Intervention

We know one person can adopt a more healthful lifestyle -- but can an entire household? It's possible, with some success, according to a recent study published online in the journal Obesity . Most weight-loss intervention studies focus on individuals, but researchers in this study worked with 90 households to see if an intervention designed to create more beneficial habits would have any effect. Half of the households took part in the intervention for a year, while the other half did not, and served as a control.

When battling street gangs across Los Angeles County, sheriff's deputies rely too heavily on suppression and not enough on gang intervention, according to a study released Monday. By not doing more to connect with the communities they police, the report found, sheriff's deputies are missing an opportunity to gain the public's trust. However, the report - put out by Merrick Bobb, special counsel to the county Board of Supervisors - acknowledged that crime rates inside sheriff's jurisdictions have fallen dramatically, and comparably to the areas patrolled by the LAPD, which more commonly uses gang interventionists.

Web-based interventions to help teens eat better and exercise more may show some benefits in the short term, but not in the long term. A study of 883 12- and 13-year-olds in the Netherlands found that a Web-based intervention program designed to help them eat more fruits and vegetables, drink fewer sugary beverages and increase their activity found that a few strategies worked after four months, not not two years later. The students were randomly assigned to take part in the program or continue their regular diet and activity regimen.

The teenager showed up in a panic on Thursday, cradling a wounded puppy in arms spattered with blood. A stray dog had attacked his 2-month-old pit bull on a walk near their South Los Angeles home. The city animal shelter nearby was the only place he knew to go. He ran over to Amanda Casarez, pleading for help. She took one look at the puppy's bloody gash and pulled out her cellphone. Within hours the pup was in surgery, the vet bill guaranteed by strangers from a pool of volunteers working with Downtown Dog Rescue, which sponsors an intervention program at the shelter.

I think unilateral military intervention in the internal affairs of any country is wrong. I think it is wrong in Bosnia. Whatever is to be done must be done through the United Nations based upon a genuine consensus. Using the U.N. as a rubber stamp did not work for George Bush and it will not work for Bill Clinton. We can't afford to police the whole world. Let's demilitarize our society and use the savings to help get our own house in order. Our losses in the Cold War were not as great as the Russians, but we didn't win the Cold War. All our winnings are in front of us. BERNARD FELDMAN Laguna Hills

You have performed a valuable public service in publishing Doyle McManus' article (June 16) about the emerging "Reagan Doctrine." According to this doctrine, our Washington policy-makers will involve us in overt intervention throughout the world because the Russians have been doing this. Because we have not, we must stop being the good guys and start "playing on a level field." Before our leaders begin squandering American dollars and American lives, they might pause long enough to familiarize themselves with the history of their own country.

There has been much wringing of hands in the news media--newspapers and television--and in Congress over the cost of our military intervention in the Persian Gulf, and its consequences. It would seem more to the point to assess the costs and the consequences to us as a nation if we had not intervened. The cost of oil is not at issue and is not the reason President Bush decided to move in. OPEC has been ineffective. It hasn't controlled oil prices over any long period. In 1989, oil prices (adjusted for inflation)

My cousin, Ramez, was dead before the echoes of the gunshot that killed him stopped ringing. His 4-year-old daughter, Zeynab, watched him fall on a narrow street in Damascus, but she never heard the shot because she is deaf. She held onto his lifeless hand until a second bullet tore into her chest. She survived. I tell this story to make it clear that my family and I have experienced the civil war firsthand. Ramez was just one of several family members who lost their lives in the battle against Bashar Assad's police state.

The United States has intervened in currency markets in the last two weeks in an effort to slow the rise of the dollar against foreign currencies, Secretary of the Treasury James A. Baker III said Friday. But he acknowledged that the intervention failed to prevent the dollar, whose soaring value has aggravated the U.S. trade deficit, from rising further. "What I can't do," he told a group of reporters, "is tell you how much more it would have risen if we hadn't intervened."

The interventionist liberals of the Obama administration were a doleful bunch last week. It was the 20th anniversary of the siege of Sarajevo, when a Bosnian Serb army battered a city full of civilians with artillery while the United States issued ineffective cries of alarm. The comparison with this year's massacres in Syria was painfully apt. Now, as then, the United Nations Security Council has asked both sides to stop shooting, to no great effect. Now, as then, the United States and its allies are rejecting the idea of military intervention as too difficult, too risky, too likely to add to the violence instead of ending it. In Bosnia, it took the United States more than three years and many massacres to decide that diplomatic measures and sanctions weren't enough.

Outrage. That's what we should feel over the Syrian government's slaughter of more than 70,000 of its own people and its use of chemical weapons. And outrage is what we should feel over the international community's total impotence. Despite nearly irrefutable intelligence regarding Syrian use of chemical weapons, which the Obama administration acknowledges, the White House persists in setting a burden of proof that is impossible to achieve in practical terms and is designed to allow the U.S. to avoid military involvement in Syria almost at all costs.

My cousin, Ramez, was dead before the echoes of the gunshot that killed him stopped ringing. His 4-year-old daughter, Zeynab, watched him fall on a narrow street in Damascus, but she never heard the shot because she is deaf. She held onto his lifeless hand until a second bullet tore into her chest. She survived. I tell this story to make it clear that my family and I have experienced the civil war firsthand. Ramez was just one of several family members who lost their lives in the battle against Bashar Assad's police state.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is sending about 200 troops to Jordan, the vanguard of a potential U.S. military force of 20,000 or more that could be deployed if the Obama administration decides to intervene in Syria to secure chemical weapons arsenals or to prevent the 2-year-old civil war from spilling into neighboring nations. Troops from the 1st Armored Division will establish a small headquarters near Jordan's border with Syria to help deliver humanitarian supplies for a growing flood of refugees and to plan for possible military operations, including a rapid buildup of American forces if the White House decides intervention is necessary, senior U.S. officials said.

FT. BLISS, Texas - Army Pvt. John Jeffery stumbled into Kyle Boswell's barracks room at Ft. Bliss before dawn one day in February, his eyes glassy. "I've done something," Jeffery mumbled to his buddy. "I can't tell anyone. It's going to happen. " He had just learned his girlfriend was cheating on him. The Army had decided to kick him out for using heroin. Now the 21-year-old veteran of Afghanistan had downed more than two bottles of Vicodin and Oxycodone, powerful prescription painkillers.

KABUL, Afghanistan - An American contractor was detained illegally for 24 hours in an Afghan prison, beaten, denied more than basic medical help and told he wouldn't be released unless his company paid $2.4 million, according to three U.S. congressmen and his employer. Contractor David Gordon was released Friday afternoon after the congressmen wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and after the company's attorney in Afghanistan appealed to U.S.-led coalition forces.

Despite a last-minute intervention by Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti, the city's Planning Commission moved forward Thursday with a bold development project that could add two towering skyscrapers to the Hollywood skyline. If the project is approved by the City Council, New-York-based developer Millennium Partners will be able to build more than 1 million square feet of apartment, office and retail space on fewer than five acres of land surrounding the iconic Capitol Records building.

At first glance, it looks as if the Obama administration has executed a sudden turnabout in its attitude toward military intervention in Libya. Two weeks ago, U.S. officials were talking about all the reasons a no-fly zone was a bad idea; now, they're all for it. In fact, the administration was closely divided all along ? torn between a desire to help Libya's rebels overthrow Moammar Kadafi and a fear of getting the United States enmeshed in another messy war in the Muslim world.

In the 1979 Woody Allen film "Manhattan," Michael Murphy's character claims that "gossip is the new pornography." Now, reality television has taken its place alongside gossip, as broadcast and cable networks scramble for new peepholes. Based on A&E's newest reality program, "Intervention," the cable channel's initials could now stand for Annoying & Exploitive.

Military intervention in the Muslim world seems to bring the United States nothing but grief. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya: None looks much like a success story now. Yet the Obama administration is edging reluctantly into a civil war in Syria, aiding rebels who are fighting to overthrow the brutal regime of Bashar Assad. And it should: The longer this war goes on, the worse it will be for the U.S. and the Syrians. Already, more than 70,000 Syrians have died; perhaps 4 million have lost their homes.

The 87-year-old woman who died last week after a staff member at a Bakersfield senior living facility refused to perform CPR did not want life-prolonging intervention, her family said Tuesday. In a statement to the Associated Press, the family of Lorraine Bayless said they do not plan to sue the facility, Glenwood Gardens. A staff member who identified herself as a nurse refused to give Bayless CPR as directed by a Bakersfield fire dispatcher, saying it was against the facility's policy for staff to do so, according to a 911 tape released by the Bakersfield Fire Department.