BUSINESS DIGEST || Buffett: Likely to buy newspapers

Buffett: Likely to buy newspapers

OMAHA, Neb.

Warren Buffett says his company is likely to buy more newspapers in the next few years, and Berkshire Hathaway will not try to influence the editorial policies of any of them.

Buffett wrote a memo this week to the editors and publishers of all of Berkshire’s daily newspapers. That group is about to grow to include 26 daily newspapers because Berkshire announced last week that it plans to buy 63 newspapers from Media General Inc. for $142 million.

The letter was posted online Thursday by the Omaha World-Herald, which is a Berkshire newspaper. Buffett’s assistant didn’t respond immediately to an inquiry about the letter Thursday.

Lockheed to hire temps during strike

FORT WORTH, Texas

Lockheed Martin on Thursday turned up the pressure on striking Machinists union members, announcing it would begin hiring temporary replacement workers to fill aircraft-production jobs.

A few workers were being brought in from a temporary employment service, and a few dozen more would be added next week, Lockheed spokesman Joe Stout said.

“We will add people incrementally each week as we need to,” Stout said, with the goal of improving and boosting production until the Machinists return to work.

The action by Lockheed to begin augmenting its production work force comes as the strike by about 3,600 members of the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers is in its fifth week.

Facebook launches iPhone camera app

NEW YORK

Facebook’s rocky initial public offering hasn’t stopped life at the world’s biggest online social network. On Thursday, the company unveiled a camera app for the iPhone.

The app can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store and works like most other camera applications for smartphones. To take a photo, you tap a camera icon in the upper left corner of your screen, aim and shoot. You can then add filters, crop or tilt your photo, and share it on Facebook.

The new app is similar to Instagram, the photo-sharing app Facebook is in the process of buying for $1 billion. The acquisition, however, has not yet been completed, and Instagram’s employees did not work on the photo app. Facebook has said it expects the Instagram acquisition to close sometime this year.

US bank earnings rose in 1st quarter

WASHINGTON

U.S. bank earnings rose in the first three months of the year to the highest level in nearly five years, and the number of troubled banks fell for the fourth-straight quarter.

The mostly positive first-quarter earnings released Thursday illustrate how far the banking industry has come since the 2008 financial crisis. Still, the report noted that many banks remain cautious about lending, a necessary driver of economic growth.

Vindicator wire reports