Young Women

NEW YORK - It started with a story for a magazine. In 2008, during a trip to Japan, New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear decided to write about cellphone novels, a phenomenon - involving young women writing largely for young women, posting fiction from their phones to media-sharing websites - that was then shaking up Japanese publishing. "It seemed like a great way to explore the literary culture," she remembers, although by the time she got home, the parameters had shifted, with the effects of the global economic crisis rippling through the American book industry.

Five men were charged with murder Saturday in the abduction, torture and killing of two Michigan women. The victims -- 18-year-old Abreeya Brown and 22-year-old Ashley Conaway -- were taken Feb. 28 from their home in Hamtramck at gunpoint and were stuffed in the trunk of a car, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement Saturday. The young women were found March 25 in a shallow grave in a wooded area of northwest Detroit, both bound and shot in the head. The five charged with their murder, all from Detroit, are Brandon Cain, 26, Miguel Rodriguez, 24, Reginald Brown, 24, Jeremy Brown, 19, and Brian Lee, 25. Neither of the suspects named Brown are related to victim Abreeya Brown.

Two more young women who disappeared in the mid-1980s and were feared to have fallen victim to the drug-fueled "Speed Freak Killers" have been identified from the gruesome trove of remains unearthed last month at an abandoned well near Stockton, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department said Friday. The two teens bring to four the number of victims identified from a toll believed to be at least a dozen and perhaps as many as 72, according to the death row inmate who is guiding authorities to the crude graves.

The pair of college friends can't suppress a conspiratorial giggle when they talk about the passion that's consuming them. "It's an amazing feeling," says Nawal, as her close friend and fellow schemer, Lina, listens closely in a cafe here in the Syrian capital. "It's like you've broken all the injustice and fear. " Some college students gate-crash parties. These two young women ditch classes and roam the streets of Damascus and its suburbs, searching for protests calling for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The No. 1 song in the United States, according to iTunes' singles chart and the Billboard Hot 100, is "We Are Young" by Fun., a New York-based pop-rock group with a flair for anthemic choruses and a precious approach toward typography. (Yes, the period is part of the band's name.) As the latest entrant in a hit parade otherwise dominated by up-tempo dance music, "We Are Young" feels pretty anomalous; it comes from a different, decidedly slower place than Rihanna's "We Found Love" or "Sexy and I Know It" by LMFAO.

The gig: Jackie Sorkin, the self-appointed "Candy Queen," founded the event-planning business the Hollywood Candy Girls in 2009. Working alongside a cadre of young women (and one Eye Candy Boy), she's designed hundreds of sweets-centric parties for the likes of Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry and the only celebrity to ever leave her starstruck, Oprah Winfrey. Although Sorkin is tight-lipped about numbers, she said her profit has grown each year. "People think this is all magic," said Sorkin, 32. "They forget that it's a business and you have to work really, really hard.

One by one, the young women vanished from the dusty farm towns of the Central Valley. They were often addicts or prostitutes, and their disappearances over a 15-year period in the 1980s and '90s didn't seem to draw much official concern. Two childhood friends and locally renowned troublemakers, Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog, were eventually arrested in 1999 for a series of murders known as the "Speed Freak" killings, and many of the missing were presumed to have fallen victim to the methamphetamine-addled duo. Shermantine and Herzog never disclosed where they dumped the mutilated corpses of their victims, leaving bereaved families with only grim speculation.

What's in a title? Plenty, according to French feminists who have persuaded a town to drop the honorific "mademoiselle" on official forms. From now on, the women of Cesson-Sevigne, population 16,000, will be addressed as "madame" regardless of age or marital status. "Mademoiselle," the Gallic form of "miss," is normally used for young, unmarried women, thus, feminists say, openly declaring them either available or unwanted in a way that men, always referred to as "monsieur," are not. A French form of "ms. " would solve the problem, but there you go.… Exactly when a woman reaches the age when she becomes a "madame," married or otherwise, is not only a matter of debate but a social minefield; women of a certain age will often ask themselves whether the waiter who calls them "mademoiselle" is being gallant or sarcastic.

Amid the photographs of beauty contestants competing in Miss California USA this weekend are those of two young women who are making history. Jenelle Hutcherson, 26, of Long Beach and Mollie Thomas, 19, of West Hollywood are the first openly gay contestants in the 60-year history of the state pageant, whose winner will go on to compete in Miss USA, the national pageant. "That Miss California crown would sure look nice atop the 'hawk," Hutcherson said, referring to her Mohawk hairstyle.

When the end of the world comes, would you really want to be in a sleazy Russian nightclub? That's one of the essential questions pondered in "The Darkest Hour," in which aliens invade the planet and a small group of attractive young people fight to survive and make their way elsewhere. As the film opens, two American web entrepreneurs (Emile Hirsch, Max Minghella) are heading to Moscow looking for funding for their location-based social media service. After they are double-crossed by a would-be business partner (Joel Kinnaman)