OSAGE, Mo. (AP) – A lawsuit filed against a former Missouri teacher who is facing criminal charges alleges that he gave female students answers to assignments and quizzes if they would allow him to look down their shirts.

An unnamed student and her family are suing 44-year-old Mark Alan Edwards, the School of the Osage and district officials. The lawsuit alleges that Edwards grabbed the student in a classroom and sexually assaulted her on a field trip. The suit said he also had students compete to be his “favorite.”

Edwards is jailed on $300,000 bond. He’s been charged with two counts of sexual contact with a student, first-degree statutory sodomy and third-degree child molestation. The sheriff’s office says he admitted during an interview to inappropriate contact with students.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A roadside bomb killed three American soldiers in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the U.S. military said, in what appeared to be the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan in the last 17 months.

The military said that three other service members were wounded when the bomb went off near the city of Ghazni. An American contractor was also wounded, it said. The military did not immediately identify any of the casualties.

Lt. Ubon Mendie, a military spokesman, said the wounded were evacuated and are receiving medical care.

The Taliban claimed the attack, saying a U.S. tank was completely destroyed.

It appeared to be the deadliest attack on American forces since June 2017, when an Afghan army soldier shot and killed three U.S. soldiers in an insider attack in the Achin district of the eastern Nangarhar province. The Taliban claimed that attack.

The Taliban carry out near-daily attacks on Afghan forces, and in August the insurgents overran parts of Ghazni, leading to days of intense fighting before they were driven out. Ghazni was the only one of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces where parliamentary elections could not be held in October. Voting there has been postponed for a year.

The U.S. and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014, but still provide close support to Afghan forces and carry out counterterrorism operations. Some 15,000 American forces are currently serving in Afghanistan.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, the Taliban abducted 21 passengers from two vans that were traveling through the northern Sari Pul province, according to Habibullah Mujahidzada, a district police chief. It was not immediately clear what motivated the abduction, and there was no immediate comment from the Taliban.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) – Authorities say a man suspected of starting a small fire in a Columbia City Hall restroom had recently been released from prison for illegal burning.

On Monday, police arrested 58-year-old Willis D. Stokes III after he allegedly set the fire in a toilet paper holder that was attached to a wall. Assistant Fire Marshal Jim Pasley says the fire caused about $1,000 in damages.

The small fire led the building to be evacuated as special city council meeting was scheduled to begin to discuss the resignation of the city manager.

A witness watched the suspect leave city hall and was able to help direct responding officers to him. The suspect was previously convicted of setting six fires, which were minor and extinguished quickly without any injuries.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas hasn’t escaped the growing urban-rural political divide that is playing out nationally, especially after Democratic voters in the state’s urban centers fueled Laura Kelly’s victory over Republican Kris Kobach in the November governor’s race.

The urban-rural divide could make it easier for Democrats to control the governor’s office or hold a congressional seat and could help Republicans fortify their hold on rural areas.

Ahead of the 2018 midterm election, the percentage of Kansas Democrats registered to vote grew for the first time in years. But Kansas won’t have any Democratic state lawmakers west of Hutchinson after several rural Democrats lost their races.

The urban-rural divide has grown gradually in both Kansas and across the county over the last couple of decades, said University of Kansas political scientist Patrick Miller. The politics and size of the divide “have finally gotten to the point where they’re becoming starkly obvious on maps,” he said.

The few blue counties in central and eastern Kansas, within a sea of red, were able to push Kelly to victory by 5 percentage points, or about 46,000 votes. Kelly won nine Kansas counties but none west of Wichita.

Kelly received 86,000 more votes in the state’s 10 most-populated counties than the party’s 2014 gubernatorial candidate, Paul Davis. Kobach had just about 7,100 more votes in those counties than the 2014 Republican who was seeking re-election, Sam Brownback.

“We’ve been reaching out to urban voters for years. That’s been a big part of what we do as a party,” said Kelly Arnold, the outgoing chairman of the Kansas Republican Party. “But it has changed. It is something that as we move forward we need to make sure we’re spending enough time on the issues that are important to each district, whether that be a rural district or an urban district.”

JACKSON COUNTY, MO. — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a homicide and asking the public for help to locate a person of interest in the case.

Aden J. Kaler, 17,  with a previous address in Blue Springs, Missouri, is a person of interest in the criminal homicide of Jayden Lockett also of Blue Springs, Missouri, according to police.

No current vehicle description is available. Kaler should be considered armed and dangerous.

If you know where we can find the subject please call the Tips Hotline at (816)474-TIPS, BSPD dispatch at (816) 228-0151 or TEXT-A-TIP to the anonymous text line. Information can be given to Detective Lange or forwarded through Crime Stoppers to the Blue Springs Police Department Intelligence Unit.

KANSAS CITY (AP) – A mother and her boyfriend are charged with the malnutrition death of a 2-year-old in a rat infested Kansas City home.

Prosecutors announced Monday that 25 -year-old Saritza Serrano and 24-year-old Ruben Yepez-Ruiz are charged with abuse or neglect of a child resulting in death. No attorneys are listed for them in online court records.

Charging documents say emergency crews responded to their home on Nov. 16. They found the boy’s body in feces-covered bedroom with a door that latched on the outside.

Serrano told police the boy had been sick for three weeks but that she hadn’t taken him to a doctor. She said she fed him milk through a bottle. Yepez-Ruiz said he hadn’t seen the child in several weeks, although they lived in the same home together.

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s OK to eat some romaine lettuce again, U.S. health officials said. Just check the label.

The Food and Drug Administration narrowed its blanket warning from last week, when it said people shouldn’t eat any romaine because of an E. coli outbreak. The agency said Monday the romaine linked to the outbreak appears to be from the California’s Central Coast region. It said romaine from elsewhere should soon be labeled with harvest dates and regions, so people know it’s OK to eat.

People shouldn’t eat romaine that doesn’t have the label information, the FDA said. For romaine that doesn’t come in packaging, grocers and retailers are being asked to post the information by the register.

Romaine harvesting recently began shifting from California’s Central Coast to winter growing areas, primarily Arizona, Florida, Mexico and California’s Imperial Valley. Those winter regions weren’t yet shipping when the illnesses began. The FDA also noted hydroponically grown romaine and romaine grown in greenhouses aren’t implicated in the outbreak.

The labeling arrangement was worked out as the produce industry called on the FDA to quickly narrow the scope of its warning so it wouldn’t have to waste freshly harvested romaine. An industry group said people can expect to start seeing labels as early as this week. It noted the labels are voluntary, and that it will monitor whether to expand the measure to other leafy greens and produce.

The FDA said the industry committed to making the labeling standard for romaine and to consider longer-term labeling options for other leafy greens.

Robert Whitaker, chief science officer of the Produce Marketing Association, said labeling for romaine could help limit the scope of future alerts and rebuild public trust after other outbreaks.

“Romaine as a category has had a year that’s been unfortunate,” Whitaker said.

The FDA still hasn’t identified a source of contamination in the latest outbreak. There have been no reported deaths, but health officials say 43 people in 12 states have been sickened. Twenty-two people in Canada were also sickened.

Even though romaine from the Yuma, Arizona, region is not implicated in the current outbreak, it was blamed for an E. coli outbreak this spring that sickened more than 200 people and killed five. Contaminated irrigation water near a cattle lot was later identified as the likely source.

Leafy greens were also blamed for an E. coli outbreak last year. U.S. investigators never specified which salad green might be to blame for those illnesses, which happened around the same time of year as the current outbreak. But officials in Canada identified romaine as a common source of illnesses there.

The produce industry is aware the problem is recurring, said Jennifer McEntire of the United Fresh Produce Association.

“To have something repeat in this way, there simply must be some environmental source that persisted,” she said. “The question now is, can we find it?”

Growers and handlers in the region tightened food safety measures after the outbreak this spring, the industry says. Steps include expanding buffer zones between cattle lots and produce fields. But McEntire said it’s not known for sure how the romaine became contaminated in the Yuma outbreak. Another possibility, she said, is that winds blew dust from the cattle lot onto produce.

McEntire said the industry is considering multiple theories, including whether there is something about romaine that makes it more susceptible to contamination. Compared with iceberg lettuce, she noted its leaves are more open, thus exposing more surface area.

Since romaine has a shelf life of about 21 days, health officials said last week they believed contaminated romaine could still be on the market or in people’s homes.

Food poisoning outbreaks from leafy greens are not unusual. But after a 2006 outbreak linked to spinach, the produce industry took steps it believed would limit large scale outbreaks, said Timothy Lytton, a Georgia State University law professor. The outbreak linked to romaine earlier this year cast doubt on how effective the measures have been, he said.

But Lytton also noted the inherent risk of produce, which is grown in open fields and eaten raw.