President Donald Trump marked the final week of his first 100 days in office with a whirlwind of activity designed to pile up accomplishments, unveiling an ambitious tax-reform proposal and signing a flurry of executive orders. Trump imposed a tariff on softwood lumber imports from Canada (see Business News); signed executive orders to lift offshore drilling regulations and rescind national monument designations; and was reportedly close to announcing that he would withdraw the U.S. from NAFTA. In his dramatic overhaul of the tax code, the president proposed slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, a rate that would also apply to small businesses that file their returns under the individual tax code. The plan would also reduce the number of individual income tax brackets from seven to three—10 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent—and roughly double the standard deduction for individuals, essentially eliminating taxes on the first $24,000 of a couple’s earnings. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called it “the biggest tax cut and the largest tax reform in the history of our country.” The massive reduction in revenues from all the cuts, however, would add more than $3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years; Mnuchin said that by stimulating economic growth, the cuts would mostly pay for themselves.
In Congress, lawmakers were trying to agree on a budget deal in order to prevent a government shutdown as The Week went to press. Trump demanded last week that the appropriations bills include $1.4 billion for his proposed wall along the Mexican border, offering Democrats money for Obamacare subsidies in exchange. But when Democrats refused, insisting they would block any bill that funded the border wall, Trump backed down. Republicans were also taking another shot at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. The conservative House Freedom Caucus, which helped scuttle the ill-fated American Health Care Act in March, gave its blessing this week to an amendment to the bill that would allow states to opt out of key Obamacare rules, including a requirement that insurers cover preexisting conditions. The focus will now shift to moderate Republican lawmakers who fear a constituent backlash over cuts in subsidies and protections.
President Trump is right to aim for a tax system with “lower rates, fewer loopholes, and a simpler code,” said The Washington Post. But the old conservative canard that tax cuts can pay for themselves through increased economic growth remains “magical thinking”— especially when the business cuts deprive the Treasury of more than $2.4 trillion over a decade. “Experience shows
that tax cuts are almost never self-financing,” and Mnuchin’s dishonest math would require almost unprecedented levels of GDP growth. After eight years of “mercilessly” attacking President Obama for doing too little to cut the deficit, are Republicans really going to “approve a budgetbusting tax cut?”
Trump was wise to “climb down” from his border wall for now, said the Chicago Tribune. Democrats
were hoping his demands for immediate funding “would lead to a shutdown and a widespread verdict of incompetence.” Instead, the president backed away, while securing funding for other much-needed improvements to border security. Indeed, that may have been his plan all along. And with illegal border crossings from Mexico already way down since his inauguration, Trump can portray this negotiation “as a victory.”
“There are many unanswered questions” about Trump’s tax plan, particularly how it would affect the deficit, said Michael Tanner in NationalReview.com. But lower corporate tax rates “should draw broad bipartisan support”—they’ll stimulate growth, hiring, and raises, and thus help workers far more than trade wars or minimum-wage laws. Cutting taxes would be immensely popular, said Ford O’Connell in the Washington Examiner, but Trump better get the legislation through Congress by the end of the year. After that, members of Congress will start focusing on their reelection campaigns for the 2018 midterms, and little will get done. Trump craves some big “wins,” but his tax-reform plan may suffer the same fate as the Obamacare replacement, said Ben White and Nancy Cook in Politico.com. Sources close to House Speaker Paul Ryan say Trump’s unfunded trillions in cuts are “a magic unicorn” that will never get past the House’s deficit hawks. Democrats, meanwhile, will be able to blast Trump for wanting to explode the deficit and give his own businesses and children a massive tax break. In the end, even Republicans are already quietly saying “Trump’s current approach to the tax issue simply won’t work.”
Trump still has time to learn from his mistakes, said Jonathan Tobin in NationalReview.com. A poll last week found that an astonishing 96 percent of people who voted for the president “would do so again.” If Trump hasn’t lost his supporters after three months of high-profile gaffes, embarrassing
blunders, and nearly constant headlines about Russian interference in the election, “the tipping point may never happen.” Loyal support from a critical mass of Republican voters may give the president several years to push through the major items on his agenda.
The brief standoff over the border wall was “simply an appetizer for much bigger fights to come,” said Stephen Collinson in CNN.com. The spending bill funds the government only through September, at which point President Trump will almost certainly push harder on what was one of his signature campaign pledges. There is also the issue of the debt ceiling. Mnuchin has said Congress will need to pass a bill raising the government’s federal borrowing limit sometime in the fall, to avoid the U.S. defaulting on its debt. In ordinary times that would be a given—but with the Democrats refusing to yield to Trump’s threats, and “the tenuous control of GOP leaders over the party on Capitol Hill, there are no guarantees.”
Early human arrivals in North America?
A group of scientists has claimed that
ancient humans may have settled in
North America as long as 130,000 years
ago—some 115,000 years earlier than
previously thought. The controversial
assertion, which is viewed with skepticism
by most other paleontologists,
is based on analysis of the fossilized
remains of a mastodon, a long-extinct
mammoth-like animal. Discovered beside
a freeway near San Diego in 1992, the
mastodon bones were scratched and
broken into many pieces, surrounded by
several large rocks that may have served
as hammers and anvils. Researchers
at the University of Michigan and elsewhere
have concluded that the bones
are 130,000 years old, and that they were
opened when fresh by a Neanderthal or
other ancient human relative using rocks
to try to extract bone marrow. It’s widely
accepted that Homo sapiens arrived in
North America about 15,000 years ago,
across a land bridge connecting Siberia
and Alaska; the mastodon findings, if
confirmed, would indicate that another
hominin species somehow reached this
continent much earlier. If that hypothesis
is true, it would rewrite the story of
human migration. Skeptics argue that
there are more-plausible explanations for
the bone fractures and markings, such as
pressure from the sediment on top of it.
Paleontologist Thomas A. Deméré, a coauthor
of the study, acknowledged that
the findings seem “impossible,’’ but said,
“People have to be open to the possibility
that humans were here this long ago.’’
ancient humans may have settled in
North America as long as 130,000 years
ago—some 115,000 years earlier than
previously thought. The controversial
assertion, which is viewed with skepticism
by most other paleontologists,
is based on analysis of the fossilized
remains of a mastodon, a long-extinct
mammoth-like animal. Discovered beside
a freeway near San Diego in 1992, the
mastodon bones were scratched and
broken into many pieces, surrounded by
several large rocks that may have served
as hammers and anvils. Researchers
at the University of Michigan and elsewhere
have concluded that the bones
are 130,000 years old, and that they were
opened when fresh by a Neanderthal or
other ancient human relative using rocks
to try to extract bone marrow. It’s widely
accepted that Homo sapiens arrived in
North America about 15,000 years ago,
across a land bridge connecting Siberia
and Alaska; the mastodon findings, if
confirmed, would indicate that another
hominin species somehow reached this
continent much earlier. If that hypothesis
is true, it would rewrite the story of
human migration. Skeptics argue that
there are more-plausible explanations for
the bone fractures and markings, such as
pressure from the sediment on top of it.
Paleontologist Thomas A. Deméré, a coauthor
of the study, acknowledged that
the findings seem “impossible,’’ but said,
“People have to be open to the possibility
that humans were here this long ago.’’
Plastic-eating caterpillars
Plastic-eating caterpillars
Scientists may have found an unlikely
candidate to clean up the mounds of nonbiodegradable
plastic trash in the world’s
landfills: the humble wax worm.
Federica Bertocchini, a developmental
biologist and amateur beekeeper
in Spain, first came up with the idea
after finding her beehives infested
with the beeswax-loving caterpillar
larvae of wax moths. She put the
grubs in a plastic bag—whereupon
they immediately ate their way out.
Plastic and wax have similar chemical
structures. Bertocchini posited
that in evolving to digest wax, wax
worms may have also gained the
ability to break down polyethylene,
the world’s most common plastic. She took
her theory to biochemists at the University
of Cambridge, who found that 100 wax
worms could gulp down 92 milligrams of
polyethylene in about 12 hours and degrade
plastic bags much faster than any known
method. “If a single enzyme is responsible
for this chemical process,” study co-author
Paolo Bombelli tells CNN .com, “its reproduction
on a large scale using biotechnological
methods should be achievable.”
Scientists may have found an unlikely
candidate to clean up the mounds of nonbiodegradable
plastic trash in the world’s
landfills: the humble wax worm.
Federica Bertocchini, a developmental
biologist and amateur beekeeper
in Spain, first came up with the idea
after finding her beehives infested
with the beeswax-loving caterpillar
larvae of wax moths. She put the
grubs in a plastic bag—whereupon
they immediately ate their way out.
Plastic and wax have similar chemical
structures. Bertocchini posited
that in evolving to digest wax, wax
worms may have also gained the
ability to break down polyethylene,
the world’s most common plastic. She took
her theory to biochemists at the University
of Cambridge, who found that 100 wax
worms could gulp down 92 milligrams of
polyethylene in about 12 hours and degrade
plastic bags much faster than any known
method. “If a single enzyme is responsible
for this chemical process,” study co-author
Paolo Bombelli tells CNN .com, “its reproduction
on a large scale using biotechnological
methods should be achievable.”
Arizonans test self-driving cars
Arizonans test self-driving cars
“Waymo’s self-driving minivans are now offering
rides to real people,” said Andrew
Hawkins in TheVerge.com. The autonomous
vehicle startup, which spun off from Google
last year, recently launched its “early rider
program” in Arizona. Residents living in the
Phoenix area can apply on Waymo’s website
for free rides, with the company using their
feedback to improve the technology. A backup
driver will be behind the wheel of Waymo’s
Chrysler Pacific minivans “at all times, but
the company insists that the vehicle will drive
without human intervention as much as possible.”
It’s a “major milestone” for Google’s
parent company, Alphabet, “which has been
operating self-driving cars on public roads for
years without allowing real people to experience
the technology first-hand.”
“Waymo’s self-driving minivans are now offering
rides to real people,” said Andrew
Hawkins in TheVerge.com. The autonomous
vehicle startup, which spun off from Google
last year, recently launched its “early rider
program” in Arizona. Residents living in the
Phoenix area can apply on Waymo’s website
for free rides, with the company using their
feedback to improve the technology. A backup
driver will be behind the wheel of Waymo’s
Chrysler Pacific minivans “at all times, but
the company insists that the vehicle will drive
without human intervention as much as possible.”
It’s a “major milestone” for Google’s
parent company, Alphabet, “which has been
operating self-driving cars on public roads for
years without allowing real people to experience
the technology first-hand.”
Alexa’s eye for style
Alexa’s eye for style
“If a computer tells you with 64 percent certainty
that what you’re wearing isn’t your best,
would you change?” asked Mike Murphy in
Qz.com. Amazon’s artificially intelligent personal
assistant Alexa will now dish out fashion
advice though the company’s Echo Look,
a camera-equipped version of its Echo home
speaker. A new feature called Style Check uses
machine learning and advice from fashion
specialists to help users decide which outfit to
wear. Ask Alexa to take photos or videos of
you wearing different clothing combinations
and Style Check will show side-by-side results
to help you choose the ideal outfit. The device
could help Amazon, which is already the top
online clothing retailer, further cement its hold
on the fashion industry.
“If a computer tells you with 64 percent certainty
that what you’re wearing isn’t your best,
would you change?” asked Mike Murphy in
Qz.com. Amazon’s artificially intelligent personal
assistant Alexa will now dish out fashion
advice though the company’s Echo Look,
a camera-equipped version of its Echo home
speaker. A new feature called Style Check uses
machine learning and advice from fashion
specialists to help users decide which outfit to
wear. Ask Alexa to take photos or videos of
you wearing different clothing combinations
and Style Check will show side-by-side results
to help you choose the ideal outfit. The device
could help Amazon, which is already the top
online clothing retailer, further cement its hold
on the fashion industry.
Google buries the (fake) lede
Google buries the (fake) lede
Google isn’t planning to rid its search results
of fake news, “but it’s trying to purge it from
the top,” said Mark Bergen in Bloomberg
.com. The company is “making a rare, sweeping
change” to the algorithm that powers its
ubiquitous search engine. Google’s 10,000-
plus staff of “raters,” who are responsible for
assessing search results, will now flag web
pages hosting hoaxes, conspiracy theories,
and other items the company has dubbed
“low-quality content.” Articles that are found
to be “misleading, false, or offensive” will be
demoted in search results, so they won’t be
among the first a user sees. Last month, for
example, searches for “is Obama planning a
coup” returned “a blatantly wrong article”
as the top result; that item will now be buried
further down.
Google isn’t planning to rid its search results
of fake news, “but it’s trying to purge it from
the top,” said Mark Bergen in Bloomberg
.com. The company is “making a rare, sweeping
change” to the algorithm that powers its
ubiquitous search engine. Google’s 10,000-
plus staff of “raters,” who are responsible for
assessing search results, will now flag web
pages hosting hoaxes, conspiracy theories,
and other items the company has dubbed
“low-quality content.” Articles that are found
to be “misleading, false, or offensive” will be
demoted in search results, so they won’t be
among the first a user sees. Last month, for
example, searches for “is Obama planning a
coup” returned “a blatantly wrong article”
as the top result; that item will now be buried
further down.
The downside of ‘free’ apps
It’s “a Silicon Valley tale as old as time,” said
Brian Feldman in NYMag.com. A technology
company comes along offering a handy service
that just so happens to be free. Users sign up in
droves. Then it’s revealed that the company has
been harvesting and selling their data, and those
same users revolt. This time, the pitchforks are
out for Unroll.me, an app that scans users’ email
accounts to unsubscribe them from junk mail. The
New York Times recently reported that Unroll.me
scanned its users’ email for Lyft receipts and sold
the anonymized data to Uber to help that firm
keep tabs on its ride-hailing rival. The revelation
was a minor detail in a bigger profile on Uber
CEO Travis Kalanick, but it sparked the predictable
firestorm on social media, with users angrily
denouncing Unroll.me. The company’s response
was just as typical: Don’t blame us. “It was in the
terms of service.”
What exactly is the big deal? said Stephen Bronner
in Entrepreneur.com. Internet users “should
be savvy enough by now to know that there is no such thing as
free.” Unroll.me warned users in its privacy policy that it might
sell their data, but there’s also nothing wrong with asking for
something in return for providing a useful service. Unroll.me
employees “need their paychecks, and I need a less cluttered
inbox.” Still, Unroll.me didn’t do itself any favors with its tonedeaf
response, said Ashley Carman in TheVerge
.com. One co-founder even wrote an angry blog
post asserting that if Unroll.me’s critics were
shocked by the company’s data collection, “they
have clearly been living under a rock.” The post
was “insensitive,” but it “has a point.” Nearly
every major tech company makes money from
user data. Why do you think your Gmail account
is free?
But just “how open was Unroll.me about what
it does?” asked Kashmir Hill in Gizmodo.com.
As with most tech companies, its privacy policy is
buried in pages of impenetrable legalese nobody
can realistically bother to read. By one estimate,
internet users would have to take an entire
month off work to read through the terms of service
agreements for all the apps and websites they
use. Unroll.me’s agreement is particularly egregious,
warning users in fine gray print of its vague
plans to gather “non-personal information” to
“build anonymous market research products
and services.” Whatever that is, it’s not a clear explanation of
Unroll.me’s business model. Take this uproar as a reminder to
check the permissions you’ve given various apps to access your
email and social media accounts, said Brian Barrett in Wired
.com. Once again, the tech industry adage holds true: “If it’s
free, you’re the product.”
Brian Feldman in NYMag.com. A technology
company comes along offering a handy service
that just so happens to be free. Users sign up in
droves. Then it’s revealed that the company has
been harvesting and selling their data, and those
same users revolt. This time, the pitchforks are
out for Unroll.me, an app that scans users’ email
accounts to unsubscribe them from junk mail. The
New York Times recently reported that Unroll.me
scanned its users’ email for Lyft receipts and sold
the anonymized data to Uber to help that firm
keep tabs on its ride-hailing rival. The revelation
was a minor detail in a bigger profile on Uber
CEO Travis Kalanick, but it sparked the predictable
firestorm on social media, with users angrily
denouncing Unroll.me. The company’s response
was just as typical: Don’t blame us. “It was in the
terms of service.”
What exactly is the big deal? said Stephen Bronner
in Entrepreneur.com. Internet users “should
be savvy enough by now to know that there is no such thing as
free.” Unroll.me warned users in its privacy policy that it might
sell their data, but there’s also nothing wrong with asking for
something in return for providing a useful service. Unroll.me
employees “need their paychecks, and I need a less cluttered
inbox.” Still, Unroll.me didn’t do itself any favors with its tonedeaf
response, said Ashley Carman in TheVerge
.com. One co-founder even wrote an angry blog
post asserting that if Unroll.me’s critics were
shocked by the company’s data collection, “they
have clearly been living under a rock.” The post
was “insensitive,” but it “has a point.” Nearly
every major tech company makes money from
user data. Why do you think your Gmail account
is free?
But just “how open was Unroll.me about what
it does?” asked Kashmir Hill in Gizmodo.com.
As with most tech companies, its privacy policy is
buried in pages of impenetrable legalese nobody
can realistically bother to read. By one estimate,
internet users would have to take an entire
month off work to read through the terms of service
agreements for all the apps and websites they
use. Unroll.me’s agreement is particularly egregious,
warning users in fine gray print of its vague
plans to gather “non-personal information” to
“build anonymous market research products
and services.” Whatever that is, it’s not a clear explanation of
Unroll.me’s business model. Take this uproar as a reminder to
check the permissions you’ve given various apps to access your
email and social media accounts, said Brian Barrett in Wired
.com. Once again, the tech industry adage holds true: “If it’s
free, you’re the product.”
Trump diplomacy rattles South Korea
President Trump seems determined to
squeeze money out of South Korea,
said The Korea Times in an editorial.
When the U.S. began installing its
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense
(THAAD) anti-missile system in the
southern Seongju County last month,
“anti- American sentiment” started to
rise among locals who believe the equipment
could make their region a target
of North Korea. Now Trump has exacerbated
that anger by demanding Seoul
pay the system’s $1 billion cost because,
he says, it’s “meant to protect South
Korea.” Yes, THAAD could save South
Korean lives in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack, but
it will also protect the 28,500 U.S. troops deployed here. Trump’s
national security adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster, tried to reassure
South Korea by saying that the existing THAAD agreement—
under which we provide the site and the U.S. pays to install and
maintain the system—would hold. But he then suggested that
this deal might be renegotiated. Sixty percent of South Koreans
supported THAAD in an April poll, but at this point, many must
“doubt whether it is really worth all this trouble.”
South Korea has already incurred the wrath of China for hosting
THAAD, said Kim Hyun-ki in Korea JoongAng Daily.
Although the system is primarily intended to shoot down North
Korean nukes midflight, its radar will also detect Chinese missile
launches. Beijing says that undermines its nuclear deterrent and
has taken “economic retaliation against South Korea,” denying
visas to our pop stars, blocking our hit TV shows, and rejecting
Korean cosmetics brands. We’ll suffer
more economic damage if Trump tears
up the U.S. free trade agreement with
South Korea, said Korea JoongAng
Daily. The president recently called
the pact—struck during the George W.
Bush administration—“horrible” and
threatened to terminate it. We clearly
face “unprecedented security risks
from Trump’s America First policy.”
If Trump insists on “degrading the
blood-forged Korea-U.S. alliance to
a mere interest-driven partnership,”
said Heo Mun-myeong in Dong-a
Ilbo, then let’s tally it up. “South Korea is not enjoying the U.S.
military umbrella for free.” Seoul already pays some $807 million
of the annual cost of keeping U.S. troops here, and it doesn’t
charge the U.S. for utilities, communications, or infrastructure
costs. South Korea also plays “a pivotal role” in supporting U.S.
strategy in Asia. Trump should “re-examine the true values of
the bilateral alliance” and “think twice before speaking.”
Pity our next president, said Dong-a Ilbo. THAAD was negotiated
under President Park Geun-hye, who has since been
impeached for corruption. Park’s successor, to be elected next
week, will have to be the one to make it clear that Seoul will not
foot the bill for U.S. weaponry. Front-runner Moon Jae-in has
supported reopening dialogue with North Korea and rethinking
THAAD altogether, while Ahn Cheol-soo favors the deployment
but says it should not be rushed and needs input from locals.
Whoever wins will face some “tricky negotiations with Trump.”
squeeze money out of South Korea,
said The Korea Times in an editorial.
When the U.S. began installing its
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense
(THAAD) anti-missile system in the
southern Seongju County last month,
“anti- American sentiment” started to
rise among locals who believe the equipment
could make their region a target
of North Korea. Now Trump has exacerbated
that anger by demanding Seoul
pay the system’s $1 billion cost because,
he says, it’s “meant to protect South
Korea.” Yes, THAAD could save South
Korean lives in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack, but
it will also protect the 28,500 U.S. troops deployed here. Trump’s
national security adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster, tried to reassure
South Korea by saying that the existing THAAD agreement—
under which we provide the site and the U.S. pays to install and
maintain the system—would hold. But he then suggested that
this deal might be renegotiated. Sixty percent of South Koreans
supported THAAD in an April poll, but at this point, many must
“doubt whether it is really worth all this trouble.”
South Korea has already incurred the wrath of China for hosting
THAAD, said Kim Hyun-ki in Korea JoongAng Daily.
Although the system is primarily intended to shoot down North
Korean nukes midflight, its radar will also detect Chinese missile
launches. Beijing says that undermines its nuclear deterrent and
has taken “economic retaliation against South Korea,” denying
visas to our pop stars, blocking our hit TV shows, and rejecting
Korean cosmetics brands. We’ll suffer
more economic damage if Trump tears
up the U.S. free trade agreement with
South Korea, said Korea JoongAng
Daily. The president recently called
the pact—struck during the George W.
Bush administration—“horrible” and
threatened to terminate it. We clearly
face “unprecedented security risks
from Trump’s America First policy.”
If Trump insists on “degrading the
blood-forged Korea-U.S. alliance to
a mere interest-driven partnership,”
said Heo Mun-myeong in Dong-a
Ilbo, then let’s tally it up. “South Korea is not enjoying the U.S.
military umbrella for free.” Seoul already pays some $807 million
of the annual cost of keeping U.S. troops here, and it doesn’t
charge the U.S. for utilities, communications, or infrastructure
costs. South Korea also plays “a pivotal role” in supporting U.S.
strategy in Asia. Trump should “re-examine the true values of
the bilateral alliance” and “think twice before speaking.”
Pity our next president, said Dong-a Ilbo. THAAD was negotiated
under President Park Geun-hye, who has since been
impeached for corruption. Park’s successor, to be elected next
week, will have to be the one to make it clear that Seoul will not
foot the bill for U.S. weaponry. Front-runner Moon Jae-in has
supported reopening dialogue with North Korea and rethinking
THAAD altogether, while Ahn Cheol-soo favors the deployment
but says it should not be rushed and needs input from locals.
Whoever wins will face some “tricky negotiations with Trump.”
Will the EU stand up for its values?
European lawmakers pulled no punches
last week in their dressing-down of Hungary’s
increasingly authoritarian leader,
said Andrew Byrne in the Financial
Times (U.K.). Prime Minister Viktor
Orban went to the European Parliament
in Brussels to defend Hungary’s draconian
new education law, which would
effectively shut down Budapest’s Central
European University—the nation’s last
bastion of academic freedom. CEU was
founded by Hungarian-born U.S. financier
and philanthropist George Soros,
whose promotion of open societies and
civic activism make him Orban’s favorite
enemy. Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian leader of the parliament’s liberal
faction, accused Orban of acting like Stalin, asking “What’s
next, book burning?” Socialist leader Gianni Pittella of Italy called
Orban a liar bent on suppressing “science, research, schools, and
culture,” claims Orban dismissed as “absurd.” Yet despite all the
harsh rhetoric, “Orban emerged relatively unscathed.” The European
Commission demanded changes to the education law, but
it stopped short of triggering the EU’s “Article 7” mechanism—
which would find Hungary in breach of the rule of law and suspend
the country’s EU voting rights—because it knows Poland’s
ruling conservative party “would veto the sanction.”
What a ridiculous spectacle, said Tamas Lanczi in Hungary’s
Mozgasterblog.hu. The Brussels elite resorted to “highly distorted
and extremely slanderous” statements to denounce
Orban. They are using the CEU as an excuse to criticize the
prime minister, when what they’re really angry about is his refusal
to allow the mass resettlement of illegal Muslim migrants
on Hungarian soil. Fortunately, Orban
“remained steadfast, led astray neither
by intimidations nor by blackmail.”
This whole flap is an election stunt
staged by the prime minister, said
Tamas Torba in Magyar Nemzet (Hungary).
Orban is simply trying to make
sure his Fidesz party doesn’t lose votes
to the even-further-right-wing Jobbik
party in the 2018 national election. His
attempts to block the flood of migrants
passing through Hungary with walls,
detention centers, and nationalist rhetoric
boosted his support among far-right
voters. But now that the refugee influx has slowed to a trickle,
the prime minister needs a new threat to Hungary and Christian
Europe, so he’s settled on CEU and Soros. And by giving him an
international stage on which to promote his nationalist agenda,
the EU did exactly “as Orban wanted.”
Worse, they appeased a would-be dictator, said Rudolf Ungvary
in Nepszava (Hungary). Just as Europeans in 1938 thought
they could deal with Hitler “through democratic means,” so
the EU has met Orban’s fascistic actions with nothing but the
threat of legal action. Of course, this is “not a similar tragedy,”
as the lives of millions of Jews are not at stake—just “the hopes
of Hungarian democrats.” The EU is wrong to treat Hungary
as just another democratic member state. Orban rode a wave
of nationalism to power in 2010, and used his two-thirds legislative
majority to rewrite the constitution, gutting judicial
oversight and eviscerating the free press. We’ve had only “the
appearance of democracy” for years.
last week in their dressing-down of Hungary’s
increasingly authoritarian leader,
said Andrew Byrne in the Financial
Times (U.K.). Prime Minister Viktor
Orban went to the European Parliament
in Brussels to defend Hungary’s draconian
new education law, which would
effectively shut down Budapest’s Central
European University—the nation’s last
bastion of academic freedom. CEU was
founded by Hungarian-born U.S. financier
and philanthropist George Soros,
whose promotion of open societies and
civic activism make him Orban’s favorite
enemy. Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian leader of the parliament’s liberal
faction, accused Orban of acting like Stalin, asking “What’s
next, book burning?” Socialist leader Gianni Pittella of Italy called
Orban a liar bent on suppressing “science, research, schools, and
culture,” claims Orban dismissed as “absurd.” Yet despite all the
harsh rhetoric, “Orban emerged relatively unscathed.” The European
Commission demanded changes to the education law, but
it stopped short of triggering the EU’s “Article 7” mechanism—
which would find Hungary in breach of the rule of law and suspend
the country’s EU voting rights—because it knows Poland’s
ruling conservative party “would veto the sanction.”
What a ridiculous spectacle, said Tamas Lanczi in Hungary’s
Mozgasterblog.hu. The Brussels elite resorted to “highly distorted
and extremely slanderous” statements to denounce
Orban. They are using the CEU as an excuse to criticize the
prime minister, when what they’re really angry about is his refusal
to allow the mass resettlement of illegal Muslim migrants
on Hungarian soil. Fortunately, Orban
“remained steadfast, led astray neither
by intimidations nor by blackmail.”
This whole flap is an election stunt
staged by the prime minister, said
Tamas Torba in Magyar Nemzet (Hungary).
Orban is simply trying to make
sure his Fidesz party doesn’t lose votes
to the even-further-right-wing Jobbik
party in the 2018 national election. His
attempts to block the flood of migrants
passing through Hungary with walls,
detention centers, and nationalist rhetoric
boosted his support among far-right
voters. But now that the refugee influx has slowed to a trickle,
the prime minister needs a new threat to Hungary and Christian
Europe, so he’s settled on CEU and Soros. And by giving him an
international stage on which to promote his nationalist agenda,
the EU did exactly “as Orban wanted.”
Worse, they appeased a would-be dictator, said Rudolf Ungvary
in Nepszava (Hungary). Just as Europeans in 1938 thought
they could deal with Hitler “through democratic means,” so
the EU has met Orban’s fascistic actions with nothing but the
threat of legal action. Of course, this is “not a similar tragedy,”
as the lives of millions of Jews are not at stake—just “the hopes
of Hungarian democrats.” The EU is wrong to treat Hungary
as just another democratic member state. Orban rode a wave
of nationalism to power in 2010, and used his two-thirds legislative
majority to rewrite the constitution, gutting judicial
oversight and eviscerating the free press. We’ve had only “the
appearance of democracy” for years.
Inheritance: the enemy of equality
Britain is supposed to be a meritocratic society,
said Ian Jack. But whether you wind up rich or
poor will increasingly depend on a single factor:
inheritance. Today, the average inheritance is worth
just 3 percent of all the other income the inheritor
can expect to get in a lifetime. But that percentage
is set to shoot up, thanks to the soaring rise in
real estate prices in recent decades. The housing
bubble means the older generation now sits on a
vast stock of wealth. Britons 65 to 85 years old
today own some $517 billion worth of property,
according to a new study. Most of them will pass
the proceeds on to their children or grandchildren,
who will invest in more property. That’s great for
those who inherit, but it will have a dire impact on
inequality, deepening the gulf between the propertied
classes and those for whom owner-occupation
is an ever more distant dream. Renters accounted
for 9 percent of the housing market in 1985—now
they account for more than 20 percent. “We are reentering
the world of the Victorian novel, in which
suitable marriages, contested wills, and misplaced
legacies drive the plot.” The poor, meanwhile,
“press their faces against the window.”
said Ian Jack. But whether you wind up rich or
poor will increasingly depend on a single factor:
inheritance. Today, the average inheritance is worth
just 3 percent of all the other income the inheritor
can expect to get in a lifetime. But that percentage
is set to shoot up, thanks to the soaring rise in
real estate prices in recent decades. The housing
bubble means the older generation now sits on a
vast stock of wealth. Britons 65 to 85 years old
today own some $517 billion worth of property,
according to a new study. Most of them will pass
the proceeds on to their children or grandchildren,
who will invest in more property. That’s great for
those who inherit, but it will have a dire impact on
inequality, deepening the gulf between the propertied
classes and those for whom owner-occupation
is an ever more distant dream. Renters accounted
for 9 percent of the housing market in 1985—now
they account for more than 20 percent. “We are reentering
the world of the Victorian novel, in which
suitable marriages, contested wills, and misplaced
legacies drive the plot.” The poor, meanwhile,
“press their faces against the window.”
Let others criticize Israel
The nation that perpetrated the Holocaust will
never be in a position to lecture Israel on human
rights, said Jan Fleischhauer. Foreign Minister
Sigmar Gabriel was inundated with praise last
week after he refused to cancel meetings with
pro-Palestinian groups in Israel that Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu claimed were actively
working to undermine Israeli security. Gabriel’s
intransigence prompted Netanyahu to cancel his
own planned meeting with the foreign minister,
and Gabriel’s visit ended with “mutual recriminations
and a badly damaged relationship.” Yet German
pundits feted Gabriel as if he had stood up
to a tyrant, rather than spurned one of Germany’s
most important allies. I get it: It’s frustrating when
Israel doesn’t listen to us, even though they are
clearly harming Palestinian civil rights. But you
know what? “There are plenty of other countries
that also know what Israel should do, and that
don’t have 6 million Jews on their consciences.”
Sure, it’s a “heavy burden” for Germans to bear,
and the temptation is strong to throw it back at
Israelis, to say that they, too, have sinned, so we’re
off the hook. That old saying “The Germans will
never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz” still holds
true. Gabriel, who has spoken of his shame at
having a “committed Nazi for a father,” is its living
embodiment.
never be in a position to lecture Israel on human
rights, said Jan Fleischhauer. Foreign Minister
Sigmar Gabriel was inundated with praise last
week after he refused to cancel meetings with
pro-Palestinian groups in Israel that Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu claimed were actively
working to undermine Israeli security. Gabriel’s
intransigence prompted Netanyahu to cancel his
own planned meeting with the foreign minister,
and Gabriel’s visit ended with “mutual recriminations
and a badly damaged relationship.” Yet German
pundits feted Gabriel as if he had stood up
to a tyrant, rather than spurned one of Germany’s
most important allies. I get it: It’s frustrating when
Israel doesn’t listen to us, even though they are
clearly harming Palestinian civil rights. But you
know what? “There are plenty of other countries
that also know what Israel should do, and that
don’t have 6 million Jews on their consciences.”
Sure, it’s a “heavy burden” for Germans to bear,
and the temptation is strong to throw it back at
Israelis, to say that they, too, have sinned, so we’re
off the hook. That old saying “The Germans will
never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz” still holds
true. Gabriel, who has spoken of his shame at
having a “committed Nazi for a father,” is its living
embodiment.
Why everyone thinks they’re losing
One of the strangest aspects of the Trump era is that “nearly everyone
seems convinced their side is losing,” said Will Rahn. Liberals, of course,
are morose because a man they view as “a racist, a sexist, a crook, and
perhaps even a traitor” occupies the White House, while his fellow
Republicans control Congress and a majority of state legislatures. Traditional
conservatives are unhappy that the GOP has become “unmoored”
from their small-government, respectable ideology, that “a charlatan” of
incoherent views now rules the party. Even the right-wing populists feel
like they’re losing, because “a clique of elite Manhattan Democrats,”
including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, have pushed aside firebreathing
nationalist Steve Bannon. Besides, Trump can’t get any legislation
passed because of a hopelessly fractured congressional GOP. The
widespread sense of panic and loss is probably responsible for the fact
that the militant left and Trumpists both now justify censoring opposing
views. “It’s a remarkable, and perhaps unprecedented, moment in our
history.” Everyone—regardless of ideology—has a sinking feeling that in
the battle for the nation’s soul, “we’ve already lost.”
seems convinced their side is losing,” said Will Rahn. Liberals, of course,
are morose because a man they view as “a racist, a sexist, a crook, and
perhaps even a traitor” occupies the White House, while his fellow
Republicans control Congress and a majority of state legislatures. Traditional
conservatives are unhappy that the GOP has become “unmoored”
from their small-government, respectable ideology, that “a charlatan” of
incoherent views now rules the party. Even the right-wing populists feel
like they’re losing, because “a clique of elite Manhattan Democrats,”
including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, have pushed aside firebreathing
nationalist Steve Bannon. Besides, Trump can’t get any legislation
passed because of a hopelessly fractured congressional GOP. The
widespread sense of panic and loss is probably responsible for the fact
that the militant left and Trumpists both now justify censoring opposing
views. “It’s a remarkable, and perhaps unprecedented, moment in our
history.” Everyone—regardless of ideology—has a sinking feeling that in
the battle for the nation’s soul, “we’ve already lost.”
When women are jailed for abortions
If abortion becomes totally illegal or strictly limited in half the country,
said Irin Carmon, women won’t need to get the back-alley or coat
hanger abortions of the 1950s. They’ll be likely to turn to the easily
available drugs mifepristone and misoprostol to “end a pregnancy by
their own hands.” That means ambitious local prosecutors in red states
could hold only one person—the woman—legally accountable, and
“there is little doubt that states would delight in prosecuting her.” For
public relations purposes, the anti-abortion movement has long insisted
on a logical inconsistency: “Abortion is murder, but women shouldn’t
be held accountable.” Yet at least 17 women have been arrested since
2005 and accused of self-inducing abortions. If Roe v. Wade is overturned,
or states restrict abortion to the point where it’s unavailable,
tens of thousands of desperate women will obtain abortion pills from
pro-choice activists or online pharmacies. (That phenomenon is already
occurring.) The women most likely to be caught and prosecuted, of
course, will be poor women of color. “Supporters of abortion rights
should get ready for what illegal abortion in America will look like.”
Abortion will go underground, and women will be sent to prison.
said Irin Carmon, women won’t need to get the back-alley or coat
hanger abortions of the 1950s. They’ll be likely to turn to the easily
available drugs mifepristone and misoprostol to “end a pregnancy by
their own hands.” That means ambitious local prosecutors in red states
could hold only one person—the woman—legally accountable, and
“there is little doubt that states would delight in prosecuting her.” For
public relations purposes, the anti-abortion movement has long insisted
on a logical inconsistency: “Abortion is murder, but women shouldn’t
be held accountable.” Yet at least 17 women have been arrested since
2005 and accused of self-inducing abortions. If Roe v. Wade is overturned,
or states restrict abortion to the point where it’s unavailable,
tens of thousands of desperate women will obtain abortion pills from
pro-choice activists or online pharmacies. (That phenomenon is already
occurring.) The women most likely to be caught and prosecuted, of
course, will be poor women of color. “Supporters of abortion rights
should get ready for what illegal abortion in America will look like.”
Abortion will go underground, and women will be sent to prison.
Forget about legalizing all drugs
“As the opioid crisis takes lives on a historic scale, it’s time to kill a bad
idea,” said David French. “Just say no to legalizing hard drugs.” Since
the war on drugs took off in the 1980s, many thoughtful conservatives,
libertarians, and liberals have argued for legalization. Their rationale is
that the drug war’s costs—“in lives lost, lives squandered in prison, and
civil liberties curtailed”—outweigh any potential harm from the drugs
themselves. The opioid epidemic proves them wrong: The consequences
of hard-drug use are indeed “more horrific than prohibition.” The
scourge began when the federal government approved and pharmaceutical
companies aggressively marketed addictive prescription opioid
painkillers such as Percocet and OxyContin. It was, in essence, the
legalization of heroin in pill form. “Communities were suddenly awash
in narcotics,” and when prescriptions became more tightly restricted,
already-addicted people simply turned to cheaper street heroin. In 2015,
52,404 Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses, more than the
number who died from car crashes or guns. People don’t choose to use
opioids—they become slaves to them. While we may never win the war
on drugs, “there is no choice but to continue the fight.”
idea,” said David French. “Just say no to legalizing hard drugs.” Since
the war on drugs took off in the 1980s, many thoughtful conservatives,
libertarians, and liberals have argued for legalization. Their rationale is
that the drug war’s costs—“in lives lost, lives squandered in prison, and
civil liberties curtailed”—outweigh any potential harm from the drugs
themselves. The opioid epidemic proves them wrong: The consequences
of hard-drug use are indeed “more horrific than prohibition.” The
scourge began when the federal government approved and pharmaceutical
companies aggressively marketed addictive prescription opioid
painkillers such as Percocet and OxyContin. It was, in essence, the
legalization of heroin in pill form. “Communities were suddenly awash
in narcotics,” and when prescriptions became more tightly restricted,
already-addicted people simply turned to cheaper street heroin. In 2015,
52,404 Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses, more than the
number who died from car crashes or guns. People don’t choose to use
opioids—they become slaves to them. While we may never win the war
on drugs, “there is no choice but to continue the fight.”
Trump’s tax plan: Who would benefit?
During his campaign for president, Donald Trump promised
that if elected he’d raise taxes on the rich, himself
most definitely included. “It’s going to cost me a
fortune—which is actually true,” Trump told reporters
in late 2015. Well, guess what? said Jonathan Chait in
NYMag.com. It was “not actually true.” Last week, in a
scramble for achievements ahead of the symbolic 100-day
milestone, the Trump White House released a single-page,
bullet-pointed tax plan that is effectively just a “massive
tax cut for the rich,” himself in particular.
The tax rate on corporations and so-called
pass-through businesses (such as Trump’s
own) would be slashed from 35 percent to
15 percent, saving Trump tens of millions
each year. He would also scrap the Alternative Minimum Tax,
which cost Trump $31 million in 2005, and the Estate Tax, which
by itself would save the Trump family up to $4 billion, if the
patriarch is really worth the $10 billion he claims. If all of his proposed
tax cuts are passed, Trump will add an incredible $7 trillion
to the deficit over a decade. Even more shocking than the naked
self-interest, said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post, is that
Trump campaigned as a champion of the working poor. In reality,
Trump’s views on taxation are “about as ‘populist’ as the membership
list at Mar-a-Lago.”
When liberals howl this way, said Kimberley Strassel in WSJ
.com, that’s when you “know a Republican president has scored
big on a proposed tax reform.” What Trump has laid out in
this succinct document is a “swashbuckling vision for enacting
pro-growth principles.” A steep cut to the U.S. corporate tax
rate—currently the highest in the developed world—will open
the floodgates to foreign investment. His proposal to double the
standard deduction and simplify the personal tax code into three
income brackets—10, 25, and 35 percent—will provide tax
relief for millions of lower- and middle-income families. And
the plan won’t explode the deficit, said John Steele Gordon
in CommentaryMagazine.com. These cuts, if enacted, will
“supercharge the economy, offsetting much of the revenue
lost through lower rates.”
Some myths never die, said Steven Rattner in NYTimes
.com. Since the days of Ronald Reagan, the GOP
has been in thrall to this “alchemistic belief
that huge tax cuts can pay for themselves
by unleashing faster economic growth.”
There’s little empirical evidence for this
“magical thinking”—at most, studies show,
about 30 percent of revenue lost in a tax cut will ever be recouped
through resulting growth—but there was Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin last week again nonsensically assuring reporters that
Trump’s plan will “pay for itself.” Even for Trump, the deception
and delusion is mind-boggling, said Paul Krugman in The New
York Times. Trump “plans to blow up the deficit, bigly, largely to
his own personal benefit.”
Republicans “should ignore the debt consequences and pass the
Trump tax cuts,” said Ed Rogers in WashingtonPost.com. After
“eight years of Obama-era stagnation” we badly need a surge in
growth to restore “our nation’s vitality.” Reform of our sprawling,
antiquated tax code is long overdue, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin
in The Washington Post, and Trump is right to look for ways to
jump-start our “anemic” economic recovery. But a “responsible
tax plan” would accomplish these goals without ballooning our
already unsustainable national debt. If Trump wants to make
America great again, he needs to come up with a tax-reform plan
“built on realistic growth assumptions, not economic fairy tales.”
that if elected he’d raise taxes on the rich, himself
most definitely included. “It’s going to cost me a
fortune—which is actually true,” Trump told reporters
in late 2015. Well, guess what? said Jonathan Chait in
NYMag.com. It was “not actually true.” Last week, in a
scramble for achievements ahead of the symbolic 100-day
milestone, the Trump White House released a single-page,
bullet-pointed tax plan that is effectively just a “massive
tax cut for the rich,” himself in particular.
The tax rate on corporations and so-called
pass-through businesses (such as Trump’s
own) would be slashed from 35 percent to
15 percent, saving Trump tens of millions
each year. He would also scrap the Alternative Minimum Tax,
which cost Trump $31 million in 2005, and the Estate Tax, which
by itself would save the Trump family up to $4 billion, if the
patriarch is really worth the $10 billion he claims. If all of his proposed
tax cuts are passed, Trump will add an incredible $7 trillion
to the deficit over a decade. Even more shocking than the naked
self-interest, said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post, is that
Trump campaigned as a champion of the working poor. In reality,
Trump’s views on taxation are “about as ‘populist’ as the membership
list at Mar-a-Lago.”
When liberals howl this way, said Kimberley Strassel in WSJ
.com, that’s when you “know a Republican president has scored
big on a proposed tax reform.” What Trump has laid out in
this succinct document is a “swashbuckling vision for enacting
pro-growth principles.” A steep cut to the U.S. corporate tax
rate—currently the highest in the developed world—will open
the floodgates to foreign investment. His proposal to double the
standard deduction and simplify the personal tax code into three
income brackets—10, 25, and 35 percent—will provide tax
relief for millions of lower- and middle-income families. And
the plan won’t explode the deficit, said John Steele Gordon
in CommentaryMagazine.com. These cuts, if enacted, will
“supercharge the economy, offsetting much of the revenue
lost through lower rates.”
Some myths never die, said Steven Rattner in NYTimes
.com. Since the days of Ronald Reagan, the GOP
has been in thrall to this “alchemistic belief
that huge tax cuts can pay for themselves
by unleashing faster economic growth.”
There’s little empirical evidence for this
“magical thinking”—at most, studies show,
about 30 percent of revenue lost in a tax cut will ever be recouped
through resulting growth—but there was Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin last week again nonsensically assuring reporters that
Trump’s plan will “pay for itself.” Even for Trump, the deception
and delusion is mind-boggling, said Paul Krugman in The New
York Times. Trump “plans to blow up the deficit, bigly, largely to
his own personal benefit.”
Republicans “should ignore the debt consequences and pass the
Trump tax cuts,” said Ed Rogers in WashingtonPost.com. After
“eight years of Obama-era stagnation” we badly need a surge in
growth to restore “our nation’s vitality.” Reform of our sprawling,
antiquated tax code is long overdue, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin
in The Washington Post, and Trump is right to look for ways to
jump-start our “anemic” economic recovery. But a “responsible
tax plan” would accomplish these goals without ballooning our
already unsustainable national debt. If Trump wants to make
America great again, he needs to come up with a tax-reform plan
“built on realistic growth assumptions, not economic fairy tales.”
Trump’s hand of friendship to Philippine strongman
President Trump stunned human rights advocates
and some members of his administration this
week by inviting Philippine President Rodrigo
Duterte—who is accused of orchestrating the
extrajudicial killings of more than 7,000 drug
suspects—to the White House. Trump made the
offer in “a very friendly” phone conversation, the
White House said, during which he and Duterte
discussed the North Korean nuclear threat,
among other issues. “The Philippines is very
important to me strategically and militarily,”
Trump told an interviewer, adding that Duterte
had been “very, very tough on that drug problem.” Two senior
administration officials said the State Department and the National
Security Council were caught off guard by Trump’s invite. Duterte,
who called former President Obama a “son of a whore” and has
claimed to have personally killed criminals while mayor of his hometown
of Davao, said he may be too “tied up” to visit the U.S.
Trump also told interviewers that he “would be honored” to meet
with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, calling him “a pretty
smart cookie” who has clung to power despite the efforts of “a lot
of people.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Trump’s warm words
for Kim and Duterte, as well his past praise for other strongmen,
including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian
President Vladimir Putin, were “very disturbing.”
U.S. presidents from both parties have always maintained warm
relations with brutal rulers of countries like Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan, said Yochi Dreazen in Vox.com. The
difference with Trump is that he seems to admire
dictators and would-be dictators more than he
does “democratically elected leaders with liberal
values.” His meeting with German Chancellor
Angela Merkel was frosty, his phone call with
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
downright hostile. This is “good news for the
world’s autocrats; it’s terrible news for those
who care about human rights.”
Duterte “might well be mentally ill,” said Tom
Rogan in NationalReview.com, “but America
needs him on its side.” Beijing is building a series of artificial islands
in the East and South China Seas, with the aim of controlling the
vast trade flows through those waters and pushing out U.S. military
forces. Duterte is now deciding whether to join with the U.S. and
stand up to China’s territory grab, by defending the Philippines’
claim to part of the crucial Spratly Islands, or accept Chinese
control in return for a favorable trade deal. Do Duterte’s domestic
atrocities “override all other American concerns?” I don’t believe
so, and “Trump is right to engage him.”
If Duterte “crosses the threshold of the White House,” said Noah
Rothman in CommentaryMagazine.com, “it will forever taint
Trump’s presidency.” The images that have emerged from his drug
war are horrifying. Victims of death squads lie bloody in the streets,
tossed on garbage piles, or in morgues, “stacked on top of one
another like cordwood.” Of course, the U.S. must occasionally suffer
unsavory allies for the sake of larger objectives. “But expressing admiration
for and rehabilitating butchers like Duterte is indefensible.”
and some members of his administration this
week by inviting Philippine President Rodrigo
Duterte—who is accused of orchestrating the
extrajudicial killings of more than 7,000 drug
suspects—to the White House. Trump made the
offer in “a very friendly” phone conversation, the
White House said, during which he and Duterte
discussed the North Korean nuclear threat,
among other issues. “The Philippines is very
important to me strategically and militarily,”
Trump told an interviewer, adding that Duterte
had been “very, very tough on that drug problem.” Two senior
administration officials said the State Department and the National
Security Council were caught off guard by Trump’s invite. Duterte,
who called former President Obama a “son of a whore” and has
claimed to have personally killed criminals while mayor of his hometown
of Davao, said he may be too “tied up” to visit the U.S.
Trump also told interviewers that he “would be honored” to meet
with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, calling him “a pretty
smart cookie” who has clung to power despite the efforts of “a lot
of people.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Trump’s warm words
for Kim and Duterte, as well his past praise for other strongmen,
including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian
President Vladimir Putin, were “very disturbing.”
U.S. presidents from both parties have always maintained warm
relations with brutal rulers of countries like Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan, said Yochi Dreazen in Vox.com. The
difference with Trump is that he seems to admire
dictators and would-be dictators more than he
does “democratically elected leaders with liberal
values.” His meeting with German Chancellor
Angela Merkel was frosty, his phone call with
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
downright hostile. This is “good news for the
world’s autocrats; it’s terrible news for those
who care about human rights.”
Duterte “might well be mentally ill,” said Tom
Rogan in NationalReview.com, “but America
needs him on its side.” Beijing is building a series of artificial islands
in the East and South China Seas, with the aim of controlling the
vast trade flows through those waters and pushing out U.S. military
forces. Duterte is now deciding whether to join with the U.S. and
stand up to China’s territory grab, by defending the Philippines’
claim to part of the crucial Spratly Islands, or accept Chinese
control in return for a favorable trade deal. Do Duterte’s domestic
atrocities “override all other American concerns?” I don’t believe
so, and “Trump is right to engage him.”
If Duterte “crosses the threshold of the White House,” said Noah
Rothman in CommentaryMagazine.com, “it will forever taint
Trump’s presidency.” The images that have emerged from his drug
war are horrifying. Victims of death squads lie bloody in the streets,
tossed on garbage piles, or in morgues, “stacked on top of one
another like cordwood.” Of course, the U.S. must occasionally suffer
unsavory allies for the sake of larger objectives. “But expressing admiration
for and rehabilitating butchers like Duterte is indefensible.”
Diabetes harms the brain
Diabetes may have an adverse effect on the brain, especially in overweight people, reports The New York Times. An international team of scientists compared 100 people with type 2 diabetes—half of whom were overweight—to 50 healthy people of normal weight. All the participants underwent
MRI brain scans and completed tests that assessed their memory, reaction times, and thinking skills. The researchers found that participants with diabetes scored lower on the cognitive tests than those
without the condition, and had significantly thinner gray matter in parts of the brain involved in key functions, including planning and concentration. These effects were most severe among the diabetics who were overweight, suggesting the two health issues have cumulative harmful effects on
the brain. The study’s co-author, Donald Simonson of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, says these effects are likely irreversible. “On the positive side,” he notes, “patients who
maintain good control of their diabetes do seem to have a slower rate of deterioration.”
MRI brain scans and completed tests that assessed their memory, reaction times, and thinking skills. The researchers found that participants with diabetes scored lower on the cognitive tests than those
without the condition, and had significantly thinner gray matter in parts of the brain involved in key functions, including planning and concentration. These effects were most severe among the diabetics who were overweight, suggesting the two health issues have cumulative harmful effects on
the brain. The study’s co-author, Donald Simonson of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, says these effects are likely irreversible. “On the positive side,” he notes, “patients who
maintain good control of their diabetes do seem to have a slower rate of deterioration.”
Arctic warming far faster than thought
Arctic warming far faster than thought
The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, speeding the melting of polar ice and causing global sea levels to rise higher and more rapidly than previously predicted. That’s the worrying conclusion of a landmark new study by over 90 leading climate scientists, who warn that the rapid thaw will have “major consequences for ecosystems and society.” The study for the intergovernmental Arctic Council notes that from 2011 to 2015 temperatures in the region increased at a faster rate than at any time since records began around 1900. It projects the Arctic Ocean will be nearly free of summer sea ice by 2030 and cauThe Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, speeding the melting of polar ice and causing global sea levels to rise higher and more rapidly than previously predicted. That’s the worrying conclusion of a landmark new study
by over 90 leading climate scientists, who warn that the rapid thaw will have “major consequences for ecosystems and society.” The study for the intergovernmental Arctic Council notes that from
2011 to 2015 temperatures in the region increased at a faster rate than at any time since records began around 1900. It projects the Arctic Ocean will be nearly free of summer sea ice by 2030 and cautions
that if greenhouse gas emissions continue on current trends, global sea levels will rise at least 29 inches by 2100—almost double the minimum estimate by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. Experts say a feedback loop is accelerating warming. Sunlight is reflected by ice and snow, but as the polar ice melts, more heat from the sun’s rays is absorbed by newly exposed areas of the Arctic Ocean, which in turn becomes warmer and melts more ice. Rising sea temperatures could alter the jet stream, triggering extreme weather changes across North America, Europe, and Asia. “The Arctic is unraveling,” conservationist Rafe Pomerance tells Nature.com. “The
fate of [the region] has to be moved out of the world of scientific observation and into the world of government policy.”
The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, speeding the melting of polar ice and causing global sea levels to rise higher and more rapidly than previously predicted. That’s the worrying conclusion of a landmark new study by over 90 leading climate scientists, who warn that the rapid thaw will have “major consequences for ecosystems and society.” The study for the intergovernmental Arctic Council notes that from 2011 to 2015 temperatures in the region increased at a faster rate than at any time since records began around 1900. It projects the Arctic Ocean will be nearly free of summer sea ice by 2030 and cauThe Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, speeding the melting of polar ice and causing global sea levels to rise higher and more rapidly than previously predicted. That’s the worrying conclusion of a landmark new study
by over 90 leading climate scientists, who warn that the rapid thaw will have “major consequences for ecosystems and society.” The study for the intergovernmental Arctic Council notes that from
2011 to 2015 temperatures in the region increased at a faster rate than at any time since records began around 1900. It projects the Arctic Ocean will be nearly free of summer sea ice by 2030 and cautions
that if greenhouse gas emissions continue on current trends, global sea levels will rise at least 29 inches by 2100—almost double the minimum estimate by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. Experts say a feedback loop is accelerating warming. Sunlight is reflected by ice and snow, but as the polar ice melts, more heat from the sun’s rays is absorbed by newly exposed areas of the Arctic Ocean, which in turn becomes warmer and melts more ice. Rising sea temperatures could alter the jet stream, triggering extreme weather changes across North America, Europe, and Asia. “The Arctic is unraveling,” conservationist Rafe Pomerance tells Nature.com. “The
fate of [the region] has to be moved out of the world of scientific observation and into the world of government policy.”
Why men are impulsive
Why men are impulsive
Testosterone makes men less likely to think before they act, a new study has found. Researchers gave 243 mostly college-age male volunteers a dose of testosterone gel or a placebo, then asked them to complete a short, untimed test that assessed their cognitive reflection. Questions included this heads cratcher: “A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” The incorrect “gut” response is 10 cents; the correct answer, which people
generally come to only after a bit of thought, is 5 cents. The men who received testosterone answered about 20 percent fewer questions correctly in the tests—which were coupled with a basic math task to control for arithmetic skills—than those in the placebo group. They also gave their answers more hastily. Report co-author Colin Camerer, a behavioral economist at the California Institute of Technology, says this disparity may be because testosterone boosts confidence, which could eliminate
the self-doubt that prompts people to reevaluate their decisions. “The testosterone is either inhibiting the process of mentally checking your work,” he tells ScienceDaily .com, “or increasing the intuitive feeling that ‘I’m definitely right.’”
Testosterone makes men less likely to think before they act, a new study has found. Researchers gave 243 mostly college-age male volunteers a dose of testosterone gel or a placebo, then asked them to complete a short, untimed test that assessed their cognitive reflection. Questions included this heads cratcher: “A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” The incorrect “gut” response is 10 cents; the correct answer, which people
generally come to only after a bit of thought, is 5 cents. The men who received testosterone answered about 20 percent fewer questions correctly in the tests—which were coupled with a basic math task to control for arithmetic skills—than those in the placebo group. They also gave their answers more hastily. Report co-author Colin Camerer, a behavioral economist at the California Institute of Technology, says this disparity may be because testosterone boosts confidence, which could eliminate
the self-doubt that prompts people to reevaluate their decisions. “The testosterone is either inhibiting the process of mentally checking your work,” he tells ScienceDaily .com, “or increasing the intuitive feeling that ‘I’m definitely right.’”
Cassini’s ‘Grand Finale’
After logging 20 years and 4.1 billion miles in space, the Cassini spacecraft last week took the first step in its final mission: a daring 77,000 mph dive between Saturn and its rings of dust, rocks, and
ice. NASA scientists back on Earth had braced for a bumpy ride, expecting to hear pops and cracks as dust particles hit the unmanned probe. But Cassini’s plunge was eerily quiet, suggesting the 1,200-mile gap is virtually devoid of debris. “The region between the rings and Saturn is ‘the big empty,’ apparently,” Cassini project manager Earl Maize tells Space.com. The emptiness was a welcome discovery, as NASA will no longer have to use Cassini’s antenna as a shield against potential debris.
The spacecraft has already performed a second dive; it will do 20 more before running out of fuel and burning up in Saturn’s atmosphere in September. Scientists hope this “Grand Finale” mission will reveal clues about the origins of the planet’s rings and help them learn more about Saturn’s clouds, gravity, and magnetic fields.
ice. NASA scientists back on Earth had braced for a bumpy ride, expecting to hear pops and cracks as dust particles hit the unmanned probe. But Cassini’s plunge was eerily quiet, suggesting the 1,200-mile gap is virtually devoid of debris. “The region between the rings and Saturn is ‘the big empty,’ apparently,” Cassini project manager Earl Maize tells Space.com. The emptiness was a welcome discovery, as NASA will no longer have to use Cassini’s antenna as a shield against potential debris.
The spacecraft has already performed a second dive; it will do 20 more before running out of fuel and burning up in Saturn’s atmosphere in September. Scientists hope this “Grand Finale” mission will reveal clues about the origins of the planet’s rings and help them learn more about Saturn’s clouds, gravity, and magnetic fields.
Top tips for your iPhone
Get more from your phone with our tricks
1. Set a Live Photo as lock screen image
One of the biggest features of the iPhone 6s is the camera, namely the introduction of ‘Live Photos’, still images that animate when activated via force touch. These Live Photos are meant to give you a glimpse of what was happening when the photo was taken – a fantastic feature when you want to take a trip down memory lane. However, many iPhone 6s and 6s Plus users are unaware that these live photos can be used as the lock screen image and animated at any time. To set a live photo as your lock screen image, simply open the Photos app and browse to the image you want to use. Once opened, tap the Share button (square with an arrow pointing out of it) and scroll along until you find ‘Set as Wallpaper’, then tap it. Making sure ‘Live Photo’ is selected, set the image as your lock screen wallpaper and lock your iPhone. Now all you need to do is force touch the screen to animate the image.
2. Quick access to multitasking menu
For years, iOS users have trained their brains to double tap the home button to access the multitasking menu, but that action has been rendered moot by the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Why? Because you can easily access the multitasking menu from anywhere in iOS, simply by force pressing the left side of the screen and swiping towards the center of the display. If done correctly, you should be taken to the multitasking center, where you can easily switch between your recently used apps. Though some users might find it a bit awkward to use at first, it’s a very handy gesture to have once you’re used to it. It’s also worth mentioning that a similar action can take you back to the last used app without accessing the multitasking menu. Simply force press on the left hand side of the screen, then drag your finger from the left hand side of the display to the right hand side. The app you were last using should be dragged onto screen, replacing the active app.
3. Quickly reply to messages
The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus also give you a new way to easily reply to text messages. Proactive was a big introduction to iOS 9, and lets the operating system learn your habits including the apps you use, people you speak to and even how you reply to text messages. This information can then be used to your advantage – in this case, ‘peek’ at the message thread to get a preview of the text conversation by force pressing on the message, then simply swipe up to reveal a list of predetermined replies,
and tap on the one you want to use. As well as a list of predetermined replies, it may feature contextual replies, that is if a question was asked, replies would include ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘maybe’, and so on.
4. Access Camera shortcuts
3D Touch was the biggest feature of the iPhone 6s, enabling a whole new way for users to interact with their smartphones. One of the key features of 3D Touch was being able to force tap an app icon to display a menu with shortcuts to the most prominent features of the app. This means that instead of
having to open the Camera app and swipe to the recording mode of choice, you can force touch the icon and easily select which you want. You have the choice of taking a selfie, recording a video, recording in slo-mo or taking a standard photo. It’s not just the Camera app that offers 3D Touch shortcuts, as many stock iOS apps have shortcuts – experiment with what you can do! Third-party apps are slowly adding support too, with early adopters including Instagram (options to publish a new post, view your activity, search or access direct messages) and Tweetbot 4 (reply to last mention, access activity tab, tweet the last photo or write a tweet).
5. Turn the keyboard into a trackpad
3D Touch isn’t only handy for accessing app shortcuts or previewing message threads – it can also make text editing on an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus less of a headache. We’ve all been in situations where we’ve misspelt a single letter of a word on our iPhones, and tried to insert the cursor mid-word to edit it (and failed a number of times before deleting the word and re-writing it). There’s no need to do that any more, as you’re now able to force press the keyboard to turn it into a trackpad, allowing you to place the cursor wherever you want. It doesn’t just stop at being able to move the cursor around either – once in trackpad mode, you can tap again once to highlight a single word, twice to highlight the entire sentence or thrice to select everything you’ve written.
6. Preview Safari links
Here’s another useful use for 3D Touch, this time allowing users to preview a link before opening it.
iPhone 6s and 6s Plus users can ‘peek’ at Safari links in-app by lightly pressing on a URL, giving you a preview of the page before applying more pressure to ‘pop’ open Safari and open the link. If you’re
not interested, simply let go of the display and the preview will disappear.
This feature can be found in a number of places throughout iOS, from the Messages app to the Notes app to third-party apps, including WhatsApp and Tweetbot 4. This gives users a new way to browse and preview links (and images if supported) before properly opening them. It comes in handy too,
as you can now see if the link your friend tweeted is something you’re interested in reading before loading it up in full-screen mode.
7. Hands-free Siri
Another exclusive iPhone 6s and 6s Plus feature is hands-free Siri, something that up until now has only been possible when your iOS device is plugged in and charging. iPhone 6s and 6s Plus users can ‘train’ Siri to recognise only their voice, allowing them to activate Siri from anywhere simply by saying ‘Hey Siri’. Before you impress your friends with your always-listening virtual assistant, you need to set it up by heading to the Settings app > General > and toggling the ‘Allow “Hey Siri”’ option on. Once toggled on, you have to go through the initial setup process where Siri gets to know the sound of your voice. Simply repeat the phrases that appear on screen, then you should be able to
activate Siri by saying “Hey Siri” at any time.
8. Make darker strokes in Notes
Using the new 3D Touch technology found in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, users are able to make
darker strokes in Notes simply by applying more pressure on the display, much like when shading with a pencil. Though this is a slightly novel use for the pressure-sensitive display, I’m sure artistic users could find a use for it. It’s also worth mentioning that third-party app developers can also utilise the technology in the same way, so expect to start seeing pressure-sensitive drawing features added to
the likes of Paper at some point soon.
9. Adjust 3D Touch sensitivity
3D Touch is a great addition to the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, but with the excess pressure used on the display, there is an issue – it can cause the oleophobic coating of the iPhone display to wear out sooner than usual. The oleophobic coating on the display helps your display stay relatively smudge free, keeping grease at bay by providing a surface it can’t ‘stick’ to it. It also makes your display feel
smooth to the touch, which also helps with scratch resistance – reduced friction will cause sharp/dangerous materials to slide off the surface, rather than damaging it.
It’s not permanent though, so excessive pressure may speed up the process of wearing it out. To help
combat the issue, you can turn up the sensitivity of 3D Touch to activate it without needing as much pressure. To do this, simply head to Settings >General > Accessibility > 3D Touch then adjust the 3D Touch Sensitivity from medium to light.
10. Peek into an entire album in Apple Music
Let’s say you have found an awesome song while listening to Apple Music’s ‘Hot Tracks’ section in the New tab. Using 3D Touch, deep press on the track to get a glimpse of the entire album that song is a part of. From there you can start playing the entire album, put it on shuffle or add it to My Music.
11. Add a new number to your Contacts
What happens when you get a new number sent to your Messages? Pressing the digits launches straight into a call, but deep pressing it gives you new options. You can now use 3D Touch to create a new contact or add a number to an existing contacts right from the Messages app.
12. Switch apps with 3D Touch
Instead of double tapping your home button every time you want to pull up the App Switcher, try this: deep press on the left edge of the screen. Your background apps will come seamlessly into view. Just one more added functionalities of the new 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus.
13. Siri can do accents now
Apple says Siri is getting smarter, so much in fact that she can now pull off three different English accents: American, Australian and British. Just a simple preference, really, but having an AI spout answers in a British accent just makes her sound more well informed.
14. Share location in Maps
You ask your friend to meet you at a coffee shop, but there are quite a few in the city? In Maps you
can deep press on a place to quickly share the exact location of where you want to meet. You can also
deep press on the you-are-here blue dot to share your current location.
15. Send quick replies in Messages
Similar to the Messages for Apple Watch app, you can now send quick replies on your iPhone 6s. Deep press on a conversation thread to peek into it and pull it up to reveal a list of short replies, like “Thanks” or “Talk later?” Different conversations pull up different quick replies. For whatever reason, some of them only have the option to text back with “OK.”
16. Enabling 4K video recording
The iPhone 6s can shoot 4K video, but that recording mode is not on by default. You have to enable it in settings. The 4K videos do take up a lot of space on your iPhone (about 375MB per minute), but they are totally worth it.
17. View recently taken pics in Camera
Don’t slow down your photo-taking rampage. The Camera app on the iPhone 6s lets you view your recently taken photos while still taking new ones. Just deep press on the photo thumbnail on the bottom left corner. After you’re done browsing through your recently taken pics, you’ll go right back to the Camera app so you can keep snapping away.
18. Activate Siri with your voice
Enable the new “Hey Siri” feature in your settings, and Siri becomes voice-activated. Just say “Hey Siri” whenever you have a query. Siri only responds to the sound of your voice, so here’s how you can set this up once you enable the feature.
19. Message your most recent contacts
Want to pick up a conversation with the contact you last texted? The Messages app has all your favourite people right at your fingertips. Deep press on the icon to launch a quick action to message one of the last three people you texted.
20. Peek into another city’s weather conditions
Planning a ski trip this weekend? You can peek into weather conditions from any of the cities saved you added to the Weather app by deep pressing on them.
21. Hide native apps
Every iPhone user has that rarely used folder hidden on a faraway home screen with titles ranging from “Apple Stuff” to “Crap I Never Use.” With the iPhone 6s you can now hide some of those native apps from your screen, like News, Podcasts, iBooks Store and even Safari for you Chrome
diehards. Go to the Restriction page in settings to toggle these apps off your iPhone. Unfortunately, there’s no way to get rid of Stocks or Compass yet.
22. Easier way to redeem codes in the App Store
If you want to redeem a code from the App Store, you have to scroll all the way down past all the app
collections to get to a Redeem Code button. With 3D Touch, however, you can deep press on the App Store app right on your home screen and launch a quick action for redeeming codes. This trick also works in the iTunes Store app.
23. Manually activate Low Power Mode
Your iPhone 6s will ask you if you want to enable Low Power Mode once you get to the last 20 percent of battery. But if you want your iPhone to last longer even when it’s fully charged, you can manually activate Low Power Mode in your settings. During Low Power Mode, you can’t use “Hey Siri,” background app refresh is turned off, and other visual effects are disabled to save battery life.
1. Set a Live Photo as lock screen image
One of the biggest features of the iPhone 6s is the camera, namely the introduction of ‘Live Photos’, still images that animate when activated via force touch. These Live Photos are meant to give you a glimpse of what was happening when the photo was taken – a fantastic feature when you want to take a trip down memory lane. However, many iPhone 6s and 6s Plus users are unaware that these live photos can be used as the lock screen image and animated at any time. To set a live photo as your lock screen image, simply open the Photos app and browse to the image you want to use. Once opened, tap the Share button (square with an arrow pointing out of it) and scroll along until you find ‘Set as Wallpaper’, then tap it. Making sure ‘Live Photo’ is selected, set the image as your lock screen wallpaper and lock your iPhone. Now all you need to do is force touch the screen to animate the image.
2. Quick access to multitasking menu
For years, iOS users have trained their brains to double tap the home button to access the multitasking menu, but that action has been rendered moot by the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Why? Because you can easily access the multitasking menu from anywhere in iOS, simply by force pressing the left side of the screen and swiping towards the center of the display. If done correctly, you should be taken to the multitasking center, where you can easily switch between your recently used apps. Though some users might find it a bit awkward to use at first, it’s a very handy gesture to have once you’re used to it. It’s also worth mentioning that a similar action can take you back to the last used app without accessing the multitasking menu. Simply force press on the left hand side of the screen, then drag your finger from the left hand side of the display to the right hand side. The app you were last using should be dragged onto screen, replacing the active app.
3. Quickly reply to messages
The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus also give you a new way to easily reply to text messages. Proactive was a big introduction to iOS 9, and lets the operating system learn your habits including the apps you use, people you speak to and even how you reply to text messages. This information can then be used to your advantage – in this case, ‘peek’ at the message thread to get a preview of the text conversation by force pressing on the message, then simply swipe up to reveal a list of predetermined replies,
and tap on the one you want to use. As well as a list of predetermined replies, it may feature contextual replies, that is if a question was asked, replies would include ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘maybe’, and so on.
4. Access Camera shortcuts
3D Touch was the biggest feature of the iPhone 6s, enabling a whole new way for users to interact with their smartphones. One of the key features of 3D Touch was being able to force tap an app icon to display a menu with shortcuts to the most prominent features of the app. This means that instead of
having to open the Camera app and swipe to the recording mode of choice, you can force touch the icon and easily select which you want. You have the choice of taking a selfie, recording a video, recording in slo-mo or taking a standard photo. It’s not just the Camera app that offers 3D Touch shortcuts, as many stock iOS apps have shortcuts – experiment with what you can do! Third-party apps are slowly adding support too, with early adopters including Instagram (options to publish a new post, view your activity, search or access direct messages) and Tweetbot 4 (reply to last mention, access activity tab, tweet the last photo or write a tweet).
5. Turn the keyboard into a trackpad
3D Touch isn’t only handy for accessing app shortcuts or previewing message threads – it can also make text editing on an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus less of a headache. We’ve all been in situations where we’ve misspelt a single letter of a word on our iPhones, and tried to insert the cursor mid-word to edit it (and failed a number of times before deleting the word and re-writing it). There’s no need to do that any more, as you’re now able to force press the keyboard to turn it into a trackpad, allowing you to place the cursor wherever you want. It doesn’t just stop at being able to move the cursor around either – once in trackpad mode, you can tap again once to highlight a single word, twice to highlight the entire sentence or thrice to select everything you’ve written.
6. Preview Safari links
Here’s another useful use for 3D Touch, this time allowing users to preview a link before opening it.
iPhone 6s and 6s Plus users can ‘peek’ at Safari links in-app by lightly pressing on a URL, giving you a preview of the page before applying more pressure to ‘pop’ open Safari and open the link. If you’re
not interested, simply let go of the display and the preview will disappear.
This feature can be found in a number of places throughout iOS, from the Messages app to the Notes app to third-party apps, including WhatsApp and Tweetbot 4. This gives users a new way to browse and preview links (and images if supported) before properly opening them. It comes in handy too,
as you can now see if the link your friend tweeted is something you’re interested in reading before loading it up in full-screen mode.
7. Hands-free Siri
Another exclusive iPhone 6s and 6s Plus feature is hands-free Siri, something that up until now has only been possible when your iOS device is plugged in and charging. iPhone 6s and 6s Plus users can ‘train’ Siri to recognise only their voice, allowing them to activate Siri from anywhere simply by saying ‘Hey Siri’. Before you impress your friends with your always-listening virtual assistant, you need to set it up by heading to the Settings app > General > and toggling the ‘Allow “Hey Siri”’ option on. Once toggled on, you have to go through the initial setup process where Siri gets to know the sound of your voice. Simply repeat the phrases that appear on screen, then you should be able to
activate Siri by saying “Hey Siri” at any time.
8. Make darker strokes in Notes
Using the new 3D Touch technology found in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, users are able to make
darker strokes in Notes simply by applying more pressure on the display, much like when shading with a pencil. Though this is a slightly novel use for the pressure-sensitive display, I’m sure artistic users could find a use for it. It’s also worth mentioning that third-party app developers can also utilise the technology in the same way, so expect to start seeing pressure-sensitive drawing features added to
the likes of Paper at some point soon.
9. Adjust 3D Touch sensitivity
3D Touch is a great addition to the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, but with the excess pressure used on the display, there is an issue – it can cause the oleophobic coating of the iPhone display to wear out sooner than usual. The oleophobic coating on the display helps your display stay relatively smudge free, keeping grease at bay by providing a surface it can’t ‘stick’ to it. It also makes your display feel
smooth to the touch, which also helps with scratch resistance – reduced friction will cause sharp/dangerous materials to slide off the surface, rather than damaging it.
It’s not permanent though, so excessive pressure may speed up the process of wearing it out. To help
combat the issue, you can turn up the sensitivity of 3D Touch to activate it without needing as much pressure. To do this, simply head to Settings >General > Accessibility > 3D Touch then adjust the 3D Touch Sensitivity from medium to light.
10. Peek into an entire album in Apple Music
Let’s say you have found an awesome song while listening to Apple Music’s ‘Hot Tracks’ section in the New tab. Using 3D Touch, deep press on the track to get a glimpse of the entire album that song is a part of. From there you can start playing the entire album, put it on shuffle or add it to My Music.
11. Add a new number to your Contacts
What happens when you get a new number sent to your Messages? Pressing the digits launches straight into a call, but deep pressing it gives you new options. You can now use 3D Touch to create a new contact or add a number to an existing contacts right from the Messages app.
12. Switch apps with 3D Touch
Instead of double tapping your home button every time you want to pull up the App Switcher, try this: deep press on the left edge of the screen. Your background apps will come seamlessly into view. Just one more added functionalities of the new 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus.
13. Siri can do accents now
Apple says Siri is getting smarter, so much in fact that she can now pull off three different English accents: American, Australian and British. Just a simple preference, really, but having an AI spout answers in a British accent just makes her sound more well informed.
14. Share location in Maps
You ask your friend to meet you at a coffee shop, but there are quite a few in the city? In Maps you
can deep press on a place to quickly share the exact location of where you want to meet. You can also
deep press on the you-are-here blue dot to share your current location.
15. Send quick replies in Messages
Similar to the Messages for Apple Watch app, you can now send quick replies on your iPhone 6s. Deep press on a conversation thread to peek into it and pull it up to reveal a list of short replies, like “Thanks” or “Talk later?” Different conversations pull up different quick replies. For whatever reason, some of them only have the option to text back with “OK.”
16. Enabling 4K video recording
The iPhone 6s can shoot 4K video, but that recording mode is not on by default. You have to enable it in settings. The 4K videos do take up a lot of space on your iPhone (about 375MB per minute), but they are totally worth it.
17. View recently taken pics in Camera
Don’t slow down your photo-taking rampage. The Camera app on the iPhone 6s lets you view your recently taken photos while still taking new ones. Just deep press on the photo thumbnail on the bottom left corner. After you’re done browsing through your recently taken pics, you’ll go right back to the Camera app so you can keep snapping away.
18. Activate Siri with your voice
Enable the new “Hey Siri” feature in your settings, and Siri becomes voice-activated. Just say “Hey Siri” whenever you have a query. Siri only responds to the sound of your voice, so here’s how you can set this up once you enable the feature.
19. Message your most recent contacts
Want to pick up a conversation with the contact you last texted? The Messages app has all your favourite people right at your fingertips. Deep press on the icon to launch a quick action to message one of the last three people you texted.
20. Peek into another city’s weather conditions
Planning a ski trip this weekend? You can peek into weather conditions from any of the cities saved you added to the Weather app by deep pressing on them.
21. Hide native apps
Every iPhone user has that rarely used folder hidden on a faraway home screen with titles ranging from “Apple Stuff” to “Crap I Never Use.” With the iPhone 6s you can now hide some of those native apps from your screen, like News, Podcasts, iBooks Store and even Safari for you Chrome
diehards. Go to the Restriction page in settings to toggle these apps off your iPhone. Unfortunately, there’s no way to get rid of Stocks or Compass yet.
22. Easier way to redeem codes in the App Store
If you want to redeem a code from the App Store, you have to scroll all the way down past all the app
collections to get to a Redeem Code button. With 3D Touch, however, you can deep press on the App Store app right on your home screen and launch a quick action for redeeming codes. This trick also works in the iTunes Store app.
23. Manually activate Low Power Mode
Your iPhone 6s will ask you if you want to enable Low Power Mode once you get to the last 20 percent of battery. But if you want your iPhone to last longer even when it’s fully charged, you can manually activate Low Power Mode in your settings. During Low Power Mode, you can’t use “Hey Siri,” background app refresh is turned off, and other visual effects are disabled to save battery life.
55 best apps for kids
Keep your children happy with these great iOS apps
Put a child in the same room as an iPad or an iPhone and they will instinctively reach for it. Perhaps it’s the bright colours and the feel of using a touchscreen; the simplicity of the iOS interface also plays a part. But app for kids love messing with smartphones and tablets.
Mobile devices can do a great job entertaining and educating your offspring. But not all apps are created equal. Some are expensive to buy or contain in-app purchases designed to tempt kids. Others aren’t appropriate for youngsters. For this article we’ve trawled the App Store to pick out some of the favourites of our editors and their children for learning, creativity and fun.
Babies and toddlers
We’ll start with a couple of suggestions for the very youngest age group. These are aimed more at parents than the babies themselves, of course, and we wouldn’t recommend much screen time for the very young.
1. Baby Feeding Log
Price: Free
The lives of small babies are entirely structured around the twin cycles of eating and sleeping, and understanding these cycles (which will be specific to your child) can make the living hell that is the first three months of parenthood slightly less hellish. Why is she crying? Ah, it’s been nearly three hours since the last feed. Or she only took 130ml last time. Or she only took 130ml the last three times, and maybe she’s poorly. And so on.
If you’re breast-feeding then things are complicated in a different way, because you no longer have access to the volumes of milk consumed – at which point timing the feed becomes critical. You will also want to remember which breast you used last time, and if that seems like the sort of thing that’s easy to remember then you haven’t got up for a feed at 3 in the morning. This app is a simple, free and one-hand-optimised way to keep track of these figures and timings (despite the name it covers sleep and ‘diapers’ as well as feeding), and while it isn’t perfect, we strongly recommend getting either this or something like it.
2. Sleepy Sounds
Price: Free
Familiar sounds and songs can act as a valuable trigger, helping to indicate to baby when it’s time to sleep. In time you’re likely to end up with a dog-eared musical soft toy that adds touch and smell to the ensemble of familiarity, but when starting out or visiting family, having an emergency measure up your sleeve (or on your phone) can be a lifesaver. Sleepy Sounds is limited, with just four white noise options (the tumble dryer is particularly restful) and three sets of nature sounds to choose from – we’d steer clear of the somewhat abrasive lullaby selection. But it’s free and helps to ease one of the more desperate situations faced by beginner parents: bedtime, with rabbit nowhere to be found.
Ages 5 and under
Age recommendations are approximate, of course, and you won’t need to be told that kids learn and mature at different speeds. Check out our choices on the App Store (have a look at screenshots, any available preview videos and so on) before spending any money, to see if the difficulty, complexity and reading level are appropriate for your child.
3. Blackboard Madness: Math
Price: Free
Got a maths-whizz child who wants a challenge? Blackboard Madness is a set of fast-paced, quick-fire maths challenges, taking in addition, subtraction, division, multiplications, algebra, and > (more than) and < (less than) questions. This is a great test of mental maths skills, logic thinking and reaction. It’s like Live Mathletics on speed. You have to slash the correct answers before they drop off the blackboard. There are kung fu sound effects to make you feel like a martial arts maths black belt. Don’t give this to a child just starting out on maths as the pace is pretty frenetic, but mental maths reaction speed is a great skill to teach more experienced maths students. As with any decent challenge game there are high scores and player statistics to track performance, achievements and badges as rewards. We enjoyed Blackboard Madness. It’s free. So why not try it?
4. Dinosaur Park Math
Price: 79p
Dinosaur Park Math is a fun way for children to learn addition and subtraction from 0 to 20. Kids need to answer sums correctly in order to chisel away at rocks that hide dinosaur fossils within them. Kids can learn dinosaur facts while they’re learning maths, too. There are also some less educational but equally fun games to play within the app. We’d suggest there’s a risk that kids will get into the habit of guessing, though, as there are no major consequences to getting the questions wrong. There’s a free version of the app too, so you can try it out and decide whether your kids will enjoy it before upgrading to the paid version.
5. Dino Tim
Price: Free
Dino Tim is a great way for younger children to get to grips with colours, shapes and their first words. Dino Tim’s family has been abducted by witches, and kids have to solve various educational puzzles in order to save them. The game involves solving colour and geometric shape puzzles, as well as running, flying, jumping and even a little bit of magic.
The aim of the game is to teach kids to recognise basic geometric shapes, as well as to learn about colours and even their first words. The game has been fully translated into a number of languages (French, Spanish and Italian to list a few) which provides your child with a great opportunity to learn a foreign language in a fun way, from a young age.
6. Doodle Critter Math: Shapes
Price: £2.29
Doodle Critter Math: Shapes teaches your children basic shapes such as triangle, rectangle, square, hexagon and circle. Kids learn to draw different shapes by touching the ‘critters’ (small animals). A range of tasks including sorting, matching and memory games, make learning fun. Doodle Critter Math is designed app for kids aged three to five and is another great way that young children can use the technology on the iPad to learn basic skills.
7. Elephant Art! Painting Room
Price: Free/£2.29
It’s immediately clear this isn’t a typical art app when you prod a button and an elephant’s massive foot crushes a banana, splattering it across a canvas on the wall. Further buttons provide additional destructive capabilities, obliterating all manner of household objects that magically become transformed into paint and flung at the artwork, creating a kind of abstract masterpiece. It’s all very silly and a world away from virtual crayons, but the developer notes that is the point. Elephant Art isn’t about recreating the real world, but celebrating colours, magic and art.
8. Endless Alphabet
Price: £4.99
Although more conventional than Metamorphabet, listed elsewhere in this feature, Endless Alphabet proves that dialling down the surreal doesn’t mean an app about letters has to be boring. On the contrary, Endless Alphabet is a lot of fun as you choose a word, watch the letters scatter, and drag them back into place. The letters come to life when touched, wriggling under your fingers (doubly so when using Force Touch on a modern iPhone), and once the word is complete, you’re treated to a little animation that explains what the word means.
9. Geo Walk HD
Price: £2.29
Geo Walk HD is essentially a digital version of an old world encyclopedia. You can spin an interactive digital globe and touch location-based flashcards to learn more about the world, or you can take quizzes about your knowledge of the people, places and things located in the app.
10. Intro to Colors, by Montessorium
Price: £3.99
With Intro to Colors, your child learns the basics of colours through a series of matching games. So it starts out white matching red, blue and yellow before moving on to secondary levels and gradients. Kids learn to mix and match paint to create colours, as well as how to learn to spot and name different colours. It’s a pretty app, which is one reason we like it, and it makes use of the iPad to deliver something children would not get from other more traditional means.
11. Lego Duplo Train
Price: Free
Your toddler will love to drive a colourful Lego Duplo Train from station to station. Choosing and loading wagons, building bridges, stopping at crossings, refuelling and laying new tracks around pesky rocks. A toddler’s dream.
12. Little Digits
Price: £2.99
Back when the iPad first arrived, people were excited to learn it could in fact recognise all ten fingers touching the screen at once, yet few apps took advantage of this. Little Digits reasons that kids often count by using their fingers, and here they can do so by prodding an iPad. Every additional digit used updates the on-screen number accordingly (numbers here being represented by inventive, colourful beasts); and once everyone’s familiar with how the app works, there are basic counting and maths puzzles to try.
13. Mathletics Student
Free. Requires annual subscription
Recommended by teachers and parents is Mathletics, a subscription-based online system of maths learning. For £39/year the child can run through adaptive-learning, level-staged maths tasks and games via computer or iPad app. Students learn at their own pace. Mathletics is fun and features a great rewards system for kids, who win Bronze, Silver and Gold certificates by scoring points in a wide range of maths questions. These questions are presented in a fun and colourful way with animations to brighten things up but also to show how to reach the correct answers. Parents will learn a thing or two, too.
Live Mathletics sets the child up against other Mathletics players across the world, and is a great way to learn simple number bonds and increase the child’s’ recall speed. Times Tables Toons helps teach children their times table through song and animal animation. There are also weekly progress emails to monitor progress via a Parent Centre. My daughter has been using Mathletics for over a year now, and it has undoubtedly helped her with her maths, and me understanding/remembering/learning alongside her. We sit down a few times a week for short periods of time, or for one 30-minute session that should be long enough for her to score her 1,000 points and earn a new certificate. She loves it, too.
14. Miximal
Price: £1.99
There’s nothing especially innovative about Miximal – it’s yet another of those sliding games, where you make strange combinations of animals. But what sets Miximal apart from its peers is the sense of craft and care that’s gone into the app. The style is very cartoonish, yet all of the animals are very recognisable. Each is animated, too. Tap one of the sections and it moves and jiggles. Fashion a ‘complete’ animal and it will offer a celebratory alternate animation. Additionally, if your child wonders at any point what strange mixed-up creature is currently on the screen, a quick tap of the play button will give you (and read out) its name.
15. The Monster at the End of This Book... Starring Grover
Price: £3.99
This updated and improved version of the Sesame Streetthemed book is a lot of fun. As Grover performs, the words appear on the screen, highlighted as they’re spoken. And you can interact with the app by touching a knot, for example, to make it unravel. Tap Grover to tickle him.
16. Monster Mingle
Price: £2.99
There’s a lot to be said for exploration and play when a child is developing. Monster Mingle’s free-play nature makes it ideal for such things. You create your own friendly monster by dragging parts to it that are lying about the place, and said monster can then amble about, dive into the ocean or soar into the air. The world features all kinds of strange creatures to discover and interact with, and the goal-free nature of Monster Mingle makes for a stress-free and highly entertaining time.
17. Monument Valley
Price: £2.99
One of the most beautiful and captivating games ever released, Monument Valley isn’t cheap (for an app) at £2.99 but it will keep children and adults engaged for hours working our how to help the silent princess Ida through mysterious and mind-bending, fantastical architecture, uncovering hidden paths, unfolding Escher-like optical illusions of impossible geometry, and outsmarting the barking Crow People. Monument Valley is both surreal and serene exploration and will surely go down in game history as one of the unique greats.
18. Mr Thorne’s Times Table Terra
Mr Thorne’s Divide + Conquer
Mr Thorne’s Addition Space Station
Price: £1.49 each or £2.99
for the Maths Universe Bundle London teacher Christopher Thorne must be one of the coolest Sirs on the planet, and he uses the planets as the theme for his three maths apps: Mr Thorne’s Times Table Terra, Mr Thorne’s Divide + Conquer, and Mr Thorne’s Addition Space Station. The apps are simple and look gorgeous – sure to be a hit with boys as well as girls. When you score 10 out of 10 on a particular addition, times table or division test you get to keep a space station or planet, depending on the app you’re using. There’s a mystery challenge when you’ve unlocked all the tests, which is an extra incentive – and different to the Squeebles and Math Bingo reward games.
Each game has three levels: Beginner/Newcomer, First Class/Elite and World Class/Legend. The top level is going to test adults, too, so you can join in the sum fun. Mr Thorne’s Addition Space Station has 42 mental maths tests, which includes adding multiple numbers, decimals and fractions so is suitable for children aged five to 11. Mr Thorne’s Times Table Terra features 60 tests based on basic multiplication and times tables. They also feature video tutorials from Mr Thorne.
Mr Thorne’s Divide + Conquer has 50 maths tests based on division and inverse times tables. I recommend all the Mr Thorne maths apps, as they’re simple to use, look great, and should really engage kids in these maths basics.
19. My Very Hungry Caterpillar
Price: £2.99
The Very Hungry Caterpillar has munched its way through countless books, a telly animation, and even the odd activities-based app. But My Very Hungry Caterpillar takes a different approach, transforming the ravenous larva’s surroundings into an interactive game. The result’s not unlike a no-lose Tamagotchi, with you feeding the caterpillar, playing with it, helping it doze under a leaf, and watching it grow. Eventually, like in the original story, the caterpillar transforms into a beautiful butterfly, at which point a new egg is laid for the adventure to begin anew.
20. Number Monster
Price: £2.29
One for the very early learners, Number Monster (from Wombi) is a simple app that teaches kids to recognise numbers – from one to 20. It’s friendly and easy for kids to pick up. Parents can turn on and off visual clues as their child progresses. It doesn’t go much further than that so is a little expensive for what it offers. There’s also a Shape Monster games (at the time of writing this was offered for free). Like Number Monster it’s easy and friendly, and can be set at different levels up to hexagons and pentagons from a start with squares and circles, and so on. Wombi also offers Colour Monster and Letter Monster apps, and a simple telling-the-time app called Around The Clock.
21. Nursery Rhymes
Price: £4.99 (Download Nursery Rhymes Bundle) This set of three apps reimagines famous nursery rhymes as tiny interactive scenes. In ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’, there’s a fiddling cat, leaping cow, grinning moon, and crockery eloping with cutlery. Every item on the screen can be tapped to make it wobble and emit a sound effect, and the rhyme is sung through when the words are tapped. Navigation between rhymes is by way of large arrows at the top of the screen, ensuring the Nursery Rhymes collection is suitable for even very young toddlers. Note that the three volumes are also available individually, and there are separate free versions, too. Each of those has a single unlocked rhyme, the rest being available via a single IAP.
22. Peek-a-Zoo
Price: £2.29
There’s an elegant simplicity at the heart of Peeka-Zoo, and it might at first appear a bit too simple. But any time spent with the app and a small child will dismiss any lingering concerns. You’ll grow to love the gang of sweet cartoon animals, and the simple questions for the child to answer: Who is winking? Who is dressed up? And so on. You soon realise that although this app is very straightforward, it’s cunningly teaching your child all kinds of things, from identifying animals to types of clothing and actions.
23. Pure Math
Price: Free, £1.49 to unlock full version Pure Math has a simpler and cleaner interface than many of the colourful apps in this round-up (hence the ‘pure’ in its name), and a faster difficulty progression, too, so it suits older children best. At the start of each level, the player will have a score of 1,000. This will decrease as time ticks by, and each time the player gets a wrong answer. The aim is to have as close to 1,000 points as possible at the end of each level. To begin, the sums are very easy, but with each level, they get harder and harder until even the adults will struggle. The addition mode is free, but to unlock the subtraction, multiplication and division modes, you’ll need to upgrade to the full version for £1.49.
24. Redshift
Price: £7.99
And here’s a delightful astronomical option. Redshift uses your current location to show you which stars, constellations and planets you should be able to see. If you enable the Follow Sky option, Redshift will update what you should expect to see as you point your iPad or iPhone at different spots in the sky while you pan around. It’s not a cheap option at £7.99, but a deep and rewarding experience.
25. Sago Mini Babies
Price: £2.29
This one’s all about caring for a little Sago baby, feeding, bathing and playing with a tiny cat, rabbit or dog. There’s plenty of character in evidence, whether you’re making your on-screen chum grin when splashing about in the bath or glare when you splatter a load of food mush on its face. According to the developer, the familiarity of the activities will help young children better understand their world and improve nurturing behaviour; and the colourful visuals and straightforward controls should ensure it’s plenty of fun for them to play.
26. Sago Mini Monsters
Price: £2.29
One for younger monster-creators, before working their way up to the likes of Monster Mingle or DNA Play, Sago Mini Monsters has you coax a monster from gloopy green slime. You then tap colours and paint your beast before interacting with it. Most interaction comes in the form of feeding the monster dishes that appear, along with prodding and poking horns, eyes and mouths to change their appearance. A quick brush of the teeth and some decorations and the monster’s time is done. You can then take a photo to share before starting the process again.
27. Solar Walk
Price: £2.29
If your kids are feeling bored later tonight, how about a spot of astronomy? The amazing Solar Walk is a great app to get you started. The £2.29 app lets you explore the solar system in exquisite detail. You can pinch and zoom around the heavens, examining celestial bodies in an immersive 3D environment from any angle or perspective.
28. SquiggleFish
Price: £2.49 (App Store Link)
SquiggleFish is a great way to blend the creative nature of children with the digital world. Your child will start with an empty fish tank, and they need to draw fish to fill it. Rather than drawing fish on the screen, kids are encouraged to draw fish with pen and paper. Kids then move these fish into the fish tank via the iPad’s camera, and they magically come to life. SquiggleFish is a pretty unique experience for younger children (it’s rated for 4+) but you’ll have fun with it no matter what your age.
29. Toca Band
Price: £2.49
This smart, uncomplicated game is all about creating music from a band of colourful characters. You simply drag them to the stage and they get on with playing their instrument. Move them to a spot with a different colour and they’ll change what they’re playing. Any character plonked in the star position (unsubtly marked with a massive yellow star) gives you the chance to explore more sounds as part of a solo performance – perfect for when you think pianist Dancy Nancy or maracas player Shaky McBones hasn’t had enough of the limelight.
30. Sago Mini Friends
Price: Free
This sweet selection of mini games has you choose from one of the brightly coloured Sago characters and then embark on a series of play dates with similarly vibrant chums. There are 10 activities in all, including doing the washing up and munching your way through a selection of goodies. Characters respond appropriately, such as a disappointed look on not getting a piece of cake when someone else has been fed. Apparently, this is designed to promote empathy in children. That might sound a bit worthy, so rest assured the app’s overall breezy nature is almost relentlessly charming and fun, and it’s extremely generous in being free yet having no ads nor IAP whatsoever.
31. Shape Gurus
Price: £1.49
In this interactive story, children are regularly challenged to complete puzzles based around shape-matching. In one case, a little bird flutters towards the outline of a nest, while five brown triangles wait to be dragged into place. Elsewhere, shape and colour matching creates flowers and a watering can. The voiceover isn’t the best around, but the 27 puzzles and story should keep a child engrossed for a good while, and the journey’s fun enough that it will warrant repeating a number of times.
32. Wee Kids Math
Price: £1.99
Wee Kids Math (from Ebooks & Kids) has a whole bunch of colourful games to teach kids about numbers and basic maths. This app is good for children just starting to learn their number shapes and order (0-20), up to those starting out on addition and subtraction. It’s not really for those who have grasped these concepts already.
There’s plenty of variety – and that’s important when encouraging kids to like maths – and the games are simple to get the hang of despite a lack of instruction from the developers. I’d have preferred a little more help when starting the game, as you have to guess what to do on each new game. There are many varied games to play, including all the kids favourites such as insects and other animals, and space arcade games.
One other gripe is that the number ‘3’ in all games looks too much like an ‘8’ on a small screen, which can be confusing. Lesson to developers: don’t needlessly confuse your young users. These criticisms aside, Wee Kids Math is a fun addition to your maths app library, and teaches a lot of basic concepts in a fun and engaging way.
33. Where’s My Water?
Price: £1.49
A great and simple game that slightly older children should be able to get the hang of. There’s a supply of water at point in each level, and an alligator at another, waiting for a shower. You have to remove intervening rock and clay (with a swipe of a finger) to complete the circuit. It gets harder later on, mind.
Ages 6 to 8
Now for some apps that are suitable for a slightly older audience. Here are our recommendations for children aged six to eight. We’ll repeat ourselves, and point out that age recommendations are approximate. Check out our choices on the App Store to see if the difficulty, complexity and reading
level are appropriate for your child.
34. DNA Play
Price: £2.29
Any suggestion that DNA Play can teach six to eight year olds the basics behind genetics is perhaps pushing it a bit. But what this toy does allow for is the creation of almost limitless monsters. This is achieved by completing ‘DNA puzzles’ (basic shape-matching) and manipulating the ‘DNA’ relating to a monster’s limbs, torso, face and features (by dragging shapes or just prodding the relevant bits of the monster). There’s also a modicum of interaction, where you can take your monster dancing and skating, and take a photo to share with friends. Smartly, the app enables you to save a monster before creating another, enabling you to revisit favourites at a later date.
35. Kodable
Price: Free
One of the most valuable skills for a youngster to learn in the digital economy is coding, which is where Kodable comes in (at a very basic level). SurfScoreLLC’s premise for the app is very simple: “The fuzz family have crash-landed on Smeeborg and they need your help navigating the Technomazes.” The commands to get the fuzzballs through the mazes are all drag and drop so with a little trial and error we can easily find our way through, earn the rewards and get to grips with the fundamentals of coding.
36. Loopimal
Price: £2.49
The idea behind Loopimal is to teach children the basics of making music by way of a colourful and simple-to-use loop sequencer. That might sound complicated, but it really isn’t. You get a bopping animal, and drag coloured shapes to a looping timeline. When the playhead moves over one of the shapes, the animal performs an animation that alters the music in some way. Once your child’s figured out how it all works, you can split the screen into two or four, creating an oddball four-track menagerie-cum-band that will entertain for hours.
37. Math Bingo
Price: £1.49
Play the game that’s all about numbers to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide: yes, Bingo.
Math Bingo sets a bunch of questions dependent on your choice and the level of your child’s maths skills. A timer ticks away so you’re out to beat your personal best time each go. To start we’d advise disregarding the clock as this can put undue pressure on the child.
Math Bingo is colourful and features a collection of weird bug aliens to make maths even more fun. Kids love to win the Bingo Bugs and they can then use them in a game of Bingo Bug Bungie – a sort of pinball game where you fire your collected bugs to knockout coins to beat your highest score. It’s enough to make even reluctant mathematicians have another go at multiplication! Within Math Bingo there are now two new games you can play after completing a Bingo board: Math Stack and Math Fling.
38. Math Farm
Price: £1.49
Once your child has mastered the art of drawing numbers and is able to recognise what they mean, they’ll be ready to begin learning basic sums. Math Farm requires players to connect a sum to the correct answer. Every time the child gets the sum correct, another part of the farmyard animal will appear. Complete the whole animal to win.
39. Metamorphabet
Price: £2.99
This Apple Design Award winner transforms letters into words, often by way of surreal and frequently strange animations. If you fancy seeing a caterpillar gamely driving a car that you can fling about the screen (complete with crashing noises when it lands) or an ostrich tentatively playing with a very solid-looking orange, this is the app to buy. For kids, it’ll almost certainly captivate more
than traditional fare in this space, because of its playful, interactive design. And although the app was created for the six to eight age range, it’s perfectly suitable for younger children (or, for that matter, much older parents).
40. Squeebles Times Tables 2
Price: £2.99
Master the times tables with the help of Whizz, defeat the nasty Maths Monster, and collect little Squeeble characters, trophies and stars as you learn. Like Math Bingo, it’s a colourful app that makes learning fun. There’s no timer so your child isn’t rushed into guessing, and they’ll love collecting all the game rewards. It’s a great way to test kids on their multiplication and times tables.
The app has been recently updated and has an expanded reward system, fun mini game, six tables modes, unlimited players and plenty of stats and reporting for parents and teachers – again thankfully without any in-app purchases or adverts. It’s great for testing kids on their times tables and rewarding them for getting them right. There are other Squeebles apps for addition, division, and so on. See the Key Stage Fun Squeebles website (keystagefun.co.uk) for details of all on offer. Each of these are really worth the investment, but try out on one first to check your child finds it fun, too.
41. Star Walk Kids
Price: £2.29
There are quite a few apps that transform your iPhone or iPad into a virtual means to explore the heavens, but the interfaces can be too complex for young children. Star Walk Kids (or, to use its full and awkward SEO-oriented name, 9 Movies of Star Walk Kids – Explore Space) strips back the popular Star Walk app, simplifying how everything works, thereby optimising it for younger users.
That doesn’t mean it’s bereft of information, however: you can still explore the solar system’s planets, constellations, the ISS and Hubble; and there are nine animated films that enable you to delve a bit deeper into the facts and figures behind some of these objects.
42. Toca Nature
Price: £2.49
The developers of Toca Nature aim with their app to capture some of the magic of the great outdoors, and we reckon they’ve succeeded. You get a little square of land, raising mountains or digging rivers with a swipe of a finger. You then tap to plant trees and watch as an ecosystem comes to life. Brilliantly, you can use a magnifying glass to explore your tiny world, collecting fruit and fish, and using them to feed the animals and birds you find. The blank canvas aspect whenever the app restarts is a pity – it would be nice to have a save slot for ‘your’ world, but otherwise this is one of the finest
children’s apps on iOS.
43. Weather by Tinybop
Price: £2.29
There’s clear ambition within Tinybop apps, which try to make tricky concepts approachable through interactive models. In Weather, it’s all about playing with atmospheric forces, and seeing how changes affect the environment. Each scene has a number of elements to experiment with, such as raising or lowering the temperature to see how this impacts on a glass of water or the comfort of a dog in its kennel. Elsewhere, you can zoom into a cloud and observe snow and rain forming. All this is wrapped up in an illustrative art style that’s effective and approachable.
44. Wombi Airplane and Wombi Treasures
Price: £2.29
Wombi Treasures is a basic but fun and graphically rich treasure hunt game for kids, available as iPad, iPhone and Android apps. It engages young children in scouring locations to find hidden artifacts, rewarding perseverance, and keeping kids gripped with their challenge. While the graphics are rich the gameplay is relatively basic but keeps children excited to keep playing again and again.
Ages 9 and over
Finally, here are our recommendations for children aged 9 and over. As always, check out our recommendations on the App Store before spending any money, to see if the difficulty, complexity and reading level are appropriate for your child.
45. Dumb Ways To Die
Price: Free
Originally conceived as a public safety animation for an Australian metro company, Dumbs Ways To Die morphed from a brilliant cartoon and maddeningly catchy tune that kids love to sing into an equally fun game of 15 potentially lethal possibilities. Kids love it and learn how not to get themselves killed at the same time.
46. Earth Primer
Price: £7.99
This beautifully designed app is essentially an interactive textbook, explaining how our planet works. As you leaf through the digital pages, you create volcanos and sculpt mountains, along with, of course, reading through the succinct but informative text alongside the simulations. That should be enough to keep most kids engrossed, but Earth Primer also includes a sandbox that enables you to create and shape a landscape with tools that are only unlocked as you progress through the rest of the book. We’d say experiencing Earth Primer is reward enough, but turning a textbook into a game is a clever move if a reader needs a little extra encouragement.
47. Lego Harry Potter: Years 5 to 7
Price: £3.99
Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 is based on the final three books and last four films within the Harry Potter franchise, given a lighthearted twist by the Lego theme. There’s no question that this will appeal most to a younger audience, but there’s much in it for all to enjoy.
48. Let’s Do Mental Maths
Price: £1.99
Let’s Do Mental Maths for iPhone and iPad are also recommended. They’re a great way to monitor your kids’ progress at maths and test most maths categories. Andrew Brodie, educational author and
former teacher, teamed up with Bloomsbury and Aimer Media to create the Let’s Do Mental Maths apps; the first two of which are aimed at six to seven and 10 to 11 years olds. An app for eight to nine year olds is scheduled for a summer release. They are designed to support the latest National Curriculum requirements and have been developed alongside children in classrooms to help boost
children’s confidence.
Let’s Do Mental Maths uses an engaging quiz format with a cartoon Digit the Dog, who can offer advice when the player gets stuck. There are three main quiz areas: Starter questions to warm up the kids’ maths skills – a quick selection of random questions, uniquely combined every time. Progress tests are made up of 7 sets of 20 questions to grade maths ability and track players’ scores – matched to National Curriculum expected progress.
Practice quizzes consist of nine categories of practice questions: Place Value, Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division, Fractions, Times, Measure and Shape. There is a simple Results dashboard that includes the percentage and number of correct answers as well as the time taken to answer The Let’s Do Mental Maths apps are a nice mix of maths tasks that don’t try too hard with gimmicks but still look like fun, and get children ready for their exams. Recommended.
49. MathBoard
Price: £3.99
Although more expensive than most maths apps MathBoard can be easily configured for school children of all ages, beginning with simple addition and subtraction problems, multiplication and division, and algebra. The blackboard theme is cute, although most kids won’t come anywhere a blackboard in school these days. It is built around multiple choice but encourages working out solutions with a neat scratchboard area where pupils can chalk their sums.
MathBoard’s Problem Solver walks students through the steps required to solve the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division equations. There are also quick reference tables to hand. We especially like the configurable nature of MathBoard, where you can determine number ranges, omit negative answers, and so on. Activities and quizzes can be timed, either as a countdown timer or elapsed time. There’s a free version that tackles addition only so you can have a play before forking out for the full version. You don’t need to be a maths boffin to see the value in that!
50. Mathmateer
Price: 79p
Mathmateer is a fun space-themed maths game in which children can build and customise their own rockets using money they’ve earned while soaring through space. There are 56 different games ranging from simple counting to division and multiplication, so kids of all ages can enjoy playing. Five player profiles can be created, so you can set up one for each child depending on their skill level. The only downfall is that the money system (used to buy rocket parts) is in dollars rather than pounds.
51. Medieval Math Battle
Price: Free
Medieval Math Battle really does make maths into a game, as it is a turn-based battle game where you defeat your opponents (villains, goblins, dragons, and so on) by answering questions based on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). The maths problems increase in difficulty as the child improves their skills. As you win battles you earn coins, potions and weapons. You can use the coins to buy new swords and shields and so forth. If the child plays for 15 minutes there’s a special daily bonus. Medieval Math Battle is free, and comes with the Addition part of the game, but each extra maths type (subtraction, multiplication, division) costs 69p to unlock. So the full cost of everything is £2.07. Apart from the sections to unlock there aren’t any other nasty in-app purchases in the game. Medieval Math Battle is a great idea, and sure to be a hit with kids. It would be nice if the player could be a girl as well as a boy, and the action could be a little faster, but we liked the game.
51. Minion Rush
Price: Free
You love Despicable Me, right? Minion Rush is a great action arcade game where the little yellow Minions jump, fly, dodge obstacles, collect bananas, ride the Fluffy Unicorn, and defeat villains in a variety of different missions. You can customise your Minion with costumes, weapons, and powerups. Earning new locations and different Minions makes this free game a lot of fun for Despicable Me fans and anyone who likes bananas. There are in-app purchases available but not buying any doesn’t affect game play in any way.
52. Operation Math
Price: £2.29
The Americanism in the app’s name might be mildly objectionable to British buyers, but this action
packed maths app has a lot to recommend it. The app mixes basic maths skills for children aged five
to 12 with a time-based spy game. You’re a secret agent battling the evil Dr Odd. You get new uniforms and spy gear for each mission completed. Like the other maths apps here you set your challenges depending on the level of maths skills of the child. This game is all about beating the clock, so try it first in training mode when the player has more time to think about the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division equations. The spy theme is a great idea for making maths
a fun adventure.
53. Times Table Galaxy
Price: Free
The aim of Times Table Galaxy, a free times tables app from the App Store, is to make learning maths a little bit more fun, social and competitive. The app has been designed by award winning educators, and will teach kids their times tables from 2x2 to 12x12 in a fun but challenging way. Kids can screen record their lightning fast times table attempts to show off to family, friends and teachers, and are also able to directly challenge friends to a times table showdown via Apple’s Game Center. For a free app, it’s worth a go, right?
54. Toca Boca Hair Salon 2
Price: £2.49
All the Toca Boca games for kids are great (except Toca Band, which will drive parents round the
bend), but Toca Hair Salon is seriously a must have on any family’s phone or tablet. Toca Boca games are great – they have the design aesthetic of Swedish wooden toys and ‘feel’ a lot like real
world toys that encourage imagination. Critically, they are great fun too.
55. Tynker Premium
Price: £4.49
Tynker Premium is for slightly older children (aged nine to 11). It aims to teach children the basics are coding through drag and drop visual blocks. These blocks are similar to programming code, and enabling children to solve puzzles and beat each level. There is a big push on to make programming more accessible to kids, and Tynker is a good way to do it. Children learn pattern recognition, problem solving, algorithmic thinking and concepts like repetition and conditional logic. Tynker Premium is good fun, too.
Put a child in the same room as an iPad or an iPhone and they will instinctively reach for it. Perhaps it’s the bright colours and the feel of using a touchscreen; the simplicity of the iOS interface also plays a part. But app for kids love messing with smartphones and tablets.
Mobile devices can do a great job entertaining and educating your offspring. But not all apps are created equal. Some are expensive to buy or contain in-app purchases designed to tempt kids. Others aren’t appropriate for youngsters. For this article we’ve trawled the App Store to pick out some of the favourites of our editors and their children for learning, creativity and fun.
Babies and toddlers
We’ll start with a couple of suggestions for the very youngest age group. These are aimed more at parents than the babies themselves, of course, and we wouldn’t recommend much screen time for the very young.
1. Baby Feeding Log
Price: Free
The lives of small babies are entirely structured around the twin cycles of eating and sleeping, and understanding these cycles (which will be specific to your child) can make the living hell that is the first three months of parenthood slightly less hellish. Why is she crying? Ah, it’s been nearly three hours since the last feed. Or she only took 130ml last time. Or she only took 130ml the last three times, and maybe she’s poorly. And so on.
If you’re breast-feeding then things are complicated in a different way, because you no longer have access to the volumes of milk consumed – at which point timing the feed becomes critical. You will also want to remember which breast you used last time, and if that seems like the sort of thing that’s easy to remember then you haven’t got up for a feed at 3 in the morning. This app is a simple, free and one-hand-optimised way to keep track of these figures and timings (despite the name it covers sleep and ‘diapers’ as well as feeding), and while it isn’t perfect, we strongly recommend getting either this or something like it.
2. Sleepy Sounds
Price: Free
Familiar sounds and songs can act as a valuable trigger, helping to indicate to baby when it’s time to sleep. In time you’re likely to end up with a dog-eared musical soft toy that adds touch and smell to the ensemble of familiarity, but when starting out or visiting family, having an emergency measure up your sleeve (or on your phone) can be a lifesaver. Sleepy Sounds is limited, with just four white noise options (the tumble dryer is particularly restful) and three sets of nature sounds to choose from – we’d steer clear of the somewhat abrasive lullaby selection. But it’s free and helps to ease one of the more desperate situations faced by beginner parents: bedtime, with rabbit nowhere to be found.
Ages 5 and under
Age recommendations are approximate, of course, and you won’t need to be told that kids learn and mature at different speeds. Check out our choices on the App Store (have a look at screenshots, any available preview videos and so on) before spending any money, to see if the difficulty, complexity and reading level are appropriate for your child.
3. Blackboard Madness: Math
Price: Free
Got a maths-whizz child who wants a challenge? Blackboard Madness is a set of fast-paced, quick-fire maths challenges, taking in addition, subtraction, division, multiplications, algebra, and > (more than) and < (less than) questions. This is a great test of mental maths skills, logic thinking and reaction. It’s like Live Mathletics on speed. You have to slash the correct answers before they drop off the blackboard. There are kung fu sound effects to make you feel like a martial arts maths black belt. Don’t give this to a child just starting out on maths as the pace is pretty frenetic, but mental maths reaction speed is a great skill to teach more experienced maths students. As with any decent challenge game there are high scores and player statistics to track performance, achievements and badges as rewards. We enjoyed Blackboard Madness. It’s free. So why not try it?
4. Dinosaur Park Math
Price: 79p
Dinosaur Park Math is a fun way for children to learn addition and subtraction from 0 to 20. Kids need to answer sums correctly in order to chisel away at rocks that hide dinosaur fossils within them. Kids can learn dinosaur facts while they’re learning maths, too. There are also some less educational but equally fun games to play within the app. We’d suggest there’s a risk that kids will get into the habit of guessing, though, as there are no major consequences to getting the questions wrong. There’s a free version of the app too, so you can try it out and decide whether your kids will enjoy it before upgrading to the paid version.
5. Dino Tim
Price: Free
Dino Tim is a great way for younger children to get to grips with colours, shapes and their first words. Dino Tim’s family has been abducted by witches, and kids have to solve various educational puzzles in order to save them. The game involves solving colour and geometric shape puzzles, as well as running, flying, jumping and even a little bit of magic.
The aim of the game is to teach kids to recognise basic geometric shapes, as well as to learn about colours and even their first words. The game has been fully translated into a number of languages (French, Spanish and Italian to list a few) which provides your child with a great opportunity to learn a foreign language in a fun way, from a young age.
6. Doodle Critter Math: Shapes
Price: £2.29
Doodle Critter Math: Shapes teaches your children basic shapes such as triangle, rectangle, square, hexagon and circle. Kids learn to draw different shapes by touching the ‘critters’ (small animals). A range of tasks including sorting, matching and memory games, make learning fun. Doodle Critter Math is designed app for kids aged three to five and is another great way that young children can use the technology on the iPad to learn basic skills.
7. Elephant Art! Painting Room
Price: Free/£2.29
It’s immediately clear this isn’t a typical art app when you prod a button and an elephant’s massive foot crushes a banana, splattering it across a canvas on the wall. Further buttons provide additional destructive capabilities, obliterating all manner of household objects that magically become transformed into paint and flung at the artwork, creating a kind of abstract masterpiece. It’s all very silly and a world away from virtual crayons, but the developer notes that is the point. Elephant Art isn’t about recreating the real world, but celebrating colours, magic and art.
8. Endless Alphabet
Price: £4.99
Although more conventional than Metamorphabet, listed elsewhere in this feature, Endless Alphabet proves that dialling down the surreal doesn’t mean an app about letters has to be boring. On the contrary, Endless Alphabet is a lot of fun as you choose a word, watch the letters scatter, and drag them back into place. The letters come to life when touched, wriggling under your fingers (doubly so when using Force Touch on a modern iPhone), and once the word is complete, you’re treated to a little animation that explains what the word means.
9. Geo Walk HD
Price: £2.29
Geo Walk HD is essentially a digital version of an old world encyclopedia. You can spin an interactive digital globe and touch location-based flashcards to learn more about the world, or you can take quizzes about your knowledge of the people, places and things located in the app.
10. Intro to Colors, by Montessorium
Price: £3.99
With Intro to Colors, your child learns the basics of colours through a series of matching games. So it starts out white matching red, blue and yellow before moving on to secondary levels and gradients. Kids learn to mix and match paint to create colours, as well as how to learn to spot and name different colours. It’s a pretty app, which is one reason we like it, and it makes use of the iPad to deliver something children would not get from other more traditional means.
11. Lego Duplo Train
Price: Free
Your toddler will love to drive a colourful Lego Duplo Train from station to station. Choosing and loading wagons, building bridges, stopping at crossings, refuelling and laying new tracks around pesky rocks. A toddler’s dream.
12. Little Digits
Price: £2.99
Back when the iPad first arrived, people were excited to learn it could in fact recognise all ten fingers touching the screen at once, yet few apps took advantage of this. Little Digits reasons that kids often count by using their fingers, and here they can do so by prodding an iPad. Every additional digit used updates the on-screen number accordingly (numbers here being represented by inventive, colourful beasts); and once everyone’s familiar with how the app works, there are basic counting and maths puzzles to try.
13. Mathletics Student
Free. Requires annual subscription
Recommended by teachers and parents is Mathletics, a subscription-based online system of maths learning. For £39/year the child can run through adaptive-learning, level-staged maths tasks and games via computer or iPad app. Students learn at their own pace. Mathletics is fun and features a great rewards system for kids, who win Bronze, Silver and Gold certificates by scoring points in a wide range of maths questions. These questions are presented in a fun and colourful way with animations to brighten things up but also to show how to reach the correct answers. Parents will learn a thing or two, too.
Live Mathletics sets the child up against other Mathletics players across the world, and is a great way to learn simple number bonds and increase the child’s’ recall speed. Times Tables Toons helps teach children their times table through song and animal animation. There are also weekly progress emails to monitor progress via a Parent Centre. My daughter has been using Mathletics for over a year now, and it has undoubtedly helped her with her maths, and me understanding/remembering/learning alongside her. We sit down a few times a week for short periods of time, or for one 30-minute session that should be long enough for her to score her 1,000 points and earn a new certificate. She loves it, too.
14. Miximal
Price: £1.99
There’s nothing especially innovative about Miximal – it’s yet another of those sliding games, where you make strange combinations of animals. But what sets Miximal apart from its peers is the sense of craft and care that’s gone into the app. The style is very cartoonish, yet all of the animals are very recognisable. Each is animated, too. Tap one of the sections and it moves and jiggles. Fashion a ‘complete’ animal and it will offer a celebratory alternate animation. Additionally, if your child wonders at any point what strange mixed-up creature is currently on the screen, a quick tap of the play button will give you (and read out) its name.
15. The Monster at the End of This Book... Starring Grover
Price: £3.99
This updated and improved version of the Sesame Streetthemed book is a lot of fun. As Grover performs, the words appear on the screen, highlighted as they’re spoken. And you can interact with the app by touching a knot, for example, to make it unravel. Tap Grover to tickle him.
16. Monster Mingle
Price: £2.99
There’s a lot to be said for exploration and play when a child is developing. Monster Mingle’s free-play nature makes it ideal for such things. You create your own friendly monster by dragging parts to it that are lying about the place, and said monster can then amble about, dive into the ocean or soar into the air. The world features all kinds of strange creatures to discover and interact with, and the goal-free nature of Monster Mingle makes for a stress-free and highly entertaining time.
17. Monument Valley
Price: £2.99
One of the most beautiful and captivating games ever released, Monument Valley isn’t cheap (for an app) at £2.99 but it will keep children and adults engaged for hours working our how to help the silent princess Ida through mysterious and mind-bending, fantastical architecture, uncovering hidden paths, unfolding Escher-like optical illusions of impossible geometry, and outsmarting the barking Crow People. Monument Valley is both surreal and serene exploration and will surely go down in game history as one of the unique greats.
18. Mr Thorne’s Times Table Terra
Mr Thorne’s Divide + Conquer
Mr Thorne’s Addition Space Station
Price: £1.49 each or £2.99
for the Maths Universe Bundle London teacher Christopher Thorne must be one of the coolest Sirs on the planet, and he uses the planets as the theme for his three maths apps: Mr Thorne’s Times Table Terra, Mr Thorne’s Divide + Conquer, and Mr Thorne’s Addition Space Station. The apps are simple and look gorgeous – sure to be a hit with boys as well as girls. When you score 10 out of 10 on a particular addition, times table or division test you get to keep a space station or planet, depending on the app you’re using. There’s a mystery challenge when you’ve unlocked all the tests, which is an extra incentive – and different to the Squeebles and Math Bingo reward games.
Each game has three levels: Beginner/Newcomer, First Class/Elite and World Class/Legend. The top level is going to test adults, too, so you can join in the sum fun. Mr Thorne’s Addition Space Station has 42 mental maths tests, which includes adding multiple numbers, decimals and fractions so is suitable for children aged five to 11. Mr Thorne’s Times Table Terra features 60 tests based on basic multiplication and times tables. They also feature video tutorials from Mr Thorne.
Mr Thorne’s Divide + Conquer has 50 maths tests based on division and inverse times tables. I recommend all the Mr Thorne maths apps, as they’re simple to use, look great, and should really engage kids in these maths basics.
19. My Very Hungry Caterpillar
Price: £2.99
The Very Hungry Caterpillar has munched its way through countless books, a telly animation, and even the odd activities-based app. But My Very Hungry Caterpillar takes a different approach, transforming the ravenous larva’s surroundings into an interactive game. The result’s not unlike a no-lose Tamagotchi, with you feeding the caterpillar, playing with it, helping it doze under a leaf, and watching it grow. Eventually, like in the original story, the caterpillar transforms into a beautiful butterfly, at which point a new egg is laid for the adventure to begin anew.
20. Number Monster
Price: £2.29
One for the very early learners, Number Monster (from Wombi) is a simple app that teaches kids to recognise numbers – from one to 20. It’s friendly and easy for kids to pick up. Parents can turn on and off visual clues as their child progresses. It doesn’t go much further than that so is a little expensive for what it offers. There’s also a Shape Monster games (at the time of writing this was offered for free). Like Number Monster it’s easy and friendly, and can be set at different levels up to hexagons and pentagons from a start with squares and circles, and so on. Wombi also offers Colour Monster and Letter Monster apps, and a simple telling-the-time app called Around The Clock.
21. Nursery Rhymes
Price: £4.99 (Download Nursery Rhymes Bundle) This set of three apps reimagines famous nursery rhymes as tiny interactive scenes. In ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’, there’s a fiddling cat, leaping cow, grinning moon, and crockery eloping with cutlery. Every item on the screen can be tapped to make it wobble and emit a sound effect, and the rhyme is sung through when the words are tapped. Navigation between rhymes is by way of large arrows at the top of the screen, ensuring the Nursery Rhymes collection is suitable for even very young toddlers. Note that the three volumes are also available individually, and there are separate free versions, too. Each of those has a single unlocked rhyme, the rest being available via a single IAP.
22. Peek-a-Zoo
Price: £2.29
There’s an elegant simplicity at the heart of Peeka-Zoo, and it might at first appear a bit too simple. But any time spent with the app and a small child will dismiss any lingering concerns. You’ll grow to love the gang of sweet cartoon animals, and the simple questions for the child to answer: Who is winking? Who is dressed up? And so on. You soon realise that although this app is very straightforward, it’s cunningly teaching your child all kinds of things, from identifying animals to types of clothing and actions.
23. Pure Math
Price: Free, £1.49 to unlock full version Pure Math has a simpler and cleaner interface than many of the colourful apps in this round-up (hence the ‘pure’ in its name), and a faster difficulty progression, too, so it suits older children best. At the start of each level, the player will have a score of 1,000. This will decrease as time ticks by, and each time the player gets a wrong answer. The aim is to have as close to 1,000 points as possible at the end of each level. To begin, the sums are very easy, but with each level, they get harder and harder until even the adults will struggle. The addition mode is free, but to unlock the subtraction, multiplication and division modes, you’ll need to upgrade to the full version for £1.49.
24. Redshift
Price: £7.99
And here’s a delightful astronomical option. Redshift uses your current location to show you which stars, constellations and planets you should be able to see. If you enable the Follow Sky option, Redshift will update what you should expect to see as you point your iPad or iPhone at different spots in the sky while you pan around. It’s not a cheap option at £7.99, but a deep and rewarding experience.
25. Sago Mini Babies
Price: £2.29
This one’s all about caring for a little Sago baby, feeding, bathing and playing with a tiny cat, rabbit or dog. There’s plenty of character in evidence, whether you’re making your on-screen chum grin when splashing about in the bath or glare when you splatter a load of food mush on its face. According to the developer, the familiarity of the activities will help young children better understand their world and improve nurturing behaviour; and the colourful visuals and straightforward controls should ensure it’s plenty of fun for them to play.
26. Sago Mini Monsters
Price: £2.29
One for younger monster-creators, before working their way up to the likes of Monster Mingle or DNA Play, Sago Mini Monsters has you coax a monster from gloopy green slime. You then tap colours and paint your beast before interacting with it. Most interaction comes in the form of feeding the monster dishes that appear, along with prodding and poking horns, eyes and mouths to change their appearance. A quick brush of the teeth and some decorations and the monster’s time is done. You can then take a photo to share before starting the process again.
27. Solar Walk
Price: £2.29
If your kids are feeling bored later tonight, how about a spot of astronomy? The amazing Solar Walk is a great app to get you started. The £2.29 app lets you explore the solar system in exquisite detail. You can pinch and zoom around the heavens, examining celestial bodies in an immersive 3D environment from any angle or perspective.
28. SquiggleFish
Price: £2.49 (App Store Link)
SquiggleFish is a great way to blend the creative nature of children with the digital world. Your child will start with an empty fish tank, and they need to draw fish to fill it. Rather than drawing fish on the screen, kids are encouraged to draw fish with pen and paper. Kids then move these fish into the fish tank via the iPad’s camera, and they magically come to life. SquiggleFish is a pretty unique experience for younger children (it’s rated for 4+) but you’ll have fun with it no matter what your age.
29. Toca Band
Price: £2.49
This smart, uncomplicated game is all about creating music from a band of colourful characters. You simply drag them to the stage and they get on with playing their instrument. Move them to a spot with a different colour and they’ll change what they’re playing. Any character plonked in the star position (unsubtly marked with a massive yellow star) gives you the chance to explore more sounds as part of a solo performance – perfect for when you think pianist Dancy Nancy or maracas player Shaky McBones hasn’t had enough of the limelight.
30. Sago Mini Friends
Price: Free
This sweet selection of mini games has you choose from one of the brightly coloured Sago characters and then embark on a series of play dates with similarly vibrant chums. There are 10 activities in all, including doing the washing up and munching your way through a selection of goodies. Characters respond appropriately, such as a disappointed look on not getting a piece of cake when someone else has been fed. Apparently, this is designed to promote empathy in children. That might sound a bit worthy, so rest assured the app’s overall breezy nature is almost relentlessly charming and fun, and it’s extremely generous in being free yet having no ads nor IAP whatsoever.
31. Shape Gurus
Price: £1.49
In this interactive story, children are regularly challenged to complete puzzles based around shape-matching. In one case, a little bird flutters towards the outline of a nest, while five brown triangles wait to be dragged into place. Elsewhere, shape and colour matching creates flowers and a watering can. The voiceover isn’t the best around, but the 27 puzzles and story should keep a child engrossed for a good while, and the journey’s fun enough that it will warrant repeating a number of times.
32. Wee Kids Math
Price: £1.99
Wee Kids Math (from Ebooks & Kids) has a whole bunch of colourful games to teach kids about numbers and basic maths. This app is good for children just starting to learn their number shapes and order (0-20), up to those starting out on addition and subtraction. It’s not really for those who have grasped these concepts already.
There’s plenty of variety – and that’s important when encouraging kids to like maths – and the games are simple to get the hang of despite a lack of instruction from the developers. I’d have preferred a little more help when starting the game, as you have to guess what to do on each new game. There are many varied games to play, including all the kids favourites such as insects and other animals, and space arcade games.
One other gripe is that the number ‘3’ in all games looks too much like an ‘8’ on a small screen, which can be confusing. Lesson to developers: don’t needlessly confuse your young users. These criticisms aside, Wee Kids Math is a fun addition to your maths app library, and teaches a lot of basic concepts in a fun and engaging way.
33. Where’s My Water?
Price: £1.49
A great and simple game that slightly older children should be able to get the hang of. There’s a supply of water at point in each level, and an alligator at another, waiting for a shower. You have to remove intervening rock and clay (with a swipe of a finger) to complete the circuit. It gets harder later on, mind.
Ages 6 to 8
Now for some apps that are suitable for a slightly older audience. Here are our recommendations for children aged six to eight. We’ll repeat ourselves, and point out that age recommendations are approximate. Check out our choices on the App Store to see if the difficulty, complexity and reading
level are appropriate for your child.
34. DNA Play
Price: £2.29
Any suggestion that DNA Play can teach six to eight year olds the basics behind genetics is perhaps pushing it a bit. But what this toy does allow for is the creation of almost limitless monsters. This is achieved by completing ‘DNA puzzles’ (basic shape-matching) and manipulating the ‘DNA’ relating to a monster’s limbs, torso, face and features (by dragging shapes or just prodding the relevant bits of the monster). There’s also a modicum of interaction, where you can take your monster dancing and skating, and take a photo to share with friends. Smartly, the app enables you to save a monster before creating another, enabling you to revisit favourites at a later date.
35. Kodable
Price: Free
One of the most valuable skills for a youngster to learn in the digital economy is coding, which is where Kodable comes in (at a very basic level). SurfScoreLLC’s premise for the app is very simple: “The fuzz family have crash-landed on Smeeborg and they need your help navigating the Technomazes.” The commands to get the fuzzballs through the mazes are all drag and drop so with a little trial and error we can easily find our way through, earn the rewards and get to grips with the fundamentals of coding.
36. Loopimal
Price: £2.49
The idea behind Loopimal is to teach children the basics of making music by way of a colourful and simple-to-use loop sequencer. That might sound complicated, but it really isn’t. You get a bopping animal, and drag coloured shapes to a looping timeline. When the playhead moves over one of the shapes, the animal performs an animation that alters the music in some way. Once your child’s figured out how it all works, you can split the screen into two or four, creating an oddball four-track menagerie-cum-band that will entertain for hours.
37. Math Bingo
Price: £1.49
Play the game that’s all about numbers to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide: yes, Bingo.
Math Bingo sets a bunch of questions dependent on your choice and the level of your child’s maths skills. A timer ticks away so you’re out to beat your personal best time each go. To start we’d advise disregarding the clock as this can put undue pressure on the child.
Math Bingo is colourful and features a collection of weird bug aliens to make maths even more fun. Kids love to win the Bingo Bugs and they can then use them in a game of Bingo Bug Bungie – a sort of pinball game where you fire your collected bugs to knockout coins to beat your highest score. It’s enough to make even reluctant mathematicians have another go at multiplication! Within Math Bingo there are now two new games you can play after completing a Bingo board: Math Stack and Math Fling.
38. Math Farm
Price: £1.49
Once your child has mastered the art of drawing numbers and is able to recognise what they mean, they’ll be ready to begin learning basic sums. Math Farm requires players to connect a sum to the correct answer. Every time the child gets the sum correct, another part of the farmyard animal will appear. Complete the whole animal to win.
39. Metamorphabet
Price: £2.99
This Apple Design Award winner transforms letters into words, often by way of surreal and frequently strange animations. If you fancy seeing a caterpillar gamely driving a car that you can fling about the screen (complete with crashing noises when it lands) or an ostrich tentatively playing with a very solid-looking orange, this is the app to buy. For kids, it’ll almost certainly captivate more
than traditional fare in this space, because of its playful, interactive design. And although the app was created for the six to eight age range, it’s perfectly suitable for younger children (or, for that matter, much older parents).
40. Squeebles Times Tables 2
Price: £2.99
Master the times tables with the help of Whizz, defeat the nasty Maths Monster, and collect little Squeeble characters, trophies and stars as you learn. Like Math Bingo, it’s a colourful app that makes learning fun. There’s no timer so your child isn’t rushed into guessing, and they’ll love collecting all the game rewards. It’s a great way to test kids on their multiplication and times tables.
The app has been recently updated and has an expanded reward system, fun mini game, six tables modes, unlimited players and plenty of stats and reporting for parents and teachers – again thankfully without any in-app purchases or adverts. It’s great for testing kids on their times tables and rewarding them for getting them right. There are other Squeebles apps for addition, division, and so on. See the Key Stage Fun Squeebles website (keystagefun.co.uk) for details of all on offer. Each of these are really worth the investment, but try out on one first to check your child finds it fun, too.
41. Star Walk Kids
Price: £2.29
There are quite a few apps that transform your iPhone or iPad into a virtual means to explore the heavens, but the interfaces can be too complex for young children. Star Walk Kids (or, to use its full and awkward SEO-oriented name, 9 Movies of Star Walk Kids – Explore Space) strips back the popular Star Walk app, simplifying how everything works, thereby optimising it for younger users.
That doesn’t mean it’s bereft of information, however: you can still explore the solar system’s planets, constellations, the ISS and Hubble; and there are nine animated films that enable you to delve a bit deeper into the facts and figures behind some of these objects.
42. Toca Nature
Price: £2.49
The developers of Toca Nature aim with their app to capture some of the magic of the great outdoors, and we reckon they’ve succeeded. You get a little square of land, raising mountains or digging rivers with a swipe of a finger. You then tap to plant trees and watch as an ecosystem comes to life. Brilliantly, you can use a magnifying glass to explore your tiny world, collecting fruit and fish, and using them to feed the animals and birds you find. The blank canvas aspect whenever the app restarts is a pity – it would be nice to have a save slot for ‘your’ world, but otherwise this is one of the finest
children’s apps on iOS.
43. Weather by Tinybop
Price: £2.29
There’s clear ambition within Tinybop apps, which try to make tricky concepts approachable through interactive models. In Weather, it’s all about playing with atmospheric forces, and seeing how changes affect the environment. Each scene has a number of elements to experiment with, such as raising or lowering the temperature to see how this impacts on a glass of water or the comfort of a dog in its kennel. Elsewhere, you can zoom into a cloud and observe snow and rain forming. All this is wrapped up in an illustrative art style that’s effective and approachable.
44. Wombi Airplane and Wombi Treasures
Price: £2.29
Wombi Treasures is a basic but fun and graphically rich treasure hunt game for kids, available as iPad, iPhone and Android apps. It engages young children in scouring locations to find hidden artifacts, rewarding perseverance, and keeping kids gripped with their challenge. While the graphics are rich the gameplay is relatively basic but keeps children excited to keep playing again and again.
Ages 9 and over
Finally, here are our recommendations for children aged 9 and over. As always, check out our recommendations on the App Store before spending any money, to see if the difficulty, complexity and reading level are appropriate for your child.
45. Dumb Ways To Die
Price: Free
Originally conceived as a public safety animation for an Australian metro company, Dumbs Ways To Die morphed from a brilliant cartoon and maddeningly catchy tune that kids love to sing into an equally fun game of 15 potentially lethal possibilities. Kids love it and learn how not to get themselves killed at the same time.
46. Earth Primer
Price: £7.99
This beautifully designed app is essentially an interactive textbook, explaining how our planet works. As you leaf through the digital pages, you create volcanos and sculpt mountains, along with, of course, reading through the succinct but informative text alongside the simulations. That should be enough to keep most kids engrossed, but Earth Primer also includes a sandbox that enables you to create and shape a landscape with tools that are only unlocked as you progress through the rest of the book. We’d say experiencing Earth Primer is reward enough, but turning a textbook into a game is a clever move if a reader needs a little extra encouragement.
47. Lego Harry Potter: Years 5 to 7
Price: £3.99
Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 is based on the final three books and last four films within the Harry Potter franchise, given a lighthearted twist by the Lego theme. There’s no question that this will appeal most to a younger audience, but there’s much in it for all to enjoy.
48. Let’s Do Mental Maths
Price: £1.99
Let’s Do Mental Maths for iPhone and iPad are also recommended. They’re a great way to monitor your kids’ progress at maths and test most maths categories. Andrew Brodie, educational author and
former teacher, teamed up with Bloomsbury and Aimer Media to create the Let’s Do Mental Maths apps; the first two of which are aimed at six to seven and 10 to 11 years olds. An app for eight to nine year olds is scheduled for a summer release. They are designed to support the latest National Curriculum requirements and have been developed alongside children in classrooms to help boost
children’s confidence.
Let’s Do Mental Maths uses an engaging quiz format with a cartoon Digit the Dog, who can offer advice when the player gets stuck. There are three main quiz areas: Starter questions to warm up the kids’ maths skills – a quick selection of random questions, uniquely combined every time. Progress tests are made up of 7 sets of 20 questions to grade maths ability and track players’ scores – matched to National Curriculum expected progress.
Practice quizzes consist of nine categories of practice questions: Place Value, Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division, Fractions, Times, Measure and Shape. There is a simple Results dashboard that includes the percentage and number of correct answers as well as the time taken to answer The Let’s Do Mental Maths apps are a nice mix of maths tasks that don’t try too hard with gimmicks but still look like fun, and get children ready for their exams. Recommended.
49. MathBoard
Price: £3.99
Although more expensive than most maths apps MathBoard can be easily configured for school children of all ages, beginning with simple addition and subtraction problems, multiplication and division, and algebra. The blackboard theme is cute, although most kids won’t come anywhere a blackboard in school these days. It is built around multiple choice but encourages working out solutions with a neat scratchboard area where pupils can chalk their sums.
MathBoard’s Problem Solver walks students through the steps required to solve the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division equations. There are also quick reference tables to hand. We especially like the configurable nature of MathBoard, where you can determine number ranges, omit negative answers, and so on. Activities and quizzes can be timed, either as a countdown timer or elapsed time. There’s a free version that tackles addition only so you can have a play before forking out for the full version. You don’t need to be a maths boffin to see the value in that!
50. Mathmateer
Price: 79p
Mathmateer is a fun space-themed maths game in which children can build and customise their own rockets using money they’ve earned while soaring through space. There are 56 different games ranging from simple counting to division and multiplication, so kids of all ages can enjoy playing. Five player profiles can be created, so you can set up one for each child depending on their skill level. The only downfall is that the money system (used to buy rocket parts) is in dollars rather than pounds.
51. Medieval Math Battle
Price: Free
Medieval Math Battle really does make maths into a game, as it is a turn-based battle game where you defeat your opponents (villains, goblins, dragons, and so on) by answering questions based on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). The maths problems increase in difficulty as the child improves their skills. As you win battles you earn coins, potions and weapons. You can use the coins to buy new swords and shields and so forth. If the child plays for 15 minutes there’s a special daily bonus. Medieval Math Battle is free, and comes with the Addition part of the game, but each extra maths type (subtraction, multiplication, division) costs 69p to unlock. So the full cost of everything is £2.07. Apart from the sections to unlock there aren’t any other nasty in-app purchases in the game. Medieval Math Battle is a great idea, and sure to be a hit with kids. It would be nice if the player could be a girl as well as a boy, and the action could be a little faster, but we liked the game.
51. Minion Rush
Price: Free
You love Despicable Me, right? Minion Rush is a great action arcade game where the little yellow Minions jump, fly, dodge obstacles, collect bananas, ride the Fluffy Unicorn, and defeat villains in a variety of different missions. You can customise your Minion with costumes, weapons, and powerups. Earning new locations and different Minions makes this free game a lot of fun for Despicable Me fans and anyone who likes bananas. There are in-app purchases available but not buying any doesn’t affect game play in any way.
52. Operation Math
Price: £2.29
The Americanism in the app’s name might be mildly objectionable to British buyers, but this action
packed maths app has a lot to recommend it. The app mixes basic maths skills for children aged five
to 12 with a time-based spy game. You’re a secret agent battling the evil Dr Odd. You get new uniforms and spy gear for each mission completed. Like the other maths apps here you set your challenges depending on the level of maths skills of the child. This game is all about beating the clock, so try it first in training mode when the player has more time to think about the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division equations. The spy theme is a great idea for making maths
a fun adventure.
53. Times Table Galaxy
Price: Free
The aim of Times Table Galaxy, a free times tables app from the App Store, is to make learning maths a little bit more fun, social and competitive. The app has been designed by award winning educators, and will teach kids their times tables from 2x2 to 12x12 in a fun but challenging way. Kids can screen record their lightning fast times table attempts to show off to family, friends and teachers, and are also able to directly challenge friends to a times table showdown via Apple’s Game Center. For a free app, it’s worth a go, right?
54. Toca Boca Hair Salon 2
Price: £2.49
All the Toca Boca games for kids are great (except Toca Band, which will drive parents round the
bend), but Toca Hair Salon is seriously a must have on any family’s phone or tablet. Toca Boca games are great – they have the design aesthetic of Swedish wooden toys and ‘feel’ a lot like real
world toys that encourage imagination. Critically, they are great fun too.
55. Tynker Premium
Price: £4.49
Tynker Premium is for slightly older children (aged nine to 11). It aims to teach children the basics are coding through drag and drop visual blocks. These blocks are similar to programming code, and enabling children to solve puzzles and beat each level. There is a big push on to make programming more accessible to kids, and Tynker is a good way to do it. Children learn pattern recognition, problem solving, algorithmic thinking and concepts like repetition and conditional logic. Tynker Premium is good fun, too.
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