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.

Michael Dance

Sick of the “Right Now” dashboard widget not showing useful information about your site? “Right Now Reloaded” solves that.
The default Right Now widget shows only information on posts, pages, categories, tags, widgets, and comments. That’s great if you’re running a standard blog, but what if you don’t use comments? What if you have a bunch of custom post types?
That’s where Right Now Reloaded comes in. It displays an accurate snapshot of your site: all your public post types and taxonomies, plus active plugins, registered users, links, widgets, and menus, all ordered by importance. Don’t use one of those? It won’t show up.
Some extra notes:
<ul>
<li>No configuration required</li>
<li>Translation-ready</li>
<li>Strict permissions – users only see what they should be able to see</li>
<li>Easily customizable with dynamic CSS classes and IDs</li>
<li>Retains the <code>right_now_table_end</code>, <code>rightnow_end</code>, and <code>activity_box_end</code> hooks so that other plugins can still hook into the widget</li>
</ul>

Right Now Reloaded

A more relevant and dynamic version of the "Right Now" dashboard widget.

Disable WordPress Events and News Dashboard Widget vs Right Now Reloaded