The difference between what appears in the 'Featured Resources' section of the resources page and the 'Other featured resources' section is 'stickiness'. Adding or removing stickiness to an item can be done in the following ways:
Declaring a catalogue item to be a featured resource simply involves promoting an item to the front page. The method that you use to accomplish this depends on where you are currently in the site:
The news stories are actually the content type listed as "Story". To add a news item to the site, do the following: