Now that this is live, I've got a suggestion for the recording of the News segment.
I'd suggest that more news actually be discussed.
The reason for this is that by the time the podcast comes out some of it is usually out of date.
Case in point here is the discussion of Gliese 581 g. New data suggests that if may not even exist.
The reason for recording more news stories is that it would allow for out of date stories, like this one, to be dropped from the final podcast.