Inflection of proper nouns What's the accusative if name of a female person ends in u? Male name ending in a? Other cases, where the case ending marker is part of the normal name? How one copes with them? Finnish names end in vowel.

Why two words for 'and'?

Horrendous mistakes in BBC news? "It (Israel) evades questions about its own nuclear arsenal with what it calls a policy of "nuclear ambiguity" but that doesn't cut much ice in the Arab world - or in Iran - where ITS universally assumed that Israel has the bomb." And "That is probably partly because it does not want to appear to be so clearly on the same side of a public row as Israel and partly because ITS simply not the kingdom's style." And "The Western world has been applying sanctions to Iran for around 30 years so it has a choice of older restrictions which it could lift without disturbing the much more effective measures ITS taken more recently which have hit Iran's energy and financial services sectors." (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24871638) In the first two cases, "its" should be "it is". In the last paragraph it should read "it has". Am I right? These seem to be very basic mistakes in what should be respectable analysis.

Did BBC make a grammar mistake? Excerpt: "It showed that many UK companies, particularly smaller businesses, have cut wages rather than lay off staff." Should "lay off" instead be imperfect (laid off)? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22860320