doubled to 430 million in January 2014. The instant messaging app had also revealed that it processes 50 billion messages on an average every day.

Jan Koum, co-founder of WhatsApp says in a post on company’s blog, “In the last few months, we’ve grown fastest in countries like Brazil, India, Mexico, and Russia, and our users are also sharing more than 700 million photos and 100 million videos every single day.”

The post further clarifies that these 500 million people are not only registered members but also active users. The new milestone for the messaging app explains why Mark Zuckerberg was interested in buying it.

As far as India is concerned, it remains one of the fastest growing markets for WhatsApp. WhatsApp’s Neeraj Arora told BGR India that it’s adding a whopping 4 million active users per month and the India user base is set to cross 50 million mark in May, constituting 10 percent of all users. Currently the report says the service has 48 million active users in the country.

The deal between WhatsApp and Facebook has come under scrutiny for privacy issues. One of the major reasons users are worried about this acquisition is they fear WhatsApp could lose its ad-free messaging service.

The recent WhatsApp outages have only fuelled the fear that it might not be ad-free service for longer. Jan Koum put to rest these fears by releasing an official statement that reads, “WhatsApp will remain autonomous and operate independently. You can continue to enjoy the service for a nominal fee. You can continue to use WhatsApp no matter where in the world you are, or what smartphone you’re using. And you can still count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication.”

As expected by Mark Zuckerberg, the app seems to be well on track to achieve the billion users mark.

The going is great for Priyanka Chopra who is out with her third solo I Can't Make You Love Me, which made it to the No 3 spot on iTunes India in less than 24 hours. (Also read: Priyanka's latest single was launched in New York)

After the success of In My City featuring will.i.am and Exotic featuring Pitbull, Priyanka has nailed it with her third song I Can't Make You Love Me. It is a unique cover of the Bonnie Raitt's 1991 song that made it to Rolling Stone magazine's 500 greatest songs of all-time list.
"My cover of I Can't Make You Love Me is really different because the original is a ballad and we have used dance music for my version of the song. Watch out for the video," Priyanka, who launched the new track on April 22, said in a statement. (Also read: Priyanka found every scene of Mary Kom inspiring)

Her rendition of the song is already on its way to making waves on the international music scene.

Australian musician Iggy Azalea stopped by New York City radio station Hot 97 on Tuesday, April 22, and told a disturbing story that explains why she had stopped crowd surfing at her shows. Apparently, her fans think it's fair game to sexually assault the rapper and try to slip their fingers into her body during the concerts.

Alarming and unsettling as it is, Azalea, 23, talked about it with a straight face and an upfront attitude. "I will get lurk tweets for like a week before my show, like 'I'm about to go to the Iggy Azalea show and I'm going to finger her,' and I'll see it and be like, please don't!," she said. "That's a violation. I don't actually like that stuff."

"Like, they think I'm real slutty, like 'Oh, she got a song called 'Pu$$y,' I know what she wants. She wants these two fingers.' Why would I want a stranger to ever finger me?" Azalea said. "Buying my album for $12 doesn't mean you get to finger me when I come to your city."

Not only do men have issues with boundaries, but women do, too. "Girls think it's cool ... doesn't make it okay," she said.

As a precaution, she now wears three layers under her pants -- two pairs of underwear and skin-colored tights, as a "protective barrier."

Polling began Thursday morning for 12 Lok Sabha seats in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh to decide the political future of 188 candidates, including SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and Union Minister Salman Khurshid.

"The polling has started at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm. The polling has started on a peaceful note," Chief Electoral Officer Umesh Sinha said.

The 12 constituencies where polling is going on include: Hathras, Mathura, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Firozabad, Mainpuri, Etah, Hardoi, Farukhabad, Etawah, Kannauj and Akbarpur.

The electoral fortunes of 188 candidates, including 20 women contestants, will be decided by 2.03 crore electorate. The EC has put up 21,990 polling centres and deployed 1.09 lakh employees for the voting exercise.

While maximum number of 28 candidates are in fray from Fatehpur Sikri, only nine candidates are contesting in Hathras.

The focus will on the Yadav family as the SP chief is fighting to retain his traditional Mainpuri seat while his daughter-in-law Dimple Yadav would be facing a challenge to retain Kannauj.

Mulayam's nephew and son of SP national general secretary Ram Gopal, Akshay Yadav is in the electoral fray for the first time from Firozabad.

Two more political families that of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh and BJP leader and former UP chief minister Kalyan Singh are also set to test their hold in their respective areas.

In the Mathura seat, Hema Malini banking on the 'Modi wave' is pitted against Jayant Chaudhary, grandson of Chaudhary Charan Singh and son of RLD chief Ajit Singh.

Once considered a key person in SP, Amar Singh has entered the electoral battle for the first time from Fatehpur. He is contesting on RLD ticket with the support of Congress.

Though Kalyan Singh is not in fray this time from Etah, his son Rajveer's future is at stake in the same seat. Last time Kalyan won from Etah seat as an independent candidate.

In Farukkhabad, Union Minister Khurshid is faced with the challenge of retaining his seat.

BJP and BSP are contesting on all 12 seats, whereas Congress has not fielded candidates against Mulayam and Dimple.

Michelle Keegan has had to apologise to fans for ignoring them when they came to meet her outside the 'Corrie' studios, claiming she was wearing stage makeup that would give away her 'Coronation Street' exit storyline.

It was announced in late 2013 that Michelle’s character Tina McIntyre was to leave the soap later this year in a dramatic “whodunnit?” storyline.

Her exit from the soap has been shrouded in secrecy ever since to avoid revealing which ‘Corrie’ resident is behind Tina’s murder.

When one fan tweeted on Tuesday that she was disappointed to have not been able to meet the actress after travelling down to see her, Michelle quickly apologised, claiming she wasn’t allowed to greet fans because of her stage makeup.

It was recently reported that following her last ever day of filming on Thursday, Michelle would be throwing a chav-themed party for the cast and crew of ‘Corrie’, as a tribute to her character, before she moves to the south to live with her fiancé Mark Wright.
The former 'TOWIE' star was on set with Michelle earlier this month, supporting her as she filmed what he tweeted were her “final scenes” as Tina McIntyre.

Michelle first joined the soap in 2008 as David Platt’s girlfriend. She’s since been involved in a number of dramatic and hard-hitting storylines including the death of her father, an on-off relationship with Chris Fountain’s character Tommy Duckworth and a surrogate pregnancy.

Her character Tina is currently embroiled in an affair with married Peter Barlow, and recently revealed that she thinks she might be pregnant with his baby.