Can anyone tell me exactly how 'recent news' in news 1.43 works?

I've had a nice list of five topics that were showing last night, now having logged in there's nothing under 'recent news on my homepage, just an empty box - the articles are still there and nothing else has changed, so I presume news is deeming them 'no longer recent' and deciding that a far nicer look would be an empty box?!

So can someone tell me how long a period 'recent' news covers and how I can disable this silly feature (if it is a feature!) so that it simply shows the LAST 5 topics - ie if I don't update for two weeks then don't start removing stuff off the recent news list!

you have updated news module to 1.44? have you follow the correct procedure?
Normally this problem is generated by a wrong update of bloks
go into template area, delete template and regenerate it