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Rupert Murdoch protégé Rebekah Brooks was charged Tuesday with conspiracy over alleged illegal payments to a Ministry of Defence employee, London's Metropolitan Police said Tuesday.

Goodbye Britain? For the European Union, a once-unthinkable question is looking more like a real possibility with each new grinding week of economic crisis. The reason is that bad times are forcing the 17 EU nations that use the euro currency to move ever closer toward some kind of United States of Europe - one that could make decisions about how much member countries spend and how much tax they collect.

... Lawyers for the former Conservative politician, Lord Alistair McAlpine, who was wrongly implicated in connection with sex abuse claims by a BBC show, have vowed to end the so-called trial by Twitter. They said they were looking at a "very long list" of users who wrongly repeated the allegations regarding Lord McAlpine with a view to taking legal action in the British courts. Simply deleting the messages would not be enough, the lawyers told The Guardian newspaper.

Few seem to be enjoying the management meltdown at the venerable BBC more than Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp. chief whose rival British newspapers have been caught up in their own lengthy, embarrassing and expensive phone-hacking scandal....

Novak Djokovic has secured his place in the semi-finals and cleared the way for Andy Murray to join him at the ATP World Tour Finals. The world number one beat Tomas Berdych 6-2 7-6 (8-6), and Murray will now qualify if he takes a set off Jo-Wilfried Tsonga on Friday evening.

The murder of the British businessman, Neil Heywood, is still seen as stemming from a financial dispute, but the intelligence links add an enticing subplot to his death.

The prime minister is appointing a "senior independent figure" to look into the way allegations of sexual abuse at north Wales children's homes in the 1970s and '80s were dealt with.

Text messages sent by the former head of Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers to Prime Minister David Cameron, published on Sunday, have further revealed their close personal relationship.

Richard Herman, 53, was so upset with firms phoning him up and trying to sell him goods and services he decided to charge them for the time they took out of his day. He recorded the calls and then sent an invoice charging £10 for every minute he spent on the phone. When they refused to pay up he sued them at the small claims court and won.

Jimmy Savile was one of the best-known faces on British television. So how was he able to become one of the country's worst child sex predators without ever being caught?...