Sometimes it’s easy to miss an event, so here’s a look back at the past week or so to help bring you up to date:
A settlement has been reached between Seattle and the Oklahoma City-based owners of the SuperSonics, clearing the way for the NBA basketball team to move to the state immediately. Clay Bennett and the other owners agreed to pay $45 million to settle the lease. An additional $30 million would be due if the Washington Legislature funds upgrades or a new stadium and the city fails to land a new team in the next five years. The team will get a new name, and tickets will go on sale soon.
Under new rules on political gifts, legislators and other elected officials will have to pay all but $100 of the costs of season tickets to college football games.
The state’s universities responded to a July 1 moratorium on state matching donations for endowed faculty positions by ramping up fundraising. The University of Oklahoma received another $61 million, and Oklahoma State — offering a four-for-one deal with money from Boone Pickens — took in another $66.8 million. The last-minute giving added $128 million to a backlog that now totals $353 million.
OSU has banned smoking on its Stillwater campus, becoming the largest campus in the state to ban tobacco.
The Mississippi River was receding from another great flood, and residents were considering whether to remove or rebuild. Many of the routes around and over the river were reopened.
Firefighters were making slow progress against the more than a thousand wildfires burning in Northern California.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain met with the Rev. Billy Graham and his son, Franklin.
Democrat Barack Obama called for expansion of President Bush’s program to allow federal money to go to religious charities. He wants to get more religious groups involved in anti-poverty efforts.
Zimbabwe’s ruler Robert Mugabe was sworn in for a sixth term after a widely discredited runoff in which he was the only candidate.
Former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors were among 14 hostages freed after having been held for years by leftist rebels.
Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation researchers have found in mice experiments that caffeine shows promise in protecting against conditions like multiple sclerosis.
A prominent city attorney, Dan Murdock, was arrested on a sexual battery complaint during a wedding party he was hosting for a couple at Remington Park. Murdock, 62, is the longtime counsel of the Oklahoma Bar Association.