Youth

Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese militia leader facing charges of recruiting child soldiers to rape and kill, on Monday became the first defendant to go on trial at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The court is the world's first permanent venue to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other major crimes against humanity. Cases such as these have mostly been tried at temporary courts, from Nuremberg, Germany, to more recent U.N.

Wherever Devon was, so too were Daylan and Moses. The three boys were often seen around their Fontana condominium complex tossing a football or competing against each other in rowdy video games. So when 15-year-old Devon Keeten grabbed the keys to his mother's spare car Wednesday and climbed into the silver Nissan Altima, his half-brother, Daylan Green, 9, and best friend and neighbor, Moses Guzman, 11, naturally went along.

For as long as he can remember, Dario Serrano's life was all screeching tires and echoing gunshots, babies' cries and barking dogs, a symphony, as he puts it, of "hood rats and gangsters," of "vatos and payasos" -- dudes and numskulls, loosely translated. By high school, he'd pretty much given up on himself. He bounced around between three schools. He started selling pot, though he always seemed to smoke more than he sold. His GPA fell to 0.

Pop quiz for teenagers: Are you more likely to die from smoking more than 10 cigarettes a day or from being obese? According to a new study from the British Medical Journal, it's a tie. Swedish researchers studied health records of 45,920 men drafted by the Swedish army in 1969-70 at an average age of 18 years, 8 months. Then they consulted Sweden's national cause of death registry and found that 2,897 had died as of Sept. 1, 2007.

A troubled, gun-wielding 23-year-old student at Virginia Tech goes on a campus rampage, killing 32 people and eventually himself. An MIT student commits suicide by ingesting cyanide, and another dies in a fire after a drug overdose. Such highly publicized incidents underscore the sense of personal angst on today's college campuses. But contrary to popular belief, the stress on today's young people has nothing to do with meeting the demands of higher education.

When I learned recently that yet another friend had been diagnosed with cancer, I experienced my usual reaction: disbelief and sadness, followed by anger at Life In General. But for the first time, I also saw what these under-35 friends and family members have in common. They, or those they love, talk about their illness with a refreshing frankness.

YAZAN AMMARI Gamer -- How did the renowned "clowN" -- dreaded, revered and awesomely lethal with a SG552 commando high-powered assault rifle -- end up back home with Mom and Dad? ClowN, not so long ago, was a hero to every kid whose parents ever nagged that computer games were a waste of time.

Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin, the teenage daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, have broken off their engagement, he said Wednesday, about 2 1/2 months after the couple had a baby. Johnston, 19, told the Associated Press that he and Bristol Palin, 18, mutually decided "awhile ago" to end their relationship. He also said some details of the breakup, rumors of which had been swirling on the Internet, were inaccurate.

It was time to play ball at a Beverly Hills park Tuesday afternoon, but it wasn't your usual Little League game. CNN's Larry King was the announcer. Hall of Fame member Dave Winfield and former star Fred Lynn coached the teams: the Culver City Little League Nationals versus the home team, the Beverly Hills Cardinals. Actor Luke Perry threw out a first pitch. And Beverly Hills Vice Mayor Barry Brucker was on hand to make sure everyone played fair.

One Disney Channel star is gunning to take down another at the box office this weekend. Warner Bros. opens its Zac Efron comedy "17 Again" today in hopes of garnering much of the same young female audience that made Walt Disney Co.'s "Hannah Montana: The Movie" No. 1 last weekend.