It would appear that BBC used air quotes because the lions were merely suspects in the case, without enough evidence for a conviction. The headline is now, “Lions blamed as hundreds of buffalo drown in Botswana.”
I’m glad the BBC is paying attention to the concerns of C&F readers.
That’s even better. Clarity matters. And I see they changed the plural, too. Stay with the veterans, and send that greenhorn back to school. 
Apparently we have that sort of clout.
I read it right, as Tunborough interpreted it, to start with. It’s probably common UK headline-speak.
Google, seems to scan C&F fairly frequently, so I suppose the BBC’s automatic recognition of accesses that don’t come from their own links could lead a human to look at where the interest was comming from. The writer of the piece, for example, may find the feedback useful.
I, too, clicked on the story and expected to read about drowning lions (in the BBC application on my tablet). Glad to see that they fixed it (it’s changed in the app view as well).
Maybe someone at BBC is a whistle player?
Punctuation matters!
Oh, dear. 
Sign at Pier One Imports Veteran’s Day. Do these look like fauna to you? Sure, they’re fake, but are they THAT fake?
Translator stayed home …
As found on Google News (link requires accepting cookies or some such, so am quoting headline)
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1059221/nasa-news-latest-insight-spacecraft-mars-landing-aliens-space-shuttle-planet-science
“NASA InSight spacecraft captures eerie audio of ‘UNWORDLY’ sound of Martian wind on Mars”
It would be even more eerie if there WERE words.
In other news:
https://www.ajc.com/news/gun-deaths-highest-level-years-cdc-says/vgcdQWPITScDYEdpHrswBP/
“Gun deaths at highest level in 40 years, CDC says”
Poor things. They used to have such longer lives. I blame a lack of quality control.
Or the Martian wind wasn’t on Mars.
Echoes of “future events such as these will affect you in the future”, from Plan 9..
When that’s said, when I listened to the audio I was hoping for something.. words would have been a bit too much to hope for, but some word-ly sounds would work too.
Obscure reference alert: It could be an appropriate sign in Mushnik’s Flower Shop.
The students lied. It was NOT their first experience at…that…thing…act…whatever.
Hyphenation? Maybe it’s my Yank sensibilities (stop sniggering, you dirty people), but this pedant would think that “firsthand” is better than “first-hand”. Or maybe not. I don’t know.
Maybe that’s not where the hyphen was supposed to go.
It occurred to me.
Is this a bit to close to the line? I hope not, but I read it wrong…
Video of Pope Francis trying to avoid having his ring kissed goes viral
Other papers were more cautious and used the phrase ‘papal ring’.
Apologies if this is too strong for C&F, in which case please remove it.
Speaking only as a Yank, Right-of-the-Pond slang falls under the jurisdiction of circumlocution. It’s like “pants”: we don’t snicker at that, either, so likewise to us the Pope’s ring is merely a jeweled bauble, and nothing else. We do, however, snicker at “knock (someone) up”. That’s a whole different ballgame in the States.
But this is material better suited to the “Divided by a common language” thread.
I think it was the concept of ‘kissing his ring’ which fooled me. Perhaps it is peculiar to the circles that I have moved in, but the expression is often used as a euphemism for ‘currying favour’, especially in a strictly hierarchical workplace.
But maybe you are right, perhaps this is a regional language thing. Ah well, we are post-structural here.