COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — University of Missouri System President Mun Choi wants the university to rescind an honorary degree given to Bill Cosby nearly 20 years ago.

The system’s Board of Curators will vote Friday on Choi’s recommendation.

A university staff memo sent to the curators says sexual assault allegations against Cosby are “incompatible” with the honorary doctorate in humane letters given to him in 1999. The Columbia Missourian reports the university’s faculty council recommended in 2015 that the curators revoke the degree.

The staff memo says 20 to 25 other universities have already rescinded honorary degrees for Cosby. A Pennsylvania jury deadlocked last week on charges based on allegations by an employee of Temple University that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2004. The prosecution says it will retry the case.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Zoo says a 31-year-old male chimpanzee died in an accidental fall from a tree.

The zoo said Wednesday the chimp, called Bahati, climbed a tree while interacting with other chimps. He fell to the ground after grabbing a dead branch and died from injuries from the fall.

Zookeepers estimate Bahati fell 30 to 40 feet.

The zoo says its chimp area includes natural trees, which are monitored by staff and professionally trimmed annually.

Bahati was born at the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita in 1986. He came to Kansas City in February this year from Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo.

The Kansas City Zoo now has 12 chimpanzees.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Supreme Court has for the first time issued a statewide order prohibiting weapons in courthouses and other public areas used by the state court system.

Chief Justice Mark Cady says in the order released Tuesday that it does not affect peace officers.

It does, however, ban other visitors from carrying weapons into courthouses. The order requires the chief judge in each judicial district to work with local officials to carry out the order in all 99 counties but does not specify how weapons would be detected.

Currently 72 counties prohibit weapons in courthouses but just 10 have airport-like metal detectors at entrances. The court says 27 counties have no known courthouse weapons ban.

Cady says current policies are inconsistent and must be corrected, “to uniformly protect all Iowans.”

SALINA, Kan. (AP) — A man has been sentenced to seven years in prison in connection with a 2016 head-on collision that killed a central Kansas woman.

The Salina Journal reports that 34-year-old Patrick Driscoll was sentenced Monday in Saline County District Court after pleading no contest to felony involuntary manslaughter and misdemeanor reckless driving and endangerment charges.

Court records say Driscoll was driving a pickup truck south in a northbound lane early April 27, 2016, when he crashed into a sport utility vehicle driven by 55-year-old Song Horton. Horton died the next day at a Wichita hospital.

Police allege Driscoll’s blood-alcohol content was more than double the legal limit two hours after the crash.

Driscoll said he never intended to hurt anyone.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Shawnee County commission chairman is pushing for an increase in the minimum age at which people can legally buy cigarettes from 18 to 21.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that Bob Archer called for the change Monday. No formal proposal has been put before the commission.

County health officer Gianfranco Pezzino stressed that the county commission is legally empowered to increase the minimum cigarette purchase age only in the county’s unincorporated areas, where the presence of outlets that sell cigarettes is minimal.

Imposing such a restriction in Topeka and the county’s four other incorporated areas would require the approval of their governing bodies.

Archer said he thought the county government should nevertheless take the lead. Similar policies already are in place in more than 200 municipalities and two states.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The city of Columbia, Missouri, is looking to potentially fine a downtown bar after city workers spent hours cleaning up a mess created by a party that required lots of fake snow.

The city is tracking the hours that workers spent cleaning as well as working with the police to determine the potential fines for My House Nightclub & Sports Bar.

Community Relations Director Steven Sapp says that the bar was stuffed with fake snow for its “Xmas at the Beach” party on Saturday night. He says that by Monday morning, the fake snow was in the streets, sidewalks, alleys and storm drains.

My House general manager Adam Lowe says the product is a biodegradable, water-soluble cornstarch meant to dissolve with no harmful effects.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A lawsuit alleges a 4-year-old Missouri girl was bound with duct tape by a preschool teacher and that supervisors at the church-based preschool refused to fire the teacher. The suit was filed this month against Zion Lutheran Learning Center in Valley Park, a suburb of St. Louis. It alleges a teacher taped the child’s legs together when she refused to stay on her cot during nap time.

The lawsuit also contends the preschool failed to report the incident to her parents, a school supervisor laughed off the incident, and the church board failed to fire or suspend the teacher.

The church told The Associated Press on Tuesday that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

The suit seeks unspecified damages in excess of $25,000.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s Republican-led House has defeated a proposed abortion ban with exceptions for medical emergencies or those needed to save the lives of pregnant women.

Lawmakers voted 43-98 against the provision Tuesday during a special session on abortion.

Anti-abortion Republican Rep. Mike Moon’s proposal also said that “due process of law shall be required” before abortions. It would require doctors performing abortions in cases of medical emergencies to “make every effort” to perform a delivery and then give medical care to the child.

The measure met bipartisan opposition.

Democratic House members criticized the proposal to ban abortions even in cases of rape or incest. Republican lawmakers said adding the provision to another bill on abortion regulations would threaten the chances of that measure passing, and could make the proposal unconstitutional.

The Associated Press has learned that an Iranian-born, Kansas City based aviation mogul is the focus of a new global criminal corruption case. The businessman is Farhad Azima, an American citizen who lives in Kansas City but frequently travels the globe.

Authorities in the U.S. and abroad are investigating Azima as part of a global corruption case. Investigators are examining whether Azima, now 75, paid a kickback to a former United Arab Emirates official to reap the profits from a hotel sale in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Azima declined to answer written questions from the AP or to be interviewed.

When a Kansas strip-mall bank with possible mob ties folded in the mid-1980s, federal authorities investigated whether Azima, a shareholder, should face criminal charges. The probe hit a dead end. Azima, a U.S. citizen, essentially had a get-out-of-jail-free card because of secretive work he had performed for the U.S. government, a former federal prosecutor involved in the case said. Azima, a gunrunner later tied to the CIA, was never prosecuted.