One question: could you go to Settings > Google News > License tab, then select “Check license” and hit Save, then let me know if you get an error message that says “An error occurred, please try again.”? I wonder if there is some kind of problem reaching the update server from your site…
About the plugin updates: there is one coming soon that does include some updates to the plugin self-updater routines but I’m not aware of a fix for any admin slowdown. Nor did we get any other reports about this, so that is why I wonder if there is something else going wrong.
Still, I can send you the development version if you are willing to test it. It would help us figure out if there is something that needs to be done before release 🙂
Please let me know!