Don't know if this is possible, it just came to me as a 'good idea'.
Module to be configured to retrieve items from an RSS feed (or possibly several..) to update every half hour or so, and setting a number of random news articles based on the feed content.
Useful for networks with network-news RSS feeds, where users may be interested or need to know things, but isn't critical enough to warrant the network to send globals every hour with the same information.
Potential could also exist for setting a logon-news item to the most recent item.
I suppose the hard part will be expiring old items, as the news functions as they exist don't have a time-limit functionality.
Open to other suggestions on how the idea could work before someone were to code it, if it is workable to have a socket manage HTTP sockets in this way.