I guess I should also mention that you need to be on the news summary page ( http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/browse?ao=1 ) to see the icon :) Many pages which offer RSS feeds offer them in a way firefox can see, not all, but some is better than none, just keep checking the status bar now and again and pretty soon you'll have a pretty impressive collection of newsfeeds :)
Got it, thanks!