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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.

Writers from around the Tribune Co. discuss New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin, who will be a restricted free agent this off-season. Feel free to join the conversation with a comment of your own. Baxter Holmes, Los Angeles Times Whose meteoric rise boosted sales traffic to the Knicks' online store by more than 4,000%; made a Knicks ticket at Madison Square Garden a must-buy (and about 200% more expensive by StubHub.com's tabulations);...

It was billed as a "shocking tell-all" and a "world exclusive," but the National Enquirer's March 26 cover story landed with a thud. TMZ, Page Six and other major players in celebrity gossip ignored the article in which a masseur claimed John Travolta offered money for sex. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this article used the term "masseuse"; it should have said "masseur. " Five weeks after the issue left the checkout aisle, a DUI attorney from Pasadena put the anonymous masseur's tawdry tale in a lawsuit and it became an overnight pop culture sensation, topping Google News, trending on Twitter and meriting a segment on "Good Morning America.

Fleet Week , which has been a New York City tradition since 1984, starts Wednesday (that's today) with a parade of tall ships and war ships that will be docked and open to the public through Tuesday. Members of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard will be aboard ships and participating in parachute jumps and other equipment demonstrations. There are lots of free activities to go and see. In honor of Fleet Week, Gray Line New York honors all military personnel in uniform with a free tour of Manhattan on its double-decker buses.  The deal: Members of the military (all branches, not just sailors and Marines)

Disco legend Donna Summer, 63, died Wednesday night, reportedly of lung cancer. As of press time, her family hadn't released details about her illness, so it was unknown what type of lung cancer she had, and how long she may have been ailing. According to the American Cancer Society , lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in both women and men, killing more than 150,000 people per year -- more than colon, breast, ovarian and prostate cancers combined. In 2012, the group estimates, there will be about 226,000 new cases of lung cancer in the U.S. Survival rates of people with lung cancer are low. Only about half of people diagnosed with early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (the more common type)

Often film sequels are slam dunks at the box office, a seamless continuation from where a previous hit left off. But as the new installment of the 15-year-old franchise "Men in Black" proves, getting to the big screen isn't always a cakewalk. One of the most troubled productions in recent Hollywood memory, Sony Pictures' latest movie in the Will Smith-Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi-comedy franchise encountered multiple script rewrites, a discontented star and a three-month production shutdown as writers and studio executives scrambled to fix a project that nearly fell apart . By the time it was over, the studio had run up a tab of nearly $250 million - making "Men in Black 3" one of the most expensive releases of the summer.

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

Teas from across the globe are becoming more and more popular in the U.S. One relative newcomer, yerba mate, is attracting fans for its allegedly jitter-free caffeine boost and high antioxidant content. Lab research suggests some potential health benefits from drinking yerba mate, but studies of lifelong yerba mate drinkers in the tea's native South America suggest the brew increases the risk of some cancers -- a fact most marketing campaigns omit.

Gasoline prices are keeping up their record-setting ways. California drivers paid an average of $4.358 for a gallon of regular gasoline, up 6.6 cents from a week earlier, the Energy Department said Monday. That's a fresh record high for this time of year and is 48.4 cents above the year-earlier price. Nationally, the average rose 7.2 cents to $3.793, also a record for this week, according to Energy Department statistics. A year earlier, the average U.S. price was 27.3 cents lower.

Perhaps proving that nothing incites suspicion among New Yorkers quite like a public display of affection, artist and furniture designer Takeshi Miyakawa was placed under arrest this weekend for setting up illuminated "I Love New York" displays in a Brooklyn neighborhood. The pieces consisted of a battery-powered flashlight stuffed into a plastic bag with the familiar "I Love NY" logo on it, which were then dangled from a wire in public spaces.

Chivas USA today AT NEW YORK RED BULLS When: 4 p.m. PDT. Where: Red Bull Arena, Harrison, N.J. On the air: TV: Univision Deportes. Records: Chivas USA 4-6-1, Red Bulls 8-3-1. Record vs. New York: First meeting. Update: This game lost much of its intrigue when Chivas USA had its new star, former Red Bull striker Juan Agudelo, called up to the U.S. national team Sunday. Chivas defender Ante Jazic (Canada)

BALTIMORE -- The amazing story moved up to incredible. I'll Have Another ran true to his name. On a Saturday that brought blue skies, perfect temperatures and a record crowd of 121,309 here at venerable Pimlico racetrack, the horse who has never been favored in a race and has been mostly under-appreciated by the public, even the racing public, won the 137th Preakness. Now, it is I'll Have Another who will take a shot at history. The last horse to win the Triple Crown was Affirmed in 1978.

NEW YORK - James Corden is in the throes of a New York moment. He's in a hit Broadway show, the London import "One Man, Two Guvnors," and though he's been down this road before with "The History Boys," a more high-minded British comedy that became a smash on the Great White Way, this time he's the star and all eyes are on this generously proportioned funnyman - a cherub posing as Puck, or is it the other way around? Part of the secret of Corden's comic gift is that he combines innocence so naturally with mischief.

Architect Thom Mayne has been chosen to design a new Cornell University building that is to rise on Roosevelt Island in New York. Mayne, head of the Los Angeles architecture firm Morphosis, won a competition to design the first building for the CornellNYC Tech campus. The proposed building is to be approximately 150,000 square feet in size and will feature classrooms, lab space and offices for Cornell's high-tech graduate school campus. The $150-million building is scheduled to be completed by the start of the 2017 academic year.

NEW YORK - "A snake swallowing an elephant" is how the Chinese artist Wu Guanzhong described himself. The snake was the Chinese artist in him, and the elephant was Western art. The stylistic fusion that made him one of China'sleading modern artists is on view at the Asia Society Museum here in "Revolutionary Ink: The Paintings of Wu Guanzhong," which also reflects the artist's long life amid the turmoil of China's 20th century. Wu died in 2010 at 90, and these works from his last decades - depicting nature and architecture, some more naturalistic, others mostly abstract - show his easy cohabitation of two cultural hemispheres.

J. Paul Reddam might not be the type of businessman for whom people suffering through the recession can bring themselves to root. Reddam, 56, is president of Anaheim-based CashCall, the mortgage refinancing and high-interest personal loan company who critics say has unfairly capitalized upon people's financial woes during the country's economic and employment crisis. But the Sunset Beach resident is also owner of Kentucky Derby winner I'll Have Another, who could provide horse racing with a huge shot in the arm Saturday with a victory in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico.

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.

When the 2012 London Olympics begin less than three months from now, it will mark an anniversary that Americans might not want to celebrate. Ten years have passed since the Games last took place on U.S. soil. And with the bidding process extended years in advance, this country's next opportunity will not come around until 2022. "That's a problem," said Anita DeFrantz, an International Olympic Committee member from Los Angeles. "We like hosting this event. It's important to the psyche of our people.

The U.S. foreign-born population has risen to its highest level since 1920, with 13% of all those living in the nation in 2010 having been born elsewhere, a new report from the Census Bureau shows. Forty million of those residing in the U.S. in 2010 were born in other countries, up from 31 million, or 11% of the total, a decade earlier. The foreign-born share of the population dropped between 1920 and 1970, hitting a low of 4.7% in 1970, before rising again for several decades. But that growth has slowed in recent years as immigration has dropped, census officials said Thursday.