Well, this is either another ACS Classic problem we didn't ferret out
while porting, or our problem caused because it was missed when
weeding through patch logs.
The news table used to be called "news". Then it got changed
(frivolously, IMO) to "news_items". Not all references to "news" were
changed to "news_items" by the author at aD. You've caught one.
Your change is correct, I'll try to commit it to the tree shortly.
Thanks.
