From what I've seen, If your news pal is pulling from a forum with lots of posts, and your server times out during the query.... the cached IIP results could be blank (if the cache never gets updated).
So sometimes, on some servers or larger sites, IIP does not work well.
I'd try to reduce options/remove boxes, and have the newspal pull from forums that don't have very many posts. Likewise, take advantage of the other options to gain efficiency. Taking advantage of the caching can help. Stagger their refresh times. But if the query is too intense to update the cache, you won't have a page.
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