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Liberty Media Corp. intends to strengthen its embrace of SiriusXM satellite radio.

The Colorado-based Liberty, which is controlled by billionaire John Malone, announced a plan late Friday to offer Liberty common stock to minority shareholders of Sirius XM Holdings in a tax-free deal designed to convert the satellite radio company into a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty.

The all-stock transaction would be valued at about $10 billion.

Liberty currently controls about 53% of SiriusXM.

ON LOCATION: Where the cameras roll

In a statement, SiriusXM said its board would form a special committee to consider Liberty's proposal. Eddy Hartenstein, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, serves on the board of SiriusXM.

SiriusXM also said the deal "would be conditioned on the approval of both a special committee and a majority of the public stockholders of SiriusXM."

Under the proposal, SiriusXM common stock holders would receive new Liberty Series C shares. Liberty would provide a slight premium -- 4.5% -- over the Friday closing price of SiriusXM.

The proposed exchange ratio of 0.0760 would value SiriusXM common shares at about $3.68 per share, Liberty said. Current shareholders of SiriusXM would then hold about 39% of the outstanding Liberty common stock. The SiriusXM board members could try to demand a higher price.

In 2009, Liberty rode to the rescue of then-cash-strapped Sirius subscription radio service during the height of the financial crisis by providing loans of more than $500 million. In exchange for the loans, Liberty received preferred stock in the satellite radio company. In recent years, Liberty has further consolidated its control.

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Liberty Media seeks full ownership of SiriusXM satellite radio

The ruling government is very adept at using the mainstream media for their own ends.

COMMENT

Lately there has been a lot of propaganda in the mainstream media on the recent price-hike protest held on December 31 last year. Some has been labelled it as an attempt to overthrow the government. This is nothing but another malicious attempt by certain quarters to mislead the general public so that the former can still continue to garner public support.

There are also mainstream dailies who are now publishing lies and falsehood on a daily basis. These dailies have been reduced to being party newsletters instead of being proper newspapers. In short, they are not really newspapers in the true sense of the word.

If not for the internet, we will not know what is truly happening as the truth will be manipulated or covered up. Likewise, it was easy to blame DAP for the race riots of 1969 because there was no internet or camera-phone during that era.

With the advent of modern technology, it is not easy to cover up the truth and therefore those who want to cling on to power find it easier to suppress the truth by allowing only poor internet coverage in remote or rural areas.

Feeding the rural folks with a daily diet of falsehood ensures that rural society is always kept misinformed, thus ensuring that they will never vote wisely.

We can see that BN government leaders do a lot of media-polishing to spruce up their personal image and that of their party by presenting a wonderful image of themselves in the mainstream media while information that is unflattering to themselves is suppressed or omitted.

It is thus preferable to read the neutral online news portals where information on both sides of the political divide is presented in an unvarnished truth.

Good or bad, news is news and must be presented correctly, accurately and factually. There must be no attempt whatsoever to hide the truth.

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Only a free media will tell the truth

NEW YORK (TheStreet) --21st Century Fox (FOXA)gained 1.3% to $35.62 on Thursday after it announced it will sell its stake in Chinese joint venture Star China TV to China Media Capital.

The entertainment company currently owns 47% of the joint venture. The sale of Fox's stake will give China Media Capital complete control over Star China TV. The joint venture currently owns and operates three 24-hour Mandarin TV channels: Xing King, Xing Kong International, and Channel Mainland China.

TheStreet Ratings team rates TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY FOX INC as a Buy with a ratings score of B. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about its recommendation:

"We rate TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY FOX INC (FOXA) a BUY. This is driven by a number of strengths, which we believe should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks we cover. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, solid stock price performance, notable return on equity, reasonable valuation levels and expanding profit margins. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income."

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:

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Why 21st Century Fox (FOXA) Is Up Today

Syrian hackers took control of Skype's social media sites yesterday. The Syrian Electronic Army, which supports President Bashar Assad, commandeered the VoIP firm's Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as its blog, and posted messages, one of which implicated Skype's parent firm in the PRISM scandal. "Dont use Microsoft emails(hotmail,outlook),They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments.More details soon #SEA."

After Skype returned to the driving seat of its social media, it posted this message:

According to the Wall Street Journal, a Twitter account used by the Syrian Electronic Army posted details of what it said were Steve Ballmer's Microsoft employee details, including the ex-CEO's address and phone number. It didn't manage to publish any details about the search for Ballmer's replacement, however.

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden this summer showed the NSA had managed to crack the wiretapping of Skype video calls, part of the revelation that Microsoft was handing over user messages to the government's surveillance agency of its own volition.

The Syrian Electronic Army has, in the past, scored some high-profile hits, including President Obama's social media accounts, White House staffers' personal email accounts, the Onion's Twitter feed, and the DNS servers of both Twitter and the New York Times.

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Syrian Electronic Army Hacks Skype's Social Media Accounts

Prague - Andrej Babis, a businessman and the chairman of the ANO movement, is the most powerful person in the Czech media world, according to the list of the 50 most influential people in the Czech media published in the January issue of the Czech version of the Forbes magazine.

Babis is followed by Petr Dvorak, director general of public service broadcaster Czech Television (CT), on Forbes's list.

Businessmen Daniel Kretinsky and Patrik Tkac, who have recently become the new owners of publisher Ringier Axel Springer, share the third and fourth positions.

In 2013, the most influential person in Czech media by Forbes's ranking was Adrian Sarbu, the then chief executive of media group CME which controls the Nova television group.

Babis has also made the fastest advance among media players, according to Forbes.

As the publisher of minor free daily paper 5+2, he was a novice on the list last year, but in 2013 he became the owner of media group MAFRA, publishing nationwide dailies MF DNES and Lidove noviny, and also acquired radio station Impuls which has the biggest audience share in the Czech Republic.

The acquisition of Radio Impuls is yet to be approved by the antitrust office UOHS.

There are eight entrepreneurs in the top ten of the list who are or will become media owners. This means that a large part of the media is being transferred under the control of Czech capital, which is an entirely new situation for the Czech society, Forbes said.

Last year's winner Sarbu resigned from the post of CME's president and CEO in August last year. He will receive a severance payment of $5.4m.

Ranking on the Forbes list is determined by the influence exerted by the particular media, which the magazine evaluates based on viewer ratings, audience share and circulation.

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Andrej Babis is most powerful person of Czech media world -Forbes