Soundcloud survives money scare

Dave LeeNorth America technology reporte








Music streaming service Soundcloud will live on after securing a reported $170m (£135m) in investment.The platform, popular with emerging artists, faced closure if the new funding was not approved by Friday."Soundcloud is here to stay,” wrote Alexander Ljung, the company’s chairman, who as part of the deal is stepping down as the firm's chief executive.Concerned users had been backing up their Soundcloud uploads, worried the site would go offline.Its highest profile user, Chance the Rapper, has been vocal in supporting the site.In July, the Berlin-based company laid off 40% of its workforce, a total of 173 people. In a note circulated to shareholders earlier this week (obtained by Axios) Mr Ljung said without the money Soundcloud would not be able “to continue as a going concern”.By Friday, things were looking up."This financing means Soundcloud remains strong and independent,” Mr Ljung wrote in a blog post."Over the last few weeks, I’ve been moved by the outpouring of commentary around Soundcloud’s unique and crucial role in driving what global culture is today (and what it will become tomorrow)."You’ve told me how, without Soundcloud, there would be a giant gaping void in today’s world of music. We can’t have that, and I’m happy to once again say that won’t be happening.”The company will see considerable changes in leadership. Mr Ljung will be replaced as chief executive by Kerry Trainor, the former boss of video-sharing site Vimeo. Mike Weissman, also formerly at Vimeo, will become Soundcloud’s chief operating officer.Soundcloud will now need to look at reducing costs and doing more to monetise the service which, according to the firms latest publicly available figures, has more than 40 million users.The firm’s money problems have been well-documented - with its valuation dropping considerable from a high of $700m in 2014. In September, acquisition talks with Spotify failed to materialise




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Seventeen dead' in Burkina Faso attack


Seventeen people have been killed and eight wounded in a "terrorist attack" in the centre of the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, the government says.
Witnesses were quoted as saying that three gunmen opened fire on customers seated outside a hotel and restaurant.
The city centre has been sealed off by the army, and the US embassy in Ouagadougou has warned its citizens to avoid the area.
A jihadist attack on a cafe nearby left 30 people dead in January last year.
There are fears that the attack is the work of one of the affiliates of al-Qaeda that are active in the Sahel region, the BBC's Alex Duval Smith reports.
The shooting began shortly after 21:00 (21:00 GMT) on Sunday on Ouagadougou's busy Kwame Nkrumah Avenue.
Two locations, Hotel Bravia and the Aziz Istanbul Restaurant, appear to have been at the centre of the shooting.
"The attack claimed 17 victims, their nationalities are yet to be confirmed, and eight injured," said a government statement quoted by the AFP news agency.
A hospital in the city said that one of those killed was Turkish.
The attack is similar to one in January 2016, when the Splendid Hotel and the nearby Cappucino restaurant, also on Kwame Nkrumah Avenue, were targeted.
Over 170 people were taken hostage and 30 were killed. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for that attack.
Burkina Faso is part of the Sahel region, which includes Mali where Islamist groups have been active since 2012.

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Australian deputy PM reveals he may be New Zealand citizen

Australia's deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, has revealed that he may hold dual citizenship with New Zealand.
Holding public office as a dual citizen is not allowed under Australia's constitution.
Mr Joyce says he will ask the nation's High Court to rule on the matter, after receiving legal advice that he is not in breach of rules.
He will remain as deputy prime minister in the meantime at the request of PM Malcolm Turnbull.
Mr Joyce is the latest of several Australian politicians to be caught up in dual citizenship scandals.
Two senators, Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters, were forced to resign last month over their citizenship status.
Speaking in parliament, Mr Joyce said he was "shocked" to be contacted by the New Zealand High Commission last week and informed he could be a citizen by descent.
The politician's father was born in New Zealand.
"Neither I, nor my parents have ever had any reason to believe I may be a citizen of another country," he said.

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Charlottesville: White House defends Trump response

The White House has defended President Donald Trump's reaction to deadly violence over a white supremacist rally in Virginia, amid criticism he did not explicitly condemn far-right groups.
But a spokesman said his condemnation included white supremacists.
A woman was killed on Saturday when a car rammed into a crowd protesting against the rally in Charlottesville.
Separately, a rally organiser was chased away by protesters as he tried to give a press conference on Sunday.
Jason Kessler, who organised the controversial "Unite the Right" march, was heckled and booed as he blamed the police for not preventing the violence, which he also condemned.
Nineteen people were injured in the car-ramming incident, and another 15 people were wounded in separate clashes related to the far-right march on Saturday afternoon.
Protests and vigils in support of Charlottesville were held in many US cities on Sunday. In Seattle, police used pepper spray to stop anti-fascist protesters approaching a pro-Trump rally.

How did Trump initially respond?

Hours after the violence erupted, Mr Trump said he condemned "in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides".
"The hate and the division must stop right now," he told reporters in New Jersey, where he is on a working holiday. "We have to come together as Americans with love for our nation."
But his comments did not explicitly condemn the white extremist groups involved in the rally, an omission that was strongly criticised by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Many, including senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, echoed the sentiment of Colorado Senator Cory Gardner, who tweeted: "Mr President - we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism."
The president's national security adviser, HR McMaster, went further by commenting: "Anytime that you commit an attack against people to incite fear, it meets the definition of terrorism."
Mr Trump's daughter too also appeared to offer stronger condemnation than her father.
In response, the White House issued a statement on Sunday clarifying that Mr Trump's condemnation had included white supremacists.
"The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred. Of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups," a spokesperson.

Should we be surprised by Trump's response?

Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America reporter
Clues for how the president would react to such a situation were scattered across his presidential campaign.
In February 2016, Mr Trump initially declined to disavow support from the Klu Klux Klan and David Duke, the former Klan leader who became a Louisiana Republican politician.
"Any candidate who cannot immediately condemn a hate group like the KKK does not represent the Republican Party, and will not unite it," Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the first black Republican elected from a Southern state since 1881, said.
After a week, Mr Trump gave a firm statement denouncing the KKK, but his initial hesitance would be an issue for the remainder of his presidential race.
If, as Mr Trump's critics suggest, his statements following the Charlottesville incident were yet another "dog whistle" to white supremacists, there's evidence that the message was clearly heard.
"Trump comments were good," one poster on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer wrote. "He didn't attack us. He just said the nation should come together."

How did the violence unfold?

Hundreds of white nationalists converged for Saturday's "Unite the Right" march, called to protest against the removal of a statue of a general who had fought for the pro-slavery Confederacy during the US Civil War.
The far-right demonstrators, who included neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members, clashed violently with counter-protesters.
A 32-year-old woman, Heather D Heyer, was later killed when a car was driven into a crowd of dispersing counter-protesters.
Ms Heyer's mother paid tribute to her daughter, who was a civil rights activist and lawyer.

"She always had a very strong sense of right and wrong, she always, even as a child, was very caught up in what she believed to be fair," she told the Huffington Post.
"I'm proud that what she was doing was peaceful, she wasn't there fighting with people."
Twenty-year-old James Fields from Ohio, the alleged driver, is in detention on suspicion of second-degree murder and the FBI has opened a civil rights investigation.
Some observers say that Mr Trump's election to the White House has re-energised the far right across the US.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organisation, says that "Trump's run for office electrified the radical right, which saw in him a champion of the idea that America is fundamentally a white man's country."


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Apple to scan iPhones for child sex abuse images

  Apple has announced details of a system to find child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on customers' devices. Before an image is stored on...