The record breakers in the news today
Last night marked the return to US TV screens of cancer-stricken teacher-turned-criminal Walter White and his sidekick Jesse Pinkman for the first episode of the final run of Breaking Bad.
One of the most eagerly anticipated TV drama climaxes in recent memory, the AMC show which first began airing in 2008, has the distinction of holding the Guinness World Records title for highest-rated TV series (current), having garnered a metacritic.com score of 99 out of 100 for its fifth season.
The show stars Bryan Cranston as White, a high-school chemistry teacher diagnosed with lung-cancer who undergoes a midlife crisis and turns to drug dealing.
To the world of video games, where a Swedish e-sports team have won $1.43m (£924,000) after emerging victorious at a Dota 2 tournament.
The final in Seattle was a tight affair, with the eventual winners Alliance securing victory after destroying the base of runners-up, Na'Vi from Ukraine, in the final game of a best-of-five challenge.
Guinness World Records is currently awaiting evidence before confirming if this has set a new record for largest single eSports prize – a record that is currently held by 2012’s The International, a DotA 2 championship organized by developers Valve which had a winner’s prize pot of $1 million (£630,000).
Struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry has put itself up for sale in a bid to turn around its business.
The Canadian company, which has seen a slow take up of its new Blackberry 10 operating system, has formed a special board committee to examine its options.
The world’s biggest-selling mobile phone remains the basic-but-tough Nokia 1100, launched in 2003 and known by its developers simply as ‘The Penny’, has shipped more than 250 million units.
That puts it far ahead of its nearest rivals, Nokia’s own 3210/3310 (released in 1999) and the Motorola RAZR V3 (launched in 2004). Cheap, robust and widely available, the Nokia 1100 came just at the right time to catch the communications revolution across the developing world – particularly in India. Such success is, however, no guarantee of continued momentum. In a similar fall from grace to Blackberry, by 2012, and for the first time in a decade, Nokia had dropped out of the top five smartphone makers in the world.
Finally Mel Gibson has been confirmed to play the villain in movie sequel 'The Expendables 3'.
Antonio Banderas has also signed up for Sylvester Stallone's crack group of veteran action stars, and will star alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham and Harrison Ford, with shooting due to start soon.
Stallone’s Rocky franchise, running from Rocky (21 November 1976) to Rocky Balboa (20 December 2006), stands as the most successful sports movie franchise, grossing $1,251,372,491 throughout its six installments.
