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In Admin\Blocks, select the 'Recent News' block and specify where on the page you want it (left pane, left middle or right of centre pain, or the right pane). Then set the order of it in the modules main page (the column titled 'weight' I think) and order them according to the three main areas of the page.
So for example, if you have two blocks in the left pane, three in the middle and one on the right, number each of them with seperate orderings. So the two on the left could be 1 and 2 of that area. Then you would have 1, 2 and 3 for the middle area, or 3, 2, 1 etc. Then just 1 for the single block in the right pane. In other words, each of the 'areas' of the page are ordered using their own set of numbering - if that makes sense?
Then, once you have your Recent News block where you want it, go to System Admin\News and choose the preferences option of the News module and display it as Topic, rather than Classic. By doing this, the latest news will be shown with most of its topic, and the other older news items will be just hyperlinked (I think!).
Does that help at all? Sorry if not.