By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima, Ap Business Writer – 39 mins ago
LOS ANGELES – "SpongeBob SquarePants" may be getting squeezed off of Time Warner Cable.
Media giant Viacom Inc. said its Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central and 16 other channels will go dark on Time Warner Cable Inc. at 12:01 a.m. Thursday if a new carriage fee deal is not agreed upon by then.
The impasse over carriage fee hikes would mean "SpongeBob" and other shows like "The Daily Show" will be cut off to 13 million subscribers, said spokesman Alex Dudley, a vice president at Time Warner Cable. The nation's second-largest cable operator primarily serves customers in New York state, the Carolinas, Ohio, Southern California and Texas.
Viacom has asked for fee increases of between 22 percent and 36 percent per channel, an amount that could increase customers' cable bills, Dudley said. Viacom spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew said the requested increase was in the very low double-digit percentage range.
"The issue is that they have asked for an exorbitant increase in their carriage fees and their network ratings are sagging," he said. "Basically we're trying to hold the line for our customer."
Viacom said the increases would cost an extra 23 cents a month per subscriber — which works out to $35.9 million more in total. It said that Americans spend a fifth of their TV time watching Viacom shows but its fees make up less than 2.5 percent of the Time Warner cable bill.
"We make this request because Time Warner Cable has so greatly undervalued our channels for so long," it said.
"Ultimately, however, if Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV and the rest of our programming is discontinued — over less than a penny per day — we believe viewers will see this behavior by their cable company as outrageous," it said.
Tense negotiations are continuing at the highest level, Dudley said.
Viacom accused Time Warner Cable of not negotiating.
"It is our sincere hope that they will come to the table and negotiate a deal," said McAndrew. The network operator also intends to tell viewers about the dispute in TV ads in 11 major markets.
Part of the disagreement is that most of the popular shows are rerun on Web sites where Viacom collects advertising revenue that it does not share with Time Warner, Dudley said.
"We don't think that's fair," he said. "They're trying to have their cake and eat it too online, where anybody can get it for free."
Viacom has staked much of its revenue-growth prospects on its ability to extract higher carriage rates out of its cable and satellite affiliates despite an ad slowdown and weak ratings.
In the third quarter, media network revenue, which accounts for about two-thirds of the total, grew 6 percent to $2.1 billion, despite global ad revenue falling 2 percent, largely because of double-digit percentage growth in affiliate fees and the success of its "Rock Band" video game.
Viacom shares rose 69 cents, or 3.7 percent, to close at $19.26 on Tuesday, while Time Warner Cable shares added $1.56, or 7.7 percent, to $21.76.
The channels that would be affected are: Comedy Central, CMT: Pure Country, Logo, Palladia, MTV, MTV 2, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, MTV Tr3s, Nickelodeon, Noggin, Nick 2, Nicktoons, Spike, The N, TV Land, VH1, VH1 Classic, and VH1 Soul.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Oldest man in the US dies in Sacramento at 112
By JASON DEAREN, Associated Press Writer Jason Dearen, Associated Press Writer – Sun Dec 28, 11:48 pm ET
SAN FRANCISCO – George Francis, the nation's oldest man, who lived through both world wars, man's first walk on the moon and the election of the first black president, has died. He was 112.
Francis died Saturday of congestive heart failure at a nursing home in Sacramento, his son, Anthony Francis, said Sunday.
"He lived four years in the 19th century, 100 years in the 20th century, and 8 years in the 21st century. We call him the man of three centuries," said the younger Francis, 81.
UCLA gerontologist Dr. Stephen Coles, who maintains a list of the world's oldest people, said Francis lived 112 years and 204 days.
With Francis' death, Walter Breuning of Montana, who is 112 years, 98 days old, becomes the country's oldest living man. At 114, Gertrude Baines of Los Angeles is the nation's oldest living person. The world's oldest person is Maria de Jesus of Portugal, who is 115 years, 109 days old, and the oldest man is Tomoji Tanabe of Japan, who is 113 years, 101 days, Coles said.
Francis, who at his prime barely weighed more than 100 pounds, was born June 6, 1896, in New Orleans. As an African-American in the South, he felt the sting of the Jim Crow-era segregation laws in his early life.
His son said Francis tried to enlist in the U.S. Army during World War I but was turned down because of his stature.
"We always attributed his longevity to his mental and physical toughness," Anthony Francis said.
George Francis quit school after the sixth grade, became an amateur boxer as a young man and later worked as a chauffeur, an auto mechanic and a barber.
He and his wife, Josephine Johnson Francis, had a son and three daughters. Josephine Francis died of cancer in 1964.
Even in his waning days, Francis never lost his passion for politics, his family said. He voted for Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and for Barack Obama in 2008.
In an interview with The Associated Press after Obama's victory, Francis, who used a wheelchair, said he felt like jumping up and down.
"He is going to give black men a break in the world, and give them a better opportunity to live and make more money," he said. "For people who say voting doesn't matter, I think that's crazy."
Anthony Francis said his father was devoted to his family and that he attributed his longevity to them.
"He said `My children and my friends, I live off of them,'" he said.
Besides his four children, Francis is survived by 18 grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren and 16 great-great grandchildren.
SAN FRANCISCO – George Francis, the nation's oldest man, who lived through both world wars, man's first walk on the moon and the election of the first black president, has died. He was 112.
Francis died Saturday of congestive heart failure at a nursing home in Sacramento, his son, Anthony Francis, said Sunday.
"He lived four years in the 19th century, 100 years in the 20th century, and 8 years in the 21st century. We call him the man of three centuries," said the younger Francis, 81.
UCLA gerontologist Dr. Stephen Coles, who maintains a list of the world's oldest people, said Francis lived 112 years and 204 days.
With Francis' death, Walter Breuning of Montana, who is 112 years, 98 days old, becomes the country's oldest living man. At 114, Gertrude Baines of Los Angeles is the nation's oldest living person. The world's oldest person is Maria de Jesus of Portugal, who is 115 years, 109 days old, and the oldest man is Tomoji Tanabe of Japan, who is 113 years, 101 days, Coles said.
Francis, who at his prime barely weighed more than 100 pounds, was born June 6, 1896, in New Orleans. As an African-American in the South, he felt the sting of the Jim Crow-era segregation laws in his early life.
His son said Francis tried to enlist in the U.S. Army during World War I but was turned down because of his stature.
"We always attributed his longevity to his mental and physical toughness," Anthony Francis said.
George Francis quit school after the sixth grade, became an amateur boxer as a young man and later worked as a chauffeur, an auto mechanic and a barber.
He and his wife, Josephine Johnson Francis, had a son and three daughters. Josephine Francis died of cancer in 1964.
Even in his waning days, Francis never lost his passion for politics, his family said. He voted for Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and for Barack Obama in 2008.
In an interview with The Associated Press after Obama's victory, Francis, who used a wheelchair, said he felt like jumping up and down.
"He is going to give black men a break in the world, and give them a better opportunity to live and make more money," he said. "For people who say voting doesn't matter, I think that's crazy."
Anthony Francis said his father was devoted to his family and that he attributed his longevity to them.
"He said `My children and my friends, I live off of them,'" he said.
Besides his four children, Francis is survived by 18 grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren and 16 great-great grandchildren.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Child maid trafficking spreads from Africa to US
Child maid trafficking spreads from Africa to US
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer Rukmini Callimachi, Associated Press Writer – Sun Dec 28, 3:16 pm ET
IRVINE, Calif. – Late at night, the neighbors saw a little girl at the kitchen sink of the house next door.
They watched through their window as the child rinsed plates under the open faucet. She wasn't much taller than the counter and the soapy water swallowed her slender arms. To put the dishes away, she climbed on a chair.
But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid.
Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the day and no days off.
The trafficking of children for domestic labor in the U.S. is an extension of an illegal but common practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they will at least be better fed in the home of their employer.
The custom has led to the spread of trafficking, as well-to-do Africans accustomed to employing children immigrate to the U.S. Around one-third of the estimated 10,000 forced laborers in the United States are servants trapped behind the curtains of suburban homes, according to a study by the National Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley and Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group. No one can say how many are children, especially since their work can so easily be masked as chores.
Once behind the walls of gated communities like this one, these children never go to school. Unbeknownst to their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves, just like Shyima, whose story is pieced together through court records, police transcripts and interviews.
"I'd look down and see her at 10, 11 — even 12 — at night," said Shyima's neighbor at the time, Tina Font. "She'd be doing the dishes. We didn't put two and two together."
___
Shyima cried when she found out she was going to America in 2000. Her father, a bricklayer, had fallen ill a few years earlier, so her mother found a maid recruiter, signed a contract effectively leasing her daughter to the couple for 10 years and told Shyima to be strong.
For a year, Shyima, 9, worked in the Cairo apartment owned by Amal Motelib and Nasser Ibrahim. Every month, Shyima's mother came to pick up her salary.
Tens of thousands of children in Africa, some as young as 3, are recruited every year to work as domestic servants. They are on call 24 hours a day and are often beaten if they make a mistake. Children are in demand because they earn less than adults and are less likely to complain. In just one city — Casablanca — a 2001 survey by the Moroccan government found more than 15,000 girls under 15 working as maids.
The U.S. State Department found that over the past year, children have been trafficked to work as servants in at least 33 of Africa's 53 countries. Children from at least 10 African countries were sent as maids to the U.S. and Europe. But the problem is so well hidden that authorities — including the U.N., Interpol and the State Department — have no idea how many child maids now work in the West.
"In most homes, these girls are not allowed to use so much as the same spoon as the rest of the family," said Hany Helal, the Cairo-based director of the Egyptian Organization for Child Rights.
By the time the Ibrahims decided to leave, Shyima's family had taken several loans from them for medical bills. The Ibrahims said they could only be repaid by sending Shyima to work for them in the U.S. A friend posed as her father, and the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued her a six-month tourist visa.
She arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Aug. 3, 2000, according to court documents. The family brought her back to their spacious five-bedroom, two-story home, decorated in the style of a Tuscan villa with a fountain of two angels spouting water through a conch. She was told to sleep in the garage.
It had no windows and was neither heated nor air-conditioned. Soon after she arrived, the garage's only light bulb went out. The Ibrahims didn't replace it. From then on, Shyima lived in the dark.
She was told to call them Madame Amal and Hajj Nasser, terms of respect. They called her "shaghala," or servant. Their five children called her "stupid."
While the family slept, she ironed the school outfits of the Ibrahims' 5-year-old twin sons. She woke them, combed their hair, dressed them and made them breakfast. Then she ironed clothes and fixed breakfast for the three girls, including Heba, who at 10 was the same age as the family's servant.
Neither Ibrahim nor his wife worked, and they slept late. When they awoke, they yelled for her to make tea.
While they ate breakfast watching TV, she cleaned the palatial house. She vacuumed each bedroom, made the beds, dusted the shelves, wiped the windows, washed the dishes and did the laundry.
Her employers were not satisfied, she said. "Nothing was ever clean enough for her. She would come in and say, 'This is dirty,' or 'You didn't do this right,' or 'You ruined the food,'" said Shyima.
She started wetting her bed. Her sheets stank. So did her oversized T-shirt and the other hand-me-downs she wore.
While doing the family's laundry, she slipped her own clothes into the load. Madame slapped her. "She told me my clothes were dirtier than theirs. That I wasn't allowed to clean mine there," she said.
She washed her clothes in a bucket in the garage. She hung them to dry outside, next to the trash cans.
When the couple went out, she waited until she heard the car pull away and then she sat down. She sat with her back straight because she was afraid her clothes would dirty the upholstery.
It never occurred to her to run away.
"I thought this was normal," she said.
___
If you could fly the garage where Shyima slept 7,000 miles to the sandy alleyway where her Egyptian family now lives, it would pass for the best home in the neighborhood.
The garage's walls are made of concrete instead of hand-patted bricks. Its roof doesn't leak. Its door shuts all the way. Shyima's mother and her 10 brothers and sisters live in a two-bedroom house with uneven walls and a flaking ceiling. None of them have ever had a bed to themselves, much less a whole room. At night, bodies cover the sagging couches.
Shown a snapshot of the windowless garage, Shyima's mother in the coastal town of Agami made a clucking sound of approval.
"It's much cleaner than where many people here sleep," said Helal, the child rights advocate. He explains that Shyima's treatment in the Ibrahim home is considered normal — even good — by Egyptian standards.
Even though many child maids are physically abused, child labor is rarely prosecuted because the work isn't considered strenuous. Many employers even see themselves as benefactors.
"There is a sense that children should work to help their family, but also that they are being given an opportunity," said Mark Lagon, the director of the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
That's especially the case for well-off families who transport their child servants to Western countries.
In 2006, a U.S. district court in Michigan sentenced a Cameroonian man to 17 years in prison for bringing a 14-year-old girl from his country to work as his unpaid maid. That same year, a Moroccan couple was sentenced to home confinement for forcing their 12-year-old Moroccan niece to work grueling hours caring for their baby.
In Germantown, Md., a Nigerian couple used their daughter's passport to bring in a 14-year-old Nigerian girl as their maid. She worked for them for five years before escaping in 2001. In Germany, France, the Netherlands and England, African immigrants have been arrested for forcing children from their home countries to work as their servants.
In several of these cases, the employers argued that they took the children with the parents' permission. The Cameroonian girl's mother flew to Detroit to testify in court against her daughter, saying the girl was ungrateful for the good life her employers had provided her.
Shyima's mother, Salwa Mahmoud, said her father believed she would have better opportunities in America.
"I didn't want her to travel but our family's condition dictated that she had to go," explained Mahmoud, a squat, round-faced woman with calloused hands and feet. She is missing two front teeth because she couldn't afford a dentist.
"If she had stayed here in Egypt, she would have been ordinary," said Awatef, Shyima's older sister. "Just like us."
___
On April 3, 2002, an anonymous caller phoned the California Department of Social Services to report that a young girl was living inside the garage of 28 Pacific Grove.
A few days later, Nasser Ibrahim opened the door to a detective from the Irvine Police Department. Asked if any children lived there beside his own, he first said no, then yes — "a distant relative." He said he had "not yet" enrolled her in school. She did "chores — just like the other kids," according to the police transcript.
Shyima was upstairs cleaning when Ibrahim came to get her. "He told me that I was not allowed to say anything," said Shyima. "That if I said anything I would never see my parents again."
When police searched the house, they turned up several home videos showing Shyima at work. They seized the contract signed by Shyima's illiterate parents.
Asked by police if anyone other than his immediate family lived in the house, Eid, one of the twins, said: "Hummm ... Yeah ... Her name is Shyima," according to the transcript. "She uh ... She works — she works for us at the house, like, she cleans up the dishes and stuff like that."
Twelve-year-old Heba got flustered: "Yeah. She's uh — my — uh — How do I say this? Uh ... My dad's ... Oh, wait, like ... She's like my cousin, but — She's my dad's daughter's friend. Oops! The other way. Okay, I'm confused."
Heba eventually admitted that Shyima had lived with the family for three years in Egypt and in California.
The police put Shyima in a squad car. They noted her hands were red and caked with dead, hard-looking skin.
___
For months Shyima lied to investigators, saying what the Ibrahims had told her to say.
She went without sleep for days at a stretch. She was put on four different types of medication. She moved from foster home to foster home. Her mood swings alarmed her guardians. In school for the first time, she struggled to learn to read.
Investigators arranged for her to speak to her parents. She told them she felt like a "nobody" working for the Ibrahims and wanted to come home. Her father yelled at her.
"They kept telling me that they're good people," Shyima recounted in a recent interview. "That it's my fault. That because of what I did my mom was going to have a heart attack."
Three years ago, she broke off contact with her family. Since then she has refused to speak Arabic. She can no longer communicate in her mother tongue.
During the 2006 trial, the Ibrahims described Shyima as part of their family. They included proof of a trip she took with the family to Disneyland. Shyima's lawyer pointed out that the 10-year-old wasn't allowed on the rides — she was there to carry the bags.
The couple's lawyers collected photographs of the home where Shyima grew up, including close-ups of the feces-stained squat toilet and of Shyima's sisters washing clothes in a bucket.
In her final plea, Madame Amal told the judge it would be unfair to separate her from her children. Enraged, Shyima, then 17, told the court she hadn't seen her family in years.
"Where was their loving when it came to me? Wasn't I a human being too? I felt like I was nothing when I was with them," she sobbed.
The couple pleaded guilty to all charges, including forced labor and slavery. They were ordered to pay $76,000, the amount Shyima would have earned at the minimum wage. The sentence: Three years in federal prison for Ibrahim, 22 months for his wife, and then deportation for both. Their lawyers declined to comment for this story.
"I don't think that there is any other term you could use than modern-day slavery," said Bob Schoch, the special agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles, in describing Shyima's situation.
Shyima was adopted last year by Chuck and Jenny Hall of Beaumont, Calif. The family lives near Disneyland, where they have taken her a half-dozen times. She graduated from high school this summer after retaking her exit exam and hopes to become a police officer.
Shyima, now 19, has a list of assigned chores. She wears purple eyeshadow, has a boyfriend and frequently updates her profile on MySpace. Her hands are neatly manicured.
But in her closet, she keeps a box of pictures of her parents and her brothers and sisters. "I don't look at them because it makes me cry," she said. "How could they? They're my parents."
When her father died last year, her family had no way of reaching her.
___
EPILOGUE: On a recent afternoon in Cairo, Madame Amal walked into the lobby of her apartment complex wearing designer sunglasses and a chic scarf.
After nearly two years in a U.S. prison cell, she's living once more in the spacious apartment where Shyima first worked as her maid. The apartment is adorned in the style of a Louis XIV palace, with ornately carved settees, gold-leaf vases and life-sized portraits of her and her husband.
She did not agree to be interviewed for this story.
Before the door closed behind her, a little girl slipped in carrying grocery bags. She wore a shabby T-shirt. Her small feet slapped the floor in loose flip-flops. Her eyes were trained on the ground.
She looked to be around 9 years old.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — This story is based on interviews in Los Angeles, Irvine and Beaumont, Calif., and in Cairo and Agami, Egypt, in September and October. In addition to interviews with Shyima, her mother and nine of her brothers and sisters, the AP also interviewed her neighbors in Irvine, law enforcement officials and the lawyer who prosecuted her case. Quotes and scenes were observed by the reporter or described by Shyima and confirmed in police transcripts and court records.
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer Rukmini Callimachi, Associated Press Writer – Sun Dec 28, 3:16 pm ET
IRVINE, Calif. – Late at night, the neighbors saw a little girl at the kitchen sink of the house next door.
They watched through their window as the child rinsed plates under the open faucet. She wasn't much taller than the counter and the soapy water swallowed her slender arms. To put the dishes away, she climbed on a chair.
But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid.
Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the day and no days off.
The trafficking of children for domestic labor in the U.S. is an extension of an illegal but common practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they will at least be better fed in the home of their employer.
The custom has led to the spread of trafficking, as well-to-do Africans accustomed to employing children immigrate to the U.S. Around one-third of the estimated 10,000 forced laborers in the United States are servants trapped behind the curtains of suburban homes, according to a study by the National Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley and Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group. No one can say how many are children, especially since their work can so easily be masked as chores.
Once behind the walls of gated communities like this one, these children never go to school. Unbeknownst to their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves, just like Shyima, whose story is pieced together through court records, police transcripts and interviews.
"I'd look down and see her at 10, 11 — even 12 — at night," said Shyima's neighbor at the time, Tina Font. "She'd be doing the dishes. We didn't put two and two together."
___
Shyima cried when she found out she was going to America in 2000. Her father, a bricklayer, had fallen ill a few years earlier, so her mother found a maid recruiter, signed a contract effectively leasing her daughter to the couple for 10 years and told Shyima to be strong.
For a year, Shyima, 9, worked in the Cairo apartment owned by Amal Motelib and Nasser Ibrahim. Every month, Shyima's mother came to pick up her salary.
Tens of thousands of children in Africa, some as young as 3, are recruited every year to work as domestic servants. They are on call 24 hours a day and are often beaten if they make a mistake. Children are in demand because they earn less than adults and are less likely to complain. In just one city — Casablanca — a 2001 survey by the Moroccan government found more than 15,000 girls under 15 working as maids.
The U.S. State Department found that over the past year, children have been trafficked to work as servants in at least 33 of Africa's 53 countries. Children from at least 10 African countries were sent as maids to the U.S. and Europe. But the problem is so well hidden that authorities — including the U.N., Interpol and the State Department — have no idea how many child maids now work in the West.
"In most homes, these girls are not allowed to use so much as the same spoon as the rest of the family," said Hany Helal, the Cairo-based director of the Egyptian Organization for Child Rights.
By the time the Ibrahims decided to leave, Shyima's family had taken several loans from them for medical bills. The Ibrahims said they could only be repaid by sending Shyima to work for them in the U.S. A friend posed as her father, and the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued her a six-month tourist visa.
She arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Aug. 3, 2000, according to court documents. The family brought her back to their spacious five-bedroom, two-story home, decorated in the style of a Tuscan villa with a fountain of two angels spouting water through a conch. She was told to sleep in the garage.
It had no windows and was neither heated nor air-conditioned. Soon after she arrived, the garage's only light bulb went out. The Ibrahims didn't replace it. From then on, Shyima lived in the dark.
She was told to call them Madame Amal and Hajj Nasser, terms of respect. They called her "shaghala," or servant. Their five children called her "stupid."
While the family slept, she ironed the school outfits of the Ibrahims' 5-year-old twin sons. She woke them, combed their hair, dressed them and made them breakfast. Then she ironed clothes and fixed breakfast for the three girls, including Heba, who at 10 was the same age as the family's servant.
Neither Ibrahim nor his wife worked, and they slept late. When they awoke, they yelled for her to make tea.
While they ate breakfast watching TV, she cleaned the palatial house. She vacuumed each bedroom, made the beds, dusted the shelves, wiped the windows, washed the dishes and did the laundry.
Her employers were not satisfied, she said. "Nothing was ever clean enough for her. She would come in and say, 'This is dirty,' or 'You didn't do this right,' or 'You ruined the food,'" said Shyima.
She started wetting her bed. Her sheets stank. So did her oversized T-shirt and the other hand-me-downs she wore.
While doing the family's laundry, she slipped her own clothes into the load. Madame slapped her. "She told me my clothes were dirtier than theirs. That I wasn't allowed to clean mine there," she said.
She washed her clothes in a bucket in the garage. She hung them to dry outside, next to the trash cans.
When the couple went out, she waited until she heard the car pull away and then she sat down. She sat with her back straight because she was afraid her clothes would dirty the upholstery.
It never occurred to her to run away.
"I thought this was normal," she said.
___
If you could fly the garage where Shyima slept 7,000 miles to the sandy alleyway where her Egyptian family now lives, it would pass for the best home in the neighborhood.
The garage's walls are made of concrete instead of hand-patted bricks. Its roof doesn't leak. Its door shuts all the way. Shyima's mother and her 10 brothers and sisters live in a two-bedroom house with uneven walls and a flaking ceiling. None of them have ever had a bed to themselves, much less a whole room. At night, bodies cover the sagging couches.
Shown a snapshot of the windowless garage, Shyima's mother in the coastal town of Agami made a clucking sound of approval.
"It's much cleaner than where many people here sleep," said Helal, the child rights advocate. He explains that Shyima's treatment in the Ibrahim home is considered normal — even good — by Egyptian standards.
Even though many child maids are physically abused, child labor is rarely prosecuted because the work isn't considered strenuous. Many employers even see themselves as benefactors.
"There is a sense that children should work to help their family, but also that they are being given an opportunity," said Mark Lagon, the director of the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
That's especially the case for well-off families who transport their child servants to Western countries.
In 2006, a U.S. district court in Michigan sentenced a Cameroonian man to 17 years in prison for bringing a 14-year-old girl from his country to work as his unpaid maid. That same year, a Moroccan couple was sentenced to home confinement for forcing their 12-year-old Moroccan niece to work grueling hours caring for their baby.
In Germantown, Md., a Nigerian couple used their daughter's passport to bring in a 14-year-old Nigerian girl as their maid. She worked for them for five years before escaping in 2001. In Germany, France, the Netherlands and England, African immigrants have been arrested for forcing children from their home countries to work as their servants.
In several of these cases, the employers argued that they took the children with the parents' permission. The Cameroonian girl's mother flew to Detroit to testify in court against her daughter, saying the girl was ungrateful for the good life her employers had provided her.
Shyima's mother, Salwa Mahmoud, said her father believed she would have better opportunities in America.
"I didn't want her to travel but our family's condition dictated that she had to go," explained Mahmoud, a squat, round-faced woman with calloused hands and feet. She is missing two front teeth because she couldn't afford a dentist.
"If she had stayed here in Egypt, she would have been ordinary," said Awatef, Shyima's older sister. "Just like us."
___
On April 3, 2002, an anonymous caller phoned the California Department of Social Services to report that a young girl was living inside the garage of 28 Pacific Grove.
A few days later, Nasser Ibrahim opened the door to a detective from the Irvine Police Department. Asked if any children lived there beside his own, he first said no, then yes — "a distant relative." He said he had "not yet" enrolled her in school. She did "chores — just like the other kids," according to the police transcript.
Shyima was upstairs cleaning when Ibrahim came to get her. "He told me that I was not allowed to say anything," said Shyima. "That if I said anything I would never see my parents again."
When police searched the house, they turned up several home videos showing Shyima at work. They seized the contract signed by Shyima's illiterate parents.
Asked by police if anyone other than his immediate family lived in the house, Eid, one of the twins, said: "Hummm ... Yeah ... Her name is Shyima," according to the transcript. "She uh ... She works — she works for us at the house, like, she cleans up the dishes and stuff like that."
Twelve-year-old Heba got flustered: "Yeah. She's uh — my — uh — How do I say this? Uh ... My dad's ... Oh, wait, like ... She's like my cousin, but — She's my dad's daughter's friend. Oops! The other way. Okay, I'm confused."
Heba eventually admitted that Shyima had lived with the family for three years in Egypt and in California.
The police put Shyima in a squad car. They noted her hands were red and caked with dead, hard-looking skin.
___
For months Shyima lied to investigators, saying what the Ibrahims had told her to say.
She went without sleep for days at a stretch. She was put on four different types of medication. She moved from foster home to foster home. Her mood swings alarmed her guardians. In school for the first time, she struggled to learn to read.
Investigators arranged for her to speak to her parents. She told them she felt like a "nobody" working for the Ibrahims and wanted to come home. Her father yelled at her.
"They kept telling me that they're good people," Shyima recounted in a recent interview. "That it's my fault. That because of what I did my mom was going to have a heart attack."
Three years ago, she broke off contact with her family. Since then she has refused to speak Arabic. She can no longer communicate in her mother tongue.
During the 2006 trial, the Ibrahims described Shyima as part of their family. They included proof of a trip she took with the family to Disneyland. Shyima's lawyer pointed out that the 10-year-old wasn't allowed on the rides — she was there to carry the bags.
The couple's lawyers collected photographs of the home where Shyima grew up, including close-ups of the feces-stained squat toilet and of Shyima's sisters washing clothes in a bucket.
In her final plea, Madame Amal told the judge it would be unfair to separate her from her children. Enraged, Shyima, then 17, told the court she hadn't seen her family in years.
"Where was their loving when it came to me? Wasn't I a human being too? I felt like I was nothing when I was with them," she sobbed.
The couple pleaded guilty to all charges, including forced labor and slavery. They were ordered to pay $76,000, the amount Shyima would have earned at the minimum wage. The sentence: Three years in federal prison for Ibrahim, 22 months for his wife, and then deportation for both. Their lawyers declined to comment for this story.
"I don't think that there is any other term you could use than modern-day slavery," said Bob Schoch, the special agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles, in describing Shyima's situation.
Shyima was adopted last year by Chuck and Jenny Hall of Beaumont, Calif. The family lives near Disneyland, where they have taken her a half-dozen times. She graduated from high school this summer after retaking her exit exam and hopes to become a police officer.
Shyima, now 19, has a list of assigned chores. She wears purple eyeshadow, has a boyfriend and frequently updates her profile on MySpace. Her hands are neatly manicured.
But in her closet, she keeps a box of pictures of her parents and her brothers and sisters. "I don't look at them because it makes me cry," she said. "How could they? They're my parents."
When her father died last year, her family had no way of reaching her.
___
EPILOGUE: On a recent afternoon in Cairo, Madame Amal walked into the lobby of her apartment complex wearing designer sunglasses and a chic scarf.
After nearly two years in a U.S. prison cell, she's living once more in the spacious apartment where Shyima first worked as her maid. The apartment is adorned in the style of a Louis XIV palace, with ornately carved settees, gold-leaf vases and life-sized portraits of her and her husband.
She did not agree to be interviewed for this story.
Before the door closed behind her, a little girl slipped in carrying grocery bags. She wore a shabby T-shirt. Her small feet slapped the floor in loose flip-flops. Her eyes were trained on the ground.
She looked to be around 9 years old.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — This story is based on interviews in Los Angeles, Irvine and Beaumont, Calif., and in Cairo and Agami, Egypt, in September and October. In addition to interviews with Shyima, her mother and nine of her brothers and sisters, the AP also interviewed her neighbors in Irvine, law enforcement officials and the lawyer who prosecuted her case. Quotes and scenes were observed by the reporter or described by Shyima and confirmed in police transcripts and court records.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Calif. family finds $10,000 in box of crackers
Sat Dec 27, 3:45 pm ET
IRVINE, Calif. – The box of crackers Debra Rogoff bought from the grocery store had some crackerjack in it — an envelope stuffed with $10,000.
Yet the Irvine woman was more curious than ecstatic about her daughter's find. After all, who would leave money in such a place?
"We just thought, 'This is someone's money,'" she said. "We would never feel good about spending it."
Rather than go on a shopping spree, the family called police and was initially told the money could be part of a drug drop.
Police later heard from store managers at Whole Foods in Tustin that an elderly woman had come in a few days earlier, hysterical because she had mistakenly returned a box of crackers with her life savings inside. In a mix-up the store restocked the box rather than composting it.
The Lake Forest woman, whose identity was not released, had lost faith in her bank and decided the box would be a safer place for the money.
Luckily for her, the box of Annie's Sour Cream and Onion Cheddar Bunny crackers were bought by the Rogoffs, who discovered the crisp $100 bills in an unmarked white envelope on Oct. 10.
The Rogoffs never heard from the woman and didn't receive a reward, but Rogoff did return to Whole Foods a couple weeks later.
"I asked them if I could have another box of crackers," she said with a laugh. The store obliged.
___
Information from: The Orange County Register, http://www.ocregister.com
IRVINE, Calif. – The box of crackers Debra Rogoff bought from the grocery store had some crackerjack in it — an envelope stuffed with $10,000.
Yet the Irvine woman was more curious than ecstatic about her daughter's find. After all, who would leave money in such a place?
"We just thought, 'This is someone's money,'" she said. "We would never feel good about spending it."
Rather than go on a shopping spree, the family called police and was initially told the money could be part of a drug drop.
Police later heard from store managers at Whole Foods in Tustin that an elderly woman had come in a few days earlier, hysterical because she had mistakenly returned a box of crackers with her life savings inside. In a mix-up the store restocked the box rather than composting it.
The Lake Forest woman, whose identity was not released, had lost faith in her bank and decided the box would be a safer place for the money.
Luckily for her, the box of Annie's Sour Cream and Onion Cheddar Bunny crackers were bought by the Rogoffs, who discovered the crisp $100 bills in an unmarked white envelope on Oct. 10.
The Rogoffs never heard from the woman and didn't receive a reward, but Rogoff did return to Whole Foods a couple weeks later.
"I asked them if I could have another box of crackers," she said with a laugh. The store obliged.
___
Information from: The Orange County Register, http://www.ocregister.com
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Microsoft releasing emergency patch for perilous IE flaw
by Glenn Chapman Glenn Chapman – 1 hr 31 mins ago
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Microsoft will release an emergency patch on Wednesday to fix a perilous software flaw allowing hackers to hijack Internet Explorer browsers and take over computers.
The US software giant said on Tuesday that in response to "the threat to customers" it immediately mobilized security engineering teams worldwide to deliver a software cure "in the unprecedented time of eight days."
According to researchers at software security firm Trend Micro, attacks based on the vulnerability in the world's most popular Web browser are spreading "like wildfire" with millions of computers already compromised.
Microsoft typically releases patches for its software on the second Tuesday of each month and rushing this fix to computer users out-of-cycle is testimony to the severe danger of the threat, according to Trend Micro.
"When the patch is released people should run, not walk, to get it installed," said Trend Micro advanced threat researcher Paul Ferguson.
"This vulnerability is being actively exploited by cyber-criminals and getting worse every day."
Trend Micro has identified about 10,000 websites that have been infected with malicious software that can be surreptitiously slipped into visitors' unprotected IE browsers to take advantage of the flaw.
A major Internet portal in Taiwan is among the legitimate websites unknowingly tainted with malicious software aimed at IE's weak spot, according to Ferguson.
Hackers can take control of infected computers, steal data, redirect browsers to dubious websites, and use machines for devious activities such as attacks on other networks, according to security specialists.
"What makes this so insidious is it takes advantage of a big gaping hole of IE, which has the largest install base of any browser on the market," Ferguson said.
IE is used on nearly three-quarters of the world's computers, according to industry statistics from November.
"At this time, we are aware only of attacks that attempt to use this vulnerability against Windows Internet Explorer 7," said Microsoft security response communications head Christopher Budd.
"Microsoft encourages customers to test and deploy this update as soon as possible. Microsoft's teams worked around the clock."
Ferguson said the flaw is being taken advantage of in "multiple versions" of IE not just the most current.
Trend Micro urges IE users to heed precautionary advice from Microsoft, or avoid using the browsers, until the patches are applied.
"There is a working flaw circulating in the criminal underground," Ferguson said. "It opens the window of opportunity that much wider to take advantage and there has not been real protection against it."
The "exploit" is similar to one used recently to steal user names, passwords and other information from people playing online games in China, according to Trend Micro.
A Chinese computer security firm that had discovered attacks taking advantage of the IE flaw released details last week after evidently thinking Microsoft had fixed the problem with routinely released software patches.
"It spread like wildfire from there," Ferguson said. "I guess they were trying to be responsible and share what they knew about what was going on, but they were mistaken about it being patched."
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Microsoft will release an emergency patch on Wednesday to fix a perilous software flaw allowing hackers to hijack Internet Explorer browsers and take over computers.
The US software giant said on Tuesday that in response to "the threat to customers" it immediately mobilized security engineering teams worldwide to deliver a software cure "in the unprecedented time of eight days."
According to researchers at software security firm Trend Micro, attacks based on the vulnerability in the world's most popular Web browser are spreading "like wildfire" with millions of computers already compromised.
Microsoft typically releases patches for its software on the second Tuesday of each month and rushing this fix to computer users out-of-cycle is testimony to the severe danger of the threat, according to Trend Micro.
"When the patch is released people should run, not walk, to get it installed," said Trend Micro advanced threat researcher Paul Ferguson.
"This vulnerability is being actively exploited by cyber-criminals and getting worse every day."
Trend Micro has identified about 10,000 websites that have been infected with malicious software that can be surreptitiously slipped into visitors' unprotected IE browsers to take advantage of the flaw.
A major Internet portal in Taiwan is among the legitimate websites unknowingly tainted with malicious software aimed at IE's weak spot, according to Ferguson.
Hackers can take control of infected computers, steal data, redirect browsers to dubious websites, and use machines for devious activities such as attacks on other networks, according to security specialists.
"What makes this so insidious is it takes advantage of a big gaping hole of IE, which has the largest install base of any browser on the market," Ferguson said.
IE is used on nearly three-quarters of the world's computers, according to industry statistics from November.
"At this time, we are aware only of attacks that attempt to use this vulnerability against Windows Internet Explorer 7," said Microsoft security response communications head Christopher Budd.
"Microsoft encourages customers to test and deploy this update as soon as possible. Microsoft's teams worked around the clock."
Ferguson said the flaw is being taken advantage of in "multiple versions" of IE not just the most current.
Trend Micro urges IE users to heed precautionary advice from Microsoft, or avoid using the browsers, until the patches are applied.
"There is a working flaw circulating in the criminal underground," Ferguson said. "It opens the window of opportunity that much wider to take advantage and there has not been real protection against it."
The "exploit" is similar to one used recently to steal user names, passwords and other information from people playing online games in China, according to Trend Micro.
A Chinese computer security firm that had discovered attacks taking advantage of the IE flaw released details last week after evidently thinking Microsoft had fixed the problem with routinely released software patches.
"It spread like wildfire from there," Ferguson said. "I guess they were trying to be responsible and share what they knew about what was going on, but they were mistaken about it being patched."
Bush shoe incident catches Secret Service flatfooted
By Greg Gordon and Adam Ashton, McClatchy Newspapers Greg Gordon And Adam Ashton, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Mon Dec 15, 6:56 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Although the Secret Service put everyone who attended President George W. Bush's Baghdad news conference through several layers of security Sunday, the agency appeared to be caught off guard when an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the president.
``We'll be our own harshest critic regarding this incident,'' Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said Monday, ``and we'll make any appropriate changes to security.''
Donovan said, however, that agents on the scene knew that everyone in attendance had been screened for weapons and that they appeared to have taken the ``appropriate level of action.'' No shots were fired as Bush's Secret Service detail joined Iraqi police in taking the shoe thrower into custody.
The arrested man, Muntathar al Zaidi, a 29-year-old employee of Cairo, Egypt -based Baghdadiya Television, remained in Iraqi custody Monday. Officials in Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's office refused to comment on his condition or on whether he'd be criminally charged.
Throngs of Iraqi Shiite Muslims marched Monday in Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad slum, hailing Zaidi as a hero and holding up shoes as they demanded his release.
The National Media Center, an arm of the Iraqi government that deals with the news media, condemned Zaidi's behavior as barbaric and harmful to ``Iraqi journalists and journalism in general,'' demanding an apology from his employer.
Baghdadiya hasn't apologized, and it pressed for Zaidi's release.
The Iraqi Union of Journalists took a middle road, saying it was ``astonished by this behavior'' but urging Zaidi's release ``for humanitarian reasons."
Video of the event at the prime minister's palace shows a tightly packed room in which most security personnel were forced to the sides, and 20 video cameras lined the back of the room.
About an hour before the news conference, a Secret Service agent arrived and gave waiting Iraqi journalists, who didn't know that Bush was making a surprise visit, a fourth and final search.
No Secret Service agent was in view on the video when Zaidi threw the first shoe at Bush's head from about 20 feet away and shouted in Arabic: ``This is a goodbye kiss, you dog.''
Bush dodged the shoe, and Maliki, who was standing to Bush's left, tried to block Zaidi's second attempt, which also missed its target. A Secret Service agent appeared to move to Bush's side, but the president waved him off.
The video shows that another Iraqi journalist, not security agents, pulled Zaidi to the floor before Iraqi police and Secret Service agents piled on him and carried him from the room.
While Bush wasn't harmed, the incident was reminiscent of John W. Hinckley's failed attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 . Hinckley slipped into a crowd of reporters outside the Washington Hilton , and when Reagan emerged from a speaking appearance, the 25-year-old drifter fired six shots with a .22-caliber handgun, hitting Reagan in the chest, permanently disabling presidential press secretary Jim Brady with a bullet to the head and wounding a Secret Service agent and a police officer.
After that incident, the Secret Service began requiring journalists to undergo background checks, credentialing and screening with metal detectors.
Donovan said that everyone attending Sunday's event ``was searched for weapons and passed through several layers of security'' before entering the room. He said that they also were subject to name checks, identification checks and verification that they represented their identified news employers.
``It's obvious that (Bush) could have been hit in the head with a shoe,'' he said. ``Anytime there's an incident like this, we're going to review it. We're always trying to improve ourselves.''
(Ashton, a staff writer for The Modesto (Calif.) Bee , reported from Baghdad .)
WASHINGTON — Although the Secret Service put everyone who attended President George W. Bush's Baghdad news conference through several layers of security Sunday, the agency appeared to be caught off guard when an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the president.
``We'll be our own harshest critic regarding this incident,'' Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said Monday, ``and we'll make any appropriate changes to security.''
Donovan said, however, that agents on the scene knew that everyone in attendance had been screened for weapons and that they appeared to have taken the ``appropriate level of action.'' No shots were fired as Bush's Secret Service detail joined Iraqi police in taking the shoe thrower into custody.
The arrested man, Muntathar al Zaidi, a 29-year-old employee of Cairo, Egypt -based Baghdadiya Television, remained in Iraqi custody Monday. Officials in Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's office refused to comment on his condition or on whether he'd be criminally charged.
Throngs of Iraqi Shiite Muslims marched Monday in Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad slum, hailing Zaidi as a hero and holding up shoes as they demanded his release.
The National Media Center, an arm of the Iraqi government that deals with the news media, condemned Zaidi's behavior as barbaric and harmful to ``Iraqi journalists and journalism in general,'' demanding an apology from his employer.
Baghdadiya hasn't apologized, and it pressed for Zaidi's release.
The Iraqi Union of Journalists took a middle road, saying it was ``astonished by this behavior'' but urging Zaidi's release ``for humanitarian reasons."
Video of the event at the prime minister's palace shows a tightly packed room in which most security personnel were forced to the sides, and 20 video cameras lined the back of the room.
About an hour before the news conference, a Secret Service agent arrived and gave waiting Iraqi journalists, who didn't know that Bush was making a surprise visit, a fourth and final search.
No Secret Service agent was in view on the video when Zaidi threw the first shoe at Bush's head from about 20 feet away and shouted in Arabic: ``This is a goodbye kiss, you dog.''
Bush dodged the shoe, and Maliki, who was standing to Bush's left, tried to block Zaidi's second attempt, which also missed its target. A Secret Service agent appeared to move to Bush's side, but the president waved him off.
The video shows that another Iraqi journalist, not security agents, pulled Zaidi to the floor before Iraqi police and Secret Service agents piled on him and carried him from the room.
While Bush wasn't harmed, the incident was reminiscent of John W. Hinckley's failed attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 . Hinckley slipped into a crowd of reporters outside the Washington Hilton , and when Reagan emerged from a speaking appearance, the 25-year-old drifter fired six shots with a .22-caliber handgun, hitting Reagan in the chest, permanently disabling presidential press secretary Jim Brady with a bullet to the head and wounding a Secret Service agent and a police officer.
After that incident, the Secret Service began requiring journalists to undergo background checks, credentialing and screening with metal detectors.
Donovan said that everyone attending Sunday's event ``was searched for weapons and passed through several layers of security'' before entering the room. He said that they also were subject to name checks, identification checks and verification that they represented their identified news employers.
``It's obvious that (Bush) could have been hit in the head with a shoe,'' he said. ``Anytime there's an incident like this, we're going to review it. We're always trying to improve ourselves.''
(Ashton, a staff writer for The Modesto (Calif.) Bee , reported from Baghdad .)
Monday, December 8, 2008
Military jet crash in San Diego kills 2 on ground
By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press Writer
SAN DIEGO – A military fighter jet preparing to land at a Marine base crashed in a densely populated San Diego neighborhood Monday, killing two people on the ground and destroying three houses.
The pilot of the F/A-18D Hornet jet ejected safely, according to a statement from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
Mayor Jerry Sanders said two people on the ground were killed. Fire officials said the deaths were at a home where two children, a mother and a grandmother were believed to be inside. Officials did not immediately know who died.
Three homes were destroyed, Fire Department spokesman Maurice Luque said. Firefighters were hosing down a pile of rubble 3 1/2 hours after the crash with smoke still rising from it.
About 20 homes were evacuated, and it was unclear when residents would be allowed to return, Sanders said.
The plane crashed near Interstate 805 shortly before noon Monday about two miles from the base, said Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman.
The pilot was in stable condition at a naval hospital in San Diego, said Miramar spokeswoman 1st Lt. Katheryn Putnam. The crash occurred as the pilot was returning from training on the carrier USS Lincoln, off the San Diego coast.
Putnam had no details on a possible cause. Investigators will review information from a flight data recorder, and there was no indication the pilot was using alcohol or drugs, she said.
Jordan Houston, 25, was looking out his back window three blocks from the crash when he saw a low-flying plane. A second parachute with an empty seat ejected from the aircraft, and he heard an explosion.
He reported a mushroom-shaped burst of flame and said he skateboarded toward the scene and found a pilot walking around.
A truck backed over the flaming debris, Houston said, and the driver jumped out and yelled, "I just filled up my gas tank." The truck exploded shortly afterward.
There was little sign of the plane in the smoky ruins, but a piece of cockpit sat on the roof of one home. A parachute lay in a canyon below the neighborhood.
The middle-class neighborhood of half-million-dollar homes smelled like a brush fire. Ambulances, fire trucks and police cars choked the streets.
A Navy bomb disposal truck was at the site, and Marines were talking with police. Authorities told observers to leave because the smoke was toxic.
Steve Krasner, who lives a few blocks away in the earthquake-prone region, said he first thought the shaking generated by the crash was the long-anticipated "Big One."
He was in his kitchen when he heard two loud explosions and looked outside, then heard a larger blast.
"The house shook; the ground shook. It was like I was frozen in my place," Krasner said.
"It was bigger than any earthquake I ever felt," he said. "The flames were billowing overhead."
Ben Dishman, 55, said he heard what sounded like "a loud gunshot" followed by an explosion.
"It was quite violent," said Dishman, resting on his couch after back surgery. "I hear the jets from Miramar all the time. I often worry that one of them will hit one of these homes. It was inevitable. I feel very lucky."
A large, busy area of the city was blocked off to traffic, creating a long backup on I- 805, which remained open.
Students at nearby University City High School were kept locked in classrooms, but there was no damage to the campus and no one was injured, said Barbara Prince, a school secretary.
The F-18 is a supersonic jet used widely in the Navy and Marine Corps and by the Navy's stunt-flying Blue Angels. An F-18 crashed at Miramar in November 2006, but the pilot ejected safely.
Miramar, well known for its role in the movie "Top Gun," is home to some 10,000 Marines. It was operated by the Navy until 1996.
___
Associated Press writers Michael R. Blood and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles and Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this report.
SAN DIEGO – A military fighter jet preparing to land at a Marine base crashed in a densely populated San Diego neighborhood Monday, killing two people on the ground and destroying three houses.
The pilot of the F/A-18D Hornet jet ejected safely, according to a statement from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
Mayor Jerry Sanders said two people on the ground were killed. Fire officials said the deaths were at a home where two children, a mother and a grandmother were believed to be inside. Officials did not immediately know who died.
Three homes were destroyed, Fire Department spokesman Maurice Luque said. Firefighters were hosing down a pile of rubble 3 1/2 hours after the crash with smoke still rising from it.
About 20 homes were evacuated, and it was unclear when residents would be allowed to return, Sanders said.
The plane crashed near Interstate 805 shortly before noon Monday about two miles from the base, said Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman.
The pilot was in stable condition at a naval hospital in San Diego, said Miramar spokeswoman 1st Lt. Katheryn Putnam. The crash occurred as the pilot was returning from training on the carrier USS Lincoln, off the San Diego coast.
Putnam had no details on a possible cause. Investigators will review information from a flight data recorder, and there was no indication the pilot was using alcohol or drugs, she said.
Jordan Houston, 25, was looking out his back window three blocks from the crash when he saw a low-flying plane. A second parachute with an empty seat ejected from the aircraft, and he heard an explosion.
He reported a mushroom-shaped burst of flame and said he skateboarded toward the scene and found a pilot walking around.
A truck backed over the flaming debris, Houston said, and the driver jumped out and yelled, "I just filled up my gas tank." The truck exploded shortly afterward.
There was little sign of the plane in the smoky ruins, but a piece of cockpit sat on the roof of one home. A parachute lay in a canyon below the neighborhood.
The middle-class neighborhood of half-million-dollar homes smelled like a brush fire. Ambulances, fire trucks and police cars choked the streets.
A Navy bomb disposal truck was at the site, and Marines were talking with police. Authorities told observers to leave because the smoke was toxic.
Steve Krasner, who lives a few blocks away in the earthquake-prone region, said he first thought the shaking generated by the crash was the long-anticipated "Big One."
He was in his kitchen when he heard two loud explosions and looked outside, then heard a larger blast.
"The house shook; the ground shook. It was like I was frozen in my place," Krasner said.
"It was bigger than any earthquake I ever felt," he said. "The flames were billowing overhead."
Ben Dishman, 55, said he heard what sounded like "a loud gunshot" followed by an explosion.
"It was quite violent," said Dishman, resting on his couch after back surgery. "I hear the jets from Miramar all the time. I often worry that one of them will hit one of these homes. It was inevitable. I feel very lucky."
A large, busy area of the city was blocked off to traffic, creating a long backup on I- 805, which remained open.
Students at nearby University City High School were kept locked in classrooms, but there was no damage to the campus and no one was injured, said Barbara Prince, a school secretary.
The F-18 is a supersonic jet used widely in the Navy and Marine Corps and by the Navy's stunt-flying Blue Angels. An F-18 crashed at Miramar in November 2006, but the pilot ejected safely.
Miramar, well known for its role in the movie "Top Gun," is home to some 10,000 Marines. It was operated by the Navy until 1996.
___
Associated Press writers Michael R. Blood and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles and Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this report.
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