A selection of headlines from stories in the news. They use English in way that you might think is intended to confuse but it’s all perfectly clear to the native speaker.
The Daily Mirror headline on a comment piece about the Libyan conflict read: ‘War Costs Us A Bomb.’ The article says that the ‘cost of firing expensive missiles . . . is understandably a concern.’ The phrase ‘costs us a bomb’ is an idiom which is used when something costs a lot of money.