BBC head says broadcaster must reform or die

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain‘s BBC could be doomed unless it makes radical changes, the head of its governing trust said, after its director general quit to take the blame for the airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former politician.

BBC Trust chairman Chris Patten said on Sunday confidence had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.

“If you’re saying, ‘Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?’, then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do,” Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime Minister David Cameron‘s Conservative Party and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television.

“The basis for the BBC’s position in this country is the trust that people have in it,” Patten said. “If the BBC loses that, it’s over.”

George Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday, just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the child sex allegation on the flagship news programme Newsnight.

The witness in the Newsight report, who says he suffered sexual abuse at a care home in the late 1970s, said on Friday he had misidentified the politician, Alistair McAlpine. Newsnight admitted it had not shown the witness a picture of McAlpine, or approached McAlpine for comment before going to air.

Already under pressure after revelations that a long-time star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, was a paedophile, Entwistle conceded on the BBC morning news that he had not known – or asked – who the alleged abuser was until the name appeared in social media.

The BBC, celebrating its 90th anniversary, is affectionately known in Britain as “Auntie”, and respected around much of the world.

But with 22,000 staff working at eight national TV channels, 50 radio stations and an extensive Internet operation, critics say it is hampered by a complex and overly bureaucratic and hierarchical management structure.

THOMPSON’S LEGACY

Journalists said this had become worse under Entwistle’s predecessor Mark Thompson, who took over in the wake of the last major crisis to hit the corporation and is set to become chief executive of the New York Times Co on Monday.

In that instance, both director general and chairman were forced out after the BBC was castigated by a public inquiry over a report alleging government impropriety in the fevered build up to war in Iraq, leading to major organizational changes.

One of the BBC’s most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management had become bloated while cash had been cut from programme budgets.

“He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and incompetents,” Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his senior staff.

Prime Minister Cameron appeared ready to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt, believing that “one of the great institutions of this country” could reform and deal with its failings, according to sources in his office.

Patten, who must find a new director general to sort out the mess, agreed that management structures had proved inadequate.

“Apparently decisions about the programme went up through every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks – and still emerged,” he said.

“One of the jokes I made, and actually it wasn’t all that funny, when I came to the BBC … was that there were more senior leaders in the BBC than there were in the Chinese Communist Party.”

Patten ruled out resigning himself but other senior jobs are expected to be on the line, while BBC supporters fear investigative journalism will be scaled back. He said he expected to name Entwistle’s successor in weeks, not months.

Among the immediate challenges are threats of litigation.

McAlpine, a close ally of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, has indicated he will sue for damages.

Claims for compensation are also likely from victims who say Savile, one of the most recognizable personalities on British television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, sexually abused them as children, sometimes on BBC premises.

INQUIRIES

Two inquiries are already under way, looking at failures at Newsnight and allegations relating to Savile, both of which could make uncomfortable reading for senior figures.

Police have also launched a major inquiry into Savile’s crimes and victims’ allegations of a high-profile paedophile ring. Detectives said they had arrested their third suspect on Sunday, a man in his 70s from Cambridgeshire in central England.

Funded by an annual license fee levied on all TV viewers, the BBC has long been resented by its commercial rivals, who argue it has an unfair advantage and distorts the market.

Murdoch’s Sun tabloid gleefully reported Entwistle’s departure with the headline “Bye Bye Chump” and Patten said News Corp and others would put the boot in, happy to deflect attention after a phone-hacking scandal put the newspaper industry under intense and painful scrutiny.

He said that “one or two newspapers, Mr. Murdoch’s papers” would love to see the BBC lose its national status, “but I think the great British public doesn’t want to see that happen”.

Murdoch himself was watching from afar.

“BBC getting into deeper mess. After Savile scandal, now prominent news program falsely names senior pol as paedophile,” he wrote on his Twitter website on Saturday.

It is not just the BBC and the likes of Entwistle and Patten who are in the spotlight.

Thompson, whom Entwistle succeeded in mid-September, has also faced questions from staff at the New York Times over whether he is still the right person to take one of the biggest jobs in American newspaper publishing.

Britain’s Murdoch-owned Sunday Times queried how Thompson could have been unaware of claims about Savile during his tenure at the BBC as he had told British lawmakers, saying his lawyers had written to the paper addressing the allegations in early September, while he was still director general.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Sophie Hares)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Next-day discharge after C-section may be okay: study

(Reuters) – Some women who deliver their babies by cesarean section may be able to check out of the hospital the next day without raising their risk of problems, according to a Malaysian study.

The study, which appeared in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, looked at 360 women in Malaysia, who were randomly assigned to go home either one or two days after having a C-section.

Both groups were equally satisfied with their care, and the women who were discharged sooner seemed to have no more problems with breastfeeding or mental well-being.

“Day 1 discharge compared with day 2 discharge after a planned cesarean delivery resulted in equivalent outcomes,” wrote lead author Peng Chiong Tan, at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur.

Those results don’t mean that hospitals should start discharging women the day after a C-section, but they do suggest that a next-day discharge is something women can talk about with their doctors, researchers said.

In the United States, where C-sections are done in about one-third of births, women typically stay in the hospital for three to four days after the procedure. That compares with about two days for women who deliver vaginally.

In the past, there were concerns about insurers pushing mothers to leave the hospital before they’re ready. That led to a 1996 law requiring insurers to pay for a 48-hour hospital stay after a vaginal delivery and a 96-hour stay after a C-section.

Still, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says a shorter stay after a C-section is an option if the baby is ready to go home, though the mother should meet certain requirements first such as normal blood pressure, no signs of infection and adequate pain control.

At Tan’s hospital in Malaysia, women who have a C-section are routinely told to expect just a two-day stay, and some providers there have discharged new mothers the day after.

Tan’s team randomly assigned the 360 women having a planned C-section to go home either one or two days after delivering. In the end, 16 percent of the women in the day-after group were not discharged that early, because either they or their babies were having problems.

But when they did go home the day after, there didn’t seem to be a greater risk of difficulties. When the women were interviewed two weeks later, 87 percent were happy with their discharge timing.

The same was true for almost 86 percent of women who went home two days after their C-section.

While the findings would likely extend to women in other countries too, these Malaysian women typically went home to a lot of support – often, an extended family network, Tan said.

“Where this support is not available, next-day hospital discharge may not be associated with the same degree of satisfaction, acceptability and good outcome as we have found,” she added.

SOURCE:http://bit.ly/TzbGoz

(Reporting from New York by Amy Norton at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

The Workday After Tomorrow

What happens when business as usual is impossible? When millions in the Northeast lost power, cell service, Internet access, and running water due to Superstorm Sandy, companies scrambled to find the answer. Some improvised on the spot: Keith McNally’s New York City bistro Balthazar grilled steaks and served lobster on Prince Street, while Katz’s Delicatessen sliced up sandwiches by candlelight. Manhattan’s Equinox fitness clubs started a second business, selling showers for $ 35 a pop. Large financial firms such as Goldman Sachs (GS) began relocating staff and workloads from New York to offices overseas, and tens of thousands of workers turned to the cloud, working from home—or Starbucks (SBUX). Meanwhile, Tim Webster, a customer enablement manager at EMaint Enterprises, an info-tech company in Mount Laurel, N.J., found himself in a Florida Wal-Mart (WMT), picking out a Captain America costume for the company’s impromptu Halloween party. “It’s hard to complain,” he says. “I mean, it’s a bit cold this morning. Maybe you need a light jacket?”

Webster was one of five employees flown down to EMaint’s satellite office in Estero, Fla., on the Saturday before Sandy hit, as part of the company’s business continuity plan. “It looked like we were going to get battered here in South Jersey, with mass power outages and trees down, and we have customers worldwide,” says Jon Hollander, executive vice president of operations. “So we decided to send five of our core-function employees for an expense-paid vacation in sunny Florida.”

Thanks to data stored in the cloud, the company was able to provide service to its clients without interruption. But Webster (who insists “it’s not a vacation—I’m still working”) is still playing it safe. “I’m staying out of the sun,” he says, noting how weird it’s been to see his colleagues wearing shorts.

Illustration by Marcos Chin

World economic losses to disasters totaled an estimated $ 380 billion in 2011, and nearly every major company now sets up detailed continuity and mitigation plans for everything from terrorist incidents and nuclear attacks to pandemics like bird flu. A cottage industry of in-house sky-is-falling professionals and glass-half-empty consulting firms has sprung up to deal with this need. And as companies become more reliant on digital data and geographically diverse locations, their strategies must evolve, too. “For instance, people don’t warehouse parts anymore,” says Ken Burris, chief executive officer of Witt Associates, a crisis management consultancy. “They rely on just-in-time delivery. But when there’s that hiccup in the supply chain, they’d better have multiple contingencies in place, or work stops.” And Burris points out that the implications are often dire: “Statistics show that, of small businesses impacted by disaster, about a third don’t recover.”

The biggest difference between recent disruptions and those only a decade ago shows up in businesses’ increasing faith in cloud computing, which was sorely tested by Sandy. As Lower Manhattan was swamped, major media companies such as Huffington Post, MarketWatch, and Gawker saw their sites go offline as water flooded the basement floors of the Datagram server building. Gawker Media eventually improvised by redirecting Gawker, Gizmodo, and Deadspin to temporary Tumblr blog pages. “If we’re the indestructible cockroaches of the media world,” Gawker founder Nick Denton e-mailed his staff, “now’s the time to show it.” Still, the network lost nearly all its advertising opportunities, save a cheeky “Back Up Site Covered by State Farm” plug at the top of each site’s Tumblr home page.

Peer1 Hosting, a Net outfit based in Lower Manhattan, thought it was in the clear—it had generators on the 17th floor ready to keep the data servers humming. But when the fuel pump in the basement was flooded, Peer1 was unable to get the necessary diesel fuel upstairs. So it improvised, too. “We had a team of 30 people getting buckets of diesel fuel going up 17 floors to keep the generator working and our customers online,” says Rajan Sodhi, Peer1’s vice president of marketing. Employees hoofed it up darkened stairwells for more than 48 hours, replenishing the tanks.

Shawn White, vice president of operations for Keynote Systems, which monitors online access, says many companies have turned to the cloud primarily for cost savings, not safety. “If you’re going to be in the cloud, you have to make sure they have options for multiple data centers in a geographically distributed base. It’s extra money, but that’s the cost of a robust continuity plan,” he says.

And obviously the cloud can’t help if you don’t have electricity, cell service, or Net access. In the 10 states hit by Sandy, 25 percent of cell towers and land lines were affected by the storm, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Downtown New York lost power for nearly a week. “People keep asking what they can do if there is absolutely no power at all, anywhere,” says Ken Moon, co-founder of Connecticut-based emergency software platform Veoci Systems. “I say, ‘It’s smoke signals and CBs, if you got ’em. And how long the juice lasts on your cell phone, if your cell phone works.’”

Click to enlarge

Throughout the Northeast, many of the contingency plans at businesses failed, most notably at several hospitals, which were left without working backup generators and forced to evacuate patients. Now experts are sorting out why. “This notion that big disasters are wake-up calls?” Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, asks. “They’re more like snooze alarms. Everyone gets aroused, then we end up repeating mistakes. For too long we’ve depended upon seat-of-the-pants decision-making to determine disaster policy. We have a lot of data about what actually works.”

So how does a company or government stress the importance of disaster planning when a storm isn’t bearing down? By invoking the undead, of course. “Are You Zombie Safe?” asks a Red Cross video promoting its disaster preparedness training program. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a graphic novel, Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security also have so-called zombie-based safety programs. In fact, while the East Coast scrambled to recover from Sandy, thousands of first responders and security firms were preparing for Zombie Apocalypse, an emergency-response training event held at the Paradise Point Resort in San Diego.

“We get all these first responders in here and tell them the sky is falling, the Mayans were right, the clock is ticking, and your bosses are watching,” says Brad Barker, president and founder of Halo, the event’s organizer. In addition to simulating crisis-driven hysteria, he also dresses up actors as zombies in elaborate Hollywood makeup and orders them to eat the humans’ brains. “We got our asses handed to us during Katrina on live TV, and everyone knows it,” says Barker. “We create hyper-realistic training, so you can put together a plan for a mass casualty event of any kind, whether that’s seismic, meteorological, biological, or somebody flies a couple planes into your building. The zombies just make it fun.”

But what happens when every plan has fallen apart and it’s just you, your cubicle, and a horde of alien, radioactive, bird-flu-infected terrorist zombies? “The priorities of survival are always the same, whatever the terrain or disaster,” says Bear Grylls, celebrity survivalist and host of TV show Man vs. Wild. “Protection, rescue, water, food.” Grylls recommends gathering office trash bags and using them for shelter, water collection, or waterproofing your tinder and cell phone. “Remember, you can only last three days without water, but three weeks without food.” On that last note, Grylls says that even in an office environment (the filthier the better), would-be survivalists should look for “bugs, grubs, and worms before rats or bigger game—as well as the obvious, like vending machines and cans.”

Last (and, yes, least), take a page from such fictional companies as Cyberdyne Systems in the Terminator franchise, Weyland Yatuni in Alien, BuyNLarge in Wall-E, and the Trade Federation of the Star Wars prequels. They’re all extraordinarily evil. So evil, in fact, that in most post-apocalyptic fiction, the company last left standing is usually the one that created the catastrophic calamity in the first place. If the collected wisdom of sci-fi is right, a company’s best long-term disaster preparedness strategy is the opposite of Google’s (GOOG): Be Evil.

Businessweek.com — Top News

Read More..

Ohio teen gets prison for life in Craigslist murders

AKRON, Ohio (Reuters) – Seventeen-year-old Brogan Rafferty was sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday for his role in the killing of three men, two of whom were lured by a Craigslist ad promising work on an Ohio farm.

Rafferty was 16 when he was arrested in November 2011, but was tried as an adult. He was convicted late last month in the murders of David Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Virginia; Ralph Geiger, 56, of Akron, Ohio; and Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon, Ohio.

Rafferty also got 10 years for the attempted murder of Scott Davis, who was shot in the arm while escaping after meeting Rafferty and alleged triggerman Richard Beasley.

Prosecutors called the teen an apt pupil to Beasley, 53, who is also charged in the murders.

Rafferty testified that he was terrified of the man he had considered a father figure and spiritual adviser after he saw Beasley shoot Geiger in the head execution-style.

Beasley allegedly enticed Geiger with the offer of a non-existent caretaker job, killed him, stole his identity, and then drew other victims by posting the bogus job on Craigslist.

Rafferty, wearing prison stripes with hands clasped in front of him, told the court Friday that Beasley an “evil, deceitful cruel murderer,” but admitted the he bore some responsibility.

“I was involved, I didn’t like it, and now I see there were many options I couldn’t see then that I see now, but I can’t make anything better and I’m sorry,” he said.

Judge Lynn Callahan called Rafferty’s case “heartbreaking” but said she did not accept that he had no way out of his situation.

“You embraced the evil, you studied it,” she said. She said Rafferty had been dealt “a lousy hand in life,” but she found nothing in the case that could be chalked up to the recklessness of youth.

“You could have been so much more; you are so intelligent,” the judge told Rafferty.

During the trial, jurors heard testimony that the teen helped dig graves for some of the men and was found in possession of guns and knives stolen from them after Beasley shot them.

Beasley’s trial is scheduled in the same courtroom for January 7. He faces the death penalty if convicted. Both Rafferty’s and Beasley’s attorneys are under a gag order and are not permitted to talk to the media.

Under Ohio law, juveniles older than 15 who are charged with a serious offense and crimes that involve a firearm are sent to adult court for trial.

Last summer, a U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down mandatory life sentences for juveniles. The high court found that judges and juries passing sentence on juvenile murders must weigh mitigating circumstances, including the youth’s role and family background.

A 2005 Supreme Court decision made it unconstitutional to execute anyone under the age of 18.

Rafferty’s attorney Jill Flagg objected to his sentence and will appeal.

In other incidents involving Craigslist and other social media, people advertising goods for sale or responding to ads have been attacked and killed.

In 2009, a former medical student was accused of killing a masseuse he met through Craigslist. In February, two men in Tennessee were accused of killing a man and a woman for “unfriending” the daughter of one of the suspects on Facebook.

(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Eric Walsh)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Ohio teen gets prison for life in Craigslist murders

AKRON, Ohio (Reuters) – Seventeen-year-old Brogan Rafferty was sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday for his role in the killing of three men, two of whom were lured by a Craigslist ad promising work on an Ohio farm.

Rafferty was 16 when he was arrested in November 2011, but was tried as an adult. He was convicted late last month in the murders of David Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Virginia; Ralph Geiger, 56, of Akron, Ohio; and Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon, Ohio.

Rafferty also got 10 years for the attempted murder of Scott Davis, who was shot in the arm while escaping after meeting Rafferty and alleged triggerman Richard Beasley.

Prosecutors called the teen an apt pupil to Beasley, 53, who is also charged in the murders.

Rafferty testified that he was terrified of the man he had considered a father figure and spiritual adviser after he saw Beasley shoot Geiger in the head execution-style.

Beasley allegedly enticed Geiger with the offer of a non-existent caretaker job, killed him, stole his identity, and then drew other victims by posting the bogus job on Craigslist.

Rafferty, wearing prison stripes with hands clasped in front of him, told the court Friday that Beasley an “evil, deceitful cruel murderer,” but admitted the he bore some responsibility.

“I was involved, I didn’t like it, and now I see there were many options I couldn’t see then that I see now, but I can’t make anything better and I’m sorry,” he said.

Judge Lynn Callahan called Rafferty’s case “heartbreaking” but said she did not accept that he had no way out of his situation.

“You embraced the evil, you studied it,” she said. She said Rafferty had been dealt “a lousy hand in life,” but she found nothing in the case that could be chalked up to the recklessness of youth.

“You could have been so much more; you are so intelligent,” the judge told Rafferty.

During the trial, jurors heard testimony that the teen helped dig graves for some of the men and was found in possession of guns and knives stolen from them after Beasley shot them.

Beasley’s trial is scheduled in the same courtroom for January 7. He faces the death penalty if convicted. Both Rafferty’s and Beasley’s attorneys are under a gag order and are not permitted to talk to the media.

Under Ohio law, juveniles older than 15 who are charged with a serious offense and crimes that involve a firearm are sent to adult court for trial.

Last summer, a U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down mandatory life sentences for juveniles. The high court found that judges and juries passing sentence on juvenile murders must weigh mitigating circumstances, including the youth’s role and family background.

A 2005 Supreme Court decision made it unconstitutional to execute anyone under the age of 18.

Rafferty’s attorney Jill Flagg objected to his sentence and will appeal.

In other incidents involving Craigslist and other social media, people advertising goods for sale or responding to ads have been attacked and killed.

In 2009, a former medical student was accused of killing a masseuse he met through Craigslist. In February, two men in Tennessee were accused of killing a man and a woman for “unfriending” the daughter of one of the suspects on Facebook.

(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Eric Walsh)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez have broken up, reports say

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop star Justin Bieber and his girlfriend, Selena Gomez, a Disney actress and singer, have broken up, ending a relationship that made them one of Hollywood’s most high-profile young couples, media reports said.

Bieber, 18, and Gomez, 20, disclosed their relationship in February 2011 when they appeared together at an Oscar night party after months of rumors of their dating.

E! Online late on Friday was the first to report the split, with other media outlets including US Weekly and People also saying the relationship was over. The reports cited unnamed sources close to the couple.

Representatives for Bieber and Gomez did not returns calls or emails on Saturday.

Bieber has released two No. 1 albums in just over a year – the holiday-themed “Under the Mistletoe” and his latest, “Believe.” In September, he topped Billboard’s “21 Under 21″ list of top young musical acts. It was his second year in a row with the title.

Gomez rose to fame as a teenager in the Walt Disney Co television series “Wizards of Waverly Place” and has enjoyed success as a pop singer.

(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Greg McCune and Peter Cooney)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Boehringer Ingelheim to start late-stage hepatitis C drug trial

BOSTON (Reuters) – Boehringer Ingelheim said on Saturday it plans to initiate a late-stage clinical trial of its experimental hepatitis C treatment following promising results from earlier studies.

The company announced final data from a mid-stage trial of its treatment regimen which showed that 69 percent of patients in the study were free of the virus 12 and 24 weeks following the end of treatment.

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne infectious disease of the liver that can lead to liver failure and transplant.

Historically, hepatitis C has been treated with pegylated interferon and ribavirin, but treatment lasts as long as 48 weeks and interferon is associated with flu-like side effects.

The goal of drugmakers now, including Boehringer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc, Gilead Sciences Inc and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co is to develop products that do not need to be combined with interferon. Most analysts consider Gilead to currently be at the forefront of the race.

Full results from Boehringer’s trial, known as SOUND-C2, were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Boston. Preliminary data were presented earlier this year.

Boehringer’s trial tested a combination of BI-201335, a protease inhibitor, BI-207127, a polymerase inhibitor, and ribivirin.

Boehringer is a privately held company headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany.

(Reporting By Toni Clarke; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Lockheed boss resigns over affair

9 November 2012 Last updated at 17:42 ET

US defence company Lockheed Martin says its incoming president and chief executive officer has resigned over a relationship with a subordinate.

Christopher Kubasik resigned after an internal ethics investigation confirmed the “close personal relationship”, the company said in a statement.

He was due to take over as head of the company next year after serving as its chief operating officer.

Another Lockheed executive, Marillyn Hewson, will now become CEO in January.

Chairman and outgoing CEO Robert Stevens said he was “deeply disappointed and saddened” by the relationship, which he described as “inconsistent with our values and standards”.

But he said the company had a “strong leadership team and a robust succession plan”.

Lockheed Martin is a defence and aerospace company based in Maryland that employs some 120,000 worldwide.

Its net sales for 2011 were $ 46.5bn (£29bn).

BBC News – Business

Read More..

Spotify to raise $100 million at $3 billion valuation – report

(Reuters) – Spotify is in the middle of a $ 100 million financing round that could value the music streaming company at just over $ 3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported citing sources.

The Journal said Spotify would raise the fresh capital from multiple investors including Goldman Sachs. The WSJ report did not name any other investors.

Spotify has raised capital from outside investors several times since it set up shop in 2006, and was earlier reported to have been looking to secure a capital boost of about $ 200 million, at a valuation of about $ 4 billion.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners and others have invested about $ 189 million in the company in its prior financing rounds.

The company has over 15 million active users and 4 million paying subscribers, for its on-demand service, which offers unlimited music streaming of some 18 million tracks.

(Reporting by Himank Sharma in Bangalore)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Spotify to raise $100 million at $3 billion valuation – report

(Reuters) – Spotify is in the middle of a $ 100 million financing round that could value the music streaming company at just over $ 3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported citing sources.

The Journal said Spotify would raise the fresh capital from multiple investors including Goldman Sachs. The WSJ report did not name any other investors.

Spotify has raised capital from outside investors several times since it set up shop in 2006, and was earlier reported to have been looking to secure a capital boost of about $ 200 million, at a valuation of about $ 4 billion.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners and others have invested about $ 189 million in the company in its prior financing rounds.

The company has over 15 million active users and 4 million paying subscribers, for its on-demand service, which offers unlimited music streaming of some 18 million tracks.

(Reporting by Himank Sharma in Bangalore)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..