Get latest post titles from one category

Hi! I use Arthemia theme and it uses following code to display latest post titles from one category:

<?php $recent = new WP_Query("cat=3&showposts=3"); while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>

<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark">
<?php the_title(); ?></a></li>

<?php endwhile; ?>

but it doesn’t work on WP 3.0 beta 1