Milan Dinić

This plugin automatically disables WordPress Events and News widget from the dashboard. By removing, you also prevent all external requests widgets makes so that it can work.
It is a very lightweight, it has no settings, just activate it and it works immediately.
And it’s on <a href="https://github.com/dimadin/disable-wordpress-events-and-news-dashboard-widget" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a>.

Disable WordPress Events and News Dashboard Widget

Disable WordPress Events and News widget from the dashboard.

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The Widget shows a list of pending reviews of posts and pages (you can hide the page entrys from the list). 
Also in the configuration part of the widget you can set how many pending entrys you would like to display or hide the date or author information. 
This Plugin is inspirational from the plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dashboard-pending-review/" rel="ugc">Dashboard: Pending Review</a>. 
Thx to Viper007Bond.

Pendig Reviews Dashboard Widget

Widget for the WordPress 2.7+ dashboard to display the current pending reviews.

Disable WordPress Events and News Dashboard Widget vs Pendig Reviews Dashboard Widget