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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.

A bleary-eyed Chui Hom tripped down her apartment stairs at 8 a.m. sharp and started her car. She didn't get far. The vehicle inched across Riverside Terrace, a narrow one-way lane in Echo Park, and stopped on the other side. Hom is part of Los Angeles' Great Street-Sweeping Do-Si-Do. Twice a week, residents of Koreatown, Pico-Union and other neighborhoods with more apartments than parking spaces race to their cars, hoping to move them before parking enforcement officers arrive and ticket them for blocking street sweepers.

In an odd yet understandable marketing strategy, the folks behind E!'s new reality show "Mrs. Eastwood & Company" have spent a lot of pre-premiere publicity time explaining what the show isn't. Which is to say, Clint Eastwood. The legendary actor and director will appear in but a few episodes and then only briefly. He will not, for instance, be slamming doors or engaging in filmed therapy sessions with his wife, Dina, around whom the show revolves (see title.) That doesn't mean the show is not about Clint Eastwood; it is. If the principal characters -- Dina, her 15-year-old daughter Morgan and 19-year old stepdaughter Francesca -- were not related to him, there would be Absolutely No Reason to watch this, which, by reality show standards, promises to be tame to the point of sedation.

After months searching for work and feeling increasingly discouraged, Natalie Cole caught a break — an offer of a part-time position at a Little Caesars Pizza shop in Compton. The manager scheduled her orientation and told her she had to pass a food safety test. She took the test — and failed. But rather than study and take it again, she shrugged it off. "I guess I am not working for a reason," she said. PHOTOS: A life spent battling poverty Cole isn't a victim of the struggling economy.

In an age of long commutes, late sports practices, endless workdays and 24/7 television programming, the image of Mom hanging up her dish towel at 7 p.m. and declaring "the kitchen is closed" seems a quaint relic of an earlier era. It also harks back to a thinner America. And that may be no coincidence. A new study, conducted on mice, hints at an unexpected contributor to the nation's epidemic of obesity - and, if later human studies bear it out, a possible way to have our cake and eat it too, with less risk of weight gain and the diseases that come with it. Just eat your cake - or better yet, an apple - earlier.

Researchers have some reassuring news for the legions of coffee drinkers who can't get through the day without a latte, cappuccino, iced mocha, double-shot of espresso or a plain old cuppa joe: That coffee habit may help you live longer. A new study that tracked the health and coffee consumption of more than 400,000 older adults for nearly 14 years found that java drinkers were less likely to die during the study than their counterparts who eschewed the brew. In fact, men and women who averaged four or five cups of coffee per day had the lowest risk of death, according to a report in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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.

If you're thinking of visiting a Disney park in Anaheim this summer, be warned that the price is about to jump by between $7 and $150 depending on the ticket deal. The annual summer price hike for tickets to Disneyland and the Disney California Adventure Park were announced Friday and take effect Sunday. For example, a ticket for one day at either Disneyland or California Adventure had cost $80 for parkgoers who are 10 or older. The new price, starting Sunday, will be $87, up nearly 9%. The biggest increase will hit people who buy the premium annual pass that includes parking.

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)

The PSA test should be abandoned as a prostate cancer screening tool, a government advisory panel has concluded after determining that the side effects from needless biopsies and treatments hurt many more men than are potentially helped by early detection of cancers. At best, one life will be saved for every 1,000 men screened over a 10-year period, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. But 100 to 120 men will have suspicious results when there is no cancer, triggering biopsies that can carry complications such as pain, fever, bleeding, infection and hospitalization.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — For a fourth day Wednesday, the jury in the John Edwards trial deliberated without reaching a verdict in a case focused on an illicit affair and federal campaign finance laws. The jury of eight men and four women must decide whether Edwards violated election laws when payments from two wealthy donors were used to cover up his affair with videographer Rielle Hunter during Edwards' failed run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Prosecutors contend that Edwards solicited $925,000 in illegal contributions from the donors in order to hide the affair and keep his campaign from collapsing in scandal.

LAKE ARROWHEAD - A hiss rose from the front row as the Republican-turned-independent took a swing at his grand old party. Voters in Southern California's vast frontier of mountains and desert can break from the GOP's "tyranny of the minority" in the June 5 primary, congressional candidate Anthony Adams told the crowd. A hundred or so people, ranging from "tea party" adherents to gay-marriage defenders, had come to hear him and other hopefuls at a forum inside the Lake Arrowhead Resort.

The Los Angeles Unified School District on Wednesday announced the settlement of a sexual harassment allegation against retired Supt. Ramon C. Cortines by a senior employee in the facilities division. The district will pay $200,000 plus lifetime health benefits, valued at $250,000 to $300,000 to Scot Graham, the director of leasing and asset management. In return, Graham will resign from his $150,000-a-year job. In a statement, Cortines, 79, denied any harassment, but acknowledged what he called "adult behavior on one occasion," adding that "as the district's former top staff member, I regret allowing myself to engage in such spontaneous, consensual behavior.

SACRAMENTO — A data breach that jeopardized the personal information of more than 700,000 people has spurred California officials to change the way they transport sensitive material. Packages of payroll data, including Social Security numbers, will be delivered by courier rather than dropped in the mail. And officials are examining ways to transmit encrypted data rather than store it on microfiche. "We're looking to improve the process," said Oscar Ramirez, a spokesman for the California Department of Social Services.

Deborah Pauly, the outspoken Villa Park councilwoman who drew community ire when she protested outside an Islamic charity event, was removed this week from a leadership position with the Orange County Republican Party's central committee. Party officials said Pauly, who is running for county supervisor, has been a divisive figure. Her removal comes a month after Orange businessman Bob Walters mailed out letters supporting Pauly's candidacy on a "George Wallace for President" letterhead.

The Rev. Hamel Hartford Brookins, an influential bishop and former pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles who became a political power broker, civil rights leader and mentor to former Mayor Tom Bradley, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and many others, has died. He was 86. The son of Mississippi sharecroppers, Brookins rose to prominence in the 1960s and '70s as an articulate, self-assured champion of black political empowerment. He died Tuesday at a Los Angeles retirement center where he had been receiving hospice care, a church spokesman said.

WASHINGTON - An experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis has caused death, strokes, nerve damage and abdominal bleeding and has no proven benefits for sufferers of the disease, the Food and Drug Administration warned Thursday. Known as liberation therapy, the treatment targets chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency - or CCSVI - a narrowing of the veins in the head and neck. It involves inserting balloons or stents into veins to widen them in an attempt to relieve the symptoms of MS. The FDA received reports in 2011 of a patient who died from bleeding in the brain after undergoing the treatment and another who was left permanently paralyzed by a stroke.

CINCINNATI - The Rev. Chris Beard is a theological conservative, make no mistake about it. He believes the Bible is the word of God. He believes the Holy Spirit speaks to him directly. He believes, as an article of faith, that abortion and same-sex marriage are wrong. Still, when a group of religious leaders in Ohio held two days of meetings in Cincinnati recently to talk about economic and racial justice, issues usually associated with the political left, there was Beard, a fourth-generation Pentecostal preacher with a disarming smile, a shaved head and a set of convictions that knock holes in the stereotypes about white evangelical Protestants.

Last month, four of the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena's bosses decided to catch the Boss, so they used their government position to claim a luxury suite for Bruce Springsteen's sold-out stand there. The taxpayer-owned venue is in financial ruins, but the officials took their customary perks, enjoying Springsteen's blue-collar brand of rock 'n' roll from digs that included a private entry, spacious bathroom, kitchenette, lounge area and television screen. The 19 elevated seats, boxed off from the crowd, offered dead-on views of the stage for the officeholders and their guests.

Scientists dissecting the remains of the disastrous 1980 explosion of Mt. St. Helens in Washington state say that crystal formations trapped in volcanic rocks hold important clues about when a magma-loaded mountain is about to blow - a discovery that could help volcanologists make more accurate predictions about future eruptions. The findings, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, link the movement of underground magma to earthquakes, gas emissions and other warning signs that are more accessible to experts who monitor active volcanoes above ground.