Use the standard news module that comes with nuke. From what you've said it does everything you want it to do.

Go into admin topics, create whatever news categories you want. Upload an image associated with that category, and you should be good to go. News is set to automatically show up on your index page, newest submission at the top of the page and there is already a block that shows older news stories. You can designate how many news items you want displayed on the page etc.