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Off topic: Why do headlines from some sources omit the "and" from sentences? Shouldn't it say "Microsoft hopes to bury iPhone and Android"? It's not like I can say "honey, can you buy some apples, pears, oranges at the store?". I might be wrong, but this is something rather new, right? If so, when and why did it come about?

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It's standard form for writing news headlines, by-lines.

...in the US, but generally not the UK.

It's just to be concise. I'm pretty sure it's standard AP style.

Specifically, it’s called telegraphese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphese

My guess is that laying a newspaper out on paper is essentially a 2D packing problem—which is an NP-hard optimization problem. I assume removing unnecessary words from headlines when helpful is a good way to give yourself some wiggle room in terms of what goes where.

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