Two questions - Gnus and IRC related

[Hiran Watson]

1) How can I set Gnus to automatically display all messages (read and unread) 
for new newsgroups I subscribe to? Currently I type G + c to go into the config 
options for a particular newsgroup and change the display option. Can I have 
Gnus do this for any new newsgroups I subscribe to?

2) Can I connect to/read/write to IRC channels with Emacs? If so, what's the 
package I need to install? Someone told me it is possible, but I can't seem to 
find any packages related to that (using aptitude in Debian and the Emacs help 
and the Emacs website).

Thanks.

God bless
Hiran