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I was trying to get the same thing, but what I found is that (with AMS 2.2 anyways) you can place the block "recent news" in the center. You can control title length and summary (teaser) length by number of characters by going to system admin->blocks, then under action <edit> the "recent news" block.
See my site as example :
FMUnderground.info
See my site as example :
FMUnderground.info