News Of The World | featured news

Prime Minister David Cameron's ex-media chief and Rupert Murdoch's former UK newspaper boss are to be charged with phone-hacking offences in the most significant development in a scandal that has rocked Britain's establishment.

Prime Minister David Cameron faced a televised grilling over the nature of his relationship with Rupert Murdoch's press group on Thursday at an inquiry that has turned into a slow-motion political disaster for the British leader.

The former top media adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron was detained Wednesday on suspicion of perjury in the trial of a flamboyant ex-Scottish lawmaker — the latest case tied to allegations of wrongdoing by British tabloid newspapers.

David Cameron signed off messages to tabloid editor Rebekah Brooks with an affectionate "LOL", she told an inquiry on Friday, conjuring the embarrassing image of a British prime minister-in-waiting fawning over a Rupert Murdoch protégée.

Murdoch was smiling at the end of the day Thursday after News Corp. announced a profit increase that dwarfed their scandal-related expenses.

Rupert Murdoch blamed News of the World journalists for conspiring to cover up a culture of phone-hacking at the tabloid, saying they hid their activities from his son James and protégée Rebekah Brooks and that he personally was not paying attention.

James Murdoch, the son of media titan Rupert Murdoch, testified Tuesday that he had no idea phone hacking was widespread at the News of the World tabloid and that he would have insisted the company "get to the bottom of what was going on" had he known.

James Murdoch has written to the influential UK parliamentary committee investigating a phone hacking scandal to apologize and restate his own innocence ahead of a potentially damaging report that could determine his future in Britain.

A former reporter on the News of the World newspaper, the defunct News Corp British paper at the heart of phone-hacking and corruption allegations, said he lost his job as crime correspondent because he refused to bribe police officers.

Rebekah Brooks, a former top executive with Rupert Murdoch’s News International, was among six people arrested Tuesday in one of the largest police sweeps yet in the long-running phone-hacking scandal, British news media reported.