News items to show is currently described as:

Number of recent items appearing on the course home page, in a news box down the right-hand side
(0 means the news box won't appear).

The terms used don't relate to the names of the features on the course page and assume positioning.

Suggest:

Number of recent items from the News Forum appearing on the course home page, in the Latest News block (if set to 0 the Latest News block is won't appear).