Following is a note I wrote to BBC News after reading their article about the US military killing Haitham al-Badri, reportedly the Sunni terrorist behind the multiple attacks on the major Shia mosque in Samarra.

The BBC story is titled US 'kills' key Iraq shrine bomber
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6931862.stm

Anything strike you as odd about that story title?

Well, here was my response to the BBC:

I wonder why you would put "kills" in quotations in the story about a major terrorist in Iraq being killed. Was he only metaphorically "killed", as in "Manchester United 'killed' West Ham today", or do you know it's some sort of hoax so that he was "killed" as far as we know but it's really part of an elaborate plot that only you and al-Qaeda know about, or was it that the US military told a joke so funny that it just "killed" the guy, sort of how Seinfeld "kills" me sometimes?

My guess is that it's none of the above and that instead it simply represents your inability to report even the smallest bit of good news from Iraq without trying to find some way to make it look questionable, accidental, or unworthy of notice.

So, either your editors do not understand proper punctuation or they are as horribly biased as I have believed for some time...or both. My guess is both, but since I really would like to hold the BBC in high esteem, believing such things about your editorial staff really "kills" me.