The Latest Topics bar thing on the Portal shows topics based on last reply time, not the newest topics. I'm not sure if that was your intention, but that seems a bit redundant since the rest of the forum says the same thing, just not in a scroll form.

By said logic it is also redundant to have the Who's Online box, Search Box, Statistics and latest Announced messages from the Announcements board. It is a function of the Portal regardless - I see no reason why to remove it.

I wasn't saying remove it, it was my impression that Latest Topics was meant to show the newest topics, not the newest replies in a topic.

Well that is just the name and settings for that widget of the Portal. You'd need to ask the programmers why they did that.