This is “weird”

While reading Hixie’s log, I came across this article at TimesOnline.co.uk. I found the following headline (in the Breaking News section on the right) more interesting (and puzzling) than the article itself…

  • Kabul market blast “kills 22”
    What’s with the quotes? Has “kills 22” become some sort of euphemism? Slang for some new surfing move? Or is this perhaps a direct quote? I have trouble constructing a likely quote from an official that would use the present tense (i.e. kills instead of killed). Are they perhaps quoting from somebody else’s newspaper headline? Was this just an attempt to avoid using the word “allegedly”? Why? There was room for it…

    Browsing around, I see several other headlines that stand out, like these…

  • Circles of Hell leave survivors divided by the psychological hierarchy of suffering
    This turned out not to be an expose on the Inferno, but somebody’s human interest piece on NYC today.

  • Schröder leads chorus of EU war dissidents
    Deck the halls but don’t attack Iraq, fa la la la la, la la la la

  • Pope warns against men “of deviation”
    I have no idea… the article doesn’t appear to be on the site any more. Note that it’s not “men of deviation”, but rather men “of deviation”. I suppose their gender is not in doubt, but their deviation is?

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