How do I disable "Apple News Spotlight" in Mojave? This new "feature" showed up recently and won't stop pinging me with news I don't care about from an app I've never opened and can't uninstall: /Applications/News.app

How do I at least disable the morning notifications it pushes?
Block notifications from the app in "System Preferences" -> "Notifications".  I'm not sure that it stops the app from from fetching news but it should block all notifications from it; including those that switch themselves back on for whatever reason.