Young Men

PARIS - A network of Islamic militants has been recruiting young Muslim immigrants at mosques in the Netherlands, urging them to join the "holy war" in places like Afghanistan or Kashmir, the Dutch Internal Security Agency said in a report this week. The agency is also investigating reports that groups with links to al-Qaida have instructed their Dutch Muslim followers that they should join the Dutch army in order to get military training. But Sybrand van Hulst, the director of the Dutch Internal Security Agency, said at a news conference that there was as yet no evidence that the recruiters themselves were from al-Qaida.

While women may have achieved a grim parity with men in contracting the AIDS virus worldwide, experts in the United States remain concerned about the disease's rebound among young gay men. Today's epidemic has not brought the devastation seen in the 1980s and early 1990s, when AIDS cut a swath through the gay community. But health officials and activists say they are alarmed by high rates among gay teen-agers and young adults - some of whom were not alive during the urgent safe-sex campaigns of those days.

The young men shuffle out of the van, a mass of puffy black jackets spilling onto a vast expanse of green grass and worn gravestones. Walker Gladden III calls them to attention. "Our young people are dying," says Gladden, 31, his baritone voice filling the otherwise empty Baltimore Cemetery. "Young men are being killed just about every single day." Young men like them. "We can't stop death," Gladden says, his voice rising as a siren sounds in the distance. "But we ain't gotta meet it through someone pulling the trigger."

At 5 o'clock on a fall morning in 2009, Coppin State University basketball coach Fang Mitchell drove then-sophomore Michael Harper to the hospital for surgery on his wrist. Harper, from Milwaukee, appreciated the show of support — then and now. When Harper finishes his college career next season for the Eagles, Mitchell will be there for him again, just like Harper would want it. "If they were bringing in a new coach in my fourth year, it would mean a whole new system, a new personality, a different look on the team," Harper said.

Police were searching last night for at least two gunmen who shot four young men playing football in Carroll Park last night, causing more than 100 people to run for cover to avoid being hit.The victims, whose ages ranged from 20 to 24, were taken by ambulances to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where they were listed in serious but stable condition last night. Police said they had been shot with semiautomatic handguns.Their identities were withheld pending notification of relatives. One was shot in the right shoulder, one in the neck and two others in the legs or feet, police said.

They don't look so tough now. Not here, shepherded into a middle school auditorium, surrounded by police, parole agents and judges.Twenty young men ages 16 to 24 -- young but street-tough, on probation or parole for serious crimes -- were back at school in South Baltimore's Cherry Hill last night, this time for a lesson in deterrence. The visual aids were mug shots of the neighborhood's alleged Veronica Avenue Boys, until recently a drug-trafficking gang presumably more violent, more terrifying than anyone in the auditorium.

ALGIERS, Algeria -- By day, they lean against whitewashed walls smoking cigarettes or selling imported shirts out of small vinyl bags. By night, they congregate on street corners or in noisy coffeehouses. And, in the future, they will inherit Algeria.The young men of Algeria, many seething with the anger of the dispossessed and the hatred of those who can no longer dream of a better life, often make their lives on the fringes of society.Those who are called "trabendistes" in Algerian slang work in the black markets that have sprung up in every major city, making illegal currency exchanges or selling shoes and clothes smuggled from abroad.

They know him as "Black," a convicted felon and longtime member of the Bloods street gang. He is leaning far back in a chair, under the only working light in a nondescript rowhouse in East Baltimore. He is talking about street life and hustling. And this group of more than 25 gang members and young men recently sprung from prison are hanging on his every word. "Bloods. Crips. BGF. Purple City," he says, rattling off the gang affiliations of the men in the room. He pauses. The room is still.

In Paris, cutting-edge designer Jean-Paul Gaultier shows men in skirts and critcs applaud. On Seventh Avenue, Donna Karan ties up a casual spring look for men with a paisley sarong. At the Grammy Awards the male contingent of Arrested Development, the year's top rap group, wraps up in skirt-like fashion. In London now, mod young men wear kilts everywhere.Men in skirts no longer shock. They've even been seen in Baltimore.At Louie's Book Store Cafe, Joe Boudreau, sometime-manager, bartender and artist wears a skirt on occasion -- even to work at the Charles Street restaurant where Baltimore's bohemia does brunch and light fare.

THE SETTING is a high school in Howard County, where Mr. Hardy's ninth-grade English class splits into factions during a discussion of poems about war.Kelly reads a haunting verse by Siegfried Sassoon, who survived World War I. "How does any soldier forget killing people or seeing his friends die all around him?" she says."Old men forget what war is like," says her friend Keith. "So they make up lies about honor and glory and trick young men into fighting. And the young men die, not the old men."