I'd like to hear an answer to this as well. I have tried numerous Today Themes and NONE will show all the items with all the details. Most of the time the calendar will show, but not ONE Today Theme has shown emails. In most cases the email/BIS and SMS icons are nowhere to be found. Not hidden, but gone completely.
Well it's possible I had already opened the Messages, but not actually opened the emails. Usually if I do that, the asterisk goes away. But I'm fairly certain that it never showed information. But even at that, most of the themes except the one I'm using makes the icons for ANY type of message disappear, but in very few cases my Messages icon is gone, but SMS is there. Weird.