Truck hits students at high school; 9 hospitalized

Nine people were hospitalized after a truck veered into a crowd outside of a California high school. KNBC-TV's Beverly White reports.

By NBC4 and msnbc.com news services

HEMET, Calif. - A high school student in a pickup truck ran into a group of teenagers who were crossing a street outside a California high school Wednesday, leaving nine people injured and backpacks and clothing strewn across an intersection, officials said.

The accident occurred shortly after school ended for the day at Hemet High School, Riverside County fire officials said in a statement.

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Three people were in critical condition, five more were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, and one refused treatment, they said.

The driver, a student at the school, named by police a David Carrillo,18,ran into a group of eight people who were in an intersection headed toward the student parking lot and the school's football stadium, principal Emily Shaw said.

"The kids were in the crosswalk doing everything right," Shaw said.

Seven of the people struck were students, and the eighth person was a 60-year-old woman, Shaw said. Her relationship to the school was not clear.

Three of those victims were in critical condition, including 15-year-old Helen Richardson, who was in a "conscious coma" and intubated, according to her mother Trisha Telezinski.

Read more at NBC4 Southern California

Witnesses reported hearing Carrillo yell out, "My brakes have gone out," Telezinski said.

NBC4 News said highway patrol officials believe the truck may have had a mechanical problem and has been impounded for inspection.

Drugs and alcohol have been ruled out as a factor, officials said, adding that criminal charges against the driver, if any, will be determined after the evidence has been examined.

A statement released by California Highway Patrol Officer Darren Meyer said the truck was travelling "at a speed greater than the 25 MPH school zone speed limit?.

"The driver stopped immediately after the collision to assist the victims," Meyer said.

Parent Rick Chavez witnessed the accident while waiting at the red light just after picking up his son, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported.

?The guy went through the red light. ?I saw the truck and started screaming out ?Whoa, whoa, whoa!?? Chavez told the newspaper. ?He plowed right into the kids. Two girls were really bad. I thought they were gone. I was in shock.?

NBC4's?Olsen Ebright, Samantha Tata and Beverly White,?msnbc.com's Alastair Jamieson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Oracle gets another setback in Google dispute

NEW YORK (AP) ? Oracle Corp. received another setback Thursday as a federal judge in San Francisco undermined a central part of the company's multimillion dollar case against Google Inc. over its Android software for mobile devices.

Oracle had accused Google of copyright infringement in using "application programming interfaces," or APIs, that help Oracle's Java software work effectively. A jury found Google infringed on those APIs on May 7, but it couldn't agree on whether Google was covered under "fair use" protections in U.S. law. Without a fair-use determination, Oracle wasn't able to extract huge sums from Google.

Now, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Google's use of the APIs wasn't covered by copyright law in the first place.

The effect of Thursday's ruling is limited because a jury had earlier reached an impasse on the issue of fair use. But the ruling could be important in any appeals.

Oracle said it will appeal the ruling.

Android now powers more than 300 million smartphones and tablet computers. Those devices are the chief competitors to Apple's iPhones and iPads. Google has driven the adoption of Android by giving the software away to manufacturers of phones and tablets. That would have been more difficult for Google to keep doing if the court had found that Google needed to pay Oracle millions of dollars to license Java technology.

The jury in the case had been asked to rule on the infringement and fair use questions on the assumption that the APIs were copyrightable. Alsup deferred a ruling on the broader copyright question until after the trial, which ended May 23.

Alsup ruled Thursday that Google didn't use Oracle's exact programming code in Android, but rather wrote its own code to produce the same functions. Although Google used some of the same phrases in the code, Alsup said it had to do so to maintain interoperability. Names, titles and short phrases aren't covered by copyright, and Google's use of those phrases amounted to that, he said.

"In sum, Google and the public were and remain free to write their own implementations to carry out exactly the same functions of all methods in question, using exactly the same method specifications and names," Alsup said.

In a statement, Google said "the court's decision upholds the principle that open and interoperable computer languages form an essential basis for software development. It's a good day for collaboration and innovation."

Oracle countered that Alsup's ruling would "make it far more difficult to defend intellectual property rights against companies anywhere in the world that simply takes them as their own."

Alsup's ruling does not affect the jury's determination that Android infringed on nine lines of Java coding, but the penalty for that violation is confined to statutory damages no higher than $150,000. Oracle had been seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from Google on the API questions.

The jury has also cleared Google of infringing two Oracle patents.

Associated Press

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THE RACE: Massachusetts is campaign target again

President Barack Obama speaks at a Jewish American Heritage Month reception in the East Room at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

President Barack Obama speaks at a Jewish American Heritage Month reception in the East Room at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

FILE - In this May 29, 2012 file photo, epublican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks in Las Vegas. President Barack Obama's campaign was opening a new critique of Mitt Romney's record on Wednesday, focusing attention on the Republican nominee's economic agenda while he served as governor of Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 16, 2010 file photo, President Barack Obama shakes hands with former President George W. Bush, in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington. President Barack Obama frequently blames President George W. Bush for America's shaky economy, high unemployment and foreign policy woes. But he's sure to change his tune on Thursday when Bush comes back to the White House in a rare limelight moment, The man who led the country for eight tumultuous years will have his portrait hung and Obama will be there applauding. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Once again, Massachusetts is in the cross hairs of a presidential race.

The Obama campaign this week pounced on Mitt Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts from 2003-2007 after first attacking his private-equity business career.

Obama strategist David Axelrod was in Boston, where Romney's campaign is headquartered, on Thursday to slam Romney's record as governor.

"Romney economics didn't work then and it won't work now," he told a gathering. At one point a group of Romney supporters drowned him out.

Haven't we seen this movie before?

The attacks reprise assaults lobbed earlier this year by Romney's Republican challengers, which were basically reruns of charges aired in 2008, the first time Romney ran for president.

Massachusetts has produced more than its share of presidential contenders.

Sen. John F. Kennedy, D-Mass., was elected president in 1960. Brother Robert Kennedy, who was raised in Massachusetts but later represented New York in the Senate, was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 when assassinated.

A third Kennedy brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., tried to wrest the Democratic nomination from President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Massachusetts-born George H.W. Bush attacked Massachusetts tax-and-spend liberals ? his campaign called the state "Taxachusetts" ? in his 1988 victory over Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.

Bush's oldest son, President George W. Bush, used some of the same arguments in 2004 re-election contest against Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, suggesting he was far left of most Americans.

The late Paul Tsongas, who also represented Massachusetts for a while in the Senate, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992.

When Romney was elected in 2002, the state was in the midst of a deep recession.

Romney claims his policies helped end it. The Obama campaign claims he made things worse.

Sort of the same thing Romney is claiming Obama has done to the U.S. economy.

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Follow Tom Raum on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tomraum. For more AP political coverage, look for the 2012 Presidential Race in AP Mobile's Big Stories section. Also follow https://twitter.com/APCampaign and AP journalists covering the campaign: https://twitter.com/AP/ap-campaign-2012

Associated Press

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