There was an NNTP v2 effort a while ago, but it petered out from lack
of interest.
As one of the original authors of NNTP, and as a participant in the
MIME effort, I can authoritatively say that NNTP was indeed explicitly
7-bit NETASCII, and anyone just sending 8 bits is in violation of
protocol. The whole idea behind MIME was to get the user interface
software changed to properly support character sets other than ASCII
*independent* of transport and it does no damn good if we don't label
the silly things which is where the "just send 8 bits" idiocy leaves
us. This goes for NetNews too.
Erik E. Fair apple!fair fair(_at_)apple(_dot_)com