OK, I'll start

Would be nice to be able to pull the news we have on the portal page into external pages like the content from most of the other portal sections.

mmhh, is this not possible right now? You can setup a post island and then create code from the portal setup page over the link 'external use'. The code can be placed everywhere.

The post box must be set to always generate.

Code is available as php and html. It would be nice to have shtml and javascript includes too.

I don't see where news can be pulled to other pages tho, it's all post_island's, who's online, etc.

It is a little bit different from the well used IIP add-on. I dont test it on my page, but if I understand the system it should work like this:

Go to control panel, post islands. Create a new post island, give name and define the island type. Then you can select the forums whitch contains the news (multiple select with ctrl-click)

When submit it you have create a post island with your news forums and this can be pulled to the page with the generated code from portal setup.

There is no News Island by default, thats correct. Maybe Rick add a external link for the build in news system for the portal so we can pull it without creating an extra post island. The post island is a workaround but should do the job.

That gives you the title of the topic, not the post body, views/# of comments

Mhh, seems we need an enhancement and it's time to test it myself before I made more suggestions