Bodies

When roasted at 475 degrees, coffee beans are sometimes described as rich and full-bodied. But for the full-bodied person who is not so rich, unroasted coffee beans - green as the day they were picked - may hold the key to cheap and effective weight loss, new research suggests. In a study presented Tuesday at the American Chemical Society's spring national meeting in San Diego, 16 overweight young adults took, by turns, a low dose of green coffee bean extract, a high dose of the supplement, and a placebo.

Bring Up the Bodies A Novel Hilary Mantel Henry Holt: 432 pp., $28 Hilary Mantel's novel about the Tudor political puppet-master supremo Thomas Cromwell, "Wolf Hall," winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize for fiction, was so richly packed with character and action that it was bound to burst its banks. Originally intended to take Cromwell through the four years that it took him to fall from the pinnacle of power (where we left him at the end of "Wolf Hall") to his own appointment with the executioner's ax, "Bring Up the Bodies" forms the middle volume of what is to be a trilogy.

Some good buys for your health and your pocketbook: Buy fresh fruits and vegetables in season. Buy frozen otherwise. Frozen is cheaper and may even be better for you than fresh. That's because produce is usually frozen at its ripest, which is usually when it maxes out in nutrient content too. Some nutrients do break down or leach out in the freezing process, but most make it through.

Re "Dozens of bodies found dumped," May 14 Heads, hands and feet missing, another 50-some bodies get dumped beside a road outside Monterrey, Mexico. Imagine if instead of drug cartels, the perpetrators were under the command of a present-day Ho Chi Minh. Good heavens, the U.S. defense budget would double overnight and our boys would be back from the Mideast in no time at all. Where's Graham Greene now that we really need him? John Crandell Sacramento ALSO: Letters: Finding life on Mars Letters: Golden rule without God Letters: Business is still in business at City Hall

Vertigo. For most people, the word summons images of Jimmy Stewart dangling from high places in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller by the same name. It means something else, however, to hundreds of thousands of people who experience the strange, dizzying affliction. The most common cause of vertigo, known as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, usually can be treated with one visit to the doctor.

A puzzle that has haunted Hollywood for more than a year, the disappearance of screenwriter Gary Devore, was apparently solved Wednesday when an armchair detective, saying he was guided only by a newspaper account of the mystery, led investigators to Devore's vehicle submerged in an aqueduct near Palmdale, with a body still at the wheel. Divers found a partially decomposed body dressed in blue jeans, a Western-style shirt and cowboy boots.

Seven bodies were dumped before dawn at a school soccer field in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. Neighbors in an upscale neighborhood found banners allegedly signed by a drug gang with the bodies, but officials would give no details about the messages. No suspects had been located. The unidentified victims had been shot, beaten and choked, but the cause of death was still being determined.

Searchers have found the bodies of three snowboarders missing since early December in a skiing area northeast of Mt. Rainier. Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said searchers advantage of melting snow and searched Saturday in the area where the three disappeared. Authorities planned to airlift the bodies from the remote site in the Cascades near Crystal Mountain. Kevin Carter, 26, Devlin Williams, 29, and Phillip Hollins, 41, all of the Seattle area, are believed to have been killed by an avalanche.

Two mass graves containing as many as 2,000 bodies have been discovered in eastern Congo, officials said. Justice Minister Luzolo Bambi told reporters that the graves were found late last week in the town of Bukavu in a plot of land formerly owned by a member of the Congolese Rally for Democracy, a Rwandan-backed rebel group. Many of its top leaders were integrated into the government. Constantin Charhondangwa, a regional official, said the bodies were discovered by a new owner of the land who was digging to install a septic tank.

Police are digging up a mass grave in a deep pit in northeastern Colombia, where as many as 55 victims of political violence are feared to have been buried, authorities reported. Police said five bodies were uncovered at Hoyo Malo (Evil Hole) near the town of San Vicente de Chucuri, 150 miles northeast of Bogota. They included two men killed 15 days ago by the pro-Cuban National Liberation Army and three people who died more than a year ago. Observers said at least 50 more bodies may be in the pit, according to San Vicente Mayor Alvaro Pico Gomez.

DALLAS -- Everything about Holley Mangold is oversized. Her personality. Her laugh. Her ambition. But the first thing most people notice is her body, which, at 5 feet 9 and 350 pounds, is hard to miss. "I'm huge," Mangold says with pride, not political correctness. "I love my body. I think it's perfect. "I don't know what my personality would be like if I wasn't so huge. " She has a pretty good idea what her athletic career would be like, though. And it wouldn't include a trip to the Olympic Games this summer.

SAN DIEGO —Two members of a Mexican organized crime group that terrorized border communities were found guilty Wednesday of taking part in the strangling deaths of two men whose bodies were later dissolved in lye and dumped at a ranch outside San Diego. The mens' ruthless tactics were the trademark of a gang that broke off from the drug cartel waging war in Tijuana nearly a decade ago, according to prosecutors. The Palillos, or Toothpicks, came to the San Diego area in 2003 after splitting from the notorious Arellano Felix drug cartel.

A retired LAPD homicide detective was arrested this week in the fatal beating of his wife in Hawaii six years ago. He had been a suspect since her death. Dan DeJarnette, 59, was taken into custody without incident Monday night at his home on the Big Island in connection with the slaying of his wife, Yu Dejarnette. He appeared in a Hawaii courtroom Tuesday to face formal charges. He said at the time of her November 2006 death that he had awakened and found her lying on a lava embankment about 20 feet from the couple's home in Ka'u on the southern end of the island.

Mercedes Adilia Rodriguez's wishes were precise and meaningful: Her casket would be closed during her funeral, and she refused to be buried in the chilly earth of a Southern California cemetery. Instead, following tradition, she would be interred above ground in her hometown in Nicaragua. But in the days after her death, family members say they were summoned to Rose Hills Memorial Park and Mortuaries in Whittier and told the funeral home had made a mistake. She had been confused with someone else.

SAN ANSELMO, Calif. — Days after President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, the Presbyterian Church's Northern California governing body refused to rebuke a retired minister for marrying gays and lesbians when it was legal in California. The Presbytery of the Redwoods, which governs churches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border, voted 74 to 18 Tuesday to reject the church's official denunciation and instead support the Rev. Jane Adams Spahr, who had been found guilty by an ecclesiastical court of violating the Presbyterian Constitution and her ordination vows for marrying 16 same-sex couples.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities responding to an anonymous tip discovered about 50 mostly mutilated bodies dumped on the side of a highway between Monterrey and the U.S. border, a region where rival gangs are battling for control over a lucrative drug-trafficking corridor. The bodies of at least 43 men and half a dozen women were found Sunday in plastic garbage bags near the town of Cadereyta Jimenez, the location of a large state-run oil refinery, officials in the state prosecutor's office told The Times.

The Orange County coroner's office says a woman and her brother found dead in their home under unusual circumstances on Easter died of natural causes. The coroner's office said this week that 51-year-old Daniel Savage had swallowed three bullets and had black shoe polish smeared on his face -- but he died of a stroke. His 57-year-old sister Jacquelyn was found with blood on her mouth and bruises on her face and neck. The coroner says she died of heart disease. The siblings' sister found the bodies when she went to pick up their father for an Easter celebration.

A 90-year-old woman apparently has been living in a house with the bodies of three siblings, one of whom may have been dead since the 1980s, police in suburban Chicago said. The bodies were found Friday morning by police who were called by a senior advocate, Evanston Police Cmdr. Tom Guenther said. The woman was taken to a hospital for observation. The Cook County medical examiner's office said Saturday that the people had died of natural causes. The dead were identified as Anita Bernstorff, who was born in 1910; Frank Bernstorff, born in 1920; and Elaine Bernstorff, born in 1916.

Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives are seeking to question Christopher A. Benton, the son of Pepperdine University President Andrew K. Benton, in connection with the death of a Malibu woman almost two weeks ago. The body of 25-year-old graphic designer Katie Wilkins was found in her parents' garage on West Moon Shadows Drive by her brother, Steve, the evening of April 28. Det. Tim O'Quinn of the sheriff's homicide bureau said Wilkins apparently...

When police arrived at an Orange apartment on Thursday, they saw enough blood in the room to know something was seriously wrong. They immediately began searching for the four members of the family who had lived there to ensure their safety. That night, a detective spotted Shazer Fernando Limas, a 31-year-old father who was living with his girlfriend and two young children in the apartment. Limas, driving a Nissan 350Z out of a Santa Ana parking lot, led police on a high-speed chase for more than an hour before his car struck a spike strip.