Latest headlines window on home page

Hi there, I’ve spotted this nice site https://www.finisterreuk.com/newsletters/ which uses wordpress, I want to emulate the little latest posts window at the top left, what is the easiest way to pull a list of say 5 recent posts from wordpress onto a static page with links?

Hope somebody can help, I’m currently trying this

<?php
$how_many=5; //How many posts do you want to show
require_once(‘wp-config.php’); // Change this for your path to wp-config.php file ?>

<ul class=”whats-new”>
<?php
$news=$wpdb->get_results(“SELECT ID,post_title FROM $wpdb->posts
WHERE post_type=\”post\” AND post_status= \”publish\” ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT $how_many”);
foreach($news as $np){
printf (”

• %s

“, $np->ID,$np->post_title);
}
?>

But just getting an empty unordered list right now.

Thanks