Suggestion:

What about making a personal news bar at the top of EE. Something similar to boxcar. You can make it an optional thing and you can also select or deselect for each server. If you are LGed maybe have it show up in yellow, if you are GS, BR, AB, NM, CM, EM, then it shows up in red.

I suggest this for those who complain about not be able to wall. Part of this is caused by kills happening so fast. Many times people will lose a country when they are logged into EE and on the forums or on a different server than the one they are killed on.

As it happens? I like this.

boxcars news function is insanely inefficient bandwidth wise, as it hits the server a couple times per second; if we could do a push model perhaps

Seeing as moving the game to a server that can handle the bandwidth on a full-time basis probably won't happen anytime soon, I suggest finding somebody who has a vps who can 'repeat' the game's API feeds.

Really, if getting game news is that problematic (causing lag to the game, etc), then you really need a dedicated solution to the problem.

edit: however, if it's all local, then why would you necessarily need more bandwidth? and a few second delay wouldn't hurt either. It won't make THAT much difference.