At least, that what the newscaster said today on channel 5. “After being buried in mud for decades, the Alameda County bomb squad declared the dynamite was no longer dangerous.”
I am reminded of the many examples of syntactic ambiguity taught in my sophomore English class by Mr. Bayse. How hard is it to understand that the modifying dependent clause goes immediately before the thing it modifies? “The Alameda County bomb squad declared that after being buried in mud for decades, the dynamite was no longer dangerous.” Come on, newswriters, you can do better than an 8th grade C student.