There are still no "hard" limits as far as queries per second or day are concerned, but the throttling mechanisms which have attempted to limit abuse have been cranked down. And of course, the biggest is the sunset date: the News Search API was deprecated in May 2011. Per the deprecation policy outlined in the TOS, you can expect that the service will be discontinued no later than May 2014. Given that reality, I would be extremely hesitant to develop new applications based on the service. And I would be actively seeking and/or developing a migration plan for existing applications.
jg