Recent post in the middle of the content

Since you add all the html in the post by hand, have you tried filtering the content?

Similar to WordPress’s <!–more–> tag, you could just add <!–my_headline_content–>

Then:

add_filter( 'the_content', 'my_headline_function_12378' );

function my_headline_function_12378( $post_content ){

    /* 
     * get your recent posts' data. You'll find the code with a simple search.
     * say $headline contains the headline html (link, addnl info, whatever)
     * swap your tag with this headline
     */
    $the_content = preg_replace( '/<!--my_headline_content-->/i', $headline, $the_content );

    return $the_content;

}

Done.