I noticed today that the “recent topics” link has disappeared.
While the New Forum topics is good, I found the Recent Topics links to be very useful for following current topics and also for tracking my own posts in the “My Recent Topics” tab.
It will come back. I hid it because I was working on some new pages that I didn’t want to mark as “unpublished” but also didn’t want showing up via the “Recent Posts” link. Another day or so, and it will return.