This came up in the general XCOMFILES discussion thread earlier, but something like the News Ticker from the 2012 remake could be a neat "little" addition for mods to hook into.
Simply put; in the Situation Room, there was a scrolling newsfeed underneath the geoscape that showed global panic levels (if you've ever watched any kind of live news you've probably seen a scrolling ticker) and events related to actual ingame events would occasionally scroll by. Events would be colour-coded blue-grey for neutral, green for good (you completed a mission, fulfilled a council request, etc.), or red for bad (aliens won a fight, you ignored a mission, etc.).
Some events could simply be unassociated filler, whilst others could be queued up by alien activity elsewhere in the world - potentially informing players of events outside their radar ranges without requiring them to constantly check the graphs screen.
So, along the top or bottom of the geoscape, something like the (crude) mockup attached;
