SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A $350,000 settlement has been proposed in a federal lawsuit alleging that a teacher slapped and insulted an autistic student at a Springfield school.

The Springfield News-Leader reports the lawsuit filed by the boy’s father alleges teacher Janet Carrie Williams hit and slapped the boy and called him names at the Greene Valley State School for the Severely Disabled. The defendants deny the allegations.

The tentative agreement was filed this week but has to be signed and accepted by a judge.

If approved, it would resolve the civil lawsuit against the school, the teacher, Greene Valley director Peggy Robinson, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Missouri Board of Education.

Criminal charges are still pending against the teacher, who no longer works for the Springfield school.

HAYS, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say an Ohio couple possibly linked to a suspicious Florida death has been arrested at a motel in Kansas.

Craig Beam, chief deputy of the U.S. Marshal’s Kansas district, says Michael Douglas Evans and his wife, Kristy, were arrested Thursday evening at a Motel 6 in Hays.

The woman’s 7-year-old daughter was with them and has been placed in protective custody.

Michael Evans was wanted in Ohio for failure to appear in court on felony charges. The couple also is wanted for questioning in the death of 46-year-old Joseph Moniz at a Miami hotel in early June.

Beam says the couple was arrested without incident after Hays police spotted their vehicle and contacted the Marshal’s office. They are being held in the Ellis County jail awaiting an extradition hearing.

MARSHALL, Ark. (AP) — Search crews were looking for a Missouri man missing since a trip to go swimming in the Buffalo National River in northern Arkansas.

The Searcy County sheriff’s office said Friday the 23-year-old man from Independence, Missouri, showed signs of distress before disappearing underwater near where the river crosses U.S. 65. Witnesses said a number of swimmers were in the river at the time the man disappeared.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Friday that the man went missing Thursday night. A search was called off overnight because of darkness but resumed Friday morning.

The National Park Service said the river is running high and fast, and with debris, making it difficult to search. The remnants of Tropical Storm Bill passed through the area overnight.

JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — An eastern Missouri man being held on state charges accusing him of kidnapping a 12-year-old girl now also faces a federal charge.

The Joplin Globe reports a federal grand jury in Springfield has indicted 47-year-old Kevin Nosser on a charge of enticement of a child. He’s accused of abducting the child from her home in Miller on May 22. The grand jury returned the indictment Wednesday.

The federal indictment alleges that he used the Internet and a cellphone to entice the girl into sexual activity.

Nosser’s being held on $1 million bond in Lawrence County on a charge of child kidnapping. His lawyer in the state case didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment Friday.

Authorities say law enforcement found the two together in Potosi.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A lawsuit filed against a St. Louis-area neurosurgeon claims that he operated on the wrong part of a patient’s brain.

The suit accuses Dr. Gregory Bailey of removing healthy brain tissue instead of a brain tumor during a surgery on 55-year-old Michael Krabbe on Dec. 23.

The lawsuit says Krabbe was unable to speak or move his arm and leg after the procedure. It says Krabbe is now unable to normally speak, eat drink and swallow.

The lawsuit seeks costs and damages from Bailey and his employer, SSM Health.

Messages seeking comment from Bailey were left by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

SSM Health denies the accusations over a wrong-site procedure. It says that it will “vigorously defend our position in the court of law.”

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri woman accused in the stabbing death of her mother has a court hearing scheduled in Wisconsin.

Gypsy Blancharde and Nicholas Godejohn, of Big Bend, Wisconsin, are charged in Greene County with first-degree murder in the death of 48-year-old Dee Dee Blancharde, who was stabbed to death Sunday in her home north of Springfield.

The suspects were arrested Monday in Godejohn’s home in Wisconsin, where they’re being held.

Gypsy Blancharde has an extradition hearing in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Friday. Godejohn’s next hearing is June 29.

KYTV reports law enforcement confiscated several items from Godejohn’s home, including wigs, about $4,400 in cash and a large sealed envelope with a return address of the Blanchardes’ home. The search warrant document says the envelope “allegedly contains a knife.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A man convicted of raping a 70-year-old Kansas City woman was been sentenced to 136 years in prison.

Federal prosecutors say 29-year-old Jason Berry was sentenced Thursday for the May 2014 rape. He was convicted in March of burglary, rape and first-degree sexual assault.

Berry’s probation on a 2012 burglary conviction also was revoked, which means he will serve another six years in prison for that conviction.

Berry had denied raping the woman and his lawyer argued during the trial that evidence suggested someone else committed the crime.

SALINA, Kan. (AP) — A former Kansas school counselor convicted of raping a 13-year-old student plans to seek a pardon from Governor Sam Brownback.

Brooke Dinkel, a former counselor at Smoky Valley Middle School in Lindsborg, Kansas, was sentenced in December to nearly 14 years, followed by lifetime supervision, for two counts of rape. Dinkel claimed the boy raped her.

A legal notice published June 10th shows Dinkel has applied for executive clemency. The Department of Corrections describes that as “a means to remedy a miscarriage of justice” and “an extraordinary method of relief.”

The Prisoner Review Board will review the application and make a recommendation before the petition is submitted to the governor.

Brownback spokeswoman Eileen Hawley says Brownback hasn’t granted any clemency requests since he took office.

VALENTINE, Neb. (AP) — Officials say a light earthquake has rattled a portion of north-central Nebraska. The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake occurred around 4:10 a.m. Thursday. Its epicenter was about 3 miles below ground at a spot about 7 miles south-southeast of Valentine.

The agency says the tremor registered 3.3 on the Richter scale.

Eric Thacker is a dispatcher with the Cherry County Sheriff’s Office, and he says the office so far hasn’t received any reports of damage or injuries. But, he says, he and others in his office felt it

JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — The Joplin City Council has approved allocations for the remaining $97 million in federal tornado recovery funds.

The council on Wednesday voted to spend $50 million on infrastructure repairs, such as sewer and sidewalk projects, in the low- to moderate-income area of the tornado zone. Some of the money was shifted to increase funding for a program that gives financial incentives for buying a home in the tornado zone. Other funds will go to the Jasper County Juvenile Detention Program and Ozark Mental Health Services.

The Joplin Globe reports Joplin received two allocations of federal disaster-recovery money after the 2011 tornado. The city had already committed to spending about $43 million of the two grants.