Positioning is off Options

[rayyyy]

I have been trying to do this layout all day and for the life of me I can't figure out what's wrong..

Everything is backwards. Where I want something to appear several pixels from the left it goes half way across the page but it works perfectly if i go from the right rather then the left.

or

I'm trying to position my news 160px from the top but it went to the bottom of my page. I set it to 0 and it still doesn't reach the top of my page.

CODE

<?php include('header.php'); ?>
<div style="position:absolute;background-color:#ffffff; right: 342px; top:0px; width:494px;border= 1px solid #000000; overflow: auto; overflow-x: hidden;">
<div class="content">

<?PHP
$number=5;
$template="Lay1";
include("/home/trulysel/public_html/cutenews/show_news.php");
?>

<?php include('footer.php'); ?>

thats the code.

here's the site

click here

help?

[rayyyy]

What doctype should I be using?