Well, after much trial and error I have found the "work around" solution to my automatic downloading problem. What's amazing is that it was so obvious I didn't consider it.
In the NBI the Group [Watch_List] (which is near or at the end of the NBI) is not being populated. Now, to work around this, once I create a Watch Topic I have to close Newsbin and list the new Topics' search terms under the NBI [Watch_List] group.
All is well for now. I am surprised that with such a major change, especially since you shutoff the ability to revert to prior betas, that a "heads up" was not put forward. Anyway, it was a good exercise that had me rethink my folder organization.
If you think the crashing by my attempting to rollback to B13 & B12 combined with the "can't find empty file" shutoff the functionality of the NBI [Watch_List] group, I hope you will have B15 correct this problem.