An AP article appeared in Today's newspaper
entitled:
Death toll in N. Korea blast set at 154
by Christopher Bodeen
Two paragraphs (excerpts) stick out:
The explosion destroyed buildings in a radius of hundreds
of yards, ripped the roofs of others and broke windows up to 2� miles out, aid
officials said.
At a three-story primary school about 300 yards from the
station, the roof was ripped away and the top floor collapsed, he
said.
The use of the unit yards is used often in the US press as
a transliteration (not a conversion) of metres. Thus if the report had
originated using FFU, the distances would have been in feet as you note for US
usage. The fact that yards are used is proof positive the originating
units were metres. The 2� miles is actually a real 4
km.
Euric
>
> Note that in non-metric references, British convention is to use yards
> rather than feet for distances between about 5 yards and half a mile. I
> understand that US convention is to use feet for those distances. I imagine
> that few British people would have know what distance is meant by 600 feet,
> but most would score better when told about 200 yards or 200 metres.
