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:

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.

Noun pile of the week

In case you missed it while the usurper was distracting you last week, freedom was under assault on many fronts:

There’s a new battleground in the war on Christmas – the suburbs of our nation’s capital. The school board in Montgomery County, Maryland has decided to appease Muslims families by making the school calendar — religious neutral.

The in-the-tank media appear to have let this one slip by, but the newly profitable Washington Times and its readers have stayed on the case, providing the genuinely awesome noun -- at last, by US standards -- noun pile above.

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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Gotham tab noun pile spread preposition link

The monarchist takeover of the New York Post has been an open secret for some time now, but this one from the New York Daily News comes as a bit of a surprise. It packs a lot of redtop -- claim quotes, two noun piles, and a verb-replacing preposition -- into six words.

Are they driving on the wrong side of the road up there too?

In the land of the tabloids

Nothing on here really qualifies as a noun pile, strictly speaking, but it's still impressive by US tabloid standards: four chunks of display type, and not a verb in the bunch:

Shock Murder Claim
Diana Slay Plot
Scotland Yard Probe
Exclusive Author Interview

"Exclusive" is a well-established newspaper noun, but I'd score it as an adjective here, which is something like a single in the top of the 10th after nine perfect innings. Otherwise, we're all nouns, all the time.

All the pesky grammar is over and above the question of why the Most Super-Important Story in the World for Post readers is the, ahem, Crown-endorsed MI6 death-by-Fiat plot to take Diana down for her plans to destroy Prince Charles by "releasing embarrassing information about his sexual peccadillos."

You just never know what you're getting when you sample a Murdoch product, do you?

Noun pile of the week

If you've been staying in practice with your British noun piles, this one shouldn't be a problem, but just in case, here's the BBC:

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