TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The $12.2 billion sale of Topeka-based Westar Energy to Great Plains Energy has cleared legal challenges after parties in lawsuits challenging the deal have agreed to drop the cases.

Missouri-based Great Plains is the parent company of Kansas City Power & Light.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that new Securities and Exchange Commission filings show the three complaints will be dropped. Two were in Kansas and one was in Missouri.

One of the Kansas complaints filed in July alleged members of Westar’s energy board of directors failed to obtain the best price for shareholders because of a process that discouraged third parties from submitting potentially better proposals.

The sale still faces a review by several agencies, including the Kansas Corporation Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Agency.

HARRISONVILLE, Mo. (AP) — A 20-year-old man faces charges in a hit-and-run fatality in western Missouri.

The Cass County Sherriff’s office said in a release Thursday that Cody J. Alford of Peculiar has been charged with felony leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident in the death of 32-year-old Megan Wheeler.

Wheeler’s body was found Sunday in a ditch along an interstate highway north of Harrisonville, where she lived.

The sheriff’s department says Alford is in custody on $10,000 bond. It’s unclear if he has a lawyer.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo says the personal information in 500 million accounts was stolen in a massive security breakdown.

The breach disclosed Thursday, the latest setback for the beleaguered internet company, dates back to late 2014.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas judge did not immediately decide whether to permanently force Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to count all ballots cast in local and state elections by voters who registered at motor vehicle offices or used a federal form without providing proof of citizenship.

Shawnee County District Judge Larry Hendricks heard arguments Wednesday on whether to issue a permanent injunction blocking Kobach from implementing a dual registration system in which some votes are counted only for federal races.

Hendricks’ earlier order temporarily blocked Kansas from discarding those votes in the August Kansas primary. The judge told The Associated Press after the hearing that his earlier order still remains in effect for the November election.

The judge did not indicate from the bench when he might rule.

KANSAS CITY, Kansas (AP) — A Kansas man has pleaded not guilty to charges in the death of his 7-year-old son whose remains were found near the family’s pigs.

Michael Jones pleaded not guilty Wednesday to premeditated first-degree murder and other charges in the death of the child, who authorities discovered was missing last November when they responded to a domestic disturbance.

Wyandotte County District Attorney Jerome Gorman has declined to discuss reports that the child’s remains were fed to pigs, but said the boy’s remains were found near swine on the family’s Kansas City, Kansas, property.

Michael Jones’ lawyer entered a not guilty plea for Jones on Wednesday and also waived a preliminary hearing.

Jones’ wife, Heather Jones, waived her preliminary hearing Tuesday but didn’t enter a formal plea then.

Their lawyers declined comment.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A federal judge has upheld Missouri’s licensing requirements for African-style hair braiders, despite claims from braiders that the process is irrelevant to what they do, unnecessary and expensive.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Bodenhausen issued the ruling Tuesday. Attorneys for two St. Louis-area hair braiders, Joba Niang and Tameka Stigers, said Wednesday that they will appeal.

African-style hair braiders in other states also have challenged licensing requirements with help from the Virginia-based Institute for Justice. It’s “Braiding Freedom Initiative” has won legal battles in some states, lost in others.

The Missouri coursework covers sanitation, chemical use and other aspects of the beauty industry, but excludes any preparation in traditional African braiding techniques its practitioners say date back thousands of years.

PRAIRIE VILLAGE, Kan. (AP) — Students throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area dressed in black to support a Kansas girl who says she was sexually assaulted in a school bathroom. The Kansas City Star reports hundreds of students at Shawnee Mission East High School in Kansas wore black on Wednesday in support of their schoolmate.

The freshman says she was groped last week by a boy inside a boys’ bathroom while a second boy held the door shut.

Word of the “wear black to stop attacks” effort spread on social media Tuesday night soon after news broke that police were investigating the alleged assault.

A Twitter user tweeted a photo of young men at all-male Rockhurst High School in Missouri also wearing black or dark-colored shirts in support of the effort.

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas man has been sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for a drunken driving crash that killed his 6-year-old daughter.

The Manhattan Mercury reports that 39-year-old Joshua Mall, of Riley, was sentenced Monday for second-degree murder in the October death of Madilyn Mall.

His criminal history includes a guilty plea in a 2001 vehicular homicide in Colorado in which prosecutors dropped two driving under the influence counts.

Authorities say that before Madilyn’s death, Mall consumed more than a half-liter of whiskey, lost control of his speeding pickup truck and crashed into a tree. His blood alcohol level measured .13; the legal limit in Kansas is .08.

Mall said he felt he let Madilyn down and that keeping her safe was his “one job as a father.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man is accused of sexually attacking and suffocating his 18-year-old high school honors student daughter whose body was found months ago in a motel.

Jackson County prosecutors charged 40-year-old Jerry Bausby on Tuesday with first-degree murder, sodomy, incest and sexual abuse. A prosecutor’s spokesman says Bausby, of Kansas City, was arrested Tuesday night and was jailed Wednesday on $750,000 cash bond.

Online court records don’t show whether Bausby has an attorney to speak on his behalf. Bausby’s voicemail was not accepting messages Wednesday.

Daizsa Laye Bausby’s body was found March 21 in a Kansas City motel room.

She was an honors student who had been first in her class. She ran track, played basketball and was a Junior ROTC member.

The streets in Charlotte, North Carolina, are quiet Wednesday morning after angry protests over the fatal police shooting of a black man left officers injured and shut down an interstate.

Traffic was flowing again on Interstate 85, hours after protesters blocked the highway and television footage showed some apparently looting semi-trucks and setting their contents on fire.

No protesters could be seen around 5 a.m. but broken glass and rocks littered the ground where a police car had been vandalized during protests earlier. Less than 5 miles away, wooden pallets barricaded the entrance to a Wal-Mart that had apparently been looted.

The protests broke out Tuesday after 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott was fatally shot by a black officer at an apartment complex on the city’s northeast side.