ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis jury has awarded a California woman more than $70 million in her lawsuit alleging that years of using Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder caused her cancer, the latest case raising concerns about the health ramifications of extended talcum powder use.

The jury ruling Thursday ended the trial that began Sept. 26 in the case brought by Deborah Giannecchini of Modesto, California. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2012. The suit accused Johnson & Johnson of “negligent conduct” in making and marketing its baby powder.

Earlier this year, two other lawsuits in St. Louis ended in jury verdicts worth a combined $127 million, but two others in New Jersey were thrown out by a judge who said there wasn’t reliable evidence that talc leads to ovarian cancer.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court is weighing the legality of a Kansas City suburb’s so-called “driveway tax” in a case that has statewide implications.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the court heard arguments Wednesday about Mission’s approach to raising money for road repairs.

A funding mechanism adopted in 2010 typically generated nearly $800,000 annually. It based collections on the number of vehicles coming and going from a property, including homes and businesses in the northeast Johnson County city of about 9,500 people.

The key issue is whether it’s a fee, as the city argues, or a type of tax that cities are generally barred from imposing under Kansas law. The legal challenge comes from the Heartland Apartment Association Inc., which represents apartment owners and managers in the state.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Westar Energy has filed a request to raise its prices by about $17.4 million, which would raise the average residential bill in Kansas by about $1.54 per month.

Westar spokeswoman Gina Penzig says the company filed the request with the Kansas Corporation Commission to recover costs that weren’t available when last year’s full price was conducted.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the bulk of the $17.4 million request is related to environmental upgrades at power plants, primarily in the LaCygne Generation Station, to meet federal requirements.

Other costs include $6.5 million used to make investments in the grid design for improved reliability.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Two men have been charged with growing hundreds of marijuana plants at a federal wildlife refuge in central Missouri.

The U.S. attorney’s office says 26-year-old Carlos Vazguez and 23-year-old Rigaberto Canacho Reyes were charged Wednesday with possessing 100 or more marijuana plants with the intent to distribute.

Vazguez’s attorney declined to comment, and Reyes’ attorney didn’t immediately return a phone message.

Affidavits say law enforcement officers discovered the marijuana growing operation Tuesday at the Big Muddy National Fish and Wildlife Refuge in Howard County. Vazguez and Reyes were arrested at the site, and are in federal custody.

The affidavit says the operation encompassed about five acres and included five tents where marijuana was hung, dried, packaged and processed for delivery. Authorities said the plants were 5 to 6 feet tall.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — An $80 million settlement has been reached in a class-action lawsuit over removal of asbestos during renovation of the Jackson County Courthouse in Kansas City.

The Kansas City Star reports $25 million will go toward attorney’s fees and the cost of the litigation. The rest of the money will go to a medical monitoring fund to cover the costs of diagnostic tests for people exposed to the asbestos 30 years ago.

The case was scheduled to go to trial this week. Instead an agreement was reached between Jackson County and Kansas City-based U.S. Engineering, which removed the asbestos from 1983 to 1985. A judge is expected to finalize the agreement in late December.

About 7,500 people could be eligible for the medical screenings.

SALINA, Kan. (AP) — A mistrial has been declared in a Kansas murder trial after a Nebraska television station aired footage of people in the jury pool.

A judge put a stop Tuesday to the trial of 37-year-old Bobby Tallent after Nebraska TV showed footage Monday night of prospective jurors waiting to be questioned.

The Kearney, Nebraska, station said on its website that it wouldn’t have filmed or aired the video if it had known potential jurors were in the hallway where its reporter had received permission to stand.

Prosecutors allege that Tallent killed 47-year-old Joseph Sweet, whose body was found in March 2015 in a park in the western Kansas town of Norton. Tallent was arrested near the Nebraska border after a pursuit in which shots were fired at officers.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Authorities from several agencies are investigating a higher-than-expected number of arson fires in Topeka.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A 21-year-old Kansas woman was sentenced to nearly 15 years in prison for placing her newborn baby in a trash can and letting her die.

Prosecutors say Marissa Carol Fields gave birth to a nearly full-term baby at her home in Olathe in December 2014. She was sentenced Tuesday to 14 years and 10 months after earlier agreeing to plead no contest to second-degree murder and aggravated abandonment of a child.

The Kansas City Star reports Fields had not told anyone she was pregnant. Her father discovered the baby’s body in the trash and contacted police.

Earlier testimony indicated the baby girl was likely born alive. Fields told investigators the girl was cold and not breathing when she was born.

The death was classified as homicide.

NEW YORK (AP) — Infections from three sexually spread diseases have hit another record high.

Chlamydia was the most common. More than 1.5 million cases were reported in the U.S. last year, up 6 percent from the year before.

Nearly 400,000 gonorrhea cases were reported, up 13 percent. And there were about 24,000 cases of the most contagious forms of syphilis, up 19 percent. The three infections are treatable with antibiotics.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say part of the growth may be due to better testing and diagnosis, but much of it is a real increase. They’re not sure why.

The CDC released the new numbers Wednesday. An estimated 20 million cases of sexually transmitted infections occur each year in the U.S.