The Announcements forum (previously called the News Forum) is a special forum for class announcements.
This forum is automatically created for each course and for the front page of the Moodle site. By default, it is placed in the top of the center section and only teacher, manager and administrator roles may add posts or reply to posts. The default settings force (without option for opt-out) every enrolled person to be subscribed to Announcements.
The Announcements block (called Latest News) displays can display 1-10 of recent discussions from the Announcements forum.