had this for a while now, have no clue; am new
reinstalled yumex but still broken; any ideas?

opened from the shell:

16:47:32 : Yum Config Setup
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Loading "fastestmirror" plugin
16:47:33 : Yum Version : 3.2.1
16:47:34 : GUI Setup Completed
16:47:34 : Setup Yum : Transaction Set
16:47:34 : Setup Yum : RPM Db.
16:47:34 : Setup Yum : Repositories.
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
16:47:35 : Setup Yum : Package Sacks
16:47:39 : Setup Yum : Updates
16:47:50 : Setup Yum : Groups
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
16:47:52 : Setup Yum : Base setup completed
16:47:52 : Building Package Lists
16:49:40 : Building Package Lists Completed
16:49:41 : Building Groups Lists
16:49:42 : Building Group Lists Completed
16:49:42 : Getting packages : updates
16:49:42 : Found 5 updates packages
16:49:42 : Sorting packages
16:49:42 : Population view with packages
16:49:42 : Population Completed

(process:3199): Gtk-WARNING (recursed) **: could not load image: Icon 'document- new' not present in theme

aborting...
/usr/share/yumex/yumex: line 5: 3199 Aborted /usr/bin/python /u sr/share/yumex/yumex.pyc $*

As far as I know, yumex just uses your GUI settings for icons. So, check you GUI theme definitions, and either add the missing one or use a different theme.

You could also just do a yum update yum yumex to make sure you've got the most current releases of yum and yumex. (The latest yum release fixed the bug in yumex that prevented the saving of yumex settings, but that's not your problem.)