Virginia

Moussaoui denied access to media

A day after winning a major legal decision that stripped the death penalty and key prosecution evidence from his case, al-Qaida defendant Zacarias Moussaoui asked Friday for access to the media.

The judge said no.

Moussaoui’s motion has not been publicly released, but U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema disclosed it in her one-page order turning him down.

The special measures governing Moussaoui’s confinement do not permit him to “talk with, meet with, correspond with, or otherwise communicate with any member, or representative of, the news media,” the judge said.

Illinois

Goal post collapses, killing 6-year-old boy

A metal soccer goal post collapsed on a 6-year-old during practice, fracturing his skull and killing him, police said.

Zach Tran was pronounced dead Wednesday at a hospital.

“It’s a tragic accident,” Vernon Hills Police spokesman Kim Christenson said.

The portable goals at Century Park are supposed to stay anchored to the ground, but people often move them and don’t put the anchors back in, Park District Executive Director Larry DeGraaf said.

Zach was a first-grader at Hawthorn Option School.

Pennsylvania

Black workers kept from patient’s room

A suburban Philadelphia hospital apologized to employees for complying with a man’s demand that no black staff members assist in the delivery of his child.

Abington Memorial Hospital supervisors kept black staff members, including doctors and nurses, from entering the room of the man’s wife for several days last month, a decision called “morally reprehensible” by hospital president Richard L. Jones Jr.

Meg McGoldrick, the hospital’s vice president, said the supervisors were trying to avoid a confrontation with the patient’s husband, but were wrong to accommodate him.

MIAMI

Baby hurt despite order to leave foster home

Two employees of Florida’s troubled child welfare agency were fired after an infant, left in a foster home months after a judge ordered his removal, suffered serious fractures, state officials said.

The 4-month-old boy’s skull was fractured while he was in the care of his 14-year-old mother, who has mild mental retardation and was a foster child herself, The Miami Herald reported Friday. The infant also showed signs of fractured ribs from an earlier incident, the newspaper said.

“We are very, very hopeful that the child will recover,” Department of Children & Families Secretary Jerry Regier told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Friday editions.

Colorado

Sex assault trial set for Air Force cadet

A woman who says she was raped by an Air Force Academy cadet over the summer testified Friday she “never would have” had sex with a stranger in the bed of a pickup truck.

After hearing from the 24-year-old woman at a preliminary hearing, a judge set a Dec. 9 trial date for senior cadet Phillip Hawkins, 21, on a sexual assault charge.

Prosecutors say Hawkins took advantage of a woman too drunk to know what was happening to her. Hawkins claims the sex was consensual.

The cadet told police he met the woman at a Colorado Springs bar, where she asked him to go his house or car.

According to a police statement read in court, Hawkins claimed he fought the woman off so he could put on a condom.

Prosecutors asked the woman if she would have willingly have sex with a stranger.

“I never would have done that,” she responded.