Americans

When San Diego County native George Norman Harrison opened his Tijuana pizzeria in 2007, he plastered the El Mirador neighborhood with fliers and hired a team of delivery boys to zip up and down the shanty-lined hills on motor scooters. Business was good, and he told his family he liked the low cost of living in Mexico.

Ilisten to America -- in focus groups, telephone interviews, town halls and polls in all 50 states -- for a living. It used to be fun. Now it's become painful. For 15 years, average Americans have exuded optimism and energy, whether they were talking about their political preferences, their employment aspirations or simply what they had for breakfast. But that was before the economic meltdown one year ago. What a difference a year makes. Today, Americans are boiling mad, and the elites from Washington to Wall Street to West Hollywood don't get it. It can best be summarized by 12 short words bellowed by Howard Beale, the deranged TV anchor in the movie "Network": "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

Weeks after arriving in Pakistan on a flight from New York, Bryant Neal Vinas plunged into holy war: He volunteered to train for a suicide attack and fought in the wilds of Afghanistan. By the time he was captured in November, 14 months later, the Muslim convert from Long Island had journeyed into the innermost circles of Al Qaeda, according to a statement he gave investigators. Vinas befriended fellow trainees who wanted to bomb stadiums in Europe. He learned to assemble explosives vests.

Apparently that tired, worried, cranky old beast called America still can cook up a story line of dreamy nonfiction, for it's just bloody hard to choose the best part of finding Jozy Altidore in this nook of eastern England commonly called "Hull." Maybe the best part would be that scene from Sept. 19, when the Hull City starting 11 strode out and lined up in their tiger orange to play Birmingham in the world's biggest sports league, and a cheer went up in a soccer-soaked household across the Atlantic in Boca Raton.

Bryant Neal Vinas' unlikely odyssey from Long Island, N.Y., to Al Qaeda's innermost circle of commanders in Pakistan was achieved without any help in the U.S. from the well-oiled "jihadist pipeline" that has guided so many militants from Europe and other countries -- a fact that is cause for concern, current and former U.S. counter-terrorism officials said. His case, which became public last week, showed that a U.S.

Federal prosecutors dropped charges Friday against Vang Pao, the exiled Hmong general accused two years ago of plotting with a band of aging Central Valley expatriates to overthrow the communist regime in their homeland of Laos. Vang Pao, 79, had been singled out as the alleged ringleader of the bizarre scheme to launch a coup -- reputedly with mercenaries armed with AK-47 assault rifles and Stinger missiles -- in the summer of 2007. Although prosecutors filed motions abandoning charges against the general, one of America's staunchest allies during the Vietnam War, they maintained the counts against a dozen of his alleged comrades and added new ones.

There is no evidence that radicalized Somali American youths who have disappeared over the last two years are being trained abroad to attack the United States, intelligence and law enforcement officials told members of a Senate panel Wednesday. Although worrisome, their apparent recruitment by the Shabab , a militant group linked to Al Qaeda, is more likely to signify that they are motivated to help their country fight against Ethiopians, who invaded the country in 2006.

A U.S. diplomat and his driver were fatally shot early Tuesday in Khartoum, the capital of war-torn Sudan, U.S. officials said. John Granville, 33, who grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., worked for the United States Agency for International Development. Reports indicated that Granville was shot four or five times while being driven home about 4 a.m., suffering wounds in the abdomen, hand and left shoulder. He died several hours later at a hospital, U.S. officials said.

Gunmen kidnapped an American aid worker and her driver Saturday from a residential neighborhood in southern Afghanistan's largest city as she was on her way to work. Cyd Mizell, 49, works here for the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation. Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid blamed the "enemy of Islam and the enemy of Afghanistan" for the kidnappings. A professor at Kandahar University, Mohammad Gul, said Mizell taught English at the university and gave embroidery lessons at a girl's school.

He can't keep his backside on the bench, not when the clock is running and one of his stars is dribbling down the lane. He bounds to his feet, frizzy mullet springing crazily around his ears, eyes locked on his girls, Diana, Tina, Sue, the players he lured from the U.S. to catapult his team to greatness. At the start of the quarter, he sends them onto the court with his ritual, lingering embrace and a pat on the lower back.