10 things in tech you need to know today

Good morning! Here's the technology news you need to know this Friday.

1. Foursquare has appointed COO Jeff Glueck as its new CEO. It has also has raised $45 million (£31 million) from Morgan Stanley and a bunch of its earliest investors.

2. The EU is going to look at how its member states are blocking companies like Uber and Airbnb. Each of Europe's 28 member states have their own set of laws that US technology giants and others must try and navigate when they expand to the continent.

3. Spotify's office in San Francisco is flying its flag at half mast this week in memory of David Bowie. Bowie died after an 18-month battle with cancer at age 69, on Sunday night, January 10.

4. Shipping software firm Flexport has obtained information that Amazon China has received a license to operate as an ocean freight forwarder in the United States. This could be Amazon's first step toward entering the $350 billion (£243 million) ocean freight market.

5. The Ecuador government has reportedly agreed to cooperate with Sweden on an interrogation of Julian Assange over a rape allegation. Assange, the creator of whistleblowing website Wikileaks, has lived in Ecuador's London embassy since 2012.

6. Anaplan has raised £62 million ($89.2 million) at a valuation of £1.1 billion ($1.5 billion), becoming the North of England's first true tech unicorn in the process. Total investment in Anaplan now stands at $240 million (£166 million) and the company is now looking ahead to a possible IPO.

7. Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and executive chairman of Google's parent company, Alphabet, is going to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican in Rome. The Silicon Valley billionaire, thought to be worth around $10 billion (£6.9 billion), will reportedly meet with the Pope for just 15 minutes.

8. BT Group's takeover of mobile phone network EE has been given final clearance by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The £12.5 billion ($17.9 billion) deal brings together the UK's largest fixed-line business and the largest mobile telecoms business.

9. Netflix will start cracking down on subscribers who use proxy services to access content that is "locked" in their area. Because of the complicated nature of some of Netflix's licensing deals, not all shows and movies on the service are available to users all over the world.

10. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said that the ride-hailing firm's China unit was valued at more than $8 billion (£5.6 billion) after its latest fundraising round, over $1 billion (£690 million) more than before the effort. Uber China's recently-closed Series B fundraising brought in "well over $1 billion" (£690 million), Kalanick told reporters in Beijing.