What I'm looking to do is display a list of links to the 5 most recent news articles, and show only one or two news articles on the home/news page.

While I'm aware I can use the main layout Recent News menu, I'd prefer not to show the recent news list on every subsequent page on the site.

Is there currently a way to display the recent news list from the news/home layout file, or am I going to have to suck it up and use the system menu?

You could probably pull this off with the Advanced Layout Options. You'd have to make a div or something around the item, and then with javascript, compare the URL (checking for news.php), and if it's that page, show the menu, otherwise, hide it.

Admittedly, if you're unfamiliar with javascript and HTML this isn't exactly a trivial task.

Just wanted to thank you for the quick reply. I'll probably go with the javascript workaround.