I'm sure there is a macro for it, but could you add a right click menu item that let's one mark everything as read and closes the window. I lean back in my chair and try to avoid the keyboard. Lazy I know, but it would speed things up. If this is a RTFM case, I apologize.

Aaaaah, the best position in which to read your news

There isn't a way to do this within Awasu but I recommended this to someone the other day elsewhere in these forums and he loved it:

http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/

You will be able to program it to do what you want.