February 3, 2006

Architecture student Nick Freeman posts Craigslist ad renting mattress stuffed in hole above doorway in apartment for $35 night; responses to ad described; expensive real estate market in New York has generated many unusual living arrangements and Craigslist is described as magnet for untraditional solutions to ever increasing problem of finding affordable place to live; photo (M)

Three former General Re executives and one former executive of American International Group have been charged with fraud and conspiracy, federal prosecutors and regulators announced yesterday, possibly ratcheting up the pressure on other senior executives. At the heart of the charges is a two-part reinsurance transaction, executed in 2000 and 2001, that federal prosecutors described as a sham, intended to inflate A.I.G.'s financial position and mislead investors. That transaction, investigators have said, was initiated and approved by Maurice R. Greenberg, who was ousted as A.I.G.'s chairman and chief executive last March.

Town of Shanksville, Pa, where Flight 93

LIKE those other big-screen intangibles, chemistry is easier to recognize than explain. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman combust beautifully in Hitchcock's ''Notorious,'' while the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman just sputter in Kubrick's ''Eyes Wide Shut,'' two soggy sticks without the requisite friction. In ''Ocean's Eleven,'' George Clooney relieved Brad Pitt of the burden of being the most beautiful man in the room, and the results were nose-tickling fizzy, as playfully sexy and artless as the most classic of screwball pairings. In ''Something New,'' a pleasantly diverting romance about a black woman (Sanaa Lathan) and a white man (Simon Baker) forced to transcend prejudice, hair extensions and a few awkwardly staged scenes in order to be with each other, the chemistry between the leads is as unmistakable as the setup is contrived. As Kenya McQueen, a top executive in a Los Angeles accounting firm, Ms. Lathan wears the kind of smart suits that speak (never shout) consummate professionalism. Kenya lives to work, and if her datebook remains blank after-hours such is the apparent price for being young, successful and the new owner of a tastefully appointed house with a garden in desperate need of plowing and planting. Enter the gardener, Brian (Mr. Baker), muscles rippling.

THE Liberia airport, Costa Rica's new international hub, is not precisely a beacon of modern transportation. The terminal consists of an open-air warehouse with a corrugated tin roof, cooled by an enormous fan whose main effect is to stir the grasshoppers into a frenzy. In the line for customs, visitors are kept company by butterflies and the occasional blasé frog. Before visitors even leave the tarmac, though, smiling representatives from the local Chamber of Tourism are there to greet their out-of-town guests, most of whom have just arrived on the new direct three-hour flights from Atlanta, Miami and Houston. They press the real estate guide ''Costa Rica Traveler'' into newcomers' hands. In its pages, American visitors can find ads for dozens of different developments that will happily sell them a villa with an ocean view.