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Authorities in Turkey are reportedly going ahead with a ban on access to YouTube days after a similar move in the country to block Twitter.

The Turkish telecommunications authority TIB is quoted in Turkish state media as saying it has taken an "administrative measure" against YouTube.

The news follows earlier reports that a recording, allegedly of a meeting among top Turkish officials discussing military intervention in Syria, was posted on YouTube.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday lashed out against the post:

"They even leaked a national security meeting," he told a crowd of supporters in Diyarbakir. "This is villainous, this is dishonesty.

"Who are you serving by doing audio surveillance of such an important meeting?" Erdogan said as he campaigned for March 30 elections.

Reuters quotes Google Inc, who owns YouTube, as saying it's looking into reports that Turkish users are unable to access the video-sharing site.

"There is no technical issue on our side and we're looking into the situation," a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

As we reported last week, Turkey moved then to ban Twitter, a move that was quickly circumvented by a text-to-tweet function that bypassed the ban.

As we reported at the time, "the #TwitterblockedinTurkey hastag quickly spread upon news of the ban, and the country's own president tweeted his disdain.

In the wake of the latest reports, a new hastag, #youtubeblockedinturkey, has sprung up.

Protesters in Taiwan are angry. They've taken over the island's parliament, blocking the doors with piles of furniture. They also stormed the offices of the Cabinet, where they clashed with riot police armed with batons and water cannons.

The source for all this hostility? A proposed trade deal with mainland China that would open up more than 100 service sectors, ranging from banks and telecommunications to travel agencies and hospitals.

But like the protests in Ukraine a few months back, the discontent in Taiwan is about much more than Chinese investors setting up travel agencies on the island. It's about Taiwan's future and how it preserves its identity — and relevance — in the shadow of China and its growing economic, political and military clout. Many see it as a battle for Taiwan's economic and political survival.

"The Taiwanese are having a kind of anxiety," acknowledged Lung Ying-tai, Taiwan's first minister of culture, during a meeting earlier this month with a group of U.S. journalists.

"Everybody gets very edgy [about China's economic strength]," she said. "But the Taiwanese are even edgier than other people, [who] don't have missiles stationed right across the strait."

Losing Its Economic Edge

The two sides split in 1949 during the Chinese civil war. Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province and remains committed to the goal of eventual reunification — and hasn't ruled out the use of force to do so.

When I lived in the capital Taipei a decade ago, anxiety about China was already palpable. But then, Taiwan — one of the Asian Tigers — was thriving economically, boasting vigorous growth and leading-edge high-tech companies that made semiconductor, personal computers and notebooks.

Candy Crush is played by trying to line up at least three of the same color candies.

In February, an average of 144 million daily active users got sucked in to the challenge.

Candy Crush is one of more than 180 games made by King Digital Entertainment, and it alone brought in three quarters of the companies revenue in the last quarter of 2013.

Roger Kay, president of research firm Endpoint Technologies Associates, says to a lot of investors the game sounded like Farmville, the hit game by Zynga that Zynga can't seem to repeat.

"It's very difficult to replicate the alchemy of a great hit even the very same makers of that game can't necessarily come up with another one that's going to be just as popular," Kay says.

He adds the market may also be getting a little bubbly — there have been high priced acquisitions like Facebook's purchase of the virtual reality company Oculus VR for $2 billion.

That two-year-old company has no revenue.

"People are paying a lot for what appears to be not very much," Kay says.

Still, he says King Digital has been a profitable company since 2005.

It posted more than $700 million before taxes last year.

And it does have a potential hit on the horizon with Farm Heroes Saga, which has seen momentum in popularity since its January launch.

President Obama meets Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday, the 30th anniversary of formal relations between Washington and the Holy See and against a backdrop of a sometimes turbulent history in U.S.-Vatican ties.

The first high-level bilateral contact was in 1788, as the Vatican foreign minister recalled recently. Speaking in a large renaissance hall, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti said President George Washington, through his envoy Benjamin Franklin, informed the Vatican that it did not need to seek authorization from the U.S. for the appointment of bishops.

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