Welcome to What’s App-ening, your weekly source for the latest and greatest in mobile apps.

This week’s app is Aspire News: a resource for victims of domestic abuse and assault, disguised as a news app.

When you open the app, it looks like any average news app. You can select news stories to read from a variety of news sources and categories.

However, unlike a normal news app, the help menu will direct you to a screen giving you options to get help or get educated.

From the help screen, you can access help lines and tips and set trusted contacts who can be called through set combinations of taps on the screen.

You can set it to send an audio recording and your location, along with a prewritten distress message to your trusted contacts in case of an emergency.

I hesitate to say much about the news reader portion of the app, lest it compromise anyone’s safety, but it is remarkably disguised as a news app.

This app is a resource for those who find themselves in abusive relationships or other unsafe situations.

It can also be a valuable app for those who have to walk by themselves at night, such as leaving from a night class or heading to your car after a late shift at work.

This app allows you to contact help without ever alerting the other person that you’ve done so.

The next app is another assault resource, specifically for dating, called Safedate.

Safedate allows you to put your phone into date mode at the beginning of a date, and has a button to send the phone into emergency mode to contact pre-programmed numbers into the app.

Safedate also stores pictures and your location until the date is over. Once the date ends and you turn date mode off, the recorded information will be deleted if there was not an incident.

I give both apps five stars for providing effective resources to protect people’s safety.

Aspire News and Safedate are both available for free on iOS and Android.

Thanks for reading Wildcats and until next Friday, you know What’s App-ening.