Are we allowed to publish a news article as content on our website if we link it? At what extent are we allowed to use news content? Can we reformulate the text & talk about our opinions on the subject and link the original article?
Read up on "fair use" copyright and how it relates to blogs. Long story short, you are allowed to use a few quotes from a news article if you are going to offer your opinion or review. You do always need to include the source, in the form of a link, as you have said. You aren't allowed to just paste a whole article, add a link and think everything will be okay. You need the permission from the person who wrote it. You might benefit from checking out the Legal Issues forum here as well.
I link to news articles all the time for informational purposes when I'm writing about certain topics. It helps add content. And like ajwalsh said, you can quote a few things here and there as long as you're giving attribution.