I know it says that each block has its own template, but the top/new story blocks both actually use the same template. That's why your edits don't show up. Tricky eh?
If you wanted to have separate templates you might be able to fix it by making the following modification in news/xoopsversion.php - I haven't actually tried this (see red):
$modversion['blocks'][4]['file'] = "news_top.php";
$modversion['blocks'][4]['name'] = _MI_NEWS_BNAME5;
$modversion['blocks'][4]['description'] = "Shows recent articles";
$modversion['blocks'][4]['show_func'] = "b_news_top_show";
$modversion['blocks'][4]['edit_func'] = "b_news_top_edit";
$modversion['blocks'][4]['options'] = "published|10|25|0|0|0|0||1||||||";
$modversion['blocks'][4]['template'] = 'news_block_[b][color=FF0000]new[/color][/b].html';