USA Today publisher Gannett Co. Inc. has acquired social media services and tools provider Ripple6, Media Post reported Friday. In addition to social media services, the firm also offers content publishing, social marketing and a word-of-mouth analytics feature.

As part of the deal, Gannett also bought out the 10 percent holding Gannett's Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer Chris Saridakis had in Ripple6. The publisher said Saridakis did not participate in transaction negotiations. The terms of the agreement are not yet disclosed.

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Investment group Maine Media Investment LLC has agreed to buy Blethen Maine Newspapers. The price of the deal and its terms, and the exact date of the final sale are not yet known, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

“Although the sale is still contingent on the buyer obtaining a portion of its financing, both parties are optimistic that the transaction will close, despite tight credit markets,” said Charles Cochrane, president and CEO of Blethen Maine Newspapers.

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Swiss presses manufacturer Wifag-Polytype Group has purchased Spühl/Legett & Platt’s Digital Printing Department as part of its plan to enter the digital printing market, Editor & Publisher reported Tuesday.

Wifag Polytype Holding will incorporate the department, along with its current 30 staffers in Switzerland and the United States, as part of its WP Digital AG business unit, which will be located in Wittenbach, Switzerland.

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Want Want Group, the Taiwanese snack maker, is in talks to buy the China Times Group, according to the president of the publishing company, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

It is quite possible that a deal will be completed soon, while an official announcement “could be quite quick,” said Lin Sheng-fen, president of the China Times newspaper, in a phone interview with Bloomberg. According to the Economic Daily, Want Want intends to acquire China Times Group for NT$20.4 billion (US$619 million), although Lin did not confirm the price.

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Weeks ago, News Corporation announced its plan to withdraw from Eastern Europe, and has now started pulling out of the area, starting with Poland, FollowtheMedia reported. The company announced it will sell its 35 percent stake in TV Puls back to the station's majority owners, according to a TV Puls statement on Monday.

Dariusz Dabski, TV Puls CEO, has now upped his stake from 5 percent to 49 percent, leaving the Franciscan Order with 51 percent.

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Italian Internet provider Tiscali announced it may well its UK sector to UK broadcasting firm BSkyB for £450 million, BBC News reported Monday.

The announcement regarding the sales of “certain UK assets” make Tiscali’s shares surge by 28 percent to €0.872.

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Independent News & Media is discussing whether to sell its 39.1 percent stake in Australasian newspaper and radio group APN News & Media Ltd., a move that would ease its debt load by about €800 million, The Irish Times reported Friday.

INM stated several groups have made their interest known, “adding that it intended to sell,” The Irish Times reported. INM publishes the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent. News that the publisher was considering the sale caused its shares to rise by 28 percent in Dublin to €0.64 at 2:50 p.m.

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Russian authorities have halted Google’s purchase of an online ad service, the Associated Press reported.

Google announced in July it would spend US$140 million to buy the ad service, ZAO Begun, from Rambler Media Ltd., which owns one of the most popular online portals in Russia. The deal was expected to be finalised during the third quarter.

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An Idaho, U.S.-based newspaper company announced Tuesday it has bought and closed down its rival, 127-year-old weekly Wood River Journal, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Express Publishing, Inc. runs the Idaho Mountain Express newspaper in Ketchum, Idaho, a rival of the Wood River Journal, based in Hailey, Idaho. The Journal published its last edition Wednesday.

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The Tribune Company is looking into buying the Orange County Register and combining it with its Los Angeles Times in order to strengthen its hold in the Los Angeles newspaper market, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

If Tribune does not buy the Register from its current owner, Freedom Communications, another option is to create an agreement in which both the Register and LA Times would merge production and distribution to save money, “media industry sources” told the FT.

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UK-based advertising firm WPP Group announced it will be purchasing a 33 percent stake in South African global marketing company Smollan Holdings, according to Share Cast Friday.

Johannesburg-based Smollan Holdings operates across the African continent and India. It also has strategic alliances in North and Central America, Europe, Asia and Australasia, M & A reported. The minority stake includes “market intelligence,” "customer contract” and “brand activation services" for several South African companies.

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Daily Latvian Russian-language newspaper Telegraf announced on Friday that its new owner is AO News media group, Novo News reported Monday. The firm acquired the publication from its former Latvian owner, Valerijs Belokon.

AO News media group assured the paper’s readers and journalists that it does not intend to “interfere with the politics” of the paper or to destroy its structure, reported Novo News on Monday. “We did not choose this newspaper accidentally; we choose it because we do consider it to be the most objective and professional source of information on the Latvian mass media market. We plan to develop the newspaper, come up with new plans and create satellite publications,” said ex-politician Janis Jurkans, head of the AO News Media Group Council.

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Monster Worldwide, Inc. has bought the top online recruitment site in one of the world's fastest growing job markets, the company announced in a press release Tuesday.

The parent company of Monster.com bought the remaining 55 percent stake in the recruitment site, ChinaHR, for US$174 million in cash.

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Google may want to buy EveryBlock.com, a start-up created by Adrian Holovaty that he funded by winning a grant called the Knight News Challenge, according to a ValleyWag report on Tuesday.

Holovaty's ChicagoCrime.org is a mash-up of using Google Maps to view local crime statistics in Chicago. For EveryBlock.com, Holovaty took that concept one step further to map out as much news information as possible for every city block, such as real estate listings, crime, business information, and all news reports related to each block.

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French mobile network provider Orange announced it has bought a license to operate in Armenia as well as to offer GSM and 3G services. Orange invested more than €51 million in the initiative, Le Revenu reported Tuesday.

The project is planned to be officially launched in the upcoming months, after Armenian authorities analyse the regulations behind the license and the frequencies Orange intends to use.

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