Extract the last published post

This is how I do it. You may want to reset and call it as a function in case you want to reuse.

// Most Recent

function nt_mostrecent( $count ) {

        $my_query = new WP_Query( array(showposts => $count, order => 'DSC', orderby => 'date'));

        while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();

            $posts .= '<a href="' . get_permalink() . '">' . get_the_title() . '</a>';

        endwhile;

        return $posts;

        wp_reset_query();

}