Can fresh Morocco protests build momentum for reform? (The Christian Science Monitor)

Fes, Morocco – Morocco's pro-democracy activists launched fresh protests Sunday, despite King Mohammed VI's Friday speech announcing a draft constitution that would limit the powers of his country’s centuries-old monarchy.

“We are sticking to our demands,” says Elabadila Maaelaynine, who joined thousands of other protesters in Casablanca to reject the king’s proposals, which they say don't go nearly far enough.

Rival protesters supporting the king – some genuine, others reportedly pushed by local authorities to speak in his favor – also took to the streets, and the pro-democracy demonstrators had to change their location after they were “attacked” with bottles and sticks by pro-king demonstrators, says Mr. Maaelaynine.

MONITOR QUIZ: Weekly news quiz! June 13-17

Despite a groundswell of support for democratic reform, however, many Moroccans are satisfied at the pace of change in the kingdom and want to avoid the type of tumultuous "Arab Spring" revolutions they've seen in fellow North African countries, such as Tunisia and Egypt.

“Imagine if the king suddenly says that he is going away … there will be chaos,” says Mohammed Montasir, a journalist in the northern city of Fes, adding that Moroccans are not seeking a revolution but a “movement against privileges” of the ruling elite.

How much reform is enough?For four months now, activists have campaigned for the king to transfer powers to elected representatives and reign only as a symbolic head.

In Friday's speech, he announced the constitutional reforms he had promised in March after the first bout of protests.

The most significant proposed change is the boost in the executive powers of the prime minister and the parliament. For instance, the prime minister would appoint and remove ministers as well as dissolve the lower house of parliament in consultation with the king.

The king, however, is not divorced from executive power. The king would choose the prime minister from the party that wins the elections and he could also dissolve the parliament in consultations with the prime minister and members of the new constitutional court, half of whom he would appoint.

The continued presence of the king in the executive branch ignores the key protester demand of separation of powers. He also remains the military and religious head of the country.

While the king is offering a constitutional monarchy, the demand is for a parliamentary monarchy like the United Kingdom. For the activists, the king’s reforms are piecemeal and if they compromise now then the momentum they have generated for comprehensive change will be lost.

They also suspect that the king is trying to rush a referendum on proposed reforms a€“ he set the vote for July 1 a€“ before mass resistance can be mobilized.

The activists push backThe pro-democracy movement – called February 20 (after the first day of widespread protests in Morocco) – is made up of the web-savvy youth, left-leaning parties, and Islamists.

Peaceful rallies have attracted tens of thousands of people. A few of these demonstrations have been violently dispersed by government forces but not as brutally as protests in much of the Arab world.

Athman Hajhamou and Maniar Othmane are engineering students and activists in Fes. They argue that those who support the king do so because theya€™ve never known any other alternative. The current dynasty has ruled for more than 350 years.

Sign up for our daily World Editor's Picks newsletter. Our best stories, in your inbox.

Unlike his father, the 47-year-old king remains popular for improving women’s rights and ordering a probe into tortures committed by the state during his father’s reign. More recently, Morocco has been accused of torturing Islamist figures suspected of terrorism after suicide bomb attacks killed 45 people in Casablanca on one day in 2003.

“You elect your leaders, you support them, and you can reject them,” says Mr. Othmane. “You don’t have to love your ruler; you love your country.”

Will the movement lose steam?Some observers predict that the movement will lose steam. Unlike the regimes of other Arab countries, the monarchy in Morocco has a certain legitimacy that can’t be dismissed, analysts say.

“The February 20 movement is finished now, because the king has answered the people’s movement,” says Jawad Kerdoudi, head of the Moroccan Institute of International Relations, speaking by phone from Casablanca.

February 20 has more than 60,000 followers on Facebook and they are calling on people to study the draft of the constitution, but 44 percent of Moroccans are illiterate. Activists are concerned they may be "duped" by the king's speech.

“Change depends on the strength of the movement," says Athman, "its ability to mobilize, to protest on the streets, to keeps its peaceful nature, and for democratic forces to remain united.”

MONITOR QUIZ: Weekly news quiz! June 13-17

Yahoo! News

Arizona wildfire sparks fresh alerts

NEW: Air quality alerts for eastern Arizona, parts of New MexicoOfficials prepared for winds of up to 30 miles per hour SaturdayContainment of the fire is expected to be more difficultPower companies are seeking contingencies if lines are closed

(CNN) -- Red-flag warnings, indicating critical fire ignition conditions, were in effect Saturday in eastern Arizona, where a massive wildfire grew to 430,000 acres.

Still, crews were making progress in the eastern section of the Wallow fire, said Rita Baysinger, spokeswoman for the Southwest Interagency Incident Management team. Other firefighters were awaiting improved conditions.

Firefighters have created "lines" to contain the fire. To keep the fire from spreading, they burned off areas to destroy ground fuel that feeds the large fire. That work continued Saturday.

"Today is the day that the good work we did over the last two days gets challenged," U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Suzanne Florey told CNN earlier in the day.

As of Saturday afternoon, the fire was 5% contained.

New Mexico health and environment officials said air quality for much of New Mexico and eastern Arizona was expected to worsen over the weekend because of wildfires.

Heavy smoke could affect those in sensitive groups, including children, pregnant woman, asthma sufferers and people with lung and heart disease, the New Mexico Environment Department said.

The National Weather Service said smoke plumes from Arizona wildfires will continue moving toward Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

Heavy smoke has permeated communities around the largest Arizona blaze.

"We have not seen the sun clearly for several days," Baysinger said.

The flames have consumed 29 homes, 22 of them in the evacuated city of Greer.

On Friday, air and ground crews concentrated on protecting residences and structures in and near the evacuated cities of Springerville and Eagar.

Power companies said Friday that they are still watching the huge fire and its potential impact on crucial transmission lines that supply power to hundreds of thousands.

The blaze -- about the size of Houston -- has caused authorities to evacuate thousands of people since the wildfire began sweeping through the Apache National Forest on May 29.

CNN's Phil Gast and journalist Craig Johnson contributed to this report.

CNN

Fresh anti-China demos in Vietnam (AFP)

HANOI (AFP) – Dozens of Vietnamese protested outside the Chinese embassy in Hanoi for the second weekend in a row on Sunday, as a maritime dispute raised tensions between the two communist neighbours.

About 50 people with Vietnamese flags sang patriotic songs and held signs proclaiming Vietnamese sovereignty over two South China Sea archipelagos which are at the centre of a long-running dispute with Beijing.

In southern Ho Chi Minh City about 250 people held a similar rally but police sealed off the Chinese consulate area with barbed wire barricades to prevent protesters from approaching, a witness said.

Although authoritarian Vietnam tolerates small land rights rallies, advocates of other political causes risk arrest -- making demonstrations unusual.

Security officers detained at least one person in Ho Chi Minh City, the witness said, while in Hanoi there were no apparent arrests but police ordered one foreign newspaper reporter to leave the area.

Demonstrators in the capital, who dispersed after just 30 minutes, were vastly outnumbered by riot police and other uniformed and plain-clothed security officers.

Vietnam and China are at loggerheads over sovereignty of the potentially oil-rich Paracel and Spratly archipelagos and surrounding waters.

Tensions are now at their highest level in years after Hanoi late last month accused Chinese marine surveillance vessels of cutting the exploration cables of an oil survey ship inside its exclusive economic zone.

Some protesters said they had returned to demonstrate again after Vietnam on Thursday alleged a Chinese fishing boat rammed the cables of another ship in the 200-nautical-mile zone.

Beijing countered by warning Vietnam to halt all activities that it says violate Chinese sovereignty in the disputed South China Sea waters.

"We protest for peace," said Quoc Dat, 30, wearing a T-shirt in the red and yellow colours of the Vietnamese flag. But he warned that if the Chinese "get into my country, they will lose".

In Ho Chi Minh City, where most demonstrators dispersed after about 90 minutes, one sign protested China's "invasion" while another called for a boycott of Chinese products, a witness said.

On Friday the United States said it is "troubled" by the tensions between the Asian countries and called for a "peaceful" resolution to the crisis.

Temperatures have also risen this year between China and the Philippines, another claimant to the Spratly islands, where Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also say they have a stake.

"If China is successful in invading the East Sea they invade the world," said Pham Gia Minh, 55, a foreign business consultant watching the Hanoi demonstration. He was using the Vietnamese term for the South China Sea.

The protests came ahead of live-fire naval drills by Vietnam planned for Monday night off the country's central coast, which Hanoi says are part of routine annual training.

Carl Thayer, a veteran analyst of Vietnam and the South China Sea, said last week that the anti-China protest serves the government's interest "up to a point".

But the demonstrations could escalate into a bilateral issue, possibly sparking Chinese protests against Vietnam and aggravating relations with Vietnam's giant neighbour, he said.

In December 2007, up to 300 protesters rallied outside the Chinese embassy on two consecutive weekends until Beijing said bilateral ties were at risk and Hanoi asked its people to stop demonstrating.

Vietnamese bitterly recall 1,000 years of Chinese occupation and, more recently, a 1979 border war. More than 70 Vietnamese sailors were killed in 1988 when the two sides had a battle off the Spratlys.

Yahoo! News

Fresh battles reported in Sanaa

NEW: New fighting reported near the home of the leader of a tribal revoltNEW: Protesters fired on in Change Square, witnesses report NEW: The headquarters of Yemen's national airline has been set ablaze, witnesses sayNEW: A government spokesman says victory is near; tribal official dismisses the claim

(CNN) -- Government troops fought fresh battles with opposition fighters in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, early Friday as the country's embattled president tried to put down a tribal revolt.

Troops backed by tanks were nearing the home of tribal leader Sadeq Al-Ahmar, whose followers have been battling troops loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh for nearly two weeks, witnesses reported. The nearby headquarters of Yemen's national airline was ablaze, with surrounding houses catching fire as well, witnesses said.

Government spokesman Abdu Ganadi told CNN said Saleh's forces "are near victory." But Abdulqawi Al-Qaisi, a spokesman for Al-Ahmar, said "All government claims of victory are fabricated, and our forces are still on the ground."

And in Change Square, where tens of thousands of anti-government protesters have made camp, witnesses said gunmen on surrounding streets were firing into the crowd, while snipers were visible on nearby rooftops.

"It's very tense inside Change Square now, because there is a fear that government forces might attempt to come into Change Square and take it over at any time," one of the protesters, who asked to remain anonymous due to security concerns, told CNN. A nearby resident said the fighting had subsided after midnight, however.

"We're still hearing bombs and gunfire, but not as much as we were just an hour ago," the resident said.

The fighting erupted May 23, after Saleh balked at a deal negotiated by Persian Gulf states that would have eased him from office in 30 days. The intensity of the fighting in the capital, where most of Yemen's security forces and army units are based, has increased fears that the country is on the verge of civil war.

Saleh has ruled Yemen since 1978, and the nation has been a key U.S. ally in the battle against the al Qaeda terrorist network. But Yemen was caught up in the wave of protests that swept the Arab world after the January ouster of Tunisia's longtime strongman, leaving Saleh battling both peaceful and violent resistance movements.

The impoverished, arid and mountainous nation has a weak central government and contains vast stretches where tribal law reigns supreme. A fresh group of about 1,000 armed tribesmen were seen entering Sanaa early Thursday, Sanaa resident Nageeb Mujaili said.

"We asked them why they were going to Sanaa armed," said Mujaili. "And they said to support their leader, Sheikh Sadeq Al-Ahmar."

Yemeni state television reported that government forces had beaten back tribal fighters from areas of the capital near the Ministry of Tourism building on Thursday, and Sanaa residents reported hearing explosions near the presidential palace, a government source said.

"The reason the street fighting in Sanaa has gotten a lot more intense in the past several hours is because special forces are now involved," said the source, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.

"The special forces of the Republican Guard, the elite units, got involved on Wednesday. They're being used because the government wants to minimize collateral damage and the special forces have particular training in clearing fighters from buildings."

A security official at Sanaa International Airport said inbound and outbound flights were halted due because of security concerns over clashes near the airport. But the official, who is not authorized to speak to the media, said that the airport itself is not closed.

CNN Top Stories

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Fresh series of NATO strikes target Tripoli (AP)

TRIPOLI, Libya – A series of at least 10 NATO strikes hit in and around the Libyan capital early on Friday, targeting military barracks close to Gadhafi's sprawling compound in central Tripoli, a police station and a military base, a government official said. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.

The strikes appeared to be the heaviest in Tripoli since South African President Jacob Zuma visited Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in the capital earlier this week in an apparently unsuccessful effort to find a peaceful resolution to the country's crisis.

Meanwhile, a Libyan woman who claimed she was gang-raped by Gadhafi's troops was deported from Qatar where she had sought refuge, and was now in Benghazi, a U.N. official said Thursday.

Imad al-Obeidi's sudden expulsion cast light again on one of the most widely covered incidents of alleged abuses by Gadhafi's forces as NATO continues its relentless nightly bombing raids on Libyan military and security bases, backing rebels who are trying to unseat the Libyan strongman after a four-decade dictatorship.

In March, al-Obeidi rushed into Tripoli's Rixos Hotel where all foreign correspondents are forced to stay while covering the part of Libya under Gadhafi's control, and shouted out her story of being stopped at a a checkpoint, dragged away and gang-raped by soldiers. As she spoke emotionally and as photographers and reporters recorded her words, government minders, whose job is to escort reporters around the area, jumped her and dragged her away.

She disappeared for several days, then turned up in Tunisia and later Qatar. She was heard from little until Thursday, when she was suddenly expelled from Qatar and ended up in Benghazi, the Libyan rebels' de facto capital. No explanation was forthcoming from Qatar.

Rebel spokesman Jalal el-Gallal said al-Obeidi arrived in Benghazi by plane. "She's welcome to stay, this is her country," el-Gallal told The Associated Press.

The U.N. refugee agency's Sybella Wilkes said al-Obeidi should have been allowed to stay in Qatar, and her deportation runs contrary to international law. Al-Obeidi "is a recognized refugee, and we don't consider there is any good reason for her deportation," Wilkes told the AP.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. was "monitoring the situation" and working to ensure al-Obeidi's safety.

"We're concerned for her safety, given all that's happened to her. And we're going to work to make sure that she's kept safe, first and foremost, and that she finds appropriate asylum," Toner told reporters in Washington on Thursday.

Libyan authorities have alternately labeled al-Obeidi a drunk, a prostitute and a thief.

Al-Obeidi has maintained that she was targeted by Gadhafi's troops because she is from Benghazi, the rebel stronghold. Her rape claim could not be independently verified. The Associated Press identifies only rape victims who volunteer their names.

Human rights violations are one aspect of the rebels' complaints against the Gadhafi regime. This week a report by a U.N. body said it found evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity by Gadhafi's government, and also charged that the rebels have committed abuses.

Four of the early morning blasts Friday shook central Tripoli, targeting an area where military barracks are located, said a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy. Those barracks, which had been hit in the past, are close to Gadhafi's sprawling compound.

Six earlier strikes targeted a police station and a military base outside the capital in the areas of Hera and Aziziya, said the official.

The conflict in Libya is nearly four months along, but the situation on the ground appears mostly stalemated. NATO airstrikes have kept the outgunned rebels from being overrun, but the rebels have been unable to mount an effective offensive against Gadhafi's better equipped armed forces.

Gadhafi's regime has been slowly crumbling from within. A significant number of army officers and several Cabinet ministers have defected, and most have expressed support for the opposition, but Gadhafi's hold on power shows little sign of loosening.

NATO warplanes bomb targets in Tripoli, including Gadhafi's sprawling Bab al-Aziziya residential and command compound, on a nightly basis.

Gadhafi has been seen in public rarely and heard even less frequently since a NATO airstrike on his compound killed one of his sons on April 30. Questions are arising about the physical and mental state of the 69-year-old dictator, who has ruled Libya since 1969.

Rebels have turned down initiatives calling for cease-fires, insisting that Gadhafi and his sons must relinquish power and leave the country.

___

Additional reporting by Associated Press writer Hadeel al-Shalchi.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Fresh iPhone Apps for May 31: AOL TV, Parkbud, To-Fu: The Trials of Chi, Tower Defense: Lost Earth (Appolicious)

The long weekend is over, but while returning to work after three days off can be a bit depressing, we have a few cool apps to kick off the week. Starting out is AOL TV, which integrates services like Hulu, Netflix and local TV stations to let users keep track of everything they can see on just about every service. After that is Parkbud, an app for finding your parking spaces and keeping track of parking meters to cut the stress of receiving tickets. We’ve also got a couple of quality games on tap – To-Fu: The Trials of Chi, a puzzle-platformer, and Tower Defense: Lost Earth, a robust and challenging TD strategy game.

Your conduit to everything TV is on your iPhone in AOL TV. The app keys you in to whatever’s on and allows you to check out schedules of all sorts, helping to stay up on what’s playing on your local stations, or even what’s available on Netflix and Hulu. All those services are funneled into one place in AOL TV, and the app allows you to bookmark shows, check out when they’ll be on, or track down missed episodes on Hulu, iTunes or Netflix.

AOL TV also has extra functionality for TiVo users. You can actually schedule your TiVo recordings from the app, or push DVDs and Instant videos to your Netflix queues. You can also check out information about various TV shows and actors on IMDb.

Don’t waste time and cause yourself frustration trying to remember where you left your car. Parkbud takes care of that information for you, keeping track of where you parked and giving you directions using Google Maps back to that location.

Parkbud also includes a lot of other handy features for your parking situation. It includes a meter alarm so you can get back and avoid a ticket, and a camera and photo-editing feature so you can keep track of rates and other information. Parkbud will show you where parking garages are near you, and lets you take notes about restrictions in an area to help you avoid any citations.

Puzzle-platformer To-Fu puts you in control of a sling-shot-capable block of tofu wearing a headband. In each of the game’s 100 side-scrolling levels, your job is to fling To-Fu from one patch of wall or floor to another. Using the game’s touch controls, you’ll stretch To-Fu in the direction you want to send him and then release, flinging him in a straight line until he hits a wall or platform to stick to.

Your primary goal in To-Fu is to reach a glowing pink fortune cookie at the end of each level, but each level includes a bunch of floating orbs called Chi that you can collect. Snagging all of them earns you a badge, as does making it to the end of the level using only a certain number of flings, and getting all the badges on each level will take some skill and probably multiple attempts. It’s a challenging game, but To-Fu is simple to learn and includes a lot of content for just a buck.

There are a whole lot of tower defense games in the iTunes App Store – but how many of them are actually called Tower Defense? The game follows the story of people fleeing a destroyed and polluted Earth for a new planet, where hostile aliens need to be shut down by powerful defenses. In Tower Defense’s campaign mode, players will work through 40 different levels on varying terrain, each with variable difficulty settings to give you exactly the challenge you’re looking for.

Tower Defense packs four different gameplay modes, each with different types of objectives. Developer Com2uS plans more downloadable content for the future, expanding on the nine available towers and number of maps available. The game also packs Game Center support for leaderboards and achievements.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Fresh Android Apps for May 23: Thumb Keyboard update, Jenga, Doodle Hunt (Appolicious)

While the promise of new input methods like waving your hands (think Kinect for Android) or brain control await us, it’s important right now to have a great virtual keyboard. Check out the newly updated Thumb Keyboard below.

For fresh Android games – old schoolers will enjoy the arrival of Jenga on Android and those who like search puzzles will find their match with Doodle Hunt.

This 4.0 update to the popular virtual keyboard delivers some important new features including multi-touch support, a customizable toolbar, better prediction, shortcuts for customizable phrases, and the option to change the width of key blocks.

Choose from among seven different keyboard layouts to find the one most comfortable for your typing style. There’s even a split layout for using only your thumbs on an Android tablet – something that app users rave about.

Find international keyboards – including QWERTZ, AZERTY, Spanish, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, and Danish – and the ability to predict words in several languages – like English, Spanish, German, Italian, and Dutch.

Remember Jenga? The popular puzzle game where you build towers out of wooden pieces. It’s gone digital and mobile so you can carry it around on your Android phone.

Designed in consultation with the original creator of Jenga, Lesile Scott, it provides a realistic physics app version of the physical game. In Pass ‘n Play mode you hand the phone around to up to four players. You can also compare tower height in real-time with players from around the world.

Sensitive controls let you tap and nudge pieces into place or precisely select pieces to remove from the tower. Play quickly for score multipliers or match colors of blocks for extra credit points. Coins earned while playing let you purchase special powers like the handy Collapse Reverse.

Like to search for stuff? Doodle Hunt will test your skills. This top-rated puzzler first asks your to choose your “stage” – the Mall, House, School, or University – then pick your “room” inside the stage – from there, you’re ready to hunt.

The screen fills with doodles of things typically found in such a room – cakes, muffins, and bread in the bakery, for example – and asks you to hunt for a specific number of particular objects – like three loaves of bread. It’s not just a game of simple matches, as some of the tasks will test your knowledge – like the periodic table label for Sodium or the Finnish flag.

Earning money at each stage lets you unlock higher stages within the first set of 20 (with over 300 different objects). OpenFeint support allows you to brag to your friends and entice them into the fun.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Fresh iPhone Apps for May 20: PhotoForge2, BeatForge, Storm in a Teacup, Arno the Hunter (Appolicious)

Leading the way into the weekend is PhotoForge2, a great app to have after snapping a bunch of photos on your iPhone. You can use the newly rebuilt PhotoForge to edit images with a lot of the power you’d see on a desktop computer. We also have BeatForge, an unrelated forge app that lets you create musical sequences quickly and easily, and a pair of quality games: Storm in a Teacup, an imaginative physics-based platformer, and Arno the Hunter, a casual game with some beautiful graphics and tough bosses.

There’s some pretty solid image-editing software at the heart of the PhotoForge2, allowing users to access and edit full-resolution photos on their mobile devices. The app supports layers just like desktop photo editing software, which means you can mix multiple elements together easily to create some great images, and do more than just change colors or remove red eye like with many apps.

PhotoForge2 is filled with tools and effects to help you get exactly what you want out of your photos. You can resize, crop and add textures quickly and easily, and create camera effects by mixing lenses, flashes and film types just like you can in apps such as Hipstamatic. You can also adjust a lot of other levels and features, like contrast, white balance and shadows and highlights.

Turn your iPhone into a music instrument using BeatForge. The app has a pretty simple premise: it fills your device’s screen with a grid filled with buttons. Tapping any button adds a sound, either a percussive beat or a melodic note. As you tap more buttons and add more sounds, BeatForge plays them in the order you choose them in a loop, creating a beat and a song that you can create quickly and easily.

Along the way, you can define generalities about how BeatForge sounds – like which key the sounds come in or what genre they fit in. Different colors denote different sounds on the grid, so you’ll get a visual interface for what you hear, which makes editing and reworking your sequence easy.

As Storm, an elemental-type character, you’re tasked with flying your way through side-scrolling platforming levels. You control Storm, who rides around in a teacup, using virtual buttons to steer and to activate his powers of flight. By tapping a lightning bolt-emblazoned button, Storm takes flight for a short time – you’ll need to manage your flight power carefully by tapping the button quickly and gauging your momentum.

Storm in a Teacup carries 40 side-scrolling levels you can work through, with 15 achievements to earn along the way. The game also has leaderboard support from Apple’s Game Center service and Crystal.

Some pretty incredible graphics adorn Arno the Hunter, in which you play a bow-and-arrow-wielding crab in some lush settings. Each level is a self-contained arena in which you can run left and right, dodging enemy attacks while firing arrows to take out flying creatures and earn points. Tilting allows you to move to avoid getting blown up, while power-ups dropped from the creatures give you a lot more abilities.

There are only three levels in Arno, but that’s not a bad trade-off for the price and the visuals found within. Each level also culminates with a big boss battle, which is a lot of harrowing fun to play through. You can also earn several achievements along the way to test your skills.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Fresh Android Apps for May 20: PrivacyStar, Apparatus LITE, Paper War for 2 Players (Appolicious)

Did the news about the iPhone logging users whereabouts jangle your nerves about mobile phone privacy? PrivacyStar aims to batten down your phone’s hatches by blocking unwanted calls or texts and allowing you to perform local searches without tracking or selling your location.

For fun, check out the clever contraption game Apparatus LITE and the two-player Paper War.

The sad reality: Telemarketers have discovered our cell phones. You probably already receive unwanted calls or texts from “unknown” sources. You may also be harassed via mobile by exes, stalkers, or potential serial killers. No worries, PrivacyStar to the rescue.

The service claims to have blocked millions of calls and filed thousands of complaints with the FTC. In addition to blocking calls, the service just added the ability to look up a text message’s originating phone number and then block future messages from it. Another new feature is Directory Assistance. Users can find places and directions to them without worrying that the phone is tracking and selling their location data.

This app provides access to the service free for a 7-day trial.

Want to build your own Rube Goldberg contraptions? This is the app for you.

The idea seems simple enough. Get the blue ball into the blue box. But, to accomplish the mission, you’ll need to construct a clever mechanism out of wood planks, wheels, and other components to roll, flip, and bounce the ball to its intended destination.

Each level ratchets up the puzzle difficulty and adds more challenges. You’ll need to use a hammer and wrench to connect objects together before letting the force of gravity start things in motion.

This free version of Apparatus LITE provides access to six different levels but for more levels and additional features – like saving your contraptions in a sandbox – you’ll need to purchase the paid app.

Rock-Paper-Scissors be damned! You don’t need your hands to decide who wins between two people – you only need your fingers. Paper War provides three separate mini-games in one free app that will settle any score between you.

Two players use the same phone at the same time --- to fire cannons at each other, shoot each others planes out of the air, or smash aircraft from above. Each game tracks the scores and tells you the winner. The doodle style graphics and paper background make it fun.

Use the app to decide who drives, who decides where to go for dinner, or who buys the next round.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Fresh iPhone Apps for May 16: 8coupons, Zombie Glider, Doodle vs Brute: World Domination (Appolicious)

Start the week off right with 8coupons, which lets you track down hidden deals using your iPhone’s GPS capabilities. Also check out Zombie Glider, a game which puts you in control of a hang-gliding zombie with a taste for human gray matter, and Doodle vs. Brute: World Domination, a side-scrolling action title set in an pen-and-ink world.

Find “hidden” deals all over the place with 8coupons, an app that uses your iOS device’s GPS technology to zero-in on sales and bargains being held at stores all over your area. The service aggregates deals from lots of different services, including Groupon, LivingSocial and Restaurant.com, as well as locals sales from weekly ads, and tracks them all on your device’s Google Maps.

There are more than 4,000 sources for deals that get pulled that 8coupons draws on, and you can also add your own deals and check out bargains spotted by the community. The app can make use of your iPhone’s camera, as well, overlaying locations for different offers using augmented reality.

The zombie hordes can’t seem to get to the humans and their brains inside walled medieval cities, but one zombie has a plan -- ride in a hang glider fired from a cannon, and attack the humans from the air. In Zombie Glider, you are that zombie, and as you soar over the humans’ fortresses, you’ll dip down and snatch humans as they flee, snacking on their brains and then tossing them back to take out other humans as they bounce like deadly projectiles.

Not all the humans are defenseless, however. Archers on towers, rooftops and flying machines will try to stop you, and running into structures will take you out immediately. But along the way you can fortify your human attack vehicle by upgrading it by spending brain points you accumulate for notching up high scores.

The doodle world and the ink world have been war for some time, but now the tide is turning with you – a giant cybernetic King Kong-like gorilla called The Brute that has been assigned with destroying doodle cities and wiping out doodle military. You’ll stalk across side-scrolling city levels as the Brute, tapping away to punch small stick-man troops before they can hit you with all manner of weapons and artillery.

As you progress through Doodle vs. Brute, you’ll gather currency called “tech points” that you can use to upgrade the Brute’s cybernetics, adding another level of strategy to the game. Do you want to gather more health from power-ups, or send doodles screaming in terror before you with the power of mind manipulation? How you approach each level is up to you, but your scores are tracked on Game Center’s leaderboards.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.