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Bob McDonnell shared a friendship that afforded Williams access to the pinnacle of Virginia political power and provided McDonnell and his family a taste of the good life the multimillionaire corporate executive loved to flaunt.
• That friendship is now strained -- if not dead -- as a federal criminal investigation into their relationship pushes them in conflicting directions, creating an election-year scandal that has consumed the final months of the governor's term.
• "We had a very positive relationship for three or four years," a somber McDonnell told The Associated Press this week in one of the most frank and open public discussions he has held yet on the subject. "Right now, we're just in a different situation."
• Williams, through his attorney, Jerry W. Kilgore, declined to be interviewed for this story.
• The men became friends in 2009 and 2010 when Williams' then-obscure nutritional supplement-making company, Star Scientific Inc., contributed $108,448 in corporate jet travel to McDonnell's gubernatorial campaign and political action committee. Williams became even more generous with personal gifts or loans to the McDonnell family that topped $145,000, including five-figure checks to two daughters for their weddings and a $6,500 Rolex watch engraved for the "71st Governor of Virginia."
• ___

• MOORE, Okla. (AP) -- Oklahoma school officials hope Friday's start of a new school year will help pupils put the memory of the deadly May 20 tornado behind them.
• Seven students at the Plaza Towers Elementary School were among the 24 people killed by an EF-5 twister that hit Moore almost three months ago. Students at Plaza Towers and nearby Briarwood Elementary, which also was destroyed, will attend classes in temporary buildings at least for the next year.
• "I'm a little nervous about the beginning of school because I want the kids so badly to feel good and comfortable at school," said Plaza Towers Principal Amy Simpson, who took cover from the storm in a 4-by-5-foot bathroom with her office staff and emerged to find a mangled car on a co-worker's desk.
• Since the storm, different students have found different ways to cope with their memories of the mayhem. Haley Delgado, 8, carries headphones to block out the noise of the wind and her brother, Xavier, 10, says he is scared by loud thunder.

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