Republican Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma are seeking information about Department of Veterans Affairs employees who they say perform full-time union duties instead of their government work.

They sent a letter Wednesday to the head of the VA suggesting employees doing other duties could hinder the VA in its goal of eliminating the backlog of veterans' disability claims.

Tens of thousands of Turks have joined anti-government protests expressing discontent with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 10-year rule.

Joshua Landis, the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, says the protests started over green space in the middle of Istanbul’s Taksim Square. Developers, with the backing of Erdoğan, want to build a large shopping mall.

“Very quickly political parties and the opposition parties joined in,” Landis says. “But much more than that, lots of middle-class people and particularly young students began to crowd into the squares.”

National player of the year Keilani Ricketts homered and drove in four runs, Michelle Gascoigne pitched a three-hit shutout and top-seeded Oklahoma won the NCAA softball championship by beating Tennessee 4-0 Tuesday night in Game 2 of the Women's College World Series finals.

"I told them, if I had a million dollars, I would buy this for you, but I don't have a million dollars so I'm glad that we won it instead," Head Coach Patty Gasso says. "Seeing these seniors go out this way is something that I'll cherish forever."

The Oklahoma Water Resources Board is a big advocate for regional water planning, the idea that local control over who uses what water and where it’s sent will lead to better conservation.

But the move toward regional planning signed into law Friday by Gov. Mary Fallin isn’t exactly what the board had in mind.

“We had nothing to do with this bill,” OWRB Executive Director J.D. Strong says.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court says a law adopted in 2009 to reform Oklahoma's civil justice system is unconstitutional.

The state's highest court handed down the decision Tuesday in a divided 7-2 ruling. In a separate decision, the court said a requirement that injured people submit a certificate of merit before they can file professional malpractice lawsuits is unconstitutional.