Current: There is no way to make announcements on the main landing page. The only way we've found is to modify the project description to add announcements.

Ideal: Include an area on the main home page, as well as each project home page, to include the ability to add critical announcements.

Yes, we would also be very interested in such feature.

yep.. we've needed something like this too. Adding a 'close' function to the announcement/message would also be useful.