Berkshire and its subsidiaries have about 225,000 workers, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company said this week in regulatory filings. Thats 8.6 percent lower than the 246,083 disclosed in the 2008 annual report. Berkshire provided the jobs information in a document tied to its planned $26 billion takeover of railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. Buffett didnt reply to a request, left with an assistant, for comment on the cuts.
Buffett, Berkshires chief executive officer, oversees a collection of more than 70 subsidiaries that sell products including Geico car - - - - >

Crude snapped two days of gains as the dollar rose to a three-month high against the euro after the U.S. Federal Reserve said yesterday the economy is strengthening and the deterioration in the labor market is abating. Oil rose the most in a month yesterday after the Energy Department said U.S. crude inventories declined to the lowest since the week ended Jan. 9.
“Its a bit of the dollar” thats causing the decline in prices today, Thina Saltvedt, a commodities analyst at Nordea Bank AB in Oslo, - - - - >

Morris, 71, has split his time the last few months courting advertisers for Vevo, he said in a Dec. 2 interview. The site will be introduced tomorrow at an event in New York where Mariah Carey, Rihanna and Lady Gaga are scheduled to attend. AT&T Inc., McDonalds Corp. and MasterCard Inc. have agreed to advertise, according to New York-based Vevo.
Vevo, powered by Google Inc.s YouTube and featuring music videos, concert footage, interviews and original content, allows record labels to attract premium-prices for ads while controlling how - - - - >

Heritage will pay a special dividend of between 90 pence and 100 pence per share as part of the deal, which could be announced as soon as tomorrow, the newspaper said. Heritage shares the fields with Tullow Oil Plc, the newspaper reported.
Heritage and Eni declined to comment, the newspaper said. Tullow Chief Executive Officer Aidan Heavey said potential new partners include unidentified “Chinese and major oil companies,” the newspaper reported.
Source

New York Times Co.s namesake newspaper is taking the latest shot today with the debut of two pages of local content in Chicago editions. News Corp. this month told employees of New York-based Dow Jones & Co., which includes the Journal, that the company was considering additional metro coverage in Chicago and Los Angeles, two people with knowledge of the situation said last week.
Publishers are increasing newsstand and subscription prices as ad sales slide. Third-quarter circulation revenue exceeded ad sales for the first time at Times - - - - >

Cable TV operator Comcast Corp. is expected to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal, perhaps as early as next week, bringing the network of Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Tom Brokaw under the corporate control of the company that owns the Golf Channel and E! Entertainment Television.
“This is highly symbolic,” said Tim Brooks, who had worked at NBC for 20 years and now writes books on television history.
Starting Sunday, Vivendi SA has an option to sell its 20 percent stake in NBC Universal. Majority owner General Electric Co. is expected to buy it and then - - - - >

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) — Russias government increased pressure on Renault SA, Frances second-biggest carmaker, to help debt-laden partner OAO AvtoVAZ stay in business.
Renault, which owns one-quarter of AvtoVAZ, needs to help Russias largest carmaker develop a broader range of cars to remain competitive, the Industry and Trade Ministry said in a statement. Plunging sales will push AvtoVAZs debt to financial creditors and component suppliers to about 86 billion rubles ($3 billion) in the next three months, the ministry said.
- - - - >

CVS MinuteClinics in Austin, Texas, and New York ran out of the seasonal-flu vaccine within the past week before restocking, according to calls to 13 stores by Bloomberg News. Calls to eight Walgreen stores in Manhattan on Oct. 5 determined none had it at the time. There are also shortages in the South and Southeast, said James Cohn, a Walgreen spokesman.
Demand for seasonal-flu vaccinations has soared because of public awareness of the H1N1 virus, known as swine flu, Cohn said. Walgreen administered twice as many doses - - - - >

The comments from Tom Curley of The Associated Press and News Corp.s Rupert Murdoch come as the media industry struggles in the Internet age. Many news companies contend that sites such as Google have reaped a fortune from their articles, photos and video without fairly compensating the news organizations producing the material.
“We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission,” Curley, the APs chief executive, told a meeting of 300 media leaders in Beijing.
“Crowd-sourcing Web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook have become preferred customer destinations - - - - >

Nearly two-thirds of Americans think the news stories they read, hear and watch are frequently inaccurate, according to a poll released Sunday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. That marks the highest level of skepticism recorded since 1985, when this study of public perceptions of the media was first done.
The poll didnt distinguish between Internet bloggers and reporters employed by newspapers and broadcasters, leaving the definition of “news media” up to each individual who was questioned. The survey polled 1,506 adults on the phone in late July.
The survey found that 63 percent of the respondents - - - - >