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Arizona Featured

The Accident – His Father is Dead, The Four Year Old Son Pulled The Trigger

PRESCOTT VALLEY, Ariz. — Authorities in northern Arizona say a 4-year-old boy has accidentally shot and killed his father at a Prescott Valley home.

Prescott Valley police say the shooting occurred just after noon Friday.

The 35-year-old man and his young son were visiting from Phoenix and were at a friend’s house.

Police say the boy somehow found a gun in the home’s living room and accidentally fired it and a bullet hit his father, who was rushed to a hospital where he died. Police identified the man as Justin Stanfield Thomas.

Police say the boy is with his mother. No other details have been released.

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Health

Report: Asparagus Lowers Blood Pressure…

… at least in rats.

Here’s another reason to eat asparagus, in case you were looking for one.

Researchers at the Kagawa Nutrition University in Japan fed a diet consisting of 5 percent asparagus to rats with high blood pressure. As they report in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, published online on May 30, after 10 weeks, the rats on the asparagus diet had lower blood pressure than the ones fed a standard rat diet without asparagus.

The rats on the asparagus diet also had less protein in their urine, a sign of a healthier kidney. And they had less activity of ACE, or angiotensin-converting enzyme. Drugs that reduce the activity of ACE are used to treat hypertension in humans.

The Japanese researchers think a compound found in asparagus called 2″-hydroxynicotianamine is responsible for inhibiting ACE activity in the rats. There’s not a lot of literature on hydroxynicotianamine. It seems to be found in buckwheat sprouts, buckwheat leaves and buckwheat, where it also seems to be an ACE inhibitor.

Of course, it’s far too soon to known whether 2″-hydroxynicotianamine has a similar effect on humans. But if it does, perhaps this could open new vistas in the treatment of hypertension. In fact, for the treatment of high blood pressure, this could be the dawning of the age of asparagus.

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Oklahoma City Sports

Oklahoma Thunder Kevin Durant to Sign With Jay-Z

Jay-Z’s upstart sports agency has received another big boost, as a source confirmed to ESPN on Friday night that Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant will leave his current agent to join Roc Nation Sports.

The source said Durant believes he doesn’t need a contract agent now because he signed an $85 million extension with the Thunder in 2010 that will take him through the 2015-16 season. Instead, Durant — already one of the most marketable players in the league — has told those close to him that he wants to increase his brand.

A spokesman for Roc Nation Sports told ESPN that Durant is not currently a client. It’s unknown whether Jay-Z will wait until he sells his small ownership share in the Brooklyn Nets – it’s believed he owns between one-fifth and one-fifteenth of 1 percent of the team — before signing Durant. A source tells ESPN that Jay-Z’s ownership sale has not yet been completed.

If Jay-Z is just doing marketing work for Durant, he might be able to steer clear of NBA rules that would prohibit him from representing a player and owning a piece of a team.

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edward snowden Politics

Edward Snowden – NSA Whistleblower Comes Forward – Video

A 29-year-old man who said he is behind the leaks exposing NSA surveillance on American citizens revealed his identity Sunday in an interview with The Guardian.

Edward Snowden, a former CIA communications expert and current defense contractor living in Hawaii, said that he released the documents to alert the American public about what is being done in their name.

“I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building,” Snowden said to The Guardian.

Snowden told his superiors at Booz Allen and Dell, a firm where he earned $200,000 a year working on a contract with the NSA, that he was seeking treatment for his epilepsy and would need some time off. He then left on a plane bound for Hong Kong.

Snowden set up a meeting with Guardian reporters in his hide out after releasing documents last week on the NSA collecting telephone information from Verizon Wireless customers, and the PRISM program, which allows the government to tap into the servers of major internet companies in the U.S. and UK.

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Immigration Immigration Reform Politics

President’s Weekly Address: Fixing a Broken Immigration System

President Obama says that the United States Senate will soon take action to fix our broken immigration system with a commonsense bill. He also cautions that the new bill will not make everyone happy, not Democrats, not Republicans. But urges Congress to act quickly to pass the bill.

The bill before the Senate isn’t perfect.  It’s a compromise.  Nobody will get everything they want – not Democrats, not Republicans, not me.  But it is a bill that’s largely consistent with the principles I’ve repeatedly laid out for commonsense immigration reform.

This bill would continue to strengthen security at our borders, increase criminal penalties against smugglers and traffickers, and hold employers more accountable if they knowingly hire undocumented workers.  If enacted, it would represent the most ambitious enforcement plan in recent memory.

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Serena williams Sports

French Open Findings – Serena Williams Claims 16TH SLAM

 Women’s singles final – Serena Williams triumphed over Maria Sharapova, 6-4, 6-4 to claim her second Roland Garros title, 11 years after her first.

h/t –wimbledon

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