Thanks for the very helpful advice. No offense but the searching feature here kind of sucks.
NewsLeecher is great under windows (and if you're happy to pay for it). I was using newsleecher however I'm using ubuntu now so I've switched to Sabnzbd which is a python based downloader and offers a web interface to work with. It automatically extracts and does all the paring on any downloads for you. Also, it works under pretty much any operating system.
NL does the same thing....I'm pretty sure you can run it on Mac and maybe some sort of Windows emulator on Linux no?
most newsreaders are worthless when compared to the sab/newzbin/nzbstatus combo.