Counseling

LAHORE, Pakistan - The seed of jihad was planted in Shahbaz Ahmed in 2001 when fundamentalist mosques in Pakistan welled up with rage against America's post-Sept. 11 invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. Ahmed, 20 at the time, left his family in Lahore to help the Afghan Taliban fight U.S. troops. Captured by American soldiers, Ahmed spent four years in jails in Afghanistan and Pakistan before his release in 2005. Since then, Pakistan has kept a wary eye on the wiry, angular-faced scrap metal dealer and thousands of Afghan-trained fighters like him, who are thought to be ripe for recruitment by Pakistan's dizzying array of militant groups.

City and school officials in Los Angeles had a good idea a few years back when they began ticketing students for truancy. It was also a good idea for them to back away from that approach, as they did over the last year. The expensive citations didn't work because the second, more important part of the program - to get to the bottom of why a student played hooky or was chronically late, and to provide the counseling and services to turn him or her around - wasn't carried out. A new, gentler plan has real merit, but it will fail too if the Los Angeles Unified School District doesn't make good on its pledge to provide both the discipline and the services to change students' behavior.

Josh Garcia got his first police citation in sixth grade for spray-painting graffiti at his middle school. Then came four more tickets for truancy and violating curfew. The worst was at Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights, where he got caught with brass knuckles and was sentenced to weekend detention in Central Juvenile Hall - a scary experience, he said. By senior year, Garcia had had so many run-ins with the law and fallen so far behind in school that he failed to pass the high school exit exam or earn enough credits to graduate.

To kick off his summer vacation, Herik Lopez rolled out of bed at 3:30 a.m., dressed in the dark and within an hour was among the workers in an Imperial County field, yanking melons from the dirt. The 16-year-old worked through the morning, taking only a 15-minute break to gobble down the tacos de machaca y huevo - shredded beef and eggs - his mother had made. A few days later, he awoke at 7 a.m. in a dorm room at the University of La Verne. Well-rested and among other teenagers like him, he strolled across the quaint campus to Founder's Hall for his English class.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - When Ishmael Beah looked at the dazed faces of child soldiers in the Central African Republic, dark memories rose inside him. He'd been in a similar situation as a boy soldier in the West African country of Sierra Leone in the 1990s during a war in which combatants routinely chopped off people's limbs. Now he had traveled the corrugated back roads of the Central African Republic to the remote town of Ndele, where he was present last week for negotiations with militia leaders on the release of child combatants.

The gig : As the director of the Asian Pacific Islander Small Business Program in Los Angeles, Ron Fong oversees a coalition of nonprofits that offers free business counseling and services, mainly to low-income immigrants. Founded in 1999, the organization has counseled 3,625 clients and assisted in the growth of 400 new businesses, such as Vietnamese comfort-food restaurant Good Girl Dinette in Highland Park. Since Fong took the helm two years ago, the coalition has helped open and grow businesses such as Angela Preschool & Kindergarten in the San Gabriel Valley and the Filipino barbecue hangout the Park's Finest in Echo Park.

Establishing a credit history is harder than it used to be — lenders are being extra cautious with new applicants. If you're applying for credit for the first time, here are some tips from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling: Start slowly . "Applying for too much credit at once can send the wrong signal to the lender, making it appear that you are desperate for credit," said the NFCC. Also, too many applications for credit cards can hurt your credit score. Co-signer . If you have been denied credit, see if a parent or other relative will come aboard as a co-signer.

SAN DIEGO — Two dentists and two Navy dental corpsmen are working on the mouth of John Gardinier, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam and now lives in Tijuana near the clinic where he can get methadone for his drug addiction. "It's no good to have teeth that are rotten," Gardinier, 64, had said as he waited to be treated at the dental services area at the 25th annual Stand Down in San Diego for homeless and hard-luck military veterans. The relief effort brings together dozens of government agencies, nonprofits and volunteers to provide veterans with a variety of health and social services.

Fourteen mothers of Miramonte Elementary students alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that they, too, are victims of a teacher who has been charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct against students. The suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, is a follow-up to litigation filed in May on behalf of 20 children of these parents. Much like the students, the mothers "have suffered emotional distress, including shock, nervousness, anxiety, worry, humiliation and embarrassment," according to the complaint.

In a move that could significantly expand insurance coverage of weight-loss treatments, a federal health advisory panel on Monday recommended that all obese adults receive intensive counseling in an effort to rein in a growing health crisis in America. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force urged doctors to identify patients with a body mass index of 30 or more - currently 1 in 3 Americans - and either provide counseling themselves or refer the patient to a program designed to promote weight loss and improve health prospects.