Hmm... Maybe I misunderstod.

I thought he was referring to a standard news block. As in something that can be setup via the Edit Blocks screen. Oopsie...

YahMan - are you referring to something within the blocks? Or the user/news bloc that all appear at the top together in the SMF (1.1 RC1 default/RC2 Babylon) theme?
If you want to get rid of that news block up there, in index.template.php, find the following code:
// Show a random news item? (or you could pick one from news_lines...)
if (!empty($settings['enable_news']))
echo '
<div class="headertitles" style="width: 260px;"><img src="', $settings['images_url'], '/blank.gif" height="12" alt="" /></div>
<div class="headerbodies" style="width: 260px; position: relative; background-image: url(', $settings['images_url'], '/box_bg.gif); margin-bottom: 8px;">
<img src="', $settings['images_url'], '/', $context['user']['language'], '/newsbox.gif" style="position: absolute; left: -1px; top: -16px;" alt="" />
<div style="height: 50px; overflow: auto; padding: 5px;" class="smalltext">', $context['random_news_line'], '</div>
</div>';
And place a "
/*" on the line before it and a "
*/" on the line after it.
To set up the SMF news items in a block, just use a newsbox when you add a block (this pulls from the SMF news item list - at least that is what I think it is doing).