Have I been hiding under a rock? I've looked at the news and I can't seem to understand any of the stories.

"MALAYSIA has arrested an alleged middleman in the international nuclear black market scandal surrounding Pakistan's disgraced scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan." Wha?

"...Gerry Gleeson...was making a courtesy call only, to say the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, the government body he chairs, was poised to make an extraordinary multimillion-dollar bid for the beleaguered SuperDome." Eh?

"BANKS to Telstra's troubled Hong Kong joint venture, Reach, yesterday angrily rejected its lowball offer to buy them out of their $US1.2 billion ($1.7 billion) debt at a mere 20c in the dollar." Huh?

For some reason I don't understand any of these stories -I have not the faintest clue what they are about. What scandal? Superdome? Who's buying what now?

OK, I'll be the first to admit that when it comes to financial stuff, I don't have a clue. The financial report on the news could be spoken in a foreign language and I probably wouldn't notice. "Oh, the footsie wootsie went down and the hang seng deng xiao peng went up and the david jones index went sideways. Here's the weather." But it's disturbing to me to read the front page and feel like I've just returned from the moon. Now I know how all those space monkeys felt.