news2 appears in the "wordfreq" file compiled by Alexandre Girardi from the Mainichi Shimbun. (See the Monash ftp archive for a copy.)

nf40 this is an indicator of frequency-of-use ranking in the wordfreq file. "xx" is the number of the set of 500 words in which the entry can be found, with "01" assigned to the first 500, "02" to the second, and so on.

spec2 a small number of words use this marker when they are detected as being common, but are not included in other lists.