How can the appearance and layout of news entries be customized directly within a PHP news script?

To customize the appearance and layout of news entries within a PHP news script, you can utilize HTML and CSS directly within the PHP code. By embedding HTML markup and styling using CSS classes, you can control the look and feel of the news entries.

```php
<?php
// Example PHP code snippet to customize news entry appearance and layout

// Fetch news data from database or API
$newsEntries = getNewsEntries();

// Loop through news entries and display them with custom styling
foreach ($newsEntries as $entry) {
    echo '<div class="news-entry">';
    echo '<h2>' . $entry['title'] . '</h2>';
    echo '<p>' . $entry['content'] . '</p>';
    echo '</div>';
}
?>
```

In the above code snippet, we are fetching news entries and displaying them within a loop. The HTML markup for each news entry is customized with a `news-entry` class, which can be styled using CSS to achieve the desired appearance and layout.