AGING

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan laid out plans to revive the economy in 2011 in his New Year remarks. While his proposals may boost some sectors of the economy, they miss the point.

Swiss drug maker Novartis will pay $12.9 billion to buy the remaining shares of Alcon it doesn't already own to broaden its presence in the booming eye-care market, which is expected to outgrow the pharmaceuticals market in coming years.

Though a change of guard at the Saudi oil ministry looks more certain than otherwise, the fact that Iran will assume the revolving chairmanship of the OPEC next month can potentially impact the timing of Saudi Arabia's long-serving oil minister Ali al-Naimi's retirement.

While it may make some strategic sense for Yahoo and AOL to combine some of their operations, she sees little hope for the resulting merged entity to mount a challenge against the reigning monarch of the search-engine market, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).