Separated by a common headline

Two questions:

1) What's your first-glance reading of what the headline means?
2) Where are you from? (Specifically, where did you learn to read headlines?)

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He's not the Duke, he's a very naughty boy

Some headlines just sort of earn their way into the record book unadorned, and "Police speak to Philip for not wearing seat belt" is such a headline.

There is, of course, some austere charm in the back story:

Norfolk Police say they have spoken to the Duke of Edinburgh after he was pictured driving without a seat belt, 48 hours after being involved in a crash near Sandringham in Norfolk.

A spokeswoman said "suitable words of advice have been given to the driver".
Meanwhile, Emma Fairweather, who broke her wrist in the crash, has told the Mirror the duke has not apologised.

A Palace spokesman has said contact was made with the occupants of the car to exchange "well-wishes".

The crash on the A149, in which Prince Philip's Land Rover Freelander landed on its side after a collision with a Kia, happened on Thursday.

Two days later, pictures in the Daily Mail and the Sun appeared to show the duke, 97, driving alone on a road near the entrance to the Sandringham estate in a replacement Freelander, without a seat belt. 

And a perfectly formed noun pile is still a wonderful sight:

... almost as good with the extra space allowed atop the story:

The name's Mistakenly. Troops Mistakenly

Your assignment: Write the hed.

Somalia's security forces have shot dead a 31-year-old government minister after mistaking him for a militant Islamist, officials have said.

If you haven't seen it yet, here's the authoritative Ten Minutes Past Deadline on the nature and function of the claim quote: "Not an actual quote, but an allegation in reported speech placed within quotation marks to signal its contested nature." In my optimistic moments, having learned how to order OK at the neighborhood pubs, I'd like to think that I could turn out a few claim-quote heds that would pass for the real thing. And then I run across something "'Troops mistakenly' kill .." and realize how far I am from fluency.

I could see "mistakenly kill" as the contested allegation, but I can't see how "troops" is suspect in a way that "minister" wouldn't be. British friends, help: Is this one in bounds?

Softest barriers EVAR

Every time I think I have the claim quote figured out, a new one comes along. Here, I think it's the phrasing that gets me. The quote in the linked video is: "He was breaking down barriers that nobody suspected." There's room for "Chuck Berry 'was breaking down barriers'"; if that seems too much more opaque than the current version, there's also room to take the quotes off and add the attribution: "Chuck Berry broke down barriers, Simmons says." The down barriers, though, are going to remain a problem for me.

I expect I have trouble with "over US election hack" because I'm not a native speaker of claim quotes (fair enough; the flying verb seems pretty opaque in British headlinese too). Is "hack" what needs the attribution, or is the "over" part of the contested assertion?

Sorry these are a bit old; trying to clear out the inbox before things get any stranger in the framing of international politics.

Noun piles on the march

British colleagues, did you have enough information to decipher the hed on the first go, or did you need to read the lede?

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has attracted outrage by mocking a dead US Muslim soldier's mother.

Ghazala Khan stood silently next to her husband as he attacked Mr Trump in an emotional speech to the Democratic National Convention on Thursday.
Mr Trump suggested she may not have been allowed to speak.

Republicans and Democrats said the Republican candidate's comments were no way to talk of a hero's mother. Mrs Khan said she was upset by his remarks.

I think it's the genitive that throws me off track -- it signals that "Trump soldier" is the noun phrase. That might just be me.

Naturally, you'll want to know how the day's developments looked at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network:

Donald Trump is taking issue with a speech at this week's Democratic National Convention by Muslim lawyer Khizr Khan, whose Army captain son was killed in action and who said on stage that Trump has “sacrificed nothing and no one" for America. But Democrats and advocates for veterans’ families say the Republican presidential nominee went too far in his response.

Khan made the comment during his tribute to his son, Humayun, who posthumously received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart after being killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004.

As Khan spoke, his wife Ghazala, Humayun’s mother, stood silently by his side.
Trump, during an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” said: "She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me."

And Trump challenged Khizr Khan’s claims about having sacrificed nothing. "I've made a lot of sacrifices,” Trump said. “I work very, very hard. I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures."

Some things really do speak for themselves.

Got me so blind I can't see

If you liked the noun pile on the homepage, you'll love the story itself:

A woman has gone on trial in France for allegedly operating a scam in which thousands of Chileans paid millions of euros to produce a supposedly "magic cheese" for the cosmetics industry.

... Buyers were lured with the promise of huge returns when their "cheese" was sold on for use in beauty products.

The €14.5m (£10.6m; $16.14m) scam is one of the largest in Chilean history.

More about the "Madoff of magic cheese" here.

Word gazpacho at the BBC

It kind of looks and acts like a noun pile, except that so much of it isn't nouns at all. And even though it's less word salad than word gazpacho, it's probably easier to follow than a classic noun pile. Anyway, can you figure out what the BBC is getting at here?

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Ground control to Major Tom

For those of you who had been keeping up with the brave Russian sex geckos, there's sad news tonight:

Five gecko lizards sent into orbit on a Russian space satellite as part of a sex experiment have all died, the Russian space agency says.

Did they -- well, you know, return with their shields or upon them, gecko-sex-wise?

... Experts say the geckos may have frozen to death after the heating system broke down, Russian news agencies report.

They were sent into space as part of a study into the effect of weightlessness on their sex lives and development.

... Drosophila fruit flies that were also travelling on the satellite, however, survived and had reproduced, Roscosmos said.

One can only hope they'll be questioned after a decent interval. The Ridger, are there any details in the Russian version that we're missing?

Freddie Starr Ate My Gecko

Good news for the gecko sex set, or Putin rearing his head again?

Why spoil it by reading the story?

Some headlines are so good that you almost hate to read on, but all right:

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Noun pile of the morning

Quick, noun pile fans: What does this BBC hed mean, and how long did it take you to get there?
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Today in random headlines

Anybody care to take a wild swing at what this BBC hed means?

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