How do you find the highest id number

I am making a news script where it can only show 1 news item at a time and the latest one needs to always to be seen
I am using id with auto increment and therefore the newsest post will be the highest id number i wonder if u could help me by showing me how to automatically show the latest news item
this is what i have so far

<?
include("dbinfo.inc.php");
mysql_connect(localhost,$username,$password);
@mysql_select_db($database) or die( "Unable to select database");
$query="SELECT * FROM webnews WHERE id='$id'";
$result=mysql_query($query);

$num=mysql_numrows($result);

mysql_close();



?>
<?
$i=0;
while ($i < $num) {
$id=mysql_result($result,$i,"id");
$by=mysql_result($result,$i,"by");
$snews=mysql_result($result,$i,"snews");
$fnews=mysql_result($result,$i,"fnews");
$date=mysql_result($result,$i,"date");

?>
<p><? echo "$id"; ?></p>
<p><? echo "$by"; ?></p>
<p><? echo "$snews"; ?></p>
<p><? echo "$fnews"; ?></p>
<p><? echo "$date"; ?></p>
<?
++$i;
}


?>
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I may be going to wrong ray around it so any help would do

thank you

To get just the most recent news item, build your query as follows: