"in a shocking development" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It can be used when describing a surprising or unexpected event or occurrence. For example: - In a shocking development, the newly elected president announced his resignation just days after taking office. - The company's stock price plummeted in a shocking development, as the CEO was arrested for embezzlement. - In a shocking development, the team's star player was traded to a rival team just before the championship game.
DENVER, Oct. 19 — The Colorado Rockies played the Colorado Rockies for four innings at Coors Field on Friday and, in a shocking development, the Rockies did not lose.
A former Colombian rebel commander has been arrested on US drug-trafficking charges, in a shocking development that heaped more pressure on the stumbling peace process with the demobilized Farc guerrillas.
In a shocking development, things have gotten testy.
Well, in a shocking development, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has uncovered video of one of the speakers for the Billy Graham Evangelical Association's Rock the Fort events advocating the burning of military bases!
- And finally, our Hero of the Week: In a shocking development, this week it's an actual man of the cloth himself, Reverend Tom Tate of Portland's United Methodist Church, who put this great sign on the church's official old-fashioned billboard, a place generally reserved for old-fashioned bigotry and general Jesus distortions: "God Prefers Kind Atheists Over Hateful Christians".
The allegation, although unproven in court, is a shocking development akin to the Steubenville incident.
The last two episodes of "The Killing" are to be broadcast here in Britain on Saturday night, after a shocking development in episode No. 18 last week that changed the course of the investigation.
Over the weekend, a painting of former president Barack Obama was making the rounds on social media, with users assuming it was his official post-presidency portrait — a shocking development because in the picture in question, the 44th president was depicted wearing that infamous tan suit that got him so much flak (remember "the audacity of taupe").
THE rapturous ovations that greeted Tony Blair's speech last week to both houses of America's Congress had barely died down before Britain's prime minister was cast low by a shocking development in the war.
If, this time, industry truly is fighting for our best interests by denying the role of pollution in climate change, and if science truly is defrauding the public on such a grand scale, then each would be a shocking development in the histories of industry and science.
