India

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.

DELHI, INDIA - Delhi, India, is closed today. My guide, a solemn man named C.K. Gupta, is deeply apologetic. It is, he informs me, not a holiday, but a peaceful protest. "Too high prices in the shops. " It is 2010, and I am in Delhi on vacation. It is my first time here. Receiving this piece of early-morning information, I am all set for empty sidewalks. The occasional whining ambulance. Maybe a bus. But when we leave my rented car near the Defence Colony, it is impossible to move.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads to India today just days after the U.S. Congress approved a landmark nuclear cooperation accord with the South Asian nation. Rice is expected to meet with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other leaders over the weekend, the U.S. State Department said. She was also to travel to Kazakhstan. Congress passed a pact this week that allows American businesses to begin selling nuclear fuel, technology and reactors to India, overturning a three-decade ban on atomic trade with the country, which is not a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

If you go THE BEST WAY TO DELHI From LAX, connecting service to Delhi is offered on KLM, Lufthansa, United, Cathay Pacific, Emirates Air, Turkish Airlines, Air China, British, Asiana, China Eastern, China Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Malaysia Airlines. Restricted round-trip airfares begin at $1,466, including fees and taxes. WHERE TO FIND STREET FOOD Fast-food stalls and stands pop up daily on many of the small streets and alleys in Delhi's Chandni Chowk neighborhood.

NEW DELHI - She was called dirty, ugly, a "little packet of poison," the offspring of donkeys. These days, Kalpana Saroj is called something else: a millionaire. Saroj, a dalit , or "untouchable," epitomizes what was once unthinkable in India: upward mobility for someone whose caste long meant she would die as she was born: uneducated, dirt-poor, doomed to a life of dangerous and filthy work. The manufacturing tycoon - one admirer called her "a real slumdog millionaire" - is among a legion of dalits embracing new opportunities in business, politics, the arts and academia as prejudices ease and economic reforms open new doors in a culture that traditionally emphasized fate and reincarnation.

As temp jobs go, Saroj Mehli has landed what she feels is a pretty sweet deal. It's a nine-month gig, no special skills needed, and the only real labor comes at the end -- when she gives birth. If everything goes according to plan, Mehli, 32, will deliver a healthy baby early next year. But rather than join her other three children, the newborn will be handed over to an American couple who are unable to bear a child on their own and are hiring Mehli to do it for them.

"The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"is an affectionately told comedy about a bunch of English retirees who trade a bleak British future for an elegant retirement hotel in the middle of India, one that promises to make those final years truly golden - and for a fraction of the price at home. Sounds like a dream, or a scheme, and in truth it's a bit of both as neither life nor the "Marigold Hotel" turn out exactly as one might wish. But when the bags are packed with pride, prejudice, problems and prospects by some of Britain'sbest - including Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Maggie Smith - it makes the trip worth taking.

Reporting from Ladrymbai, India The young miners descend on rickety ladders made of branches into the makeshift coal mines dotting the Jaintia Hills in northeast India, scrambling sideways into "rat hole" shafts so small that even kneeling becomes impossible. Lying horizontally, they hack away with picks and their bare hands: Human labor here is far cheaper than machines. Many wear flip-flops and shorts, their faces and lungs blackened by coal. None have helmets. Two hours of grinding work fills a cart half the size of a coffin that they drag back, crouching, to the mouth where a clerk credits their work.

BEFORE my recent trip to India, I asked two rug importers in the U.S. about reputable carpet merchants in the places I planned to visit. One dodged my request altogether. The other tried to dissuade me from buying anything. "You would be wiser to buy in the U.S. from a merchant you trust," said an e-mail from John B. Gregorian, author of "Oriental Rugs of the Silk Route" and president of Arthur T. Gregorian Oriental Rugs, a store in Newton Lower Falls, Mass.

The Delhi High Court issued a landmark ruling Thursday decriminalizing homosexuality, a move that could bring more freedom to millions of people in this deeply conservative nation. The ruling said that treating relations between consenting adult homosexuals as a crime is a violation of basic human rights safeguarded under the Indian Constitution. The court decision amending an 1860s-era British Empire statute ostensibly applies only to Delhi.

Go with a guide who knows local street food and, if possible, can help you find relatively clean stalls. According to customers I talked with, quality street-food vendors can often be found near universities and railway stations. For the sake of food safety, choose hot snacks. Try to get them when they've just come out of the griddle or fryer. It's best to avoid eating meat, even if it's well cooked. I failed to follow this last rule: It's usually smart to avoid chutneys and juices and to discard raw items such as onion and tomatoes . travel@latimes.com

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Icy wind whipped Lt. Nauman Ahmed's face as he plodded up a barren expanse of snowfields and crevasses. Woozy and spent, he reached a Pakistani military outpost 20,000 feet above sea level and slumped down on a cot in one of the camp's fiberglass igloos. The next morning, the peril of waging war in the world's highest conflict zone began to take its toll. His head throbbed, and he was coughing up blood. When he tried to speak, he couldn't form words. "I thought to myself, 'What is happening to me?

NEW DELHI - When Gavin Martin and his family moved here from southern India in the early '70s, the country's capital city offered the gifted young pianist exactly one option for continuing his music education: the Delhi School of Music. It was the only place in town - perhaps in the whole of northern India - that taught Western classical music with any degree of competence. Even so, life wasn't easy for the serious student born in a country where the sitar is king. "Growing up in India playing the piano was kind of like [being]

TRIVANDRUM, India - R. Padmanathan Nair sits on a plastic chair in the entryway of the Heritage senior home talking about the fellow residents who treat him like family, which is helpful seeing as his own rarely visits. His wife tried to abscond with their valuables, he said, so he gave the house to a niece, who ignored him after she got the property. Now his daughter is the only one who visits the 76-year-old retired teacher here in the capital of the southern state of Kerala, and that's just a few times a year.

Accor Hotels, which operate Novotel, Ibis, Pullman and other brands in India , is offering a 15% discount on rooms this summer as well as breakfast for two for just 1 rupee (roughly a penny). The sale is good at 15 hotels, including properties in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The deal: You might recognize the name Accor because the company operates Motel 6 and other properties in the U.S. The Early Breaks offer requires reservations at least three days in advance to receive 15% off the standard room rate and breakfast for two for the equivalent of a penny.

NEW DELHI - Hundreds of Air India pilots did not report to work Thursday, the fourth day of a sickout to protest their treatment by management, a dispute that so far has resulted in the cancellation of numerous international flights and cost about 45 pilots their jobs. Officials said the Mumbai-based airline was forced to cancel more than 35 international flights this week, including several bound for New York and Frankfurt, because of the protest. India's aviation minister called the sickout illegal, the airline said it had fired some pilots, and a high court called for negotiations.

In a sleek new office building, two dozen young Indians are studying the customs of a place none of them has ever seen. One by one, the students present their conclusions about this fabled land. "Americans eat a lot of junk food. Table manners are very casual," says Ritu Khanna. "People are quite self-centered. The average American has 13 credit cards," says Nerissa Dcosta. "Seventy-six percent of the people mistrust the government.

Pasties and a G-string are no good to an Indian erotic dancer. With sari firmly tied, she just flashes some navel, or bares her back, to fire up a bar full of men into a money-throwing frenzy. Striptease is out of the question, table dancing an unimagined horror of Western promiscuity. Women who entertain men in India's nightclubs are supposed to do so more or less fully clothed, with a vague nod to an ancient art of suggestion.

"We urge all nuclear-capable states to exercise restraint regarding nuclear capabilities," a State Department spokesman said last month after India successfully blasted its new long-range Agni 5 missile into the Bay of Bengal. But he quickly softened the admonishment: "That said, India has a solid nonproliferation record. " Washington's oddly relaxed approach to India's nuclear program goes back to 2008, when Congress approved the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement.

NEW DELHI — Hopes were high after Congress passed a U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement in 2008 that the two countries would forge a close military and strategic partnership. But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's three-day trip to India, starting Sunday after a weekend stop in Bangladesh, comes amid reduced expectations and political distraction on both sides and a relationship increasingly marked by incremental movement on a variety of issues. Though India remains an important ally, few big-ticket nuclear and defense deals that the United States had hoped for have materialized.