For media companies, the past year was one of the worst in living memory. Newspapers are dying, content is being stolen and advertisers are in hiding. So why did they forget to send Naspers the memo? Maybe because it is not really a media company anymore?

Finance minister Pravin Gordhan reckons it’s going to be a slow economic recovery. But it’s his comments about the future of inflation targeting that were more interesting at the press conference that was supposed to be about something else.

Contrary to the marketing hype of the last decade, the sun may be setting, for a while at least, on Dubai World. The emirate’s state-owned flagship for global investments has asked creditors for six extra months to make forthcoming payments on $59 billion of debt. That quite suddenly raises the possibility of a default on that debt – and questions about the overall solvency of the tiny country that grew so quickly during the boom years.

Rupert Murdoch’s apparent decision to dump Google and support Microsoft search engine Bing is just the latest gambit in his strategy to change the rules of the online news game. No winners are yet emerging, but the contest sure is fascinating.

The Bank of England admitted on Tuesday it lent $102 billion to the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS in secret during last year's financial crisis, quickly adding that the cash had since been repaid. By adding that rider, it seems Britain's central bank is trying to pre-empt a storm of criticism from an angry public.

South Africa emerged from recession on Tuesday, but here is the truth: we are in deep, deep, deep trouble.

We’re fairly confident the SABC has lied to us all in the past, but now it’s taken things to a whole new level.

Stephenie Meyer’s teen vampire novels made her the biggest-selling author of 2008, at a staggering 29-million units sold for the year. But would her success translate into film? Hell yeah!

In two years, the Oprah Winfrey Show will be no more. The retrospectives have already started, but expect things to get much more mushy in the months ahead.

In a woefully under-reported historic event, Boeing has publicly admitted to shooting down an airplane. With a frigging laser! An unmanned airplane and in a planned test, admittedly, but it's still pretty cool and scary in roughly equal quantities.

For the second year running, Johannesburg is putting on a very expensive cattle-show of women in bikinis who are absolutely aching for world peace. But here’s the odd thing: a quick cross-section of women’s public representatives suggests women really don’t give much of a hoot.

Kevin Rudd, who as Australia’s Prime Minister managed to do what successive Australian governments were too arrogant to do - say sorry to Aboriginals, and British children abducted from their homes 70 years ago to provide Empire with sturdy white workers - has now raised concerns about the Church of Scientology.

The sad tale of global prowess of Internet service provider America Online (AOL), once the ruler of all the lands it could survey in the glorious kingdom of the Internet, is coming to a tragic end.

Paul Allen, the guy who started Microsoft with Bill Gates, has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. It’s the third time that one of the world’s richest men has had to fight for his life.

Why do the wise owls of South African business keep getting offered jobs in the public sector? Why do they accept these jobs? Why do they flee after short stints? Why do they never explain what went wrong? Questions, questions.

It seems incredible that the walking, talking Playboy Hugh Hefner, who at the age of 83 flaunts three buxom blonde girlfriends on a reality TV show, should ever be parted from the magazine brand he created and nursed to a global franchise.

Guess who's listed by Forbes as the three most powerful people in the world. BIll Gates? Nah.The founders of Google? Here's a hint: they are politicians. Specifically, Barack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao, and that former KGB martial arts expert Vladimir Putin.

For Apple lovers everywhere, this has been a sad week. Steve Jobs seems intent on moving over to the dark side, and his devotees may soon have to pay for his folly via the enforced consumption of advertising.

Here’s an interesting factoid: despite having about half the world’s known gold reserves, South Africa will produce less gold this year than it did in 1906, when horses were the predominant form of public transport. But amazingly, the extraordinary decline of South Africa’s gold mining industry is not the subject of public outcries, parliamentary enquiries or even particularly of public comment.

Eskom’s explanation about its leadership crisis raises more questions than it answers.

Oh no, not another one! Hot on the heels of the Eskom crisis, press reports on Thursday morning suggest Armscor is also involved in a face-off between the CEO and his board.

The world’s richest man just loves playing a contrarian-in-chief game, as he proves in his latest, almost-bet-the-farm deal on technology from the early 19th century.

Aggressive journalism is not commonplace in China, mainly because the Communist Party has little use for the Western concept of the “Chinese Wall”. So the resignation of Hu Shuli from Caijing is a big loss for the country’s free-speechers.

How will investors read the Eskom saga? Short answer: they will probably run for the hills and dive into any bunker available. So is nationalisation now the only alternative?

Eskom chairman Bobby Godsell resigned from his position on Monday, after a meeting with President Jacob Zuma on Sunday. Coincidence?

Disney has just entered its mascot into the biggest complete makeover reality show in history. If you’re one of those people who likes Mickey Mouse just as he is, you’re probably a lot older than 12 anyway.

What do the Black Management Forum and the ANC Youth League know that we don't about what has been happening at Eskom? Not much, apparently.