(AP) – Federal investigators found several safety violations at a southwest Missouri milling plant where a worker was fatally injured last summer.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said in a release Thursday that the worker died after falling about 40 feet from a lift used to transport materials at MFA Inc.’s milling facility in Aurora. The accident occurred Aug. 26.

Barbara Theriot, OSHA’s Kansas City director, said the accident was preventable.

OSHA says its inspectors cited MFA for 13 serious safety violations, including failing to guard open-sided floors, creating potential falls up to 20 feet and failing to inspect man lifts every 30 days.

The Springfield News-Leader reports OSHA also proposed $91,000 in fines. MFA has about two weeks to contest the citations.

MFA didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.

(AP) – A former Lindenwood University wrestler charged with knowingly exposing five sex partners to HIV could face more charges after police found dozens of new dorm-room videos showing him having unprotected sex.

Twenty-two-year-old Michael L. “Tiger” Johnson was charged in October with exposing a sexual partner to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He was initially charged with one count of recklessly risking infection of another with HIV, but four more felony charges were later added. Johnson was kicked out of school the same day criminal charges were filed.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that St. Charles County prosecutors said Thursday police have obtained 32 videos of Johnson. One is of a victim already identified, but it is unclear how many different men are depicted on the other tapes.

(AP) – The Liberty School District has paid a former superintendent nearly $1 million to settle his wrongful-termination lawsuit.

The lawsuit Phil Wright filed against the district in July 2009 was dismissed Thursday.

Wright left the district in April 2008, and said at the time he was forced to resign because he refused to falsify documents. He said Thursday that the settlement barred him from discussing his departure.

Liberty school board president Scott Conner said in a statement that the lawsuit was draining funds and administrative time, and the settlement was best for taxpayers and students. The district denied any wrongdoing.

An appeals court judge found the district in contempt of court for refusing to turn over documents to Wright’s lawyers. The documents were never produced.

(AP) – A record number of people flocked to the Kansas City Zoo last year, in part to see a new penguin exhibit.

Zoo officials say 882,194 people visited the zoo in 2013. About 90,000 of those visitors went to the zoo after the penguin exhibit opened in October.

The zoo had hoped to attract 835,000 people last year. Attendance in 2012 was 824,218.

Zoo attendance peaked at 714,367 in 1998, then declined before rebounding and has been rising steadily since 2006. Zoo officials are hoping to meet the 1 million visitors mark by 2016.

(AP) — The Kansas Highway Patrol says blowing dust caused an 11-vehicle pileup that left three people dead in northwest Kansas.

The crash happened Thursday afternoon on Highway 83 near Rexford, in Thomas County. The patrol says seven tractor-trailer trucks and four passenger vehicles collided. The patrol says high winds and blowing dust reduced visibility to almost zero at the time of the crash.

The victims were identified as 51-year-old Leonard Scott Breeden of Colby; 57-year-old James Ocie Perrott of Perryton, Texas; and 66-year-old Jerold L. Lamb of Florissant, Colo.

The patrol did not release more details on the accident or information on injuries.

(AP) – Missouri could carry out executions with firing squads under legislation proposed in the House.

The state currently puts inmates to death with injections of lethal drugs, although existing law also permits use of lethal gas – the method by which 39 people were executed from 1938 to 1965.

The House bill adds an option of executions by firing squads consisting of five law enforcement officers chosen by the state corrections director.

Missouri’s next execution is scheduled for Jan. 29.

The state recently switched from three-drug to single-drug lethal injections after pharmaceutical companies stopped selling the three drugs to prisons. It’s unclear where Missouri obtains the single drug, and there have been demands to halt executions until the source is revealed.

 Bipartisan legislation backed by U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill to boost oversight in how the government conducts background investigations received approval from the U.S. House of Representatives.

McCaskill’s bill-cosponsored by Senator Jon Tester of Montana, and Republican Senators Rob Portman of Ohio and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin-improves oversight of the security clearance process by empowering the Office of Personnel Management’s Office of Inspector General to use resources from its Revolving Fund to audit and investigate contractors that conduct background checks of government employees and contractors. The background investigations are used by government agencies to determine who should be granted access to sensitive and/or classified information.

“It’s nothing short of a national security threat that these background checks aren’t being conducted with the care needed,” said McCaskill, a former State Auditor and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial & Contracting Oversight. “The ability to conduct a basic audit is a good first step toward reforming the security clearance process, and making sure that we can trust those with access to our country’s secrets and secure facilities.”

The bipartisan bill is a product of a recent joint Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing led by McCaskill and Tester which revealed that the contractor who conducted Snowden’s background check is under investigation. At the June hearing, witnesses testified that a lack of oversight and information sharing threatened the security of classified information.

McCaskill also sent a bipartisan letter to Government Accountability Office Comptroller General Gene Dodaro requesting that the agency examine the security clearance process and report how various federal agencies can streamline and improve clearance investigations.