Featured Articles from CNN

When you see photos of Cameron Diaz's slim silhouette or Jessica Alba's flat post-pregnancy tummy, you probably wonder just how Hollywood stars stay so lean or snap back into shape so quickly. While many swear their svelte bods come from eating right and exercising round the clock, the truth is that some celebs may go to strange and interesting lengths to get or stay pin thin. Here, the skinny on exactly what the big names do to get red-carpet ready -- from the healthy strategies you'll want to steal to the just plain wacky ideas you'll want to avoid.

Avoid the mile-long lines at the Times Square TKTS booth by buying discounted Broadway tickets using one of these eight approaches. Crack the codes When you're buying tickets online, the major agencies -- Telecharge and Ticketmaster -- ask for a promotional code, which can shave between 25 and 50 percent off the face-value price. You can find one of these codes by visiting Playbill, TheaterMania and BroadwayBox.com. These sites list promotional codes for many shows, including blockbuster productions like "Hairspray.

Bad reputations tend to stick, even with foods. Continued negative press about a fruit, vegetable, or beverage is enough reason for many of us to banish it. Or maybe we indulge on occasion, but with a measure of guilt. Take avocados and peanuts, for example. Not too long ago they wore a big scarlet "F" for too much fat. Yet as peanuts and avocados sat languishing on many people's bad-for-you lists, researchers discovered that the fat in these two foods, mostly the monounsaturated kind, is extremely good for the heart--and for health in general.

A not-so-gentle reminder: Mother's Day is Sunday. Maybe your gift is wrapped and your brunch plans booked. Maybe you've already blocked out time to call mom, step-mom, grandmother, den mother -- whoever the person is who fed, cared for, taught and loved you. Or maybe, like many others, you're just not sure how to say 'Thank you.' The National Retail Federation estimates consumers will spend $18.6 billion on Mother's Day this year, about $152.52...

Nineteen-year-old Stuart Wald is not likely to grow out of his schizophrenia, bipolar disease and attention-deficit disorder. But he will, with 100 percent certainty, grow out of the health insurance coverage he has through his father's employer -- and that day is just a few years away. The Walds (not their real name) know he'll never get insurance on his own because he has not just one but three pre-existing conditions. Without insurance, it will cost the Walds thousands of dollars a month for his treatment and care.

About one in two American adults has borderline or high cholesterol levels, which increase one's risk of heart attack and cardiovascular disease. Statins, medications that lower levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, are now among the most prescribed drugs in the country (and the world). But medication is only part of the solution: To keep cholesterol under control, maintaining a healthy weight and diet is just as important as taking a daily pill. The guidelines for treating high cholesterol from the National Cholesterol Education Program recommend that patients try to lower their cholesterol through Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC)

You've been told for years that popping a multivitamin every day might help you live longer. But the daily multi habit has been getting a bit of bad press lately. First, ConsumerLab.com, a watchdog of the supplement industry, found that more than half of the 21 multis it tested had too much (or too little) of certain vitamins -- or had been contaminated with dangerous substances such as lead. Then a controversial paper from researchers in Denmark and other European countries, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, made the claim that taking vitamins may actually shorten your life.

Think back to your first job at the local ice cream shop. Working after school, 15 hours per week at $7 an hour was enough to fulfill your wishes, hopes and dreams. (Let's be honest, back then, none of us wished for much more than a reciprocated crush and a big allowance.) Those days have long since passed. Unless you're a waged worker (paid hourly) like 59 percent of U.S. workers are, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you probably don't have a clue what your salary translates to per hour.

Almost 16 hours after Martha Freeman's husband was strangled and beaten to death in the couple's upscale south Nashville home, she finally reported his death to police. If her decision to wait was puzzling, so was the explanation she gave police. Freeman claimed her lover, an illegal Mexican immigrant who was living in her closet, killed her husband. She said Jeffrey Freeman had discovered him. But prosecutors dispute Martha Freeman's version of the events that led to her husband's April 2005 slaying.

You know how good it feels when you fish a $10 bill out of your jeans pocket right before it hits the wash. Imagine coming into hundreds of dollars from a savings bond or a bank account you forgot about. You may get a letter from a company saying you have unclaimed money or property, and for a fee, you'll be able to reclaim it. But before you pay for this service, remember there are plenty of free Web sites that will help reunite you with your treasures. There's almost $33 billion in unclaimed money from old payroll checks, utility refunds, trust distributions, stocks, banking or checking accounts, certificates of deposit and the contents of safe deposit boxes, according to estimates by the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators.

The woman at the center of the U.S. Secret Service prostitution scandal embraced her notoriety and spilled colorful details Friday about alcohol flowing like water and Secret Service agents dancing on a bar. Dania Londono Suarez is the escort who unwittingly sparked investigations that have ensnared roughly two dozen members of the Secret Service and U.S. military over reported use of prostitutes in Colombia in the days before President Barack...

If you're looking for an all-natural way to lower your cholesterol -- in addition to watching what you eat and exercising -- there are plenty of dietary supplements on the market that claim to do the trick. Each year seems to bring a new alternative remedy -- garlic, ginseng, or red yeast rice, for example -- that users tout as the next best thing to get cholesterol under control. But just because your Uncle Jack says a supplement worked miracles on his cholesterol doesn't mean it will work for you. In fact, his success may be due to a placebo effect or a diet overhaul he neglected to mention.

Michelle Klawiter was nine days into a course of antibiotics for a sinus infection when the gut pain hit. Bloody diarrhea quickly followed. The 42-year-old secretary and mother of three in Chandler, Arizona, had developed a nasty intestinal infection, the kind that sometimes occurs when antibiotics kill your body's good bacteria along with the bad and lower your defenses to other invaders. Doctors prescribed a series of increasingly potent antibiotics to try to knock out the new bad bug, Clostridium difficile (C. diff)