Word: pets
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...With most parents (except for Draco's mother and the Weasleys) absent from the action, the Hogwarts teachers are the guardians of youth. They're not all suited to the job; some are foolish, some sinister. The new teacher, Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), runs a salon for his pet students. An incorrigible name-dropper, he "collects" children whose talent or connections might bring him glory. The resentful Snape (Alan Rickman, effortlessly oily), whose motives have been murky but whom Dumbledore continues to trust, becomes Draco's surrogate dad: snake for snake...
...powers. It is surely one that the rich nations of Western Europe, which at times carry themselves as if someone else will always look after their defense, could take more seriously. In the meantime, Rudd will continue with his multilingual diplomacy, trying to convince other world leaders that his pet idea of an Asia-Pacific Community won't just add to the alphabet soup of regional forums that litter the calendar with ineffectual meetings...
...that nonchalance vanished in a heartbeat last week when 2-year-old Shaiunna Hare was strangled to death in her crib by a 9-ft. Burmese python kept as a pet, illegally, in her house near Orlando. (The owner, a live-in boyfriend of Shaiunna's mother, killed the python with a knife as it squeezed the girl, but it was too late.) Suddenly Floridians, and the rest of the country, are paying more sober attention to the warnings of wildlife officials and environmentalists that proliferating pythons are a threat to critical ecosystems like the Everglades as well...
...states, like New York, already ban large constrictor snakes. A House bill, introduced by Florida Representatives Ron Klein and Alcee Hastings, would not ban but more closely regulate python importation. Even that legislation has met resistance from business lobbies like the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC), which insists the problem can be contained, via regulatory programs like Florida's, without clamping down on imports. "Bans often just drive the commerce underground, which can instead worsen the situation," says PIJAC CEO Marshall Meyers. Python sales, which include the smaller and more popular ball python, are still robust...
...Alzheimer's disease, but not all of them exhibit the memory loss and confusion that typically characterize these disorders. In fact, the number of such patients may be greater than researchers first thought. In a November 2008 study, a team of scientists used a new positron emission tomography (PET) brain-imaging technique developed by Drs. William Klunk and Chester Mathis of the University of Pittsburgh to image the brains of live patients - a leap forward in a field that long had to rely on postmortem analyses of brain tissue to confirm diagnoses after the fact - and showed that some...