I have restricted the topics displayed in the Recent News block, and that is working fine, but the spotlight article will display an article from other topics if the group has permissions to view that topic. It does not list the article in the most recent list, though.

You can see it here. The Daily Text article is in a topic not selected to display (Prayer Corner) - no tab, and it is not listed in the recent articles at the bottom of the spotlight.

I want to have separate blocks for different topics and use the spotlight for both of them, so this causes a problem.

Xoops 2.0.13.2
News 1.42

I did what I should have done earlier - checked the dev.xoops.org site and found the answer in the forums. Edit blocks/news_top.php in 2 places and replace with