[CarCdr]

Here's how you would change your query to catch threads with the "newsworthy" iconid. It is vital that your moderators use "Edit Thread" to set the thread icon, not the first post or any other post to set the post icon.

Change this line:

WHERE forumid IN ($vbindex[newsfid])

to:

WHERE (forumid IN ($vbindex[newsfid]) OR thread.iconid=###)

where "###" is replaced with the actual iconid that you noted when you added it.

Since the thread table has an iconid KEY, this should be quite performant.