This is a example file - the actual file is not version-controlled
and should be named  

latest_news.txt

It needs to be manually set up in this location for each release, starting with 6.2.4
and edited to show latest news (such as new features, upcoming outages, etc)

This file should still be accessible if the database VM isn't running.
(Hence the location of the reference to it in index.php, before any database calls)