NewsPiper Description:

NewsPiper is a RSS/Web news reader and news ticker in one environment. This program can show news from different sources: Web-pages (like cnn.com, foxnews.com, etc.) or RSS news feeds.
Retrived news are shown in usual three-panes newsreader interface (channels, news titles, news details) and in a special news ticker bar (News Bar) placed at the top of your desktop. For each shown headline you can open "full story" page in your default web browser simply by clicking on the headline.
Another useful feature of NewsPiper is "speaking": it can pronounce news headlines and details and so can be used as "radio" tuner for RSS news feeds or Web sites.
Any part of NewsPiper interface can be hidden: you can turn off main newsreader window and leave only NewsBar or vice versa. You can also hide them both and allow NewsPiper to live in your tray and just pronounce news.
Addition of a new channel is very easy: you can manually enter URL of web-site or RSS feed, drag-n-drop it from web-browser or another program or simply paste it from clipboard.
You can also add channels from "Online channel catalog" which contains many popular web-sites and RSS feeds.
In addition NewsPiper checks your connection status by the schedule you setup (one time per minute, 5 times per hour, etc.) and changes the color of the icon in the system tray bar accordingly: green means your are online, red - offline.