I eliminated A, B, and C first.

In A, the verb "were" does not agree with "news" (a singular noun). C makes the same mistake.

B uses "in order to" incorrectly. What follows "in order to" should be the goal of the action. D makes the same mistake.

E is pretty good. "news (of the shots) took four days to reach NYC and another eleven days..."

Hey!
I have one more reason to eliminate A,B & C.
"Which" and "That" seem to point to shots rather than news.
Therefore, these options must be wrong.
"another" along with "in adition" in option "D" must be wrong.
Left with option "E".
Am I right in my explanations?

Regards,
Mukherjee

Yeah, "another" and "in addition" are redundant in D.

You have to be careful with that logic for A, B, and C. It's possible for the modifier to describe the noun before the prepositional phrase, as we have here: "news (of these shots)".

Hey!
How to judge when "which"/"that" refer to noun just before comma and when they refer to noun before prepositional phrase?

Regards,
mukherjee

It requires some logical thinking. If you notice that you have a noun followed by a prepositional phrase, you have to check both the original noun and the noun in the phrase:

Justin handed me a box of car parts, which I stacked on top of the other boxes.

The noun directly before the relative clause is "car parts". Did I stack the car parts themselves? Unlikely. Given the wording "other boxes", it's pretty clear that I stacked this specific box on top of the other ones.

Hey Bill!
I read in Manhattan SC book that "which" points to the noun, which is just before the comma.
The book says the above rule is a thumb rule.
I'm confused!
According to the logic that I previously drilled, your example must be wrong.
Could you please clear my doubt?
Help me with "that" aswell!

Regards,
mukherjee

[email protected] wrote:Hey Bill!
I read in Manhattan SC book that "which" points to the noun, which is just before the comma.
The book says the above rule is a thumb rule.
I'm confused!
According to the logic that I previously drilled, your example must be wrong.
Could you please clear my doubt?
Help me with "that" aswell!

Regards,
mukherjee

The exception to the touch rule (I think that's what you mean by thumb rule?) is when you have another essential modifier that can't be split up. In this case, we need "of car parts" to tell us which box we're talking about. There's no way to split it up: you couldn't say "a box, which I stacked on top of the other boxes, of car parts."

As another example: "The framed letter from JFK, which was written in 1962, was my grandfather's prized possession."

JFK is the noun before the "which" clause, but it wasn't JFK that was written in 1962. "from JFK" is an essential modifier for "letter".