Police in the UK have blamed an Android smartphone update on a record increase in accidental 999 calls. The National Police Chiefs Council said the Emergency SOS function was resulting in emergency switchboards being overwhelmed by “silent” calls. The emergency feature is activated when a side button on a device is repeatedly pressed, which triggers a countdown that allows the action to be cancelled by dragging a slider across the screen. However, many users appear to inadvertently initiate emergency calls when their device is in a bag or pocket. “Nationally, all emergency services are currently experiencing record high 999 call volumes,” the National Police Chiefs Council said. “There’s a few reasons for this, but one we think is having a significant impact is an update to Android smartphones.” Met Police chief superintendent Dan Ivey said people should disable the emergency feature, claiming that an “unprecedented” number of calls to emergency lines in June were a result of people accidentally activating it. The majority of smartphone owners in the UK use Android, with Samsung, Huawei and Google Pixel phones all using the mobile operating system. Google, which first began rolling out the Emergency SOS update with the release of Android 12 in 2021, said that it was working with these smartphone manufacturers in order to resolve the issue. “To help these manufacturers prevent unintentional emergency calls on their devices, Android is providing them with additional guidance and resources,” a spokesperson for Google said. “We anticipate device manufacturers will roll out updates to their users that address this issue shortly. Users that continue to experience this issue should switch Emergency SOS off for the next couple of days.” The feature can be deactivated within the ‘Safety and Emergency’ section of Android’s settings. Android researcher Mishaal Rahman noted on Twitter that the issue also appeared to impact other law enforcement agencies around the world, including police in Canada and Europe. Read More Facebook and Instagram to block news in Canada Police warn about dangerous emergency setting on Android phones Meta rejects accusation of censorship of language around female body Facebook and Instagram to block news in Canada

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Instagram was restored online after experiencing global outages, the social media company said. Down Detector, a website that tracks outages, reported 56,628 reports at around 11pm on Sunday. The Down Detector location map showed the outages spread across the UK with reports of outages coming from the US and Australia as well. Instagram said at 1.19am on Monday that the issue which had caused the outage had been resolved. The photo and video networking service appeared to be online again before 1am with reports of the outages dropping to less than 500 by 1:.. According to Down Detector, 92% of the outages were on the app, 6% via the website and 2% on the login. Users could not refresh their feed or post during the outages. It came after Instagram experienced an outage on March 9 where thousands of users reported similar issues.

A midsummer quiz: Let’s say you read about an area experiencing blistering heat for weeks on end. Heat

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Exxon Mobil Corp. boosted dividends more than expected and posted a surprise cash flow increase, reaping the benefits

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Activision Blizzard Inc. shareholders handed management everything it wanted at their annual meeting Wednesday, including rejecting a proposal

Sean Penn has strongly backed the current Hollywood screenwriters strike while speaking at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday, saying the dispute over artificial intelligence is “a human obscenity.”