Install the developer support service.
Then you can activate db query tracking either by visiting /ds/ and turning it on or clicking "DB" ont he developer support toolbar. Once you have DB query tracking you can examine the queries that are run for each request and compare the working one to the non working query.
I think you will have to pass in the correct package_id to any include, since news needs to know which news package to show and the main website page package_id will not be correct.