Gnus is the news reader of emacs. It is still under constant evolution, and we may not be using the latest version (even the latest major revision).
We have currently minimal settings: the site-start.el file doesn't set any default nntp server (but lists several secondary ones, not necessarily available to us...).
mf-init just defines a default method,
using news.europe.
Gnus may be used to browse multiple sources (nntp servers, but also
mail folders, ftp archives or imap and pop
servers).
Note that the startup time may rise though.
Gnus now supports MIME (TAB to switch to parts, e to extract). It may be interfaced with bbdb. The recommended setting is then (in your ~/.emacs):
(require 'mf-bbdb)