Belo Corp. disclosed Tuesday it expects to reap US$51.9 million from the spinoff of its newspapers into a separate publicly traded company, according to a statement in a regulatory filing.

The media company's board approved the deal, which includes a special tax-free stock dividend distribution to shareholders, Friday. Following the spin-off, Belo will owe $18 million in federal income taxes, as well as state tax, on the gain, according to the filing.

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DoubleClick's vice president of advertiser products wrote last week that whenever the topic of widgets come up in a business meeting, people start to giggle, and repeating the word only makes the giggles continue.

But despite the funny name, widgets, which VP Ari Paparo describes as “small contained piece(s) of content that can live on a blog, a social networking page, a personalised homepage or even a mobile phone” can mean big business for interactive marketers.

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Reuters and Thomson announced in a joint statement Monday that their US$17 billion merger deal should receive regulatory clearance early in Q2 this year, a slight delay from the planned mid-of-Q1 clearance.

The U.S. Department of Justice had agreed to give its decision on the deal “on or about the date” that the European Commission makes its decision, to align the clearances, which is by March 10, the two groups said.

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Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs announced during the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco an alliance with the six major movie studios, which will enable the company to offer online movie rentals.

The service was launched Tuesday in the United States and will roll out globally later this year. More than 1,000 movies will be available for online rental through iTunes by late February. Price will be $2.99 for older movies and $3.99 for new releases.

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The mobile video games market is increasing, compared with markets for consoles and handheld video games, while online games are growing faster than the mobile video games, research firm Understanding & Solutions said.

“Global revenues from mobile gaming are pegged at $3.6 billion this year. We predict this figure to rise to $6 billion by 2011," said David Rouse, an analyst at Understanding & Solutions.

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A young newspaper publisher executed in 1961 for collaborating with North Korea was acquitted in an emotional trial today, The Korea Times reported Wednesday.

Jo Yong-su, 32, founded the Minjok Ilbo (People's Newspaper) in February 1961, and was executed in December 1961, after he was convicted by a military court of setting his newspaper up with financial support from North Korea and of being a member of pro-Pyongyang underground organisations. Wednesday's ruling overturned the court's 1961 decision.

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In its biggest contract since venturing into the mobile ads market, Nokia has been hired by Reuters to help the news agency generate mobile advertising revenues.

Nokia Ad Business, the sales team the mobile phone giant formed after acquiring mobile media services group Enpocket last October, will help develop branded sites for ad campaigns and sell ads on Reuters' mobile properties, Brand Republic reported Wednesday.

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