you are using the same recordset for showing the news items and for showing the links.
you need to use one recordset for showing the links.
and a second recordset for showing the news items.
in the second recordset, se it to filter the ID column on the ID URL Variable.
to show a default news item, go to advanced view for the recordset, and set the default value for the URL parameter to the ID of the news item that should be the default.
for the issue with the email link, the if statement is just checking that the recordset is not empty, since the recordset is what is used to populate the list, it is not empty (otherwise the list would be empty to, no?)
I believe you want to be checking if the email column is empty?
<?php if ($row_Councillors['CouncillorsEmail'] != "") { ?>