how can i display the first 3 elements from the last 10 ??

hello,
i have table called news and columns called news_id, news_name and newS_data.

i added alot of news and deleted alot of them too. cauze of that i got alot of them which arent in arranged numbers inside the unique column news_id

so i wanna display the first 3 news from the last 10 ,beside i wanna handle each data alone in variable (iam no gonna display the 3 in list with while )

i mean i wanna got the 3 news like that
$first_news_name = .....
$first_news_data = ...
$second_news_name = .....
$second_news_data = ...
$third_news_name = .....
$third_news_data = ...

so if it was arranged number with no delete , i would make it like that

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM news ORDER BY news_id DESC ");
if (mysql_num_rows($result)) {
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
        $the_last_id = $row['$news_id'];
  }

$before_10_news = $the_last_id-10;
$before_9_news = $the_last_id-9;
$before_8_news = $the_last_id-9;

$result2 = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM news WHERE news_id = '$before_10_news'");
if (mysql_num_rows($result2)) {
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result2);
        $first_news_name = $row['news_name'];
        $first_news_data = $row['news_data'];
  }

PHP:

and the smame way for $second_news and third_news
but now the numbers arent in arrange , so please help me to display them

thanks

 

I don't really understand what you're after here. Don't you just want the last three items? Is the number 10 relevant or just a red herring?

$sql = "select news_name, news_data from news order by news_id desc limit 3";
$st = mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
$stupid_names = array('first', 'second', 'third');
$stupid_name_index = 0;
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($st))
{
   ${"{$stupid_names[$stupid_name_index]}_news_name"} = $row['news_name'];
   ${"{$stupid_names[$stupid_name_index]}_news_data"} = $row['news_data'];
   $stupid_name_index++;
}

Code (markup):

That oughta do it.