[JWait]

I haven't used the standard news feature in so long I'm not sure if this will work of not. Instead of trying to make the "news" a fixed height, try changing this in today_news.tpl

{$news_message.body}
to
{$news_message.body|truncate:100:"...":true}
then change "100" to whatever figure works for what you want to achieve in height.

What I usually do is just put a link in to "Latest News" and move the "subscribe" to that page.