Help on passing variables through includes

[wertwert]

Hello,
I am ripping my hair out about this right now if anyone can help.

I am working on a news section of my webpage and I am having trouble passing the variables through my php files.

What I want to do is something like this:

news.php (the url the user visits)

<?php
$menu='../functions/news/menu.php';
$body='../functions/news/body.php';
require ('../templates/maintemplate.php');
?>

maintemplate.php

LAYOUT AND STYLE....
include ($menu);
MORE LAYOUT....
include ($body);
....

menu.php (dynamic menu)

(connects to database and for each item....)
printf ('<a href=news.php?news_item=%d>%s</a><br />', $item['id'], $item['title']);

body.php (here is where the problem is)

I would like this section to pick up the news item from the url but the variable isn't making it this far

Everything else is displaying properly, I just cant figure out how to pass the variables. I need to keep this structure in order to keep the rest of my site working.

I am using PHP 5.1.2

Thanks in advance for any help.

[wertwert]

Resolved:
It was a register globals issue

I've used
$var = $_GET['var'];
in the first script.