I love this thing!

Anyway, to save time for those getting started...

set content_function to 1 in Administration → Settings → Advanced settings

Throw the php function below into includes/functions.inc.php and edit as necessary

--------------------------------------
function get_latest_news_headlines($limit) {
$dbr = Database::$content->query("
SELECT page, title, time FROM ".Database::$db_settings['pages_table']." WHERE sections = 'news' AND content_type = '' AND status > 0 AND NOT type = 'news' ORDER BY time DESC LIMIT " . $limit);
$headlines = '';
while ( $row = $dbr->fetch() ) {$headlines .= "<li><a href=\"" . $row['page'] . "\">" . $row['title'] . "</a><span class=\"timestamp\"> " . date("l, M j, Y",$row['time']) . "</span></li>";}
return $headlines;
}
--------------------------------------

and add the following into the index page.

<ul id="headlines">
[function:get_latest_news_headlines(5)]
</ul>

Here's a function for grabbing the latest simple news headlines as links. Use $limit to determine how many headlines to show at the most.

NOTE: place this function in functions.content.inc.php (new) instead of functions.inc.php as mentioned in my firt post.

function get_simple_news_headlines($limit) {
  $dbr = Database::$content->query("
  SELECT newsitem.id, newsitem.title, newsitem.time, page.page
  FROM ".Database::$db_settings['news_table']." AS newsitem
  LEFT JOIN ".Database::$db_settings['pages_table']." AS page
  ON newsitem.page_id = page.id
  ORDER BY newsitem.time DESC
  LIMIT " . $limit
  );
  $headlines = '';
  while($row=$dbr->fetch()){
    $headlines .= "<li><a href=\"". $row['page'] .",". $row['id'] ."\">". $row['title'] ."</a> <span class=\"timestamp\">".date("M jS, Y, g:i a",$row['time'])."</span></li>";
  }
  return $headlines;
}

Call the function from any page content like so ...

<ul>[function:get_simple_news_headlines(5)]</ul>