Just curious why the giant string map. I see that you are not using the properly accented characters with your replacements.
This code will replace them correctly with all the right accents.

proc dehex {string} {
  set string [subst [regsub -nocase -all {\\u([a-f0-9]{4})} $string {[format %c [decimal \1]]}]]
  return $string
}
proc decimal {hex} { return [expr 0x$hex] }
proc hex {decimal} { return [format %x $decimal] }
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To use this code , you would just put:
set news [dehex $news]
Instead of:
set news [string map ...................]