The court was told how the youth who admitted manslaughter, had control of the breeze block after it had been lifted onto the bridge's barrier.

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Mr McCourt, from Sandwell in the West Midlands, was driving his lorry on the eastbound carriageway of the A45 near Doddington, when a breeze block smashed through his windscreen.

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In a video created by Boston Dynamics, BigDog is seen lifting a breeze block with an arm attached to where the head would go on its animal equivalent, and then throwing it backwards.

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In the front drive of their breeze-block house, there is a motorbike, still with its Alabama license plates.

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In contravention of the planning regulations, many of its gardens have been filled with breeze-block sheds to house the latest arrivals.

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The launcher shoots the bottles at a velocity of 984 feet per second, fast enough to smash a double-layer breeze-block wall and allow assault troops to enter a building, according to the manufacturer, BCB International.

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They routinely block roads with burning tyres, breeze blocks and rubbish bins.

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The hero of 15 books by Lawrence Block, Scudder is a winningly smart-assed private eye who can shoot the breeze (and the bad guys) with the best of them, and has a capacity for abstract thought to boot.

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